敦煌叙事文献《大目乾连冥间救母变文》英译的描写研究

A Descriptive Study on the English Translations of Dunhuang Narrative “Transformative Texts on How Mahāmaudgalyāyana Rescues His Mother from the Underworld”

“目连救母”是对中国民间习俗、戏曲文化等产生了深远影响的文化故事。《大目乾连冥间救母变文并图一卷并序》是敦煌出土的载述该故事的唐五代时期文献。二十世纪中期以来,汉学家们先后对该文献进行了英译,其成为在西方文化语境讲释“孝道”这一中国传统伦理思想的文字载体。通过双语语料的描写与对比,收集可观察的文本数据,可探究汉学家英译重构敦煌“救母”叙事过程中的决策机制和特点,以便为多语文化语境中“中国故事”的翻译与传播提供理论参照。

“Mu-lien Rescuing his Mother” is a culturally-loaded story which exerts far-reaching influence on traditional Chinese rituals and drama genres. The story is literarily told in “Transformative Texts on how Mahāmaudgalyāyana Rescues His Mother from the Underworld, with Pictures, One Scroll, with Preface”, a narrative manuscript which was written in the Tang and Five Dynasties and unearthed in Dunhuang. Ever since the middle of the 20century, the sinologists from western countries have translated the Dunhuang narrative into English. Its English versions help disseminate “filial piety”, an essential component of traditional Chinese ethical thoughts in the western context. On the basis of the observable textual evidence retrieved from a contrastive description of the bilingual texts, we may spell out the mechanism of the sinologist translators’ decision-making in restructuring the English version of the story. This research is expected to shed light on methodologically telling Chinese stories in the globalized multilingual context.