《红楼梦》霍克思译本“红”英译问题辨析

An Analysis of David Hawkes’s Translation of “红 hong”(red) in His The Story of the Stone

《红楼梦》霍克思译本因"改红为绿"现象广为学者诟病,本文利用"《红楼梦》汉英平行语料库",细致比对原作前80回近500个"红"字以及霍克思译本的相应英译,发现霍克思译文并不存在很大问题。从不存在歧义的"红"字到已不具本义的"红"字,再到目的语中无法理解的"红"字,霍氏针对不同情况做出了不同的处理,直译为主,意译为辅,万不得已才改译。"改红为绿"实际只出现在"怡红院""怡红公子"二词的翻译上,其背后的原因应是译者误读了"怡红"中"红"之所指及"怡红快绿"短语的结构。

This paper,using the Chinese-English Parallel Corpus of Hongloumeng,carefully compares some 500"红hong"(red)in the first eighty chapters of Cao Xueqin’s Hongloumeng with David Hawkes’s corresponding translations,and finds that there is no grave problem in translating"hong"for Hawkes’The Story of the Stone.Most"hong"s were faithfully translated by Hawkes when there were ambiguities,some"hong"s were paraphrased and others were dealt with otherwise since they didn’t have the original meaning or were involved with misunderstandings in the target language if literally translated.For the issue of"changing‘red’to‘green’",it actually existed,but just in two phrases,"Yihong Yuan"and"Yihong Gongzi",which seemed to be magnified and much criticized in the Chinese academia.The reasons for such changes were that David Hawkes misread the reference of"hong"in"Yihong"as well as the phrasal structure of"Yihong Kuailü".