变译理论视域下《淮南子》文化专有项变译策略研究

On Translation Strategies of the Cultural-specific Items from the Huainanzi in the Perspective of the Translation Variation Theory

译界对集道家之大成的《淮南子》关注不够,而其文化专有项作为汉语言文化尤其是道家思想文化的“异质元素”,既是翻译难点,也是翻译初衷之所在。《淮南子》英译本尤其是新世纪之前的诸多节译本经梳理后,发现相关文化专有项翻译主要存在语义空缺、信息传达不明确、错译误译漏译等三类问题,理论上可运用变译理论的“增益”“减修”和“变异”策略应对。实践中,马绛在“增益”“减修”和“变异”三种翻译策略指导下灵活采用诸多手段翻译《淮南子》中的文化专有项,产生了翻译质量较高的译文。因此,基于变译之“策”灵活运用诸多手段翻译文化专有项,可有力促进中国文化走向世界进而促进世界文化走向繁荣。

The Huainanzi as a collection of Taoism has not received enough attention from the translation community,and its cultural-specific items as“specific elements”distinguishing the Chinese language and culture,especially the Taoist thought and culture,from the foreign language&culture,are both the great difficulty and the original intention of translation.After sorting out the English translations of the Huainanzi,especially the many abridged translations before the new century,it is found that there are mainly three types of problems in translating the relevant cultural items,such as semantic gaps,unclear messages,mistranslations and omissions,etc.Theoretically,in order to cope with these problems,we can apply the“addition”,“reduction”and“variation”strategies from the Translation Variation Theory.In practice,John S.Major,famous Sinologist and translator,has flexibly adopted many means based on the three translation strategies,to translate the cultural-specific items from the Huainanzi,resulting in English versions of high quality.Therefore,the flexible application of various means to translate the cultural-specific items based on the“strategies”from the Translation Variation Theory,can strongly promote the Chinese culture to the world and global culture to the prosperity.