《西游记》新英译本新在何处?: 基于语料库计量文体研究的初步发现

2021年以出版世界文学经典著称的“企鹅经典文库”出版了蓝诗玲新译的《西游记》英译本。从章回选择来看,该译本与之前已列入该文库的韦利英译本类似。从关于两个译本的书评来看,这两个译本均在英语世界产生了较大的影响。那么,新译本究竟有何异同?与当前中国文学外译研究多采用分析翻译和出版活动的文本外方法或采用分析译本书评和前言后语等的副文本方法不同,运用基于语料库的计量文体学研究方法,从语言总体特征及译本内容、关键词和词汇搭配等层面对蓝氏和韦氏的译本进行宏观为主、微观为辅的比较分析,从文本角度系统探究蓝诗玲译本与韦利译本的异同。研究发现,从语言总体特征来看,蓝译本平均句长比韦译本短,词汇密度也不如韦译本高;从译本内容来看,蓝译本选译了更多的章回,译本情节更为丰富,但在章回内部删减了无法融入叙事主线的章节;从译本的关键词表来看,两个译本的文化专有项翻译均多采用体现源文文化的直译手法,虽然韦氏翻译人名和地名采用韦氏拼音或梵语拼写,而蓝氏则采用现代汉语拼音;从译文主题词“monkey”的词汇搭配来看,两个译本塑造的猴王形象有所不同,韦译本集中凸显了孙悟空英勇伟大的形象,而蓝译本孙悟空的形象相对更为立体而多面。两个译本存在差异主要是因为社会时代背景和翻译手法等因素。

The study conducts a stylometric comparative analysis on Julia Lovell' s and Arthur Waley' s translations of the Chinese classic novel Journey to the West, aiming to examine how Lovell' s new retranslation is different from the previous Waley' s version at lexical, syntactic and discursive levels by using various corpus linguistics tools. Finding shows that in terms of general linguistic features, the average sentence length and the lexical density of Lovell' s translation are shorter and lower than that of Waley' s. In terms of content, Lovell's version has more chapters, accordingly more plots than that of Walley' s, but sections that do not involve in the mainstream of narration are deleted in the chapters. In terms of key wordlist, literal translation method is adopted to translate culture-loaded elements in both versions. And in terms of lexical collocation of "monkey", the Monkey King is shaped differently in the two versions, in that the Monkey King is presented as brave and grand in Waley' s version, while Lovell depicts a more multifaceted Monkey King. The different socio-cultural backgrounds, translation methods/strategies contribute to the differences between these two translations.