论文总字数：29194字
摘 要
作为一种修辞方式，比喻（明喻和暗喻）具有一定的美学价值，并且和思维方式、审美标准以及文化传统密切相关。成功地翻译比喻，不但能够传递或再现原文比喻的魅力，还能够让汉英这两种语言和文化和谐共存，相互促进。译者有责任在忠实于原文的基础上传播中国文化。然而，这两种语言文化各有其特点，这就使得语言文化的交流要经历一个漫长的过程。在林语堂的译作《浮生六记》中，兼用了归化和异化的翻译策略。当然，其中还涉及了一些具体的翻译方法。本文将从《浮生六记》中比喻的翻译，来研究林语堂翻译策略与方法的具体运用。
关键词：《浮生六记》；明喻；暗喻；林语堂；翻译策略
Contents
1. Introduction 1
2. Literature Review 1
2.1 Brief summary of Six Chapters of A Floating Life 1
2.2 Definition and importance of figurative expressions 2
2.2.1 Definition and importance of simile 2
2.2.2 Definition and importance of metaphor 3
2.3 Present relevant research 3
3. Translation Strategies of Figurative Expressions 4
3.1 Domestication 4
3.2 Foreignization 6
4. Translation Methods of Figurative Expressions 8
4.1 Literal translation plus notes 8
4.2 Literal translation 9
4.3 Change of vehicle 10
4.4 Application of idioms 10
5. Conclusion 11
Works Cited 12
1. Introduction
Six Chapters of A Floating Life is such an excellent work that many people want to translate it into other languages. Lin Yutang is one of them. Lin is both a writer and translator with great competence and intelligence as well as profound achievement. Certainly, Lin Yutang and his English version of Six Chapters of A Floating Life is worth studying. What’s more, simile and metaphor contribute much to the popularity of Six Chapters of A Floating Life.
Pleasure is created by aesthetics which is originated from interrelation between things in nature. According to Wang Xijie (1983: 87), a Chinese scholar, relation is a basic principle in aesthetics. As a mode of thinking as well as one of the figures of speech in linguistics and literature, simile or metaphor relates two different things (tenor and vehicle) that have a common feature, which brings thorough understanding and aesthetic feeling. What’s more, the figure of speech also reflects aesthetics that derives from fine contrasts between tenor and vehicle, two languages as well as two kinds of culture.
In the process of translation, it is important to successfully translate the figure of speech. To some extent, the value of English version is decided by whether the figure of speech in source text is translated successfully which also decides whether the version and culture of source language are accepted by target readers. Translation is defined by Catford as “the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual material in another language (TL)” (Catford, 1965: 20). However, we cannot find equivalent for every simile or metaphor because of linguistic and cultural differences. Even so, translators should burden the responsibility to retain and convey the beauty of the figure of speech and show the charm of culture of source language as much as possible instead of ignoring it. When he translates Six Chapters of A Floating Life (《浮生六记》), Lin Yutang adopted domestication and foreignization. There are also other specific translation methods involved. In this thesis, the author mainly discuses the translating strategies and methods employed by Lin Yutang when he translated the figurative expressions in Six Chapters of A Floating Life.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Brief summary of Six Chapters of A Floating Life
As one of the shining pearls in ancient Chinese prose, Six Chapters of A Floating Life, which was created in Qing Dynasty, was an autobiography written by Shen Fu. The book mainly depicts early happy marriage between Shen Fu and his wife Chen Yun as well as their later misery life. Despite its short length, it is rich in content including romance, misfortunes of family, travel, and individual interest and so on. What’s more, their attitudes towards difficulties leave a deep impression on readers. Optimistic and open-minded, they live with permanent childlike innocence making them fail to get accustomed to a federal society but enabling the couple to appreciate the beauty of life regardless of the following tough experiences. The image of Yun makes a great contribution to the fame of the book. She loves her husband and family, bears profound interests for landscape and literature and keeps a positive attitude towards life. Lin Yutang points out that “Yun, I think, is one of the loveliest women in Chinese literature” (Lin Yutang, 1999: 20).
The title of Six Chapters of A Floating Life originates from Li Bai’s poem, “Our floating life is like a spring dream; how often one can enjoy oneself?” The book could have totaled six chapters but now only four of them left. Nominally, it includes Chapter One, Wedded Bliss、 Chapter Two, The Little Pleasure of Life、Chapter Three, Sorrow、Chapter Four, The Joys of Travel、Chapter Five, Experience and Chapter Six, The Way of Life. Chapter Five and Chapter Six are missing at present.
Chinese version of Six Chapters of A Floating Life makes a feature of co-existence of vernacular and classical Chinese, making itself easily understood and shadowing a poetic air. Furthermore, merits of novel and prose are contained at the same time. As a result, readers may taste the attraction of plots as well as the classical elegance of words.
2.2 Definition and importance of figurative expressions
2.2.1 Definition and importance of simile
The term simile originates from ‘Simile’, a Latin word which means similarity and likeness. Now simile means comparing two things or phenomenon with some common aspects. “Simile is fundamentally a figure of speech requiring overt reference to source and target entities, and an explicit construction connecting them.” (Gibbs, 1994: 40) In English, some markers of similarity for the comparison are “as”, “like” and so on.
As for the importance of simile, there are three aspects involved. Firstly, it offers us a way of deploring the world. An object in the world shares some common features with another while it bears some specific points. We should know not only the differences but also the similarities. Secondly, simile provides an effective way of argument. Last but not the least, simile implies some aesthetic values and is an indispensable figure of speech in literature.
2.2.2 Definition and importance of metaphor
The term metaphor originates from ‘Metaphoria’, a Greek word meaning ‘to carry’. In metaphor, there is a comparison of two diverse things that have some similar features. The meaning is connotative because topic or similarity markers such as like, as, are omitted. Metaphor is first defined by Aristotle as “a shift carrying over a word from its normal use to a new one” (Richards, 1965: 89). According to Newmark, metaphor is “Any figurative expression: The transferred sense of a physical word; the personification of an abstraction; the application of a word or collocation to what it does not literally denote. Metaphors may be ‘single’ (one-word) or ‘extended’ (a collocation, an idiom, a sentence, a proverb, an allegory, a complete imaginative text)” (Newmark, 1998: 104). Describing an essence, occurrence or character more extensively and briefly and in a more sophisticated manner is the primary aim compared with using literal language.
2.3 Present relevant research
Before 21st century, there was little study on C-E translation of Six Chapters of A Floating Life. However, more and more attention from academic community has been attracted since the republication of Lin Yutang’s English version of the book in 1999. Generally speaking, studies involved can be classified into seven types: overall review of English edition, translator, comparison between diverse English versions, cultural aspects, literary aspects and linguistic aspects, translation strategies.
Firstly, study of overall review makes a general comment on the translation of Six Chapters of A Floating Life especially Lin’s translation, including not only the praises of outstanding merits but also the disadvantages.
Secondly, study of translator is about the translator’s subjectivity. In other wards, the choices of source text, strategies and methods are under the influence of subjective factors such as writing style, translation motivation, translation principles, attitudes towards culture and life, sense of value, ideology, feminist consciousness, etc.
Thirdly, comparison of different English versions studies the similarities and differences mostly from perspectives of culture and translator’s subjectivity, detailedly analyzing translation strategies of culture information, presentation forms of culture, reoccurrence of language features, comprehension of source text from the view of culture, and compensation strategy of cultural default. Lin Yutang and Shirley M. Black are the translators often mentioned.
Fourthly, study from the perspective of culture focuses on various cultural factors shown in the English versions of Six Chapters of A Floating Life in terms of the translation of culture-loaded words, specific cultural translation strategies such as domestication, foreignization, cultural compensation, cultural borrowing, cultural substitution and so on, the interpretation of cultural images, the pragmatic translation of symbols of cultural information, etc.
Fifthly, literary study of this book’s translation involves aspects of genre and aesthetics. Specifically, the study probes into reappearance of familiar style and other writing characteristics, the translation of symbols or images and the translation of figures of speech.
The sixth type applies linguistic theories to research English versions. There are mapping theory and relevance theory in cognitive linguistics, adaptation theory in pragmatics, interlanguage and so on.
Last but not the least, study of translation strategies generally discusses different theories implied in the translation. Domestication and foreignization are the two main strategies. In addition, the translation of many details such as names of place, structure of Chinese sentences, idioms, figures of speech and vague language is also shown.
Inspired by the studies mentioned above, the author will carry out a further study on translation strategies and methods employed by Lin Yutang when he translated the figurative expressions in Six Chapters of A Floating Life. By writing the thesis, the author hopes to arouse people’s interests for classical Chinese literature. What’s more, people who bear profound interests for translation may get something useful from the thesis.
3. Translation Strategies of Figurative Expressions
3.1 Domestication
When translating Six Chapters of A Floating Life, Lin succeeded in translating simile and metaphor in source text and even transferring connotations and meanings of simile and metaphor. Domestication is one of the strategies utilized by Lin. Another one is foreignization which will be mentioned later. As a celebrated American post-colonial translation theorist, Laurence Venuti puts forward these two terms whose root can be found in the concept of translation by Friedrich Scheiermacher, a German theologian and philosopher, that “There are only two. Either the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him; or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him.” (Venuti, 2004: 37)
Venuti made it clear that “Domestication means bringing the foreign culture closely to the reader in the target culture, making the text recognizable and familiar.” (Venuti, 1995: 37) From his perspective, domestication is “an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to target language cultural values, bringing the author back home” (Venuti, 1995: 20).
The Dictionary of Translation Studies also offers a definition for the term. Domestication is defined as “a term used to describe the translation strategy in which a transparent, fluent style is adopted in order to minimize the strangeness of the foreign text for target readers” (Shuttleworth amp; Cowie, 2004: 43). To conclude, domestication deals with target-language-oriented translation in which the translator is supposed to utilize languages admissible in the target culture for purpose of making the interpreted texts more acceptable for the target text readers. The translator adopts a transparent and fluent style in the translated text as though it had been originally written in the target language.
Of course, there exist both advantages and disadvantages in domestication. For one thing, it can wipe off the linguistic and cultural foreignness of the source text or reduce them to a minimum extent in order to make the translation more natural and fluent and make the target readers experience that they are reading an original text rather than a translation. Then, it tries to accommodate the conventions in the original language to the target text to solve the problems arising from the differences between languages and cultures and respect the target language and cultural conventions. Furthermore, domestication serves as a strategy to carry out cultural communication.
For another thing, domestication makes the translation so natural and fluent that it actually results in the invisibility of translators. What’s more, it may also contribute to the existence of cultural narcissism because domestication “invisibly inscribes foreign texts with (target language) values and provide readers with the narcissistic experience of recognizing their own culture in a culture other” (Venuti, 2004: 20).
Here are some examples:
- (ST)：虚中有实者：或山穷水尽处，一折而豁然开朗；或轩阁设厨处，一开而可通别院。（Lin Yutang, 1999: 96）
(TT)：Contrive so that an apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space and a closet-like door forms the entrance into an unexpected courtyard. This is to provide for the real in the unreal. (Yutang, 1999: 97)
- (ST): 即跨鹤腾空，无此神爽。（Lin Yutang, 1999: 228）
(TT): Quick as riding upon a stork in the air, I reached… (Lin Yutang, 1999: 229)
- (ST): 大醉而卧 （Lin Yutang, 1999: 10）
(TT): I fell asleep drunk like a fish. (Lin Yutang, 1999: 11)
Since “each language has its own genius”(Nida amp; Charles, 1969: 3), it is impossible to translate every word from source language into target language. In other words, accurate translation usually can not be realized and it is inevitable to adopt omission during the translation process. In the first example, there are two kinds of figures of speech, metaphor and contrast, in source text but in the target text Lin only uses an imperative sentence and omits the figures of speech in source text.
Replacement is another method used by Lin when he employs the strategy of domestication. In the second example, metaphor is contained in “跨鹤腾空” to describe how fast it is. However, a simile “quick as riding upon a stork in the air” in target text replaces metaphor. Regardless of different figures of speech, the effects are the same.
The last method is addition. In the third example, there is no simile or metaphor used in source text but a simile is found in target text. However, “to drink like a fish” is to describe the act of drink instead of the state of being drunk. “大醉而卧” emphasizes the latter. So, the addition of simile is inappropriate here.
3.2 Foreignization
In his book The Translator’s Invisibilities, Venuti also pointed out that “Foreignization, on the other hand, means taking the reader over to the foreign culture and making him or her see the differences.” (Venuti, 2004: 37) From his perspective, the function of foreignization is to “register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad” (Venuti, 1995: 20).
Besides, the Dictionary of Translation Studies also offers a definition for the term. It defines foreignization as “a term used to designate the type of translation in which a target text is produced which deliberately breaks target conventions by retaining something of the foreignness of the original” (Shuttleworth amp; Cowie, 2004: 44). In conclusion, foreignization refers to source-language-oriented translation, in which the translator is supposed to try his best to retain the original cultural factors for the purpose of preserve the foreignness.
Just as domestication, the strategy of foreignization also bears advantages and disadvantages at the same time.
On the one hand, target readers are able to enrich their knowledge about other places of Earth and foreignization provides an effective way for cross-cultural communication. In addition, foreignization plays a significant part in preventing cultural hegemony and raising the status of foreign culture in the target culture. As a result, varied languages and cultures are transplanted by foreignizing translation to enrich the target language.
On another hand, however, it is impossible to erase completely the differences between languages and cultures. It is often the case that rigid expression and misunderstanding are aroused if foreignization is used all the time. What’s more, it might block culture communication. So, translators should adopt foreignization in accordance with specific situation.
Here are some examples involved foreignization:
- (ST): 但见合帮灯火相对如长廊。（Lin Yutang, 1999: 258）
(TT): …where I saw the boat lights shining in two parallel rows like a long corridor. (Lin Yutang, 1999: 259)
- (ST): 芸乃止笑曰：“佛手乃香中君子，只在有意无意间；茉莉是香中小人，故须借人之势，其香也如胁肩谄笑。”（Lin Yutang, 1999: 30）
(TT): Then Yun stopped laughing and said, “The citron is the gentleman among the different fragrant plants because its fragrance is so slight that you can hardly detect it; on the other hand, the jasmine is a common fellow because it borrows its fragrance partly from others. Therefore, the fragrance of the jasmine is like that of a smiling sycophant.” (Yutang, 1999: 31)
- (ST):余笑曰: “姥真‘荷下仙人’哉！”（Lin Yutang, 1999: 258）
(TT): “You are indeed the ‘Fairy under the Lotus Leaves’,” I said, complimenting her with a smile. (Lin Yutang, 1999: 259)
In the examples mentioned above, target text uses the same figures of speech as source text and expresses the meanings contained in source text successfully. Simile is adopted in the first example and metaphor is employed in the third one. Simile and metaphor are both used in the second example.
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