合作原则视角下对《三体II:黑暗森林》英译本的批判性研究

A Critical Study of the English Translation of The Dark Forest from the Perspective of the Cooperative Principle

《三体II:黑暗森林》是刘慈欣的科幻巨著《三体》系列第二部,语言简洁并含有大量隐喻,融入了丰富的哲学、宇宙和人性思考。此作的英译者Joel Martinsen (周华)在忠实原文的同时,也展现了译者主体性,但明显不足之处是某些对话的翻译表达不准确。本文从语用学合作原则出发,对文中典型人物会话及译文进行分析,深入探讨了句子的表面意义及特定语境下的言外之意。文章指出,在进行对话翻译时,对小说人物性格、说话意图、前后文语境的语用思考至关重要。并基于此,对译文提出了改进意见,以期更好地传达作者意图,让读者能更清晰地领略文本内涵。希望以此能为不同背景的译者在进行具体翻译实践时提供思路参考,从而更好地提升译文质量,推动中国小说、中国文化更好地走向世界。

The Dark Forest is the second volume of Liu Cixin’s sci-fi masterpiece Three Body trilogy. The language is concise and contains a great deal of metaphors, incorporating a wealth of philosophical, cosmic, and humanistic reflections. Joel Martinsen, the English version’s translator, shows translator’s subjectivity while being faithful to the original text, but the obvious shortcoming is the inaccurate expression of the translation of certain dialogues. Based on the cooperation principle in pragmatics, this article analyzes the characters’ dialogues in both the original and translated texts, and explores the surface meaning and the deeper meaning in the context. The article points out that when translating dialogues, the pragmatic thinking about the characters’ personalities, their speaking intention and the context before and after the specific text is crucial. Then it suggests improvements to the translation in order to better convey the author’s intention and let readers understand the original text more clearly. It is hoped that this will provide translators of different backgrounds with ideas and references for specific translation practices, so as to better improve the quality of translations and promote Chinese novels and Chinese culture to the world.