语料库驱动的《六祖坛经》三译本比较

A Corpus-driven Comparison of Three English Versions of Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch

在自建《六祖坛经》汉英平行语料库的基础上,通过对《六祖坛经》中文原本及其相应的黄茂林英译本、德怀特·戈达德(Dwight Goddard)英译本和克里斯玛·韩福瑞(Christmas Humphreys)英译本的检索分析,发现三个英译本均在一定程度上表现出翻译文本的语际显化特征,但黄译和韩译更倾向于忠实中文源语文本,而戈译则更多地体现了译者对文本的操纵。三位译者不同的翻译目的和生活背景以及身处的社会历史文化大环境对于译者翻译策略的选择和翻译方法的运用具有一定程度的影响,但译者不同的语言文化背景对译本的高频词使用和语句的复杂程度以及译文的可读性并没有显著影响。

Driven by the Chinese-English parallel corpus of Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, the paper compares the lexical, syntactic and discoursal features of three English translations of the Sutra, one by Wong Mou-lam, another by Dwight Goddard, and the other by Christmas Humphreys. The study shows that although there are similarities of inter-lingual explieitation among these three translations, Wong＇s and Humphreys＇ appear to be more faithful to the souree text, while Goddard＇s demonstrates more manipulations by the translator. It is pointed out that different translation purposes, living experiences and social environments affect translators＇ choice of their strategies and methods to some extent. And the source text do affect the use of high-frequency words in the translations to a certain degree, while the translator＇s native language and culture background have little effect on the frequently used words and the average sentence length of their translations.