基于语料库的《红楼梦》诗词英译本译者风格对比研究

A Corpus-based Contrastive Study on Translators′Styles of the English Versions of Poems in Hong Lou Meng

《红楼梦》中的诗词是整部小说不可或缺的重要组成部分,值得重视。文章基于作者自建的《红楼梦》诗词汉英平行语料库,借助语料库软件,从词汇层面对《红楼梦》诗词的两英译本——霍克斯和闵福德合译本与杨宪益和戴乃迭合译本呈现出的不同译者风格进行了定量与定性分析。研究发现:霍译本用词更为丰富,重视对人称代词的使用,其复杂句的数量远多于杨译本;杨译本定冠词the的使用有一定的倾向性,其简单句远多于霍译本。语言、文化背景等因素的差异,使译者呈现出不同的翻译风格。

As an indispensable part of the whole novel,the poems in Hong Lou Meng deserve an in-depth study.Based on the Chinese-English parallel corpus of the poems in Hong Lou Meng built by the author,with the help of corpus software,this paper makes a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the different translalors′styles of two English versions of the poems in Hong Lou Meng(one is translated by Hawkes and Minford,the other is translated by Yang Hsien-yi and his wife Gladys)from the aspect of words.The result shows that:Hawkes and Minford′s translation is featured with more variety of words,more usage of personal pronouns,and more complex sentences;Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys′s translation is characterized by certain tendency in using the word“the”,and more simple sentences.It is different language and cultural backgrounds of the translators that lead to the different translations′styles.