选择与适应视角下的杂合:《生活的艺术》的跨文化解读

Hybridization from the Perspective of Translation as Adaptation and Selection:A Cross-Cultural Interpretation of The Importance of Living

以翻译适应选择论为理论框架,对20世纪30年代风靡美国的中国文化经典《生活的艺术》的译介展开研究。研究发现,大萧条期间,为“工业文明病”所困的美国民众从林语堂的《吾国与吾民》一书中发现了对中国文化的误解,并从中感悟到了生活的智慧。而林语堂也在赞助人的推动下,希望延续该书的成功从而达到“治病救人”的交际目的,为此他开始了《生活的艺术》的创作。林语堂通过使用汉语句式和未被广泛接受的音译词汇、中国古代文化介绍和中西文化对照、语录体引进这3种方式,实现了《生活的艺术》一书在语言维度、文化维度和交际维度的适应性选择转换,使其在语言、文化和文学手法上呈现出明显的杂合特征,以适应当时复杂的翻译环境。研究表明,针对翻译生态环境进行多维度转换,实现作品的适度杂合,有利于中国文化的译介与传播。

Based on the Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection,this paper makes a study on The Importance of Living,a masterpiece which successfully introduced Chinese culture to the U.S.in the 1930s.The findings are as follows:During the Great Depression,amazed by Lin Yutang’s My Country and My People,American people began to long for more wisdom of life from the misunderstood China.This,together with the urge from Lin’s literary agents,strengthened Lin’s resolve to save American people trapped in the hustle and bustle of modern society by writing The Importance of Living.To adapt to this ecological environment of translation,Lin selectively used Chinese sentence patterns and transliterated words that are not widely accepted,presented Chinese culture via anecdotes of ancient Chinese and the contrast between it and western culture,and introduced Quotations as a type of ancient prose style in his writing.Such adaptive transformations in the dimension of language,culture and communication endowed the book with hybridity in terms of language,culture and literary techniques,enabling it to survive successfully.This means that the realization of hybridity by making adaptive transformations corresponding to the specific ecological environment of translation can be beneficial to the introduction of Chinese culture.