图形-背景理论视角下汉语古诗英译的句法结构探讨

The Syntactic Structure of Poems from Chinese to English from the Perspective of Figure-ground Theory

汉英句法结构不同,汉语多用并列结构,英语多用从属结构,这个差异导致汉译英时须将汉语的并列结构转化成英语的从属结构,这就涉及到汉语并列结构中谁主谁从的问题,图形-背景理论为解决这一问题指明了方向。本文从定义特征、动态性、依赖性、突显性四个方面探讨汉语古诗语句图形和背景的区分问题。在区分原文中图形和背景的基础上,还要考虑在译文中用适当的句法结构体现出来:图形用主谓结构或主句表达,背景用从句或短语形式表达。综合这两个方面,图形-背景理论视角下汉语古诗英译的本质问题可以归结为:原文中何为图形,何为背景;译文中图形和背景何以体现。本文旨在为汉语古诗英译时译文的句法建构提供可资参考的视角。

Coordinate structure is widely used in Chinese while subordinate structure in English. The difference leads to the necessity of turning Chinese coordinate structure into English subordinate structure when ancient Chinese poems are translated into English. Here comes the problem of which part of Chinese coordinate structure is main clause and which part is subordinate clause. Figure-ground theory points out the way to the choice. In this article, definitional properties, motion, dependence and salience are discussed to help distinguish between figure and ground in ancient Chinese poems. Once figure and ground have been decided, we have to consider using proper sentence structure in the version so as to give expression to them. Generally we use subject-predicate structure or main clause for figure, participle phrase, noun phrase, adjective phrase or subordinate clause for ground. So we come to the essential problem of ancient Chinese poems translation from the perspective of figure-ground theory： which is figure and which is ground in the original; how figure and ground are expressed in the version. The significance of the article lies in that it can provide a referential perspective for choice of sentence structure in the version when ancient Chinese poems are translated into English.