文学语境与人名隐喻的翻译研究——基于《红楼梦》英译文的个案研究

Literary Contextual Constraint on the Translation of Name Metaphors:A Case Study of the English Translation of The Story of the Stone

人名隐喻是《红楼梦》的艺术特色之一。小说的人名同时投射到人物形象、性格及作品的主题等较抽象的概念上,使人名在一定语境中兼而实现了称谓功能以及表现人物与主题的文学功能,成为颇具特色的文学隐喻。一部作品的主题、人物等文学因素是人名隐喻赖以生成的环境因素,也是其存在的依据,和文化语境一样,制约着人名的文学解读与翻译。文化和文学语境交织存在,有时会发生冲突。文学语境与人名隐喻是相辅相成的关系。上述观点为霍译本的人名意译策略提供了一定的解释,并赋予文学作品的人名翻译评价以新标准。

The literary contextual constraint on the translation of name metaphors has been neglected to an extent. Although both phonemic transliteration and semantic translation have been widely used in translating the names of characters in literary works, discussion as to which is the more appropriate is ongoing. Many studies have investigated the cultural context for explaining and considering the advantages and disadvantages of each, but they seem to have overlooked a key point： that naming in literature is in fact an art, a central part of fiction. Unlike in daily life, names of the characters in literary works can be mapped onto the images, the characteristics of the characters, and the theme of the novel. So in a literary context, names function not merely as appellations, but also play a key role in terms of describing images, portraying characteristics, and conveying the theme. Thus, a kind of name metaphor is produced： NAME IS CHARACTER, NAME IS THEME, which is a typical metaphor in literature, strongly dependent on certain works. A good example is the Chinese classic Hong Lou Meng （The Story of the Stone, translated by D. Hawkes）, in which over 500 people are named by the author in an artful/artistic way： the effective use of partial tone and quotations from classical poems, which contributes much to the vividness of the characters, images, and the implicit conveyance of the theme. We hold that there is no way to discover name metaphors without probing into the works： name metaphors are usually dependent on the literary works in which they are implemented. Characters and theme serve to indicate why and how name metaphor occurs. In other words, the characters and topic theme of the works are contextual factors which bring the name metaphor into being. They are also poetic elements to be taken into consideration in literary translation, as A. Lefevere once noted. In relation to the cultural context, we refer it to ＂literary context＂, which consists of theme, characters, style, aesthetic tendency, literature tradition, and so on. These supply both a contextual foundation and a purpose for the name metaphor. From the viewpoints of the dependent relationship between the name metaphor and the literary context, we here suggest a new way for translation study of the characters＇ names of the literary works, and also some new criteria for evaluating the products. The empirical study reported in this paper revealed that when the literary context was observed, or both cultural and literary contexts were observed, a semantic translation was adopted, as in Hawkes＇ translation. Moreover, a plot-compensation procedure was applied appropriately when the translation of the special names （comments on the characters＇ personality, etc. ） was done with the aim of reproducing the metaphorical meaning. But Hawkes failed to transfer the implied meaning of the partial tone names and the covert aesthetic meaning of the names related to poems and literary quotations due to his choice of phonemic transliteration. Thus, we argue that phonemic transliteration can hardly help to reproduce name metaphors. In summary, study of the translation by Hawkes has convinced us that cultural context is not the only one that mediates the translation of names, as the literary context acts in much the same way. We should also note that sometimes the cultural context and the literary context remain contradictory and that the notion of name metaphor can offer further hints.