翻译文学的文化地位与译者的文化态度

Cultural Position of Translated Literature and Translator , s Cultural Attitude

翻译是文化交流的一种方式,因此一个民族的文化地位,以及特定文学多元系统内翻译文学的地位都会对译者翻译策略的选择产生重大的影响。根据Evan-Zohar的多元系统假说,在强式文学多元系统内,译者往往会采用归化式策略,而在弱式多元系统内,则多采用洋化式或阻抗式翻译策略。然而,有趣的是,在中国翻译界,自20-30年代始,在同一个文学多元系统内却出现了两种策略并存的现象。本文从译者对目标文化和翻译文学在目标文学多元系统内的地位的主观态度入手,对这个问题作了进一步的探讨。

Since translation is a means of cultural interaction, the cultural position of a nation and/or oftranslated literature in a given literary polysystem in relation to the source culture may exert strong influ-ence on the translators selection of strategy. According to the polysystem hypothesis proposed by Evan-Zohar, the translators in a strong literary polysystem tend to apply domesticating strategy and thus producetranslations characterized by superficial fluency, while in a weak culture foreignizing strategy or resistanttranslation prevails. Interestingly enough, in Chinese culture since 1920-30s, both strategies have beenpresent side by side. By taking into account the translators attitudes towards Chinese culture and trans-lated literature in Chinese literary polysystem, this paper argues that individual translators cultural atti-tudes play an important part in their selection of translation strategy, and that translators with differentcultural attitudes tend to produce translations with different stylistic values. This finding explains whysome translators tend to produce fluent translations but others do not. The socio-pragmatic perspectiveassumed here marks a departure from the structuralism that traditional translation studies tend to apply tothe study of translation.