Abstract:

Shih-I Hsuing was the first drama translator to have introduced Chinese Peking Opera to the West. However, Chinese scholars have paid little attention to his translations or translator’s style. Focusing on Shih-I Hsuing’s English translations of Lady Precious Stream and The Romance of the Western Chamber, this study explores his translator’s style using a self-built corpus. It has revealed that Shih-I Hsuing had a consistent translation style featuring limited lexical diversity, low information load, and high readability and intelligibility. However, due to the differences in the translation purposes and strategies, Lady Precious Stream is more suitable for performance in terms of orality, language dynamism and dialogue fluency. Translators should strive to balance the literary and theatrical aspects to ensure positive reception of their works.

Keywords: Shih-I Hsuing; translator’s style; corpus; English translations of drama; Lady Precious Stream; The Romance of the Western Chamber

摘要：

熊式一是历史上首位让中国京剧走出国门并享誉欧美的戏剧翻译家，然而他却名副其实地声名在“外”，国内少有学者关注和研究他的戏剧翻译，遑论探讨其译者风格。本文以熊式一的两部英译戏剧《王宝川》和《西厢记》为研究对象，借助自建语料库，探究其戏剧翻译的可读性和可表演性，分析他的译者风格及成因。研究发现，熊式一有相对统一的译者风格：词汇多样性程度较低，文本信息量较小，词汇易懂性较高，译文可读性较强。但因翻译目的和策略的差异，这两部熊译戏剧的可表演性相去甚远，《王宝川》的台词上口性、语言动作性及对白流畅性都高于《西厢记》。本文认为，在戏剧外译的过程中，译者要处理好译文的文学性与舞台性的矛盾统一，唯其如此，作品才能获得良好的接受效果。

关键词: 熊式一, 译者风格, 语料库, 戏剧英译, 《王宝川》, 《西厢记》