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摘 要

小说中的对话是小说刻画人物性格和传达作者写作风格的重要手段，是小说中不可或缺的部分。因此在翻译的过程中，译者需要把握好小说对话的翻译，这是重现作者写作风格的重要步骤。在《傲慢与偏见》中有各式各样的人物，但是简·奥斯汀对人物性格的描绘却是寥寥几笔，她通过对话就能让读者自己去感受人物的性格特点。这部小说结构层层递进，将人物心理的变化展现得淋漓尽致，或是精妙的话语，或是点睛的语言，以男女主人公之间的傲慢与偏见为线索，串联出整个故事的架构，为世人展现出别样的对话艺术和非凡的思维想象力。本文主要从词义选择、标点使用、引用结构的使用等方面，分析孙致礼《傲慢与偏见》中文译本中的本内特夫人对话部分，讨论如何还原小说人物特征，再现作者写作风格。

关键词：写作风格；人物特征；表达方式；对话翻译

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. A Review of Pride and Prejudice 2

2.1 The Author of Pride and Prejudice 2

2.2 Writing Style of Jane Austen 2

2.3 Pride and Prejudice 3

3. The Role of Dialogue in Shaping Character 6

3.1 Dialogue Translation and Reproduction of Characters 6

3.2 Analysis of Mrs. Bennett’s Dialogues in the Original Text 7

3.3 The Reappearance of Mrs. Bennett in Translation 8

4. Conclusion 12

Works Cited 13

1. Introduction

Translation of a literary work, which only expresses the content but ignores the author’s writing style, is not exactly successful. And the translation doesn’t show the original style, cannot truly impress the readers. Or in other words, readers can not have the due resonance with the original style from a deviated translation. Novel, as the most widely spread literary form, when being translated, requires the translator to analyze the original writing style, to have a deep understanding of the original content and the author’s thought, and to keep the translation similar to the original work in terms of language style and presentation. Translated work can reproduce writer’s style, impress and move the readers deeply, and deliver exactly the information and the emotion that the author expresses between the lines of the original work.

Pride and Prejudice is the master work of Jane Austen (1775-1817), who observes the life from a female sensitive perspective and paints the common people in common live with distinct and delicate tongue. The story is about a simple worldly wisdom and love in twists and turns in a small town, but by Jane Austen’s incisive language and unique conversational dialogue, the characters of the novel are particularly attractive to people"s attention. The dialogue is the most important thing of the character’s language, which also becomes an important means and ways shaping the characters. In Pride and Prejudice, characters are distinct and bright, and language is sharp, satiric or humorous. For example: astute Elizabeth, vulgar and shallow Mrs. Bennett, humorous and witty Mr. Bennett, and frank and lovely Mr. Darcy, etc. Each and every fresh character lets us satisfy a craving. This novel, translated into Chinese, has reached a wide Chinese audience, and the dialogues of which are also enjoyable. There are several versions of Chinese translation of this book, and each of them tries hard to present its soul to readers. However, because of the ambiguity and diversity of translation and the different understandings of the original book by each translator, translations may not all actually reproduce the author’s writing style. This thesis, take the translations of the dialogues in this book as examples, briefly discusses how translators reproduce the original style in translations.

2. A Review of Pride and Prejudice

Edmund Wilson, the famous American literary critics, said: “in the recent one hundred years, there were a few interesting revolutions on the literary history. The renewed literature flavors had influenced almost all the writers’ reputation, except the author Shakespeare and Jane Austen”. Wilson’s words didn’t make a mountain out of a molehill. Austen had received highly praise from generation to generation with her six time-tested novels. These novels are all the classic works. Pride and Prejudice is a really rare treasure in the world literature. No wonder William Somerset Maugham puts it as one of the ten world classic novels.

2.1 The Author of Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen was born in 1775 and died in 1817. During the time, the British novel was in a temporary period, which was a shortage of works in transition. In the first half of the 18th Century, four realism novel masters, Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Laurence Sterne and Tobias Smollett appeared. But in the 1970s, there came to the Sentimental novelists represented by Fanny Burney and the Gothic novelists represented by Ann Radcliffe. Although those works were fashionable for a time, they still showed their starvation because of their clear emotional and the magical color. From 1770s to the first ten years of the 19th century, with the market being flooded with these kinds of works, there were no new important works being produced. Fortunately, Austen has issued the six novels from 1811 to 1818: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. These novels led the sentimental and the gothic novels lose their market and made them so artificial by their rational words. This helped Britain clear the way to welcome the arrival of the climax of realistic novel in the 1830s.

2.2 Writing Style of Jane Austen

Irony is a narrative technique used by authors to have an insight into society and reveal the reality. Austen is an outstanding irony artist and gives full play to this technique of expression in Pride and Prejudice. The novel uses plenty of mocking tones and skillfully comedy techniques, colors the character’s personality with the witty language. The language tension from the imagery to the deep attitude undoubtedly enables this masterpiece a huge aesthetic space. Observing the human nature from Austen’s unique point of view, readers can read out humor and absurdity, and then get educated and enlightened. This comedic irony is the author’s inconsistent and fallacious mock to the real world. Famous British litterateur and critic T. T. Kibble has such comments: “Jane Austen is a comic artist.” “She is second only to Shakespeare in pure comic art.”

What attract mostly readers in Pride and Prejudice are the mixed and vivid characters, which “perhaps it is Austen’s best skill”. E.W. Forster divided novel characters into “Flat Characters” and “Round Characters”. “Flat Characters” often refer to those are simple and mocked directly by the author. In Pride and Prejudice, the major representative of “Flat Characters” is the heroine’s mother —Mrs. Bennett. When depicting characters, Austen uses a “Dramatic Expression” technique, which lets them separately make a stage pose and fully show their own. In the first chapter, Austen brings a simple-minded, shallow and loquacious rural woman lively to readers just by several short dialogues, fully characterizing this “Flat Characters”. It follows that dialogue of characters is the indispensable part of the novel and the effective assistor to shape the characters and build the plot development.

2.3 Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice, which was first published in 1813, is a novel written by Jane Austen. The story describes the manners, upbringing, morality, education and marriage of the main character Elizabeth Bennett in the society of early 19th-century England. Elizabeth, the second of the five daughters of a country gentleman, lives near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, nearby London. Although the story sets at the turn of the 19th century, it retains a mystique for modern readers, continuing near the top of the lists of most loved books’ such as The Big Read. It has become one of the most popular novels in English literature, and gets considerable attention from literary scholars. Modern interest in the book has resulted in a number of dramatic adaptations and an abundance of novels imitating Austen’s memorable characters or themes. Today, the book has sold some 20 million copies around the world.

2.3.1 Linguistic Characteristics of Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen is the first novelist who describes the ordinary life. In one of her masterpieces, Pride and Prejudice, she perfectly described the ordinary things and characters with magnificent descriptions and the vivid dialogues. The dramatic dialogues show that Austen is a standout irony master. She does well in exposing the personality of the characters and the emotion conflict by the irony and the plot. Irony can be divided into three categories: verbal irony, dramatic irony and situation irony. In Pride and Prejudice, it is clear that verbal irony is mainly used to describe the personality of the characters, the inner emotion conflict and the relationship between characters. In order to study the linguistic features in Pride and Prejudice, it helps when being analyzed with the speech act theory. In the pragmatic study of language, speech act theory is of great importance. It was proposed by the British philosopher John Austin in the late 1950s. According to speech act theory, we are performing actions when we are talking. A speaker might be performing three acts at the meantime: locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act.

2.3.2 Cultural Characteristics of Pride and Prejudice

When mentioned women and family relationship, many foreign scholars have made some brilliant expositions. Sheila Allen, a British sociologist, said that women, especially married women, gained their class positions and social status from their male relatives. Allen also believed that women did not have any real class independence. For most women, their social status mostly came from their family. That is to say that their family status determined their social status. However, the role of the family was mainly male-parent status set. In other words, it was the identity of the family which men appeared more essential than the status of women. In the early 19th century, most middle-class British women were neither employed in social production nor needed to do dull housework. They just stayed at home idly symbolizing the male member’s success. The only way out for women was to find a good husband.

The treatment of kids’ rights in a family father’s will was the highest which was supported by law. Laws also gave husband right to rule his wife. Mothers could only educate children under the father’s authority. In this novel, Austen describes five kinds of marriage. Though different attitudes towards the five girls’ marriages, they reflect the author’s own view of the modern marriage style: intentionally marrying with property, money and status is wrong; the marriage without taking the above factors into consideration is stupid as well. Therefore, she does not only oppose marrying for money, but also opposes the marriage as a trifling matter. She stresses on the vital of an ideal marriage which should take the affections of both men and women as a highlight of a marriage. In the novel, Elizabeth comes from a small landlord family and is loved by a rich gentleman, Darcy. Darcy proposes to her despite the wealth gap between them, but she rejected. The misunderstanding and prejudice is one of the reasons, but mainly because of Elizabeth hating Darcy’s conceit. Darcy’s conceit is actually a reflection of their differences in status. As long as such conceit exists, there is no general thought and affection between him and Elizabeth nor an ideal marriage. After observing Darcy’s action and change, Elizabeth excludes the misunderstanding and prejudice against him, and she concludes with a happy marriage. Elizabeth’s different attitude towards Darcy, in fact, shows that women pursue personal independence and equal rights. From the perspective of the novel, Elizabeth is intelligent, humorous, courageous, visionary, strong self-respect and good at thinking. It is these admirable qualities that make her independent on marriage and lead her marry Darcy. In Pride and Prejudice, Austen also writes several Elizabeth’s sisters and her girlfriend’s marriages. These marriages are used to compare with the heroine to make the story richer in content. For example, although Charlotte and Collins live a comfortable material life, there is no love between them. Such marriages are actually social tragedy under the cover of the beautiful clothes. In the novel, the author also shows her views on love. First, the author clearly defines the standard of the bad marriage and the good one. In Austen’s opinion, the unfortunate marriages generally have two situations as followed: one is like Charlotte and Collins, which fully established on an economic basis; the other as Lydia and Wickham, was purely built on the base of beauty and passion.

Charlotte is a clever girl. Because she has no property and good looks, she does not marry until 27-years-old. Her marriage is just to have a family. She even does not care whether her marriage will be happy in the future. It reflects the sad fate of women at that time. Lydia is a flippant woman and elopes with Wickham because she clings to his beauty. After being rescued by Darcy, these two people get married. But not soon after marriage, their love fades out. Jane’s marriage is built on the base of love, true love. Elizabeth and Darcy’s or Jane and Bingley’s combination does not exclude economic aspects or appearances they pay more attention to the beauty of the virtues. So after the wedding even there are some differences between them the two couples still love their partners, especially the Elizabeth couple.

3. The Role of Dialogue in Shaping Character

Characterization is the central task of a novel, and the language of the characters in the novel is an important way for the author to show the personality traits to the readers. The dialogue is a direct display of characters’ affections, so the dialogue is also called the basic material and basic means of literary creation of shaping the characters. In Pride and Prejudice, the description of the character appearance is very few, and the readers mainly understand the character through the language in the novel. Based on the description of the characters dialogue, the author depicts distinctive character"s personality (Ji Xiaobin, 2007:84). Dialogues in the book are full of wisdom, humor, wit, delicate description, modeling and depicting a group of vivid characters in literary history.

3.1 Dialogue Translation and Reproduction of Characters

Comparatively, dialogues can be more “intuitive and implicit” when performing the characters than narrative words. The so-called “intuition”, refers that the dialogues reduce or even conceal authorial voice to a certain extent, leave the right to speak for the characters themselves and leave the right to determine the characters for the reader. The so-called “implication”, refers that the author loses the direct opportunity to speak in the dialogue to directly give the description and judgment of the characters, so that all kinds of character information in the dialogue can only exhibit in the details relatively “implicit”. In view of the dual characteristics of dialogue, the author often needs to rack his brain arranging the dialogue, hiding the character information as skillfully as possible between the lines, so as to make the characters natural and profound. For the same reason, the translator should be careful when translating the dialogues and reproduce as accurately as possible in order to live up to the original author and the expectation of the target reader. However, in fact, it is due to the characteristics of the “intuitive and implicit” dialogues that the translator is easy to insufficiently understand the importance of dialogue in translation and neglect the in-depth study of the dialogue, resulting in the inadvertent loss of subtleties of the dialogues.

The thesis will use Mrs. Bennett as an example, combined with Sun Zhili Chinese version of Pride and Prejudice, and discuss how the dialogue translation reproduce the writing style of the author.

3.2 Analysis of Mrs. Bennett’s Dialogues in the Original Text

From the point of characterization techniques, characters in the novels of Austen can be divided into two types, sketching characters and cartoon characters (Lin Wenchen, 1991:28): the former tends to be multi-faceted personalities, and the latter tends to be relatively simple. Mrs. Bennett is a typical cartoon character, of which the description is a comic-style exaggeration. She is a shallow nagger and fussbudget, whose only desire is to marry her daughter into the purple. Simply, she has a mothering type character (Zhang Nanfeng, 2004:127). Dialogues between her and other characters are not only the most powerful proof of this characteristic, but also the main way used to shape this character. The dialogue in the first chapter between her and her husband is a vivid embodiment.

To facilitate the analysis, we introduce the concept of “turn-taking”. “Turn-taking” is the basic unit of a dialogue; it refers to “in the process of the session, the speaker saying consecutive words at any time, ending with the exchange of the speaker and the listener or the silence of all participators as a signal to give up the turn.” (Li Yue’e, 2002:7). Mrs. Bennett’s discourse in the first chapter contains 15 turns.

We can draw the following data from the analysis and statistics of her conversation with her husband:

In contrast, Mrs. Bennett’s average length of each turn is obviously longer than Mr. Bennett’s, giving people a kind of verbose impression. Exaggeratively, the longest turn (one sentence) has 79 words.

Then analyze the constitution of her language. From the point of tone, in this conversation, Mrs. Bennett has 6 times using the sigh tone, yet Mr. Bennett uses no exclamatory sentence. It seems not to be worthy of her fuss that she complains her husband scoffing her or she sighs that her new neighbor Mr. Bingley is real single. It can tell from Mr. Bennett’s understatement of these topics. From the point of word forms, her words contained in a lot of adjectives, adverbs and other modifiers, like “a young man of large fortune”, “so much delighted”, “agreed...immediately”, “very likely”, “certainly have”, “extraordinary”, “merely on that account”, “indeed”, “not a bit”, “not half so handsome”, “nor half so good humored” and so on. And she rapidly uses the modal verb “must” five times. Comparatively, the conversation of Mr. Bennett is very brief and clear with insipid tone and few exaggerated modifiers. These features in dialogue description are not occasional for that the author aims to reflect the character image through these details.

In this chapter, dialogue takes up most of the space. It begins directly from the very beginning of the chapter even not explain the specific background. As a result, the representation of dialogue details also becomes one of the most important aspects of the reproduction of the original characters.

3.3 The Reappearance of Mrs. Bennett in Translation

We study the reappearance of Mrs. Bennett from the following aspects in the translation.

3.3.1 The Choice of Words in the Dialogue Translation

The conversation shapes the character in the difference and change of the words used by them. The translator must appropriately reproduce the original discourse between different characters with different words in dialogue translation to avoid the mismatch in the discourse style.

For instance, in the original volume 1 chapter 9, Mrs. Bennett speaks highly of good looks of his eldest daughter and mentions that one man has done poems for her. (1)“...he wrote some verses on her, and very pretty they were.” “……他为简写了几首诗, 写得真动人。” Mrs. Bennett is quite impressed with his oldest daughter and more proud when mentioning a man composed poems for her daughter. Although the word “pretty” is intuitively praising the poetry, actually it is indirectly commending her daughter. Sun’s version uses "真动人" to reflect the original modal of Bennett when she gives kind words of praise to her daughter.

For another example: (2) “But, my dear, you must in deed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into the neighborhood.”(Chapter1, Volume1)“不过, 亲爱的, 宾利先生一搬到这里, 你可真得去见见他。” From the previous analysis, we know that Mrs. Bennett is a farcical fuss, exaggerated and excited when speaking. Meanwhile, she wholeheartedly hopes that her daughters could marry into the purple. When she heard that her husband would not visit the single Bingley, she was so anxious that she urgently wanted to change her husband’s mind. In the original work, although Mrs. Bennett is the hostess, she does not have a high status as female at that time. It can be told from the dialogue between her and her husband. Every time Mrs. Bennett starts to talk, she adds the title like “My dear Mr. Bennett” or “My dear”. But Mr. Bennett seldom uses a title when talking to his wife and even sometimes turns his back upon his wife’s words. At the beginning of the novel, when the character appears, the first sentence also gives us the same enlightenment. (3) “My dear Mr. Bennett, said his lady to him one day...”. “His lady” indicates the ownership relationship between both sexes in family and suggests the primary and the secondary roles in described perspective. Try to change it into “My dear Mr. Bennett, said Mrs. Bennett to her husband one day...”, we can obviously feel the different emphasis. All these details reflect the fact that women’s social status is not high at that time. Sun uses “可真得” to correspond to the “must indeed” in the original text, which faithfully mirrors the motion and position of the character. It is clear that words in dialogue are just like a tag of the character itself, which directly concerns the production and reproduction of the character, so that every word needs to be considered carefully when translating.

3.3.2 The Use of Punctuation in Sentence

Read the following example:

(4) “Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.” (Chapter1, Volume1)

“哦, 亲爱的, 你应该知道, 朗太太说, 内瑟菲尔德让英格兰北部的一个阔少爷租去了; 他星期一那天乘坐一辆驷马马车来看房子, 看得非常中意, 当下就和莫里斯先生讲妥了; 他打算赶在米迦勒节以前搬进新居, 下周末以前打发几个佣人先住进来。” (Sun Zhili’s Version)

This is the longest turn of Mrs. Bennett’s dialogues in chapter one, totally 79 words, within one sentence. Mrs. Bennett uses three object clauses guided by that in a row to compound three sentences into one, which fully suggests her nagging and verbose personality and her desperately eagerness at that time. Sun’s version faithfully keeps the semicolons to give expression to Mrs. Bennett’s urgent speaking rhythm. Furthermore, there are three symbolic “that” together with the semicolons reflecting the urgent emotion of the speaker and indicating Mrs. Bennett is quoting other people’s words. The translation should have some reflections to these specialties. So we can adapt the translation as followed based on Sun’s version:

“哦, 亲爱的, 你应该知道, 朗太太说内瑟菲尔德让英格兰北部的一个阔少爷租去了;说他星期一那天乘坐一辆驷马马车来看房子, 看得非常中意, 当下就和莫里斯先生讲妥了;说他打算赶在米迦勒节以前搬进新居, 下周末以前打发几个佣人先住进来。”

3.3.3 The Use of Citing Structure

Besides the punctuation, dialogue description can also use the citing structure to effectively show the dialogue situation and highlight the character feature. Example is following:

(5) (Mr. Bennett :) “I hope Mr. Bingley will like it, Lizzy.” (Mrs. Bennett) “We are not in a way to know what Mr. Bingley likes,” said her mother resentfully, “since we are not to visit.” (Chapter2, Volume1)

“我希望宾利先生会喜欢这顶帽子, 莉齐。”“既然我们不打算去拜访宾利先生, ” 做母亲的愤然说道, “我们怎么会知道人家喜欢什么。”(Sun Zhili’s Version)

“我希望彬格莱先生会喜欢你这顶帽子, 丽萃。”她的母亲气愤愤地说: “我们既然不预备去看彬格莱先生, 当然就无从知道他喜欢什么。”(Wang Keyi’s Version)

“利齐, 这顶帽子宾利先生要是喜欢就好。”“我们没打算登宾利先生的家门, 哪里会知道他喜欢什么!” 利齐的妈妈气冲冲说。(Zhang Jinghao’s Version)

In this dialogue, Mr. Bennett is originally talking to his second daughter Lizzy (Elizabeth), but Mrs. Bennett cannot get over husband’s refusing to visit Mr. Bingley and complaints “We are not in a way to know what Mr. Bingley likes”. The author plants the citing structure “said her mother resentfully” in Mrs. Bennett’s words with special purposes: firstly to make the front phrase fully prominent to express the situation that Mrs. Bennett chips in; secondly to separate the sentence with citing structure to show Mrs. Bennett pausing after grabbing the speaking opportunity which strengthens her complaining emotion in the last phase. Among the above three translations, Wang’s version puts the citing structure before the quotation, conforming to the Chinese custom of writing style but hardly presenting Mrs. Bennett’s interposing eagerness. The post-positioned citing structure in Zhang’s version entirely conveys the eagerness of the speaker but unreasonably deletes the intended pause between two sentences. Different managements of the citing structure make difference to the expressive force of the character. Sun’s version faithfully reproduces the situation.

4. Conclusion

Reproducing the writing style mainly depends on the attention to the original presentation. Translations that only convey the meaning of the original text and ignore the stylistic effect brought by the original specific language expression, more or less will twist the original writing style, make a certain loss to the original art value and affect the target readers’ understanding and appreciating of the original text. Therefore, translators must fully understand the importance of unifying the translation and the original style. And it benefits in conveying the original connotation more exactly and keeping the original art value in the highest limit. In translating process, translators should analyze the writing background and style of the author and have a deep understanding of the original content and the thinking marrow, then try best to unify the language style and the presentation with the original work. Only after these can reproduce the author’s style, exactly convey the information and the emotions between the lines and resonate with the target readers.

Works Cited

[1] Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice [M]. New York: Bantam Books, 1981.1.

[2] Bassnett, Susan amp; Lefevere. Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literal Translation. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2010.

[3] Newmark, Peter. A Textbook of Translation. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language

Education Press, 2001.

[4] Munday, Jeremy. Introducing Translation Studies Theories and Applications. London amp; New York: Routledge, 2001.

[5] [英]奥斯丁. 《傲慢与偏见》. 孙致礼译. 南京:译林出版社,1995.

[6] 张南峰. 《鸡蛋里挑骨头—评lt;傲慢与偏见gt;的两种译本》 . 中国青年出版社, 2004 , 121-129

[7] 林文琛. 《奥斯丁反讽艺术片谈》 . 外国文学研究,1991, (4) :27-33

[8] 何欣. 《契合之美— 孙致礼译本对lt;傲慢与偏见gt;技巧与神韵的传达》. 天津外国语学院学报,2005,(6): 20-26.

[9] 李悦娥. 《话语分析》. 上海:上海外语教育出版社, 2002.

[10] 纪晓斌. 《对话翻译与小说人物形象的再现》. 解放军外国语学院学报,2007, (5): 83-87.

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