汤显祖名剧《南柯记》西行东归的文化翻译

From Nan Ke Ji to DREAMING Under the Southern Bough:Tracing the Process of a Cultural Translation

2016年,纪念汤显祖和莎士比亚逝世400周年的英文现代戏剧《仲夏夜梦南柯》在中英两国巡回演出。本文分析了从汤显祖名剧《南柯记》到其英译本、从英译本到英文改编剧本DREAMING Under the Southern Bough(《梦南柯》)、以及英剧本汉译这三个过程中的文化翻译现象,发现:在《南柯记》这部中国文化名著英译的西行过程中,原作的文化因素有一定程度的省略和简化;在英译本到英剧本的改编过程中,主创及编剧进行了跨文化的重塑;在英剧本汉译的过程中,译者进行了跨文化的协调。本文的分析或可为"中国文化走出去"提供一个鲜活的案例。

To commemorate the 400 th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare and his Chinese counterpart Tang Xianzu,a special theatrical production named A Midsummer Night's DREAMING Under the Southern Bough was staged in 2016 in both China and the UK.This article analyzes the process of cultural translation which the Chinese-English rendition of Nan Ke Ji had set off.The process is divisible into three stages:first,Tang Xianzu's masterpiece Nan Ke Ji was translated into its English version A Dream under the Southern Bough;then the English version was further turned into the script for a play in English by the name of DREAMING under the Southern Bough;and this script has finally been back-translated into Chinese as a fine example of 'Chinese culture going global.' It is found that in its English rendition,the original Chinese cultural elements tend to be omitted and simplified to some extent,that further intercultural adaptations are visible in the English play script based on the translation,and that in the Chinese back-translation of the play script,intercultural mediation appears to have been adopted by the translator as the dominant mode of practice.