基于语料库的《红楼梦》英译集体量词对比研究——以“群”的英译为例

A Corpus-Based Comparative Study of the English Translation of the Collective Classifier “Qun” in Hong Lou Meng

本文基于《红楼梦》的两个译本,对汉语集体量词"群"的英译进行描述性对比研究,借以探求两译本在汉语集体量词英译方面的异同,以及从多个角度探讨异同的成因,以丰富汉英量词研究及量词翻译研究。研究发现:两译本对"群"的翻译呈现多样化特征,均使用具体的英语集体量词以明示原文中隐含的意义,使得译文更加形象、生动,体现了翻译语际显化现象;杨译对近半数(48%)的"群"采用省略策略,而霍译本中79%的"群"被译成英语集体量词,且这些量词都可以用于"数词+N1+of+N2"的表量结构,和源文本的"一+群+名词"结构对应。两种不同的翻译结果可能受译者身份及源语和译入语在集体量词上的差别所影响。

The paper focuses on the translation of “qun”, a collective classifer in the Chinese lan-guage, in the two translated English versions of Hong Lou Meng, thereby explores the similarities and differences of its renditions and attempts to account for these similarities and differences from different perspectives. It is aimed at enriching studies on classifers in the Chinese and English languages and on their renditions between the two languages. Results show that “qun” has been translated into various English classifers, thus manifesting the implied meaning of the source text; nearly a half （48%） of the “qun” were not rendered in Yang’s translation, whilst 79% of them were translated by Hawkes into their English equivalents. This difference might be caused by the differ-ent identities of the two translators and the differences in classifers between the two languages.