《红楼梦》“四时即事诗”中花鸟等传统意象之英译研究

Two Types of English Interpretation:a Study on Traditional Chinese Flower-and-Bird Images in Some Poems from A Dream of Red Mansions

《红楼梦》中贾宝玉所撰“四时即事诗”虽非成熟诗作,但其中不乏梅、竹、鹤、鸦等古典文化中常见的花鸟意象,以及扫雪烹茶、焚香听雨等传统生活内容。霍克思译本(下文简称“霍译”)与杨宪益、戴乃迭译本(下文简称“杨译”)这两种重要英译中对这些内容的处理各有千秋。霍译简洁流利而不乏遗漏或改写;杨译内容相对完整而偏重直译,译文典雅华赡,比较忠实地传达出传统文化内涵。从二者的对照研究中可以见出他们对中国文化的不同理解与阐释,有助于我们理解春雨夏荷、秋桐冬雪等传统文化意象在英文中的阐释与传播。

JIA Baoyu’s four“Garden Poems”in A Dream of Red Mansions,although not a series of mature poems,contains many common flower-and-bird images of classical Chinese culture such as plum,bamboo,crane and crow,as well as traditional life style like snow-sweeping,tea-making,incense-burning and listening-to-rain etc..These poems’two important English translations of Hawke’and YANG Xianyi&Gladys YANG’s both have advantages and disadvantages.In short,Hawkes’translation is concise and fluent but with a lot of omissions or rewrites,while the YANG’s translation is rather complete and focuses on literal translation,in an elegant and classical style,thus faithfully conveys traditional Chinese connotations.From a comparative study of the two translations,we can see two types of understandings and interpretations of Chinese literature,which helps us to understand the interpretation and spreading of traditional cultural images such as spring-rain,summer-lotus,autumn-parasol tree and winter-snow in English.