从顺应论看萧伯纳《卖花女》的翻译策略_英语论文

On the Translation Strategies of Bernard Shaw’ s Pygmalion from the Perspective of the Adaptation Theory

摘要

《卖花女》的作者萧伯纳在英国戏剧史上的地位，在后人看来仅次于大文豪莎士比亚。他的作品《卖花女》有多种语言版本。其中杨宪益译本经多次修改和重印，深受中国读者欢迎。顺应论是维索尔伦在其作品语用学理解中正式提出的。语言的使用是一个在语言内部和外部做出选择的动态过程，并且是在不同意识程度上做出的选择。语言具有的三种重要性质，变异性、协商性和顺应性。其中顺应性是语言使用的核心，因为语言的使用必须要根据环境做出动态的顺应。顺应的语境成分包括对心理世界、社会世界和物理世界，本文主要从这三个世界着手分析杨宪益在《卖花女》的翻译过程中，翻译策略的运用。本文首先介绍了前人对《卖花女》的研究以及传统翻译理论的不足之处。本文尝试将语境顺应理论应用于文学作品的翻译，具体研究维索尔伦的交际语境中非语言语境在翻译中的应用。并以此为基础，详细介绍了顺应论并从非语言语境即心理世界、社会世界和物理世界三方面的详细分析它在翻译中的应用。最后通过分析《卖花女》翻译中翻译策略的使用，得出结论。总之，顺应论对于翻译有着很大的指导作用，为翻译研究提供了新思路，对翻译具有强大解释力。

关键词：《卖花女》；顺应论；翻译策略

Abstract

The author of Pygmalion, Bernard Shaw as a British playwright is considered only second to Shakespeare in the history of British Drama. His book Pygmalion has been translated into many Chinese versions, among which Yang Xianyi’s received a substantial popularity and was revised and reprinted for several times. The adaptation theory was put forward by Verschueren in his book Understanding Pragmatics. According to Verschueren, language use is a dynamic process of making choices both internally and externally, and the choices are made based on different levels of consciousness. Language has three important properties—Variability, Negotiability and Adaptability. Among them adaptability is the key to language use, because the users of language must make dynamic adaptation in language use according to the relevant contexts. The ingredients of communicative context include mental world, social world and physical world. The paper mainly analyzed the application of translation strategies in Yang’s translation of Pygmalion from the above three worlds. Firstly, the paper introduced the previous studies of Pygmalion and the limitations of previous translation theories. The paper tried to apply the adaptation theory to the literary translation, and study the application of non-linguistic context in detail. Then it discussed the application from three aspects: mental world, social world and physical world respectively. Finally, it drew a conclusion by analyzing the application of translation strategies in Pygmalion. In a word, the adaptation theory plays an important role in translation, and it can provide a new perspective for translation study, and it reflects the great explanatory power of the adaptation theory on the analysis of translation. 

Key words: Pygmalion; adaptation Theory; translation strategies

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Research Background 1

1.2 Research Purpose 2

1.3 Thesis Structure 2

2 Literature Review 2

2.1 Previous Studies of Translation Strategies of Pygmalion 2

2.2 The Limitations of Previous Translation Theories 3

3 An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation 4

3.1 Language Use as a Choice-Making Process 4

3.2 Three Properties of Language 4

3.3 Four Angles of Pragmatic Investigation 5

3.4 Contextual Correlates of Adaptability 6

3.5 The Relationship Between the Adaptation Theory and Translation 7

4 The Analysis of Yang’s Translation of Pygmalion 8

4.1 Adaptation to the Mental World 8

4.2. Adaptation to the Social World 12

4.3 Adaptation to the Physical World 14

5 Conclusion 16

References 17