如何以言行事:杨绛和她的翻译

How to Take Action based on Words: Yang Jiang and Her Translational Politics

杨绛的翻译观或许跟钱钟书的观点截然相反。钱颂扬语言"转换"过程中不可避免的讹误,杨绛却为翻译过程中原文"光彩"不可避免的损耗感到些许遗憾。表面上看,杨提及中国印刷业,是在回应"堂吉诃德"关于翻译仅仅类似于"誊录或抄写"的主张,意思是:如果抄写或印刷外文作品已然错误百出,那么翻译,尽管有其各式各样的局限,却不能不说是一种提升。然而,品味一下字里行间的言外之意,我们还可以这样理解,杨绛提及文化大革命对中国民族印刷业造成的破坏,而她正是在那样的背景下完成所有翻译工作的。

Yang Jiang’s view of translation may have been vastly different from that of Qian Zhongshu’s.But while Qian praises the errors unavoidable in the process of transference,Yang is slightly regretful about the loss of brilliance of the original text in the process of translation.On the surface,when Yang mentioned the printing industry in China,she was responding to Don Quixote’s view of translation as a mere‘transcribing or copying’,meaning that if the copying or printing of a foreign work is full of mistakes,the translation must be a lifting despite its limitations.Still,when one tries to understand the subtext,one can approach it this way that Yang was mentioning the destruction the Great Cultural Revolution wrought on the national printing industry in China and it was against that background that she completed all her translation work.