林纾佚译《冰洋鬼啸》之考读

Lin Shu's Translation of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Captain of the Pole-Star:A Re-assessment

林纾(1852-1924)是我国近代文学史上影响最大、成就最高的小说翻译家.1911年刊登在《小说时报》上的《冰洋鬼啸》是一篇长期以来不为学界所知、几乎从未有人研究过的林纾佚译.近年来,虽有学者考证出该译底本,但对林纾译文的评价非常低,有失公允.本文通过对林纾1911年前后翻译及交游活动的考察,对林纾翻译《冰洋鬼啸》的相关译事进行梳理,推断其可能的合作者,并在译文与原文的细读与对比基础上,分析柯南·道尔原作的哥特式美学特征在《冰洋鬼啸》中的再现、变形与改写,以及"科学"与"鬼神"这两种看似对立的元素如何在林纾笔下得到有机的调和与统一.

Lin Shu(1852-1924)was the most influential and accomplished fiction translator in the early modern history of Chinese literature.Although most of Lin’s translations have been well researched,his rendition of Arthur Conan Doyle's short-story The Captain of the Pole-Stary which appeared in a 1911 issue of Xiaoshuo Shibao(The Fiction Times),remains largely unexplored and even unknown to scholarship today.The only study of this translation was conducted by Japanese scholar Watanabe Hiroshi渡辺浩司,who,having found Lin Shu’s TT not entirely faithful to the original,dismissed it as a poor translational work.Subjecting Lin's rendition to a reexamination in its historical context,this paper argues against Hiroshi’s assessment on the basis of a close reading of and a careful comparison between the translation and the original text.The findings show that the Gothic aesthetics informing Conan Doyle’s original work is creatively reproduced and rewritten by Lin Shu,whose masterful balancing and reconciliation of the two seemingly opposing elements of“the scientific”and“the supernatural”in the original has added much to the value of his version of the story.