葛浩文英译《红高粱》中的创造性搭配及其跨语言翻译研究

A Study on Goldblatt's Translation Strategies of Creative Collocations in Red Sorghum

搭配具有跨语言的差异,在英汉语翻译中是一大难题,特别是创造性搭配的跨语言翻译尤其困难。同时,创造性搭配是体现作品文学性的一个重要方面,也是文学翻译的一个重要方面,因此文学作品中创造性搭配的翻译是一个值得研究的课题。本文重点探讨美国译者葛浩文翻译莫言小说《红高粱》中的创造性搭配的英译策略。结果发现,50%以上的中文创造性搭配在英译文中被直接按字面保留或改造性保留,这说明中国当代文学的创造性搭配这一文学性在英译过程中是可以保留和翻译的。但同时,仍有近一半比例的《红高粱》中的创造性搭配未被翻译。这说明,一方面,创造性搭配是文学翻译中较为困难的一部分,在跨文化翻译中很难找到对应的创造性的搭配;另一方面,中国当代文学的文学性和创造性还未得到充分重视,在英译过程中有一定程度的损失。

Collocation is an important category of language patterning. The concept 'collocation' was proposed by British linguist J.R. Firth, referring to the company words keep. However, collocations are not at random, which means the component words in collocations usually are supposed to meet certain semantic or logical conditions. Nonetheless, in reality, in particular in literary works, certain collocations do contravene the expected semantic or logical restrictions. In fact, these kinds of creative collocations are an important aspect of the creativeness of literary works. Therefore, creative collocations are an important issue in literary translation. On the one hand, collocations, in particular in terms of creative collocations, are practically difficult to translate across languages due to systemic as well as habitual differences. On the other hand, studies of translation of creative collocation in literary works will contribute to the exploration of the creativeness issue in translation studies. Due to the above two considerations, this article explores Howard Goldblatt's English translation strategies of creative collocations in Mo Yan's famous novel Red Sorghum. The findings show that:(1) over half of the creative collocations in the original Chinese Red Sorghum are preserved in Goldblatt's English version, which implies that creative collocations in Chinese literary works can be rendered into English;(2) in the meanwhile, almost half of the creative collocations are normalized in Goldblatt's English version, which means, on the one hand, they are hard to translate across cultures, and on the other hand, the creativeness of Chinese literary works somewhat suffer losses in English translation