跨文化视角下葛浩文的四字成语英译策略研究——以莫言小说《生死疲劳》为例

A Study on Goldblatt's Strategies in His English Translation of Chinese Four-Character Idioms from the Cross-Cultural Perspective——With examples taken from Mo Yan's novel,Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out

四字成语是中华民族文化的重要代表之一,中国的文学作品中富含寓意深远的四字成语,在被翻译过程中应受到充分的重视。跨文化理论是对文化现象进行归属性和差异性的对比分析,旨在达到对文化差异性的理解。研究基于跨文化视角,从语言习惯思维、传播受众和目的、翻译美学三个方面,对葛浩文先生英译莫言小说《生死疲劳》中的四字成语进行了实例分析,得出的结论是:译者对特定翻译策略的选用在一定程度上可以有效传达中国四字成语的意义,使译入语与原文的文化语境相契合,实现跨文化传播的目的。

Four-character idioms are one of the important representatives of Chinese culture.Chinese literary works are rich in four-character idioms with profound and far-reaching connotations,which should be paid full attention to in the process of translation.Cross-cultural theory is a comparative analysis of the attribution and difference of cultural phenomena,aimed at the understanding of cultural differences.Based on a cross-cultural perspective,this study explores into the English translation of Chinese four-character idioms from three aspects,namely,the habitual way of thinking in a certain language,the target audience and the purpose of communication and the aesthetics of the translation.After an analysis of Mr.Goldblatt's English translation of the Chinese four-character idioms in Mo Yan's novel,Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out,a conclusion is reached that the translator's selection of specific translation strategies can effectively convey the meaning of Chinese four-character idioms to a certain extent and make the target language expressions fit with the cultural context of the original text so as to achieve the purpose of effective cross-cultural communication.