特殊文学文体的认知焦虑及其翻译——以《爱玛》中带引号自由间接引语的汉译为例

特殊的文学文体形式会给译者的翻译提出挑战,例如《爱玛》中有一类带引号的自由间接引语(FIS)就对译者准确地翻译设置了难题。《爱玛》的作者奥斯丁将此类FIS大致用于4种情形:1)话轮开始前的过渡;2)上下文叙述中孤立存在的引语;3)话轮展开;4)话轮压缩。本文考察21个《爱玛》的中译本,其中对大部分带引号的FIS都有准确的把握和处理,个别带引号的FIS则阻碍了译者正确把握原文含义。译者所做出的翻译选择间接反映了特殊语境下此类引语偏低的辨识度,并由此引发译者的识别焦虑,集体的误读趋势同时也体现了译者之间的相互影响。

Translators are often confronted with and challenged by special styles of literary works,for example,Free Indirect Speech(FIS)with quotation marks which abounds in Jane Austen’s later work,Emma.This kind of FIS can be found in four contexts:1)before slipping into Free Direct Speech(FDS),2)as a piece of isolated speech,3)in the development of dialogue turns,and 4)as a reconstructed dialogue.Most cases of such FIS are translated successfully in 21 Chinese versions of Emma,while some have created obstacles to Chinese translators.Translators’choices reflected the difficulty of identifying and understanding such FIS in certain contexts which caused anxiety among translators and led to misreading and interaction among different versions.