基于纽马克交际翻译理论的莫言《红高粱》英译本对比研究_英语论文

A Comparative Study of Mo Yan's Red Sorghum on the Basis of Peter Newmark's Communicative Translation Theory

摘要

莫言是历史上首位荣获诺贝尔文学奖的中国作家，其代表作之一《红高粱》拥有很高的文学地位。它讲述了抗战时期发生在中国山东高密的英雄轶事，表现了人民在抗日战争中的顽强生命力和充满血性的民族精神。其中，汉学家兼翻译家的葛浩文先生功不可没，他的优秀译文帮助这部中国本土小说走上了世界的舞台，获得专业人士和广大读者的喜爱和好评。由于汉语与英语在语言和文化方面的不同，小说原著的本土化表达成为了翻译的难点和重点，具体体现在作品中的文化负载词翻译。分析葛浩文译本的翻译策略对中国文学翻译具有启示引导作用。本论文将结合纽马克的交际翻译理论，从文化负载词角度，对《红高粱》的译文作对比分析。将探寻译文如何体现纽马克的交际翻译理论，如何将理论运用于翻译实践，从而让英文读者能最大程度的理解和感受原著的魅力。  

案例的对比分析是本论文主要的研究方法。本文将提取原作具有代表性的五类文化负载词，与译文作对比分析，以找出葛浩文译文使用了哪些合理的翻译策略，且它们是如何体现纽马克的交际翻译理论。

关键词：红高粱；英译本；交际翻译理论；文化负载词；对比分析

Abstract

Mo Yan is the first Chinese writer who has won Nobel Prize in Literature throughout the Chinese history, and the novel Red Sorghum is one of his master works. The novel tells about heroes’ stories in Gao Mi, a county in Shandong Province, in the time of Anti-Japanese War. Red Sorghum represents people’s strong willingness and national spirit during the wartime. Howard Goldblatt, a famous sinologist and translator, contributes to making this novel world-known and nominated by Nobel Prize, which receives favor and compliments from specialists and readers. Because of the barriers between Chinese and English languages and cultures, the main difficulty in translation is concerned with culture-loaded words. Howard’s successful translation sets a good example for overcoming this difficulty. Culture-loaded words in the translation of Red Sorghum will be analyzed in detail in order to show the fact that Newmark’s communicative translation theory is applicable to the explication of the translational phenomena of culture loaded words. Besides, the paper tends to find out how the translator translated culture-loaded words properly, which may enable English readers to fully understand the translated text. 

The methodology adopted in this paper is related to case analysis. Five types of typical culture-loaded words in Red Sorghum are to be classified and analyzed in order to find out whether Howard’s translation strategies match application of Newmark’s translation theory in the process of translating those culture-loaded words.

Keywords: Red Sorghum, English-Chinese translation, communicative translation theory, culture-loaded words, comparative analysis

Contents

摘 要

Abstract

Acknowledgements

Chapter One Introduction 1

1.1 Background of the thesis 1

1.2 Objectives and significance of the thesis 2

1.3 Methodology of the thesis 2

1.4 Layout of the thesis 3

Chapter Two Theoretical Basis 4

2.1 Mo Yan and Red Sorghum 4

2.1.1 Mo Yan and his novels 4

2.1.2 Introduction to Red Sorghum 4

2.2 A brief review on Howard Goldblatt’s translation 5

2.3 Newmark’s communicative translation theory 6

2.4 Culture-loaded words translation 9

Chapter Three Case Study and Analysis 10

3.1 Ecological culture-loaded words 10

3.2 Material culture-loaded words 12

3.3 Social culture-loaded words 13

3.4 Religious culture-loaded words 15

3.5 Linguistic culture-loaded words 16

3.6 Summary 18

Chapter Four Conclusion 19

4.1 Major findings 19

4.2 Implications 19

4.3 Limitations 20

References 21