Abstract:

The phenomenon of “One Voice Two Sounds” is found to be existent in the texts of the great Chinese novel A Dream of Red Mansions, and widely exploited in the names, conversations and poems in the novel as well. This paper employs the pun theory of Delabastita to conduct a comparative research between the two English versions rendered by David Hawkes & John Minford and Yang Xianyi & Gladys Yang. Detailed examples have been carefully chosen for comparative studies, and the discrepancies and pros and cons between the two translations have been tentatively discussed. This research finds that Yang and Hawkes adopt different translation strategies in translating the concealed and connotative meanings of the puns. They either copy the original Chinese puns, or use compensation methods, or absolutely abandon the puns, or maintain parts of the puns, so as to create different effects in this figure of speech. However, confined to the differences between Chinese language and English language and the two different cultures, both of these two versions do not completely convey the connotative meanings in the puns so that readers of the English versions cannot appreciate the ingenuity of the particular “One Voice Two Sounds” as much as the Chinese readers do. Moreover, when conducting the comparative studies between different translations of the novel A Dream of Red Mansions, the prosodic harmony in the translated language should be emphasized, and the researchers should enhance their consciousness of differences in the Chinese versions of this novel.

Keywords: A Dream of Red Mansions; One Voice Two Sounds; English translation

摘要： “一喉二歌”语言现象广泛存在于《红楼梦》文本中，在人名、对话、诗词中均得到广泛运用。本文对比分析了杨宪益、戴乃迭夫妇及霍克斯、闵福德所译的两种《红楼梦》英译文，选取原著中较为典型的例子，借用Delabastita 的双关语翻译理论，分析《红楼梦》中“一喉二歌”语言翻译的差别和优劣。研究发现，杨宪益和霍克斯采用了相同或不同的翻译手段来翻译这些“隐复之语”、“言外之意”，或照搬原文双关语，或借助补偿手段，或完全丢失双关意义，或保留部分双关意义，修辞效果各有千秋。而囿于中英语言本身和文化的差异，两个译文并未将所有双关语蕴含的两层或两层以上意思完全翻译过去，英语读者可能并不能像本族读者一样体会到“一喉二歌”笔法的奇妙。此外，在对《红楼梦》不同英译本进行对比研究时应注重翻译语言的义韵和谐，同时研究者亦需增强底本意识。

关键词: 红楼梦, 一喉二歌, 英译, 双关语翻译