变通意识与国粹心态——葛浩文的文学翻译观解读

The Sense of Flexibility and Mentality of Quintessence of Chinese Culture

由于汉英语言和文化迥然各异,译者如何酌情变通以逾越翻译障碍至为关键,文学翻译尤其如此。葛浩文注重读者的审美习惯,敢于变通,译笔优美,以写作心态追求译文的可读性,其译文既不逾矩,又极具可读性,因而广受欢迎。他的成功对中国文学"走出去"起了积极的推动作用,对我们富有启示意义:翻译中的创作意识不是单纯的归化策略,也非同一般的"改写"笔法,而是从内心以翻译为创作。可以说,葛译是创作的,而不是翻译的;葛浩文以译为写,变通灵活,但不等于忽略或否认了中国文学的民族特色。中国文学真正要"走出去",首先应该保持积极的外向心态,摆脱"国粹"心态的束缚,少些细节得失的计较,更多地考虑宏观层面上中国文学美学价值的再现。

Flexibility is of vital importance to the translator in his efforts to overcome various obstacles that might occur in Chinese-English literary translation.Goldblatt believes that the first target in literary translation is to meet the aesthetic taste of the target language reader.With this in mind,he has been successful in making his translations of Chinese novels more acceptable by the native English readers either linguistically or aesthetically.From this fact we can learn that greater readability for Chinese literary works among the western readers largely depends on the creativity of the translator.For only with this creativity will the translator be able to reproduce the aesthetic value of the original,which is more of the essence of literary translation than some linguistic details in the original.