中国古诗词翻译研究之我见（A Tentative Study on the Strategies Used in Translating Chinese Ancient Poems）

论文总字数：29103字

摘 要

文章中首先简述了中诗英译的标准及基本理论，并以举例分析的方法介绍了许渊冲教授的“三美”原则。之后，作者从海量诗歌中挑选了十一首唐诗及其译文，分别在“三美”原则的指导下，探究译者所采用的翻译策略：直译为主、意译为辅；使用“绝妙好词” ；填词救韵；意断形连；使用呼语。除此之外，中国古诗中经常出现数字和地名，文章介绍了针对这两种情况的翻译策略。

关键词：中诗英译；“三美”原则；翻译策略

Contents

1. Introduction

Poetry is, in all languages, regarded as the highest form to express human’s feelings, emotions and thoughts. The author shows his particular interest in translating Chinese ancient poems into English because Chinese ancient poems tend to be concise, vivid and expressive with musical rhyme. However, C-E ancient poetry translation is quite difficult which is common acknowledged. Based on the analysis of examples in the paper, this research aims to come up with some strategies in C-E verse translation.

Poetry is the carrier of beauty . It is wise for translators to repeat the closest natural equivalent to the source language in the receptor language.This paper includes a proper use of translation strategies which can help us to achieve the three beauties in verse translation. It’s hoped the result of this study can be conducive to future verse translation. However, because that there are some limits of data and information, the result may not be very conclusive. So,more follow-up studies can be done later.

2. Theoretical Basis

2.1 Basic Translation Methods

There are generally three methods for verse translation: metaphrase (or literal translation), paraphrase (free or liberal translation) and imitation or adaptation. Metaphrase is trying to preserve the original form to make it smooth and fluent under the precondition of being faithful to the original. Paraphrase is not tied to the original form to make it smooth and fluent under the precondition of being faithful to the original. Translators either use alone or concurrently with these two methods according to the original contents and forms based on TL expressive custom. Imitation or adaptation is rather more applied on names of people or place.

2.2 Three Beauties

The three ways we mentioned above can be all together to satisfy Professor Xu Yuanchong’s three-beauty principle.It’s accepted by most people in the field nowadays: beauty in sense, beauty in sound and beauty in form. Xu firmly think that translated verse should be and can be beautiful, like the original content, in three aspects: First,in sense appealing to the heart.Second, in sound appealing to the ears.Third, in form appealing to the eyes. To achieve the three-beauty,Xu suggests that the method of paraphrase may be employed to keep the beauty in sense; the way of imitation or adaptation may be used to keep the beauty in sound; metaphrase can be used to maintain the beauty in form.

Many analysis and examples will be studied to find how translators can achieve the three beauties with different strategies and methods under different circumstances in the following part of this paper,.

2.2.1 The beauty in sense

Translators should strive to detect the real meanings of Chinese ancient poems; without this prior work, faithful translation will be difficult to attain.

《登鹳雀楼》“白日依山尽，黄河入海流。欲穷千里目，更上一层楼。” is a very well known poem in China.It is written by famous Tang poet Wang Zhihuan (王之涣). The Yellow River comes from the north,and passed by the towers and suddenly turned to the east. What a grand view the tower commanded! The poet described such grandeur only in ten words as if he knew the magic of shortening a thousand miles into a foot. Professor Xu expresses the beauty in sense as “The sun beyond the mountains glows / The Yellow River seawards flows / You can enjoy a grander sight / by climbing to a greater height”. If TL readers read this poem, most of them can feel the same picture that revealed in SL. Another criterion to verify if the rendering is good or not we can, translate it back into Chinese literally： “太阳的光辉照在山的尽头，黄河(汹涌)流向大海。你可以享受到更广阔的视野，通过登上更高的高度。” Readers are very easy to connect them with the SL poems if they read these Chinese sentences.And it tells us that the rendering is true to the SL. Therefore this rendering is a good example of achieving the beauty in sense.

2.2.2 The beauty in sound

Poetry sounds beautiful because of its rhyme.It means that we put Chinese characters with the same simples or compound vowels in the same place.They are mostly put at the end of lines. The rhyming word that ends a line of verse is called foot. In “床前明月光，疑是地上霜。举头望明月，低头思故乡。” This poem has the foot “ang” .And it makes the poem sound rhyming. So it is easy for us to feel by heart.

It is customary and convenient to denote patterns of rhyme (commonly called “Rhyme Scheme”) briefly by using letters of the alphabet; thus the above example may be described as “aaba”, “a” indicating the foot “ang”. Xu renders this rhyme scheme into “abab” like “Before my bed a pool of light / Is it hoarfrost upon the ground? / When eyes raised, I see the moon so bright / When head bent, in homesickness I’m drowned.” With the “abab” rhyme, the rendering sounds beautiful as the same as the SL, so it achieves the beauty in sound.

Translators should try to maintain or copy the rhyme in their rendering when they translate Chinese ancient poems. So,they can make equivalence with the original content. Take it for example,its rendering TL should be a rhyming poem when the RL is a rhyming poem.In a result,TL readers can feel the beauty in sound as SL readers do too.

2.2.3 The beauty in form

There are only 20 Chinese characters in Chinese ancient pome《静夜思》.This pome expressed greatly of the poet’s homesickness. The form is very elegant with five characters in each line. Gong renders it quite tidily with 28 words as below:

The bright moonlight near my cot,

Seemed to me like white ground frost.

I looked up to gaze at the moon;

I looked down to think of home.

This rendering reads comfortable for the eye as it possesses terseness and tonal pattern. it has four lines and each line contains 7 vowels which is quite neat in the style. Therefore it is a good example to achieve the beauty in form.

2.2.4 The Beauty in Sense Always First

In 《静夜思》,Zhao’s rendering has only 21 words: “Moonlight before my bed / Can it be frost instead? / Head up, I watch the moon / Head down, I think of home”. It gets both beauty in sound and beauty in form. It is almost to a perfect rendering except that unfortunately, the rendering of the second sentence “Could it be frost instead?” needs re-consideration. The subjective mood is used here.However, if we translate this sentence back into Chinese, it is “在床前的月光可以是霜而不是月光吗？” Its connotation is that “如果是霜而不是月光，那就好了！” So we can tell that this meaning is too far away with the RL. It violates the beauty in sense.

“The beauty in form and sound are necessary when we translate ancient Chinese pomes.But when we achieve the beauty in sense.Then,the poems we translated can be good pomes”（Zhang, 2006: 58）To follow this guideline, the author modifies it as “Moonlight before my bed / looks like frost instead / Head up, I watch the moon / Head down, I think of home”. After the modification, the rendering has 20 words as the same as SL. It now can be regarded as the perfect example to have achieved the three beauties: beauty in sense, beauty in sound and beauty in form.

3. Strategies Applied in Translation

3.1 Metaphrase or Paraphrase?

《春晓》is a very famous ancient poem in China written by Meng Hao ran. This quatrain tells us the poet’s love of nature. The first two sentences “春眠不觉晓，处处闻啼鸟” is a narrative couplet to show that the poet is intoxicated in the blooming spring so that he will not wake up. However,Professor Xu uses metaphrase to translate it into that as follow, “This morn of spring in bed I’m lying / Not to awake till birds are crying” . Robert Payne also,a famous translator,who uses metaphrase to translate the couplet into “I slept in spring not conscious of the dawn / But heard the gay birds chattering all around.” These two renderings are both satisfied for their faithfulness to the original because if the renderings are translated back into Chinese, they have the similar meaning as the original text.

Gong uses paraphrase to translate it into “Spring slumber goes on and on / Everywhere you hear birds’ song”,though of this same couplet . “Goes on and on” used in here is very vivid. It is very easy to arouse readers’ sense of sleepiness and make them keep sleeping without waking in the spring morning. Gong applies the method of paraphrase here also achieves the beauty in sense and is more creative and impressive.

Through the upper analysis it reveals that different translators may have different preference to use different methods for same RL to achieve the beauty in sense. As long as the renderings are close enough to the RL, they are all satisfactory translations. Besides, paraphrase is liable to make the TL creative and vivid if it is well applied.

3.2 Choosing best word

In《春夜喜雨》, the poet tells us what he hears, sees and thinks on a rainy night. When translating “好雨知时节”, Gong uses paraphrase to translate it into “Propitious rain is timely rain” while Yang applies metaphrase to translate it into “A good rain knows its season” and in Xu also applies metaphrase to translate it into “Good rain knows its time right.” These renderings are all faithful to the original content, which shows that both methods (paraphrase and metaphrase) are applicable in translating the same original content as analyzed in the above. But when translating the sentence “随风潜入夜” , Gong uses the verb “sneaks” ,which means “Borne on the wind, it sneaks in by night” .And Xu chooses the verb “steal”, which means “With wind it steals in night” .This condition needs us to re-considerate.

In the poem,the spring rain personified happiness.Because it knows the proper time when it should fall.It moistens everything and lasts long. The whole poem fulfills with the poet’s happiness and love of nature.So, we can find there is nothing derogatory in the Chinese characters. However, “sneak” and “steal” are not commendatory words in English. These two words’appearance damages the happy tune of the poem and which causes a damage to the beauty of sense. So Yang’s use of “slips secretly” is much better than aboved two.His rendering is “On the heels of the wind, it slips secretly into the night.”

Therefore, translators should pay more attention when choose words, especially verbs, in verse translating practice to maintain the beauty in sense. Choosing the “best” word means the closest in meaning, in sound and in form that is harmonious with poet’s mood. The consideration of commendatory word or derogatory term in order to choose a best word is also a strategy to produce a good verse translation.In the pome“Spring slumber goes on and on / Everywhere you hear birds’ song / Last night there was wind and rain / How many flowers in mud have lain!”. “Lain” is the best word in it to have achieved the ‘Three Beauty’principle.So it is a good example of choosing the best word.

3.3 Adding words to save rhyme

We all know that a famous Chinese ancient pome 《望岳》,is written by Du Fu at the age of twenty-four. He is so wise that can write such a great poem.Most people know the last distich of it is very popular in China: “会当凌绝顶，一览众山小”. Xu translates the whole poem with “ababcdcd” rhyme scheme , so the whole rendering is very musical when we read. It well matches the beauty in sound. What’s more, when translating the famous couplet “会当凌绝顶，一览众山小” Professor Xu adds “under my feet”, and we can not find it in the original content.He writes that “I must ascend the mountain’s crest / It dwarfs all peaks under my feet”. Adding “under my feet” in one hand highlights the meaning that all mountains look small.In the other hand,it saves the rhyme to meet with the foot “fleet”. This strategy is called “adding words to save rhyme”. Of course, the words that we added should be the connotation in the poem rather than a casual one.

3.4 Breaking in form, continuing in sense

In《悯农》,Professor Xu manipulatively reproduces the rendering into “abab” rhyme as below:

At noon they weed with hoes;

Their sweat drips on the soil.

Each bowl of rice, who knows?

Is the fruit of hard toil.

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