浅析林语堂的翻译思想

论文总字数：30174字

摘 要

林语堂是一位享誉世界的翻译家，他有许多脍炙人口的翻译作品。但由于历史的原因，其翻译思想并未得到充分的研究。而且，相较于林语堂的译者成就，一些学者多致力于他的文学造诣或研究他的某篇翻译作品，未能细致地归纳他的翻译思想。这与他对中国翻译界作出的贡献不太相符。所以，该论文从林语堂的翻译标准和翻译策略两大方面研究其翻译思想。作者希望，学者们能够尽其所能系统地归纳林语堂的翻译思想，为译者以后的翻译实践提供明确的指导。

关键词：林语堂；翻译标准；翻译策略

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. Lin Yutang’s Translation Principle 3

3.1 Historical and Theoretical Background 3

3.2 Faithfulness 4

3.3 Fluency 5

3.4 Beauty 6

4. Lin Yutang’s Translation Strategy 8

4.1 Culture Compensation 8

4.2 Domestication and Foreignization 10

4.3 Other Strategies 11

5. Conclusion 12

Works Cited 13

1. Introduction

As we all know, LinYutang is always regarded as famous translator in China and even in the world but not many of us know more about his academic thought so it’s necessary to do more research on Lin’s translation thought and this study on Lin’s translation aimed not only to promote the improvement of the current translation theory but also to guide the translation practice.

This paper is also to explore Lin’s translation through his translation principle and translation strategy. There are some examples in detail based on Lin’s translated works together with other scholars’ researches on him. Similarly, it is inclined to solve practical problems in translation. What’s more the author hope it can cope with the issue interpreting Chinese culture more faithfully to western world.

The dissertation is conducted with the analysis on two aspects. One is translation principle and the other is translation strategy. In the former, it involves three sub-principles which are respectively faithfulness, fluency and beauty. Through these three parts, it will be discussed that what Lin’s principle is. In the latter, it mainly studies another issue how to perfectly translate works. That is to say, this part is designed to study Lin’s translation strategy including three aspects. The first is “culture compensation”. The second is “domestication and foreignization” and the third is “other strategies”. What the author has mentioned are the main subjects of the research. By describing, analyzing and explaining translational exemplifications, this research is planned to lead to a better understanding of Lin Yutang as a respectable translator and of Lin’s academic thought of translation, which is beneficial for us translators to develop and improve the future of Chinese translation.

“One mind seeks the learning of ancients and moderns; two legs straddle the cultures of both East and West”, Lin Yutang, as a outstanding writer and translator, actually lives up to this couplet he wrote for himself. “His most English literary works are translated by other translators. Instead, he devoted himself to Chinese-English translation area.”(Wang Shaodi, 2011:5)Moreover, he has a lot of typical translated works such as The Wisdom of Confucius, The Wisdom of Laotse and Six Chapters of a Floating Life and so on. There are abundant translation thought and practice hidden in his translated works, which is worth getting further research. In addition to translated works , he wrote some literary works himself too such as My Country, My People, Life in China and Moment in Peking and so on to introduce Chinese culture and life style to the West. What the author wants to stress is its practical and theoretical values in translation “since Lin Yutang constantly provides scholars with research source according to his great works and special thought. In the same way, the result of these studies promotes the whole development of human and society science.”(Wang shaodi, 2011:5)

1. Literature Review

“At the end of 1924, Yusi and Modern Crisis were published.” (Shi Jianwei, 1997:151)In 1926, Lin became one of the writers of Yusi. In 1932, Lu Xun wrote some essays to criticize Lin’s humor including “From Humor to Seriousness” and “The Crisis of essay”. In 1934, “On Lin Yutang” authored by Hu Feng, another representative writer, was published in literature. He paid attention to Lin’s “humor”, “essay” and “hsingling”. Between 1943 to 1944, Lin Yutang was also criticized by Guo Moruo who wrote an essay entitled “Ti Xiao Jie Shi ”, a satirical parody of one of Lin’s earlier work “Ti Xiao Jie Fei ”. “Lin Yutang neither knows himself clearly nor knows others generally. He merely shows his Pidgin English although he knows little about East and West.”(Guo Moruo, 1992:402) As a whole, the research on Lin Yutang from 1926 to 1929 is not all-round due to some historical restricts and most views deny his accomplishments to some degree.

During the following thirty years, there were few studies on Lin Yutang or his translation, which resulted from the previous critics mainly came from Lu Xun. This situation didn’t change until the year 1979 when the researches on Lin Yutang were carried out.

Since 1979, it occurred one by one that the research on Lin Yutang started again. In the beginning, although studies on Lin gradually turned its renaissance, scholars are still very cautious about carrying out this research. After in 1985, most scholars and translators actually spared no effort to improve Lin’s studies. In 1987, On Lin Yuntang written by Wan Pingjin was the first monograph on Lin Yutang’s life. In his essay, he said, “Lin Yutang learned Western culture widely and he didn’t forget Chinese culture. That’s to say, he is a man whose two legs straddle the cultures of both East and West.” Shi Jianwei, another scholar, studied Lin Yutang too. His book Biography of Lin Yutang researched Lin’s life. “Lin Yutang first translated ‘humor’ into ‘幽默’, which was finally recognized by Lu Xun too.”(Shi Jianwei, 1999:106)Besides, Shi published another two books. One is Lin Yutang in the Mainland and the other is Lin Yutang Abroad. Wang Zhaosheng is another important scholar who studied Lin Yutang. “Lin Yutang admitted that life is fundamentally tragic. Since life is meaningless, we should spend our life with smile or we should be humorous.”(Wang Zhaosheng, 2005:91) In 2005, Peking University Press published a book, Lin Yutang WenHua ZhuanXing De FuHao written by Shi Ping. “From now on, Orientals stress intuition, emotion and sacrifice while Occidentals are always rational.”(Shi Ping, 2005:150)In summary, the researches on Lin Yutang have been improved both in quality and quantity. All of these have provided research source to study further on Lin’s translation thought.

1. Lin Yutang’s Translation Principle

3.1 Historical and Theoretical Background

Although Lin Yutang is a famous translator, he is a writer when we first know him and his translation thought is influenced by the historical and theoretical background at that time.

At the end of the 19th century, with the spread of Western science and culture, some scholars began to translate these articles or books to make Chinese know more about Western science and culture. Yan Fu and Lin Shu had facilitated the development of translation in China at that time. Yan with his great translated work Evolution and Ethics focused on translating Western literature work particularly in novel. Yan not contributed to developing China translation but also had a great effect on Lin Yutang according to his famous translation theory：faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance, which was the original of Lin’s translation principle of faithfulness, fluency and beauty.

Of course, there were some other scholars who affected China translation and provided a theoretical environment for Lin Yutang so that he could make more giant achievements in translation, which also had a fundamental impact on the communication between Chinese and Western culture. Later on, there were some arguments between word-for-word translation and sense-for-sense translation, which was questioned by Lin too. Lin just regarded word-for-word translation as a comparison to accentuate through contrasting the fact that there is only one workable and scientific way in aspects of translation. All of these is a historical and theoretical background of Lin’s translation development. As he is both a writer and translator, he can translate ancient Chinese works with high standard to interpreter Chinese culture. Moreover, when he adopted other worthwhile translation thought he also had a influence on improving and adding the history of China translation, which is an inevitably component to establish a more and more scientific and systematic translation theory.

3.2 Faithfulness

As mentioned above, faithfulness derived from Yan Fu. Faithfulness here doesn’t mean word-for-word translation. What he really stressed is the spirit of the word. Lin criticized “dead” translation and he thought translators should be based on the meaning of sentences. That’s to say, they should be responsible for the original with the most suitable equivalent of the target language. “Translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work.”(Alexander, 2007:10)Lin viewed faithfulness as the responsibility of the author to the original. “Therefore, translators should try their best to get to the criteria of faithfulness no matter what’s the tone, content and form.”(Chen Yulan, 2013:231)According to Lin, translators are expected to examine and understand the whole meaning of the original sentence then to translate it into target language.

For instance, the sentence “曾经沧海难为水，除却巫山不是云” in Six Chapters of a Floating Life was translated into: “Even if you should leave me half-way like this,” I said, “I shall never marry again. Besides,‘ it is difficult to be clouds for one who has seen the Yangtze Gorges.’ ”(Shen Fuamp;Lin Yutang, 1999:173)Lin Yutang had known the meaning of this sentence as a whole. It was used to tell his terminally ill wife that they have experienced ups and downs together, which is the most important in their life. Based on the whole understanding of sentences, Lin started his translation.

Among three translation principles, Lin paid more attention to explain faithfulness, which partly resulted from the heated debate between literal translation and sense translation during that time. Confronted with it, Lin pointed out his own opinion. Lin transcended that debate by advocating sentence-for-sentence translation and word-for-word translation. Sentence-for-sentence translation viewed each sentence as the basic unit of the original. According to Lin Yutang, Sense-for-sense translation is right instead of word-for-word translation, which is apparently that one should realize it. It means when translating, translators should combine all words’ meaning. On Translation, his most profound theoretical article, divided faithfulness into four degrees. They are literal translation, dead translation, sense translation and imprudent translation. Lin thought dead translation is the extreme of literal translation. He also pointed out imprudent translation is the extreme of sense translation and he regarded Yan Fu and Lin Shu as the representatives of imprudent translation. So he focused on literal translation and sense translation when it came to this question. Lin Yutang first questioned whether these two terms are workable or not. “Although they are practical and convenient, they’re a little incongruent and they neither show the procedure of the translation nor lead readers’ correct understanding.”(Lin Yutang, 1994:309) In other words, Lin thought it’s difficult to distinguish literal translation from dead translation. As to the explicit difference sense translation and imprudent translation, it’s also a question unsolved, which led to two degrees of criteria is applied at the same time.

Apart from four degrees of faithfulness, Lin proposed four meanings of faithfulness too. First, faithfulness doesn’t mean to be equivalent to each word. Instead, translators should be aware of the spirit of each word. Second, it means not only the expression of the original, but also the feeling-tone of target language. He pointed out faithfulness has to be spirit-like. Third, it’s impossible to reach absolute faithfulness. Fourth, it actually also means to be fluent.

3.3 Fluency

Lin Yutang thought the translated work should be fluent since it must be responsible for the original. According to Lin Yutang, the translator should take a psychological process of writing for account because two different languages have something different in thinking. Lin Yutang had analyzed the psychological writing to convey this solution when a competent writer plans to write something down he must conceive the idea he wants to express at first, which is common psychological process of writing. Because it is almost impossible for one to just combine some separated words into a meaningful sentence. Lin also compared the process of writing and translating between mentality and psychology to convey that translators can’t catch a total concept of the original without viewing a sentence as the fundamental unit. As translators, we should analyzed what the author’s real meaning before starting to translate. “Lin had a different opinion on fluency compared to Lu Xun’s dead translation and Zhao Jingshen’s literal translation.”(Chen Fukang, 2000:294)Lin said: “The translator should figure out the exact meaning of the whole sentence in the original language, then absorb it, translate it according to Chinese grammar.” When it comes to the completely different culture between target language and original langue the main aim of the translator is to convey the true meaning of the original instead of the simple equivalent of the form, which is necessary to reach fluency.

This is fluency put forward by Lin and had made great contribution to China translation. Lin stressed that fluency is based on faithfulness instead of including contrary meanings. At the same time, Lin held fluency principle in a objective way, which is easily accepted by others and has a practical function. “No wonder that is considered the very person who made the great contribution to translation theory among the non-leftist literature in the 1930s.”(Chen Fukang, 2000:325)

3.4 Beauty

Here are some concrete explanations of the third translation principle of Lin. In the theory of translation principle, Lin also put much more emphasis on beauty. According to him, beauty is made up of three components. First, translation itself is a kind of art. Second, what should be taken into account in the theory of beauty. Third, the real works of art are untranslatable. In the beginning of On Translation, Lin said, “what translators should do is to make translation as a fine art.”(Luo Xinzhangamp;Chen Yingnian, 2009:504)That’s to say, translators must pay attention to the beauty of words besides the faithfulness. Poetry, for instance, couldn’t be translated into another language without losing its style.

To reach the principle of beauty, Lin mentioned the problem that should be considered in the translation of artistic work. The first is the style of the original. The translator should not only notice what’s the original wants to express but also realize how it expresses. Each writer has his own style and, which is the treasure of that work. Therefore, Lin regarded the style of the original as significant as the content and he thought the enjoyment of a piece of literary work was not lied on what was told but on the way it was told. As a result, for translators, they should be aware of the style of the original and then they to imitate that style as possible as they can. Only in this way can translators reach beauty to most degree. “The failure of many translators to understand that a literary text is made up of a complex set of systems existing in a dialectical relationship with other sets outside its boundaries has often led them to focus on particular aspects of a text at the expense of others.”(Susan, 2010:80)In terms of expressing the style of the original, Lin indirectly showed that translators should have similar characteristic, knowledge as well as appreciating ability. The second problem is the word form. “Lin Yutang divided a word form into outer form and inner form”.(Luo Xinzhangamp;Chen Yingnian, 2009:506)The former refers to the length of sentences, rhyming schemes, etc. while the latter refers to those elements related to writer’s mentality and mood. In addition, it can be three main points in Lin’s beauty principle. They are the beauty of sound, the beauty of form and the beauty of sense. Translators should be based on these to reach beauty. Here are three examples.

Example 1:

寻寻觅觅， So dim, so dark.

冷冷清清， So dense, so dark.

凄凄惨惨戚戚。 So damp, so dank, so dead.

Lin also used only fourteen syllables with alliteration and repeat, which reached a great accordance with the original. It’s no doubt that this translation recurs the rhythm beauty of the original.

Example 2:

少年不识愁滋味，In my younger days, I had tasted only gladness.

爱上层楼， But loved to mount the top floor,

更上层楼。 But loved to mount the top floor.

There is a long sentence with two short sentences with only four words. In the translated version, Lin preserved almost same structure and feature, which deeply expressed the spirit of this Ci and readers can easily understand the affection of the original author.

Example 3:

老妪力虽衰，请从吏夜归。

Although my strength is ebbing weak and low, I’ll go with you , hailiff, to the front to serve.

Lin used the present progressive form of “ebb” to reveal that old woman was older and older day by day, which really expressed the sense beauty.

Here comes the third problem. Lin quoted Croce’s view that translation is not reproduction but production to express his opinion in this question. Last but not least, Lin proposed that the literary work of art is untranslatable especially poetry, which is not accepted by some scholars such as Xu Yuanchong who also put his own translation principle.

Anyway, Lin’s beauty view of translation is relatively all-round at that time. “Although part of his translation theory is different from that in modern society, his unique opinion and analysis have a great meaning in later research of translation practice.”(Wang Shaodi, 2011:99)

4. Lin Yutang’s Translation Strategy

4.1 Culture Compensation

Culture is everything one needs to know and master and to judge where people’s behavior confirms to or deviates from what is expected from them in their social roles. Indeed, culture itself is a complicated concept so it’s more difficult to translate culture. “Translators have, over the centuries, enriched their native languages not only with new vocabularies but also with an abundance of stylistic figures and resources.”(Andre, 2010:46), which also implies the importance of culture. Lin promoted some translation strategy to translate culture that is called culture compensation which is used to compensate some culture background information to make it easier for foreigners to understand the target language. And it can be apparently pick up four sub-strategies.

4.1.1 Direct Annotation

It’s really difficult for target readers to understand the words of history or culture in the original works. Direct annotation seems to be workable here. Lin explained that it required translators to preserve the culture sense of the original with extra explanation in the translation.

Example:

头巾已揭，相视嫣然。

“When her [bridal] veil was lifted, we looked at each other and smiled.”(Shen Fuamp;Lin Yutang, 1999:11)

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