英语自由诗的节奏及翻译

On rhythm and translation of English free verse

英美自由诗大师认为,好的自由诗是有节奏的,这种节奏虽不同于格律诗那种有规律的语音重复,但也不像散文那样没有明显的音乐性设置。本文根据其相关诗论,以艾略特的长诗《普鲁弗洛克的情歌》为例,对该诗的节奏进行诗学分析。分析表明:好的自由诗确实有明显的节奏。然而,现行的自由诗翻译却完全没有体现出这一特征,反而具有突出的“散文化”或“非诗化”倾向,对国内自由诗体裁形式产生了很大影响。本文认为,自由诗的翻译首先应区分原诗是否具有明显不同于散文的节奏,针对有节奏的自由诗,翻译时应与现行的分行散文式译法反其道而行之,采用“诗化翻译”的方法,以强化译文的节奏配置,从而把原文的节奏体现出来。为检验这一译法的有效性,本文作者重译了艾略特的这首诗,然后通过读者调查的方式,考察和比较了读者对拙译和几个著名译文的接受情况。调查显示,新译法在自由诗翻译中有巨大的成长空间。

The leading figures of the English free verse believe that there is rhythm in this genre, which, although different from metrical poetry featured by regular repetition of a syllabic sequence, is by no means without obvious musical setting. This study takes T. S. Eliot’s long poem The Love Song of J. R. Prufrock as an example and makes a poetic analysis of its rhythm to show that a good free verse has an obvious rhythm. Unfortunately, the current Chinese translation of the Western free verse does not represent this feature at all. The translated poems are heavily “prosified” or “depoeticalized,” and have exerted a great influence on the(re-)shaping of free verse in China. The study holds that translators of free verse should distinguish at the very beginning whether or not the original poem is loaded with a rhythm that is obviously different from that of prose. If so, they should take a contrary route to the current prose-oriented method and adopt a method of so-called “poeticalized translation” so as to reinforce the rhythmic organization of the translated poem and represent this important poetic feature of the original. This method is applied to the retranslation of The Love Song of J. R. Prufrock to test its effectiveness. Thereafter, an investigation is conducted to compare the readers’ reaction to this retranslation and several well-known versions. The results reveal that this new method shows its great growth potential in free verse translation.