“打铁还需自身硬”的英译研究——语言认知研究视角

Translation of “Da Tie Hai Xu Zi Shen Ying” from the Perspective of Cognitive Approach to Language

党的"十八大"闭幕后,新一届中央政治局常委与中外记者见面,新当选的习近平总书记在讲到我们党要解决党内目前存在的问题必须从严治党时使用了一个生动形象、含义深刻的熟语——"打铁还需自身硬"。从修辞角度来看,这句话是一个能把深奥的道理浅显化和把抽象事理具体化、形象化的隐喻表达。针对这句话,见面会现场译员和海内外媒体有不同的理解,进而产生了具有明显差异的英文翻译。随后,译界学者也针对该熟语的理解与英文翻译提出了不同的观点。译员、媒体和学者之间的分歧在于对熟语中"自身硬"的理解以及翻译方法的选择上。本文从语言认知研究的角度对该熟语在这一特殊语境中所表达的意义做出了新的解释,并基于以意义为取向的翻译观,对该熟语的英文译法提出了自己的见解。

After the 18th Congress of the CPC, the standing committee of the newly elected Political Bureau of the CPC met the journalists from home and abroad. XI Jinping, the newly elected Secretary-in-General of the CPC, in his speech used the idiom ＂Da Tie Hal Xu Zi Shen Ying＂ when he was addressing what the Party need to better administer the Party so as to solve the problems that have emerged in the Party. From the rhetoric point of view, this sentence is a metaphor, which functions to make the profound clear and the abstract concrete and vivid. However, the interpreter at the meeting and the many overseas media gave different interpretations of the sentence. Hence, diverse English versions of the idiom. Scholars in translation also presented different views in terms of interpretations of the sentence. The focus of their differences arose from the interpretation of ＂Zi Shen Ying＂ of the idiom and whether direct translation or free translation should be adopted. This paper presents a new interpretation of the sentence from a cognitive view, and on the basis of the frame theory and conceptual metaphor theory in particular, analyzes the inadequacy of the various interpretations/translations of the sentence in light of the meaning-oriented view of translation, and finally brings about the writer＇ s own translation.