Abstract:

Howard Goldblatt is the most noted and the most productive English translator of modern Chinese novels. However, by careful reading and analysis of Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out written by the first Chinese Nobel Prize writer Mo Yan, three categories of mistranslations in this novel are discovered: 1) the mistranslation caused by the translator’s lack of thorough understanding of the cultural background in the source language; 2) the mistranslation caused by lack of discourse analysis and insufficient grasp of the situational context; 3) the mistranslation caused by negligence of numbers, names, consistence and other detailed errors. Malinowski, the founder of modern context theory, put forward the triarchic theory of contexts, which are “the context of culture”, “the situational context” and “co-text”. By catering to the co-working of the three types of contexts, we can improve the accuracy of the translation as well as reducing information deviation and loss. Meanwhile, this paper aims to re-translate the mistranslations in Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out by employing the triarchic theory of contexts, thus hopefully it can provide some meaningful references to the further development and transmission of Chinese literature in the western countries.

Keywords: Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out; Malinowski; context theory; mistranslation; Goldblatt

摘要：

现代语境论鼻祖Malinowski提出了语境“三元论”,即“文化语境”“情景语境”“上下文语境”。通过关照三种语境的共同制约作用,可提高译文准确性,减少误译、信息偏离及信息损耗。本文通过细读文本,发现葛浩文译《生死疲劳》中的误译类型主要有3种：（1）由于译者对源文本词汇背景文化了解不够充分,误解词语意思而造成的误译;（2）译者缺乏语篇内容分析、对情景语境把握不足而造成的误译;（3）译者疏忽而导致数量、称呼上的纰漏、前后不一致等细节错误。文章尝试通过语境“三元论”试译《生死疲劳》中的错误译文,期望能够对中国文学作品在西方的有效传播提供借鉴。

关键词: 《生死疲劳》, Malinowski, 语境论, 误译, 葛浩文