论文总字数：32258字

摘 要

生态翻译学是最初由著名胡庚申教授提出的一种新的翻译理论研究，把达尔文的“自然选择”，“适者生存”等生物进化论的基本原则作为理论依据，其中的三维原则是翻译和评论的重要参考标准之一，这一理论发展至今，已被广泛运用于电影字幕翻译，公示语翻译，文学作品翻译等。因此本文以此翻译方法为依据，对比分析《背影》的两个英译本，即张培基的译本和杨宪益、戴乃迭的译本，认为译者只有在语言维、文化维、交际维上对翻译环境做出适应性选择，才能产出合适的译文。通过对译文中大量的例子进行分析，认为两个译本各具特色，值得借鉴，生态翻译学对翻译工作的进行具有有益的指导作用。

关键词：生态翻译学；三维；背影；英译本

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

2.1 An Overview on Eco-translatology 1

2.2 Previous Study on the Two Versions of Zhu Ziqing’s Bei Ying 2

3. A Comparative Study on the Two English Versions of Bei Ying from the Perspective of Eco-translatology 3

3.1 Transformation from Linguistic Dimension 3

3.2 Transformation from Cultural Dimension 7

3.3 Transformation from Communicative Dimension 10

4. Conclusion 12

Works Cited 14

1. Introduction

Translation plays an important role in social development of human beings. In recent decades, translation studies has experienced linguistic turn, cultural turn, and now headed to the eco-translatology. Prose is the essence of Chinese literature. When translating prose, the translator must have a profound literary accomplishment, and fully understand words and sentences which contain Chinese special meanings. Bei Ying, one important essay written by famous writer Zhu Ziqing, is very simple and vivid, singing the praises of paternal love. So far, there are quite a few academic articles on the translation of Bei Ying from different perspectives; however, few scholars have explored from the perspective of eco-translatology. This thesis is intended to probe into the realization of eco-translatology in the translation of the essay Bei Ying, by means of a comparative study of the two English versions from the lingusitic dimension, cultural dimension and communicative dimension. Through such analysis, the thesis tries to examine how the two translators made adaptation and selection in their translational eco-environment, and where they made transformations.

2. Literature Review

2.1 An Overview on Eco-translatology

The theory of eco-translatology was firstly put forward by our Chinese domestic scholar, Professor Hu Gengshen on the basis of his book “Translation as Adaptation and Selection” written in 2008. Actually, eco-translatology has gone through more than ten years and has been gaining lots of attention in the academic field of translation studies and experiencing great development. Its research is composed of two classes: theory and application in China. Eco-translatology was first raised in China, but it draws much attention from all over the world. A lot of foreign scholars started to focus on the eco-translatology. For some examples, Michael Cronin, in his work Translation and Globalization, first put up with the notion of “translation ecology”. What’s more, the authoritative journal Perspective: Studies in Translatology published many papers, such as Translation as Adaptation and Selection (2003) and Adaptation in Consecutive Interpreting (2006). Daniel Gile, a French learned man, discussed the ways to adapt to the translational eco-environment when translating in his paper On Adaptation to the Translating Environment in Research on Translation.

So far, a number of papers on eco-translatology have been published and some applied researches on eco-translatology in different fields are increasing year by year. The core conception of eco-translatology is to establish “translation theory of adaptive selection of preliminary conception”, learnt from Darwin’s principle of “natural selection, survival of the fittest” to explore the philosophical theories and the feasibility of translation activities. Translation is a consequence of “natural selection” and an activity adapted and selected by the translator in his “translational environment”(Hu Gengshen, 2004:97). Such a translational eco-environment is made up of three systems, respectively, the source system, the original text system, and the target language system, which is both the collection of the factors that restrict the translators’ optimal adaptation and the premise of the translators’ multi-dimensional adaptation and adaptive selection (Hu Gengshen, 2003:288). Up to now, many scholars in translation field have made a lot of work and study on the effects that eco-translatology have on ancient books, advertising language, film title and subtitle translation, the applied study of ecological translation in Chinese prose are quite rare, so this paper attempts to explain the literary translation on the basis of eco-translatology. Therefore based on the studies discussed above, this thesis attempts to explore the eco-translatology in the two English versions of Zhu Ziqing’s Bei Ying.

2.2 Previous Study on the Two Versions of Zhu Ziqing’s Bei Ying

Bei Ying is a masterpiece in the history of Chinese modern prose, written by Zhu Ziqing in October 1925. It mainly describes a picture of Father and Son parting at the railway station after some unforeseen events of the family. Through the simple and vivid descriptions, this essay reveals father’s love to his son and son’s longing for his father. As Zhu Ziqing points out, this is a documentary prose and the “father” in the text refers to the father of Zhu Ziqing and “I” means Zhu Ziqing himself. The image of Father in the May 4th literary was all negative, but in the prose Bei Ying, Zhu Ziqing first depicted a positive image of his father, so it suddenly inspired countless readers’ resonance. All in all, Bei Ying is in the right place at the right time, so it achieves a great success and improves the reputation of Zhu Ziqing as a famous writer.

In Mr. Zhang’s translation of Bei Ying, he tries to achieve the fresh and natural language. He used to be a student in the Department of English Literature of St. John’s University, worked as an interpreter for two and a half years in Tokyo and now a consultant of The World of English, an English magazine. With rich experience, he is very careful in the choice of words, pays great attention to grasp the main meaning and makes the original information and style reappearance perfectly. Zhang Peiji’s translation of Bei Ying is short in sentences and simple in structure, so readers can understand his translation without any obstacle. As the indefatigable husband-and-wife team, Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang who has translated classic Chinese literature into English since they worked as professional translators in the 1950s. They adopted the integration of the literal transition and free transition which emphasizes the former, and took the combination of domestication and foreignization which emphasizes the later one. In their translation, “faithfulness and fluency” policy is employed. Different academic background and translation strategies may influence their translation and therefore give us two different versions. Hence, in the following part, the thesis tries to explore and compare the two versions with the guidance of eco-translatology.

3. A Comparative Study on the Two English Versions of Bei Ying from the Perspective of Eco-translatology

3.1 Transformation from Linguistic Dimension

“The linguistic dimension refers to the language forms”(Hu Gengshen, 2004:134). The adaptive transformation from linguistic dimension means that the translator makes adaptive selection on the language form in the translation process. This kind of conversion is conducted in different aspects and levels (Hu Gengshen, 2008:13). Owing to the different Chinese and western cultural background, different thinking and language habits, the expressions are totally different. So after having a knowledge the ecological environment of the prose translation, translators should take the meanings expressed into consideration carefully, give full play to their leading role according to the language habit of the target readers, and adjust the vocabulary properly so as to convert the language form, avoiding obscure literal translation that may give rise to readers’ misunderstanding.

Example 1：到徐州见着父亲，看见满院狼藉的东西，又想起祖母，不禁簌簌地流下眼泪。(Zhu Ziqing, 2013:36)

张译：When I met father in Xuzhou, the sight of the disorderly mess in his courtyard and the thought of grandma started tears trickling down my cheeks.(Zhang Peiji, 2007:50)

杨译：When I joined him in Xuzhou I found the courtyard strewn with things and could not help shedding tears at the thought of granny.(Yang Xianyi, 1998:179)

As we all know, lexical features have an important place in forming the style of a text, so translators should choose different or special words to express different kinds of feelings which may result in different effects. In the source text, Zhu Ziqing used “簌簌地”to describe the tears and gave the readers a feeling that the author can’t help crying. At the same time, Mr. Zhang used the word “trickling”, vividly depicting tears like a trickle weeping down the cheeks and lively expressing both the author’s unbearable feeling to see his father’s plight and miss his grandmother. This can truly represent the scene where the author’ tears are out of control, showing the impressive and moving kinship. But in the Yangs’ version, the phrase “shedding tears” is used without any modifier, so readers may feel less shocked and touched.

Example 2：这时我看见他的背影，我的泪很快地流下来了。(Zhu Ziqing, 2013:37)

张译：While I was watching him from behind, tears gushed from my eyes. (Zhang Peiji, 2007:51)

杨译：At the sight of his burly back tears started to my eyes. (Yang Xianyi, 1998:181)

This was the second time that the author shed tears. The original text used the word “很快地” and vividly described the author’s appreciation at that time. This feeling buried in the bottom of heart was out of control and outburst accidently. The word “gushed” was used in Zhang’s translation and this can show that the tears were almost poured out. By contrast, the usage of “started to” in the Yangs’ translation just showed the sign of weeping from the canthus, but this can not express that the tears fell down quickly.

According to pragmatics, the meaning of words and utterances that can be classified into refers to “associations, impressions, and reflections that linguistic signs evoke in the minds of the speakers of a language” (Ke Ping, 1991:29). In fact, words of the same referential meaning may have different pragmatic meanings in Chinese and English respectively according to a variety of situations. Thus Zhang and Yang take the pragmatic meanings into account and manage to get the similar effect so as to adapt to the translational eco-environment. For example:

Example 3：颇踌躇了一会。……他踌躇了一会，……。(Zhu Ziqing, 2013:36)

张译：He hesitated for quite a while about what to do…… After some wavering, he finally decided that he himself would accompany me to the station. (Zhang Peiji, 2007:50)

杨译：he worried for quite a time.……. But after much hesitation he finally decided to see me off himself。(Yang Xianyi, 1998:179)

The translators both used different words to distinguish the two “踌躇” ingeniously to avoid repetition. The first “踌躇” means Father’s consideration, the thought of son’s daily life and work, while the second indicates father’s hesitation and his worry about son’s single trip. The verb “hesitate” means that it is very difficult to make up one’s mind to do something or make a choice, but “waver” refers to that although one has made some decision, he does not take actions to finish it or dare not to do it. From above analysis, Yang’s translation was closer to the author’s intention.

Example 4：我那时真是聪明过分，总觉他说话不大漂亮，非自己插嘴不可。(Zhu Ziqing, 2013:36)

张译：I was then such a smart aleck that I frowned upon the way father was haggling. (Zhang Peiji, 2007:51)

杨译：I was such a bright young man that I thought some of his remarks undignified. (Yang Xianyi, 1998:181)

“漂亮” in this sentence is not its original meaning “beautiful, charming”, but the meaning of “decent, fluent, wonderful”. Both translators reflect the cultural differences. Zhang does not translate it directly, but uses the phrase “frowned upon” to mean “disagree” and changes the sentence pattern. By contrast, Yang and Dai’s translation is more concrete and simple with using the word “undignified”, vividly showing that the author disagreed what his father said as he was not a well-educated man with some words indecent. And “聪明” here does not mean really smart, but an irony. “Clever” means “not clever” with a little self-deprecating tone, so this can express the author’s extreme regret for his former thoughts and behavior. Zhang employs an idiom “a smart aleck” which can be easily understood by target readers. It talks about an impudent individual, a wise guy, as new teachers often have a hard time coping with the smart alecks in their classes. This expression originated from the mid-1800s, probably referring to a person who was named Alec whose identity could not be identified. The phrases have the same function with the English and Chinese readers in their respective language systems. But Yang and Dai uses the phase “such a bright young man that ……”, it cannot show the author’s regret successfully.

Nida’s book Translating Meaning (1982) mentions that between Chinese and English, the contrast of hypotaxis and parataxis is the most common difference. English usually uses a variety of conjunctions, relative words and infinitives and so on to make sentences fluency, however, the Chinese sentences are made up of through inherent logic and meaning associations instead of obvious links such as conjunctions connecting all elements (Nida, 1982: 85), that is to say, when interpreting Chinese to English, translators should allocate more attention to the connecting between sentences and then choose the proper words to combine them.

Example 5：近几年来，父亲和我都是东奔西走，家中光景是一日不如一日。(Zhu Ziqing, 2013:37)

张译：In recent years, both father and I have been living an unsettled life, and the circumstances of our family going from bad to worse. (Zhang Peiji, 2007:52)

杨译：The last few years father and I have been moving from place to place, while things have been going from bad to worse at home. (Yang Xianyi, 1998:183)

This sentence described the present situation of Zhu’s family. From the perspective of sentence structure, the original text did not have any conjunctions, but both the two versions added conjunctions——and, while, to make the sentences more coherent and holistic. In English, both “and” and “while” can indicate the contrasting relationship, but “while” emphasized more on the degree of contrast. In the original text, although father and I ran about busily, the condition of our family was reducing, the contrast here was very obvious and at the same time a sense of helplessness was conveyed. The conjunction “while” used in the Yang and Dai’s translation played an important role in transition of an essay. What’s more, before and after “while”, the Yangs used two parallel structure “have had been moving from... to...” and “have been going from... to...”, the structure was very tidy and can be read in rhyme. By contrast, in Zhang’s translation, “and” was more like a kind of connection, thus the contrast was not so clear and obvious.

3.2 Transformation from Cultural Dimension

The adaptive transformation from cultural dimension refers to that translators focus on the transmission and interpretation of bilingual culture connotation in the process of translation (Hu Gengshen, 2008:11). This requires translator to pay attention to the differences in the nature and content between the original language culture and target language culture, and avoid distorting the original text from the target language culture’s point. When translators converse the primitive language, more attention should be paid to the whole culture system which language belongs to. Chinese and English belong to different language families and there are many differences between them, while different cultural concepts will inevitably have conflicts and thus bring much difficulty to the translation. Therefore, translators should not only let the western readers have a basic knowledge of Chinese culture and then be interested in it, but also make the English versions easily understood and accepted.

Example 6：父亲说，“事已如此，不必难过，好在天无绝人之路！”(Zhu Ziqing, 2013:36)

张译：Father said, “Now that things’ve come to such a pass, it’s no use crying. Fortunately, Heaven always leaves one a way out.” (Zhang Peiji, 2007:50)

杨译:：“What’s past is gone,” said my father. “It’s no use grieving. Heaven always leaves us some way out. (Yang Xianyi, 1998:179)

As we all know, “天无绝人之路” is a old Chinese saying which is filled with wisdom, meaning that we don’t need to be sad when we are in great trouble, there is always some opportunity to turn the things better. So we can simply translate it as “When one door closes another opens”, however, when doing with the culturally loaded expressions, in order to let the target readers know Chinese culture and get interested in it, both translators adopted the word “heaven” which was very familiar to English readers.

Example 7：我身体平安，惟膀子疼痛利害，举箸提笔，诸多不便，大约大去之期不远矣。(Zhu Ziqing, 2013:37)

张译：I’m all right except for a severe pain in my arm. I even have trouble using chopsticks or writing brushes. Perhaps it won’t be long now before I depart this life. (Zhang Peiji, 2007:52)

杨译：My health is all right, only my arm aches so badly I find it hard to hold the pen. Probably the end is not far away. (Yang Xianyi, 1998:183)

This sentence was written in ancient Chinese, and foreign readers would be puzzled because they couldn’t understand. Comparing the translations and the source text carefully, we can find out that translators reorganized the sentence in a flexible way, in which Zhang and the Yangs translated its meaning instead of following the forms, in the hope that the target readers will understand without any obstacle. “大去”in Chinese is a kind of written form euphemism, meaning death. Zhang used “depart this life” to express death politely and the Yangs also used the euphemism, but the Yangs’ translation was catchier. In a word, both of the translations were in written form and very delicate. What’s more, in the source, it mentioned about “箸” which refers to chopsticks in modern time. Because father was older and older with time gone by, he had some difficulty holding many things, such as chopsticks and pens, the Yang’s translation didn’t uncover it, which was a good way to make the Chinese culture known by others.

The lexicon style is very special in the article of Bei Ying due to writing motive, quite different from Zhu Ziqing’s earlier and even contemporary essays. In other words, more ancient words, old-fashioned words, dialect words, learned words and formal word are used in Bei Ying. Two translators, Zhang Peiji and Yang Xianyi, Gladys Yang, have carried on the proper transformation in their own translations, thus not only reserving the characteristics of the original text, but also making target readers easily understand and accept the versions. Let’s look at some more examples:

Example 8：那年冬天，祖母死了，父亲的差使也交卸了。(Zhu Ziqing, 2013:36)

张译: In the winter of more than two years ago, grandma died and father lost his job. (Zhang Peiji, 2007:50)

杨译: That winter my grandmother died, and my father’s official appointment was terminated. (Yang Xianyi, 1998:179)

The phrase “交卸” had four meanings in Chinese while in Bei Ying it meant that father didn’t have work, in fact Zhu Ziqing expressed it with a tone of euphemism. The Yangs did not translate it as “lost job” directly, but adopted the words “appointment” and “terminate” which can show that although father didn’t work, he still managed to make some money, in this way the translation would be in accordance with the source text, while Zhang Peiji translated it in a direct way, it seemed that the expression was not very decent and violated the author’s intention.

Example 9：我看见他戴着黑布小帽，穿着黑布大马褂，深青布棉袍。(Zhu Ziqing, 2013:37)

张译：I watched him hobble towards the railway track in his black skullcap, black cloth mandarin jacket and dark blue cotton-padded cloth long gown. (Zhang Peiji, 2007:51)

杨译：So I watched him in his black cloth cap and jacket and dark blue cotton-padded gown. (Yang Xianyi, 1998:181)

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