基于汉英平行语料库的翻译语义韵研究--以《红楼梦》“忙XX”结构的英译为例

A Chinese-English parallel corpus-based study on semantic prosody in translation The case of the “忙 XX” structure in Hongloumeng and its English translations

语义韵是一种特殊的词语搭配现象,是语料库语言学采用数据驱动方法研究词语搭配内部语义关系时发现的一种语义和谐机制,揭示了词语结伴使用时相互间的一种语义选择趋向关系。本研究以《红楼梦》"忙XX"结构在原文与三个译文中的对译项为例,借助语料库方法论考察翻译文本语义韵。研究表明,翻译文本语义韵和谐与冲突并存。译者语言能力、翻译策略及原文牵制都将导致译文同目标语原创文本的语义韵冲突,并最终导致译文与原文语义冲突。语义韵是翻译评论的一个指标,也是译者风格描写一个重要维度,同时还能用于指导翻译教学与翻译实践,其研究存在向话语交际及社会语用领域拓展的空间。

Semantic prosody is a special collocation phenomenon. It is a semantic harmony mechanism,discovered in the study of internal lexical semantics of words by the corpus-driven method,which reveals the interrelation of mutual semantic preferences among co-occurring words. The present study, exemplified by the high-frequency structure "忙 XX " in Hongloumeng and its English translations,investigates semantic prosody in translated texts based on Chinese-English parallel corpora. It is concluded that both harmony and conflict exist in semantic prosody in translation. A translator's language proficiency,translating philosophy and the constraints of source texts can all cause semantic prosody conflicts between translated texts and the non-translated texts in the target language,which can in turn cause the same conflicts between source text and target text. Semantic prosody serves not only as one crucial standard for the assessment of translation quality,a new dimension of describing a translator's style,but more importantly as a guidance in teaching translation and translating practice itself.Furthermore,the study of semantic prosody should be extended to the field of verbal communication and social pragmatics in the future.