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To Study the Translation of Poems in Hong Loumeng from the Perspective of Domestication and Foreignization
从归化与异化的角度看《红楼梦》中诗词的翻译
周宁
【Abstract】This essay, with the study of the theory of domestication and foreignization proposed by American scholar Venuti Lawrence and the comparative analysis of two English versions of the translations of some poems in Hong Loumeng, analyses briefly the different translation methods used by Hawkes and Yang Xianyi and the different effects they make in the TL culture and to the TL readers. Finally, it concludes that the purpose of translation decides the choice of different translation strategies.
【Key Word】domesticationforeignizationpoemtranslationHong Loumeng
从归化与异化的角度看《红楼梦》中诗词的翻译
【摘 要】本文结合美国学者L.Venuti提出的归化与异化理论，通过对名著《红楼梦》中部分诗词两种英译文的比较，分析评述了霍克斯和杨宪益两位译者在传递文化信息时所采取的不同翻译策略，以及由此对读者产生的效果和在目的语文化中所起的作用。研究最后指出翻译目的的不同决定了不同翻译策略的选择。
【关键词】归化 异化 诗词 翻译 《红楼梦》
【中图分类号】G623.31 【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】1009-9646(2008)06-0247-03
1 Introduction
Hong Loumeng is among the greatest classical works of China and of the world. As an encyclopedia work, it takes pride in rich life, great theme and unique artistic values. Not only in China, this masterpiece also aroused great interests of many foreign readers. The most popular English versions are The Story of the Stone translated by the Britain scholar David Hawkes and A Dream of Red Mansions translated by Chinese famous translator Yang Xianyi and his wife Gladys Yang.
It is well known that to fully understand and interpret each detail of Hong Loumeng is a very hard work even for many Chinese readers because of its rich culture-loaded contents and the extraordinary depth of thoughts. So, this essay is going to cite some poems in chapter V for the following comparative study of domestication and foreignization, the two translation strategies adopted by David Hawkes and Yang Xianyi respectively in their translations.
2 Domestication and Foreignization
It has been widely acknowledged that it is very difficult to translate poem. The translation is a process of losing many things. The American poet Robert Frost even defined poem as “poem is what gets lost in translation.”[1] David Hawkes and the Yang’s used two different strategies in their practical translation respectively. According to the theory of American scholar Venuti Lawrence, they are named as domestication and foreignization.
In 1813,Friedrich Schleiermache mentioned two translation methods, which can be taken as the earliest description of domestication and foreignization. He said: “the translator leave the original writer in peace as possible as s/he can and bring the readers to the writer abroad; or the translator leave the readers in peace and bring the writer to the reader.”[2] In 1995, American scholar Venuti Lawrence developed this theory in his book The Translator’s Invisibility, and named the two methods formally as domestication and foreignization. According to him, “domesticating method, an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to target-language cultural values, bringing the author back home, and a foreignizing method, an ethnodeviant pressure on those values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad.” [3]In other word, domestication is to bring the writer of the original text to the target language readers and make the original text in accordance with the culture of target language; while foreignization admits the difference between different cultures and let the target readers to accept the culture of original text.
3 The Comparative Study of Poems in Chapter V
The chapter V holds a very important position of the whole novel. It is in this chapter that Cao Xueqin firstly pointed “红楼梦”, the name of this novel. So firstly, a brief comparison of the title should be necessary.
3.1 The Comparative Study of the First Poem of “Third Register of Twelve Beauties of Chinling”
In this chapter, Bao-yu visits a fairyland with the guide of Qin-shi and saw many pictures and the relevant poems. The first one of “Third Register of Twelve Beauties of Chinling”is about the maid of Bao-yu, Qingwen. The original text goes like this:
“霁月难逢,彩云易散。
心比天高,身为下贱。
风流灵巧招人怨。
寿夭多因诽谤生,多情公子空牵念.” [6]
David Hawkes’s translation:
“Seldom the moon shines in a cloudless sky,
And days of brightness all too soon pass by.
A noble and aspiring mind,
In a base-born frame confined,
Your charm and wit did only hatred gained,
And in the end you were by slanders slain
Your gentle lord’s solicitucle in vain.”
Yang Xianyi’s translation:
“A clear moon is rarely met with,
Bright clouds are easily scattered;
Her heart is loftier than the sky
But her person is of low degree.
Her charm and wit give rise to jealousy,
Her early death is caused by calumny.
In vain her loving master’s grief must be.”
Mr. Yang basically adopted literal translation, trying to achieve the fully literal equivalence of each sentence to the original text.The first couplet of the Chinese original“霁月难逢,彩云易散” not only hides the Chinese name of Qingwen, but also indicates the miserable fate of her,for“霁”,“彩云”means “晴”,“雯”respectively and “难逢”,“易散”also implies the imperfect endings in Chinese. Yang well expressed the literal meanings of the Chinese characters and met perfectly the requirement of form of Chinese poem; however, the information of Qingwen’s name was lost. In Hawkes’s version, the name of Qingwen was translated as Skybright.Hawkes didn’t explain the meanings of Chinese characters “霁”and“彩云”,and the name “Skybright” also was hidden in the first couplet, so in this aspect, Hawkes’s translation is fairly a successful one.
In the six sentence“寿夭多因诽谤生”,the word“寿夭”not only means “death” in chinese, but also indicates that to live a very short life. Qingwen’ early death is a very important foreshadow of the whole story. Mr. Yang translated this as “early death”, which meets perfectly the Chinese meaning, what’s more, the two words “caused” and “calumny” formed alliteration, which successfully gains the same reading effects as“诽谤”in Chinese. Hawkes also used the two alliteration words: “slanders” and “slain”, but it is pity that he didn’t express the meaning of “early death” to his readers.
By using the way of domestication, Hawkes successfully conveyed the original textual information to foreign readers with smooth and beautiful English, but the loss of Chinese culture-loaded information is inevitable. Mr. Yang mostly adopted the way of literal translation, trying his best to keep the true and idiomatic Chinese style and national tint.
3.2 The Comparative Study of the Sixth Poem of “First Register of Twelve Beauties of Chinling”
This poem is about Jia Ying-chun, the elder granddaughter of Jia Mansion. She suffered an extreme miserable marriage and finally was maltreated to death by her husband, Sun Shaozu. The original poem is:
“子系中山狼,得志便猖狂；
金闺花柳质,一载赴黄粱。”
For many foreign readers, to understand this poem may not be an easy thing, because the short four lines are full of Chinese traditional allusions and culture-loaded words. For example, the phrase“中山狼”comes from an old Chinese folk tale:“The Tales of Mountain Wolf ” which was written by Ma Zhongxi of Ming dynasty. In Chinese, this phrase is used to indicate those ungrateful people. The first two lines are the description of Jia Yingchun’s husband, Sun Shaozu, who is ungrateful and brutal. The other allusion“黄粱”is from《枕中记》of Dang dynasty,which means the dream-like rich and prosper that is unreal and easily goes in vain. Another example is the three Chinese characters in the third line:“金”,“花”and“柳”.In Chinese classics,“金”is often used to emphasize the dignity and nobility;“花”is the word that to describe the beauty of female. In this sentence, it was used to modify the svelte and elegant figure of female.So, the information is abundant: the gentle and weak lady, the wolf-like husband and the terrible ending of Jia Ying-chun and so on. David Hawkes’s translation:
“Paired with a brute like the wolf in the old fable,
Who on his saviour turned when he was able,
To cruelty not used, your gentle heart
Shall, in a twelvemonth only, break apart.”
Yang Xianyi’s translation:
For husband she will have a mountain wolf,
His object gained he ruthlessly berates her;
Fair bloom, sweet willow in a golden bower,
Too soon a rude awakening awaits her.
Both Hawkes and Yang Xianyi maintained the image of wolf. This is because that in both the English and Chinese, the word “wolf” has the same conceptual meanings and the culture connotations: a representative of brutal, ruthless and ungrateful person.In Hawkes’s translation, the textual information was kept, while the information of allusion was missing, which is a loss to those foreign readers and they may be wondering about the “fable”in the expression:“wolf in the fable”.For the third line:“金闺花柳质”, Hawkes just used one word “gentle” to describe the lady, which made the readers can not gain the enough information of Ying-chun. Yang successfully kept all the three images of the culture-loaded words by using“bloom”,“willow” and“golden”,and the use of adjectives “fair”and “sweet” also serves well to the expressiveness. Yang’s translation of the final line, in my opinion, is a classic of foreignization.The skillful use of the word “awakening” is really excellent. This word not only reminds the readers the allusion of the story of“黄粱”, but also implies the break of the dream of the red mansion which is accidentally the novel’ name.
So,Hawkes adopted liberal translation and cleared away the obstacles of understandings for foreign readers. Mr. Yang is more like a responsible translator. His strategy is to adopt semantic translation with annotation. By doing this, the loss of meanings of culture allusions can be effectively compensated and the exotic favor can also be retained to the great extent.
3.3 The Comparative Study of the Poem “虚花误”
This poem is one of the fourteen “Hong Loumeng” songs. The poem is:
“将那三春勘破,桃红柳绿待如何？把这韶华打灭,觅那清淡天合。
……
似这般,生关死劫谁能躲？闻说道西方宝树唤婆娑,上结着长生果。”
This poem is the description of Xi-chun, the youngest granddaughter of the Jia Mansion. Having been disillusioned by the cruel reality, she decided to get away from the earthly affairs and chose to sacrifice herself to the Buddhism. The first line directly described the short time span of the beautiful early springs. Here the word “三春” not only means spring, but also hides the other three granddaughters of the Jia Mansion, namely, Yuan-chun, Ying-chun and Tan-chun. So, Mr. Yang translated the line as: “She will see through the three Springs.” And he also added the missing information by the annotation that: “A pun meaning the three months of Spring and the three elder Chia girls. All the Chia girls had the character chun or spring in their names.”This way of translation effectively informed the inner connection between Xi-chun and other girls and the exquisite design of their names. By the way, if we connect the first character of the four names of these girls, then a phrase can be gained, which reads as: “原应叹息”. This phrase can be takes as the basic tone of Hong Loumeng. Hawkes simply put: “三春” as the “triple springs”,which lost the rich implied meanings of the original text.
As for the last couplet, Mr. Yang added the annotation in translating: “西方宝树”,a special term of the Buddhism. He explained in the foot note that: “it was said that Sakyamuni attained Buddhahood in a grove of sal trees.” Hawkes’s translation is: “In Paradise there grows a precious tree, which bears the fruit of immorality.”Actually, Hawkes replaced the specialty of Chinese culture, “Buddhism”by“paradise” the typical symbol in the culture of English which is a comparatively strong language with more power and influence.
4 Conclusion
The Chinese famous translator Wang Zuoliang once commented translation as a process of the communication between two cultures. So,a translator should be a faithful introducer of the semantic meaning as well as the culture of the source language and has the responsibility of maintaining the national tint in order to satisfy the different requirements of the various readers. In order to promote the communications between different cultures, the translator should respect the conventions and characteristics of the less powerful languages.
In the year of 1973,with the invitation of the Penguin Books Publishing House, Hawkes began to translate Hong Loumeng. His direct purpose clearly is to let more readers to understand and enjoy the novel. Mr. Yang successfully meets the three standards of the foreigniation proposed by Sun Zhili.
Actually, it is very difficult to judge which method is better, the purpose of translation decides the choice of different translation strategies.
参考文献
[1] 周方珠.翻译多元论[M].北京:中国对外翻译出版公司,2004.
[2] Schleiermacher, Friedrich. On the Different Methods of Translating[C]. Chicago&London:The University of Chicago Press,1992.
[3] Venuti,Lawrence.The Translators Invisibility:A History of Translation[M].London:Routledge Publishing, 1995.
[4] David Hawkes.The Story of The Stone[M].London:Penguin Books Ltd. Press,1973.
[5] Yang Xianyi and Gladys.A Dream of Red Mansion[M]. Beijing:Foreign Language Press,1978.
[6] 曹雪芹,高鹗.红楼梦[M].合肥:黄山书社,1994.
从归化与异化的角度看《红楼梦》中诗词的翻译
周宁
【Abstract】This essay, with the study of the theory of domestication and foreignization proposed by American scholar Venuti Lawrence and the comparative analysis of two English versions of the translations of some poems in Hong Loumeng, analyses briefly the different translation methods used by Hawkes and Yang Xianyi and the different effects they make in the TL culture and to the TL readers. Finally, it concludes that the purpose of translation decides the choice of different translation strategies.
【Key Word】domesticationforeignizationpoemtranslationHong Loumeng
从归化与异化的角度看《红楼梦》中诗词的翻译
【摘 要】本文结合美国学者L.Venuti提出的归化与异化理论，通过对名著《红楼梦》中部分诗词两种英译文的比较，分析评述了霍克斯和杨宪益两位译者在传递文化信息时所采取的不同翻译策略，以及由此对读者产生的效果和在目的语文化中所起的作用。研究最后指出翻译目的的不同决定了不同翻译策略的选择。
【关键词】归化 异化 诗词 翻译 《红楼梦》
【中图分类号】G623.31 【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】1009-9646(2008)06-0247-03
1 Introduction
Hong Loumeng is among the greatest classical works of China and of the world. As an encyclopedia work, it takes pride in rich life, great theme and unique artistic values. Not only in China, this masterpiece also aroused great interests of many foreign readers. The most popular English versions are The Story of the Stone translated by the Britain scholar David Hawkes and A Dream of Red Mansions translated by Chinese famous translator Yang Xianyi and his wife Gladys Yang.
It is well known that to fully understand and interpret each detail of Hong Loumeng is a very hard work even for many Chinese readers because of its rich culture-loaded contents and the extraordinary depth of thoughts. So, this essay is going to cite some poems in chapter V for the following comparative study of domestication and foreignization, the two translation strategies adopted by David Hawkes and Yang Xianyi respectively in their translations.
2 Domestication and Foreignization
It has been widely acknowledged that it is very difficult to translate poem. The translation is a process of losing many things. The American poet Robert Frost even defined poem as “poem is what gets lost in translation.”[1] David Hawkes and the Yang’s used two different strategies in their practical translation respectively. According to the theory of American scholar Venuti Lawrence, they are named as domestication and foreignization.
In 1813,Friedrich Schleiermache mentioned two translation methods, which can be taken as the earliest description of domestication and foreignization. He said: “the translator leave the original writer in peace as possible as s/he can and bring the readers to the writer abroad; or the translator leave the readers in peace and bring the writer to the reader.”[2] In 1995, American scholar Venuti Lawrence developed this theory in his book The Translator’s Invisibility, and named the two methods formally as domestication and foreignization. According to him, “domesticating method, an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to target-language cultural values, bringing the author back home, and a foreignizing method, an ethnodeviant pressure on those values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad.” [3]In other word, domestication is to bring the writer of the original text to the target language readers and make the original text in accordance with the culture of target language; while foreignization admits the difference between different cultures and let the target readers to accept the culture of original text.
3 The Comparative Study of Poems in Chapter V
The chapter V holds a very important position of the whole novel. It is in this chapter that Cao Xueqin firstly pointed “红楼梦”, the name of this novel. So firstly, a brief comparison of the title should be necessary.
3.1 The Comparative Study of the First Poem of “Third Register of Twelve Beauties of Chinling”
In this chapter, Bao-yu visits a fairyland with the guide of Qin-shi and saw many pictures and the relevant poems. The first one of “Third Register of Twelve Beauties of Chinling”is about the maid of Bao-yu, Qingwen. The original text goes like this:
“霁月难逢,彩云易散。
心比天高,身为下贱。
风流灵巧招人怨。
寿夭多因诽谤生,多情公子空牵念.” [6]
David Hawkes’s translation:
“Seldom the moon shines in a cloudless sky,
And days of brightness all too soon pass by.
A noble and aspiring mind,
In a base-born frame confined,
Your charm and wit did only hatred gained,
And in the end you were by slanders slain
Your gentle lord’s solicitucle in vain.”
Yang Xianyi’s translation:
“A clear moon is rarely met with,
Bright clouds are easily scattered;
Her heart is loftier than the sky
But her person is of low degree.
Her charm and wit give rise to jealousy,
Her early death is caused by calumny.
In vain her loving master’s grief must be.”
Mr. Yang basically adopted literal translation, trying to achieve the fully literal equivalence of each sentence to the original text.The first couplet of the Chinese original“霁月难逢,彩云易散” not only hides the Chinese name of Qingwen, but also indicates the miserable fate of her,for“霁”,“彩云”means “晴”,“雯”respectively and “难逢”,“易散”also implies the imperfect endings in Chinese. Yang well expressed the literal meanings of the Chinese characters and met perfectly the requirement of form of Chinese poem; however, the information of Qingwen’s name was lost. In Hawkes’s version, the name of Qingwen was translated as Skybright.Hawkes didn’t explain the meanings of Chinese characters “霁”and“彩云”,and the name “Skybright” also was hidden in the first couplet, so in this aspect, Hawkes’s translation is fairly a successful one.
In the six sentence“寿夭多因诽谤生”,the word“寿夭”not only means “death” in chinese, but also indicates that to live a very short life. Qingwen’ early death is a very important foreshadow of the whole story. Mr. Yang translated this as “early death”, which meets perfectly the Chinese meaning, what’s more, the two words “caused” and “calumny” formed alliteration, which successfully gains the same reading effects as“诽谤”in Chinese. Hawkes also used the two alliteration words: “slanders” and “slain”, but it is pity that he didn’t express the meaning of “early death” to his readers.
By using the way of domestication, Hawkes successfully conveyed the original textual information to foreign readers with smooth and beautiful English, but the loss of Chinese culture-loaded information is inevitable. Mr. Yang mostly adopted the way of literal translation, trying his best to keep the true and idiomatic Chinese style and national tint.
3.2 The Comparative Study of the Sixth Poem of “First Register of Twelve Beauties of Chinling”
This poem is about Jia Ying-chun, the elder granddaughter of Jia Mansion. She suffered an extreme miserable marriage and finally was maltreated to death by her husband, Sun Shaozu. The original poem is:
“子系中山狼,得志便猖狂；
金闺花柳质,一载赴黄粱。”
For many foreign readers, to understand this poem may not be an easy thing, because the short four lines are full of Chinese traditional allusions and culture-loaded words. For example, the phrase“中山狼”comes from an old Chinese folk tale:“The Tales of Mountain Wolf ” which was written by Ma Zhongxi of Ming dynasty. In Chinese, this phrase is used to indicate those ungrateful people. The first two lines are the description of Jia Yingchun’s husband, Sun Shaozu, who is ungrateful and brutal. The other allusion“黄粱”is from《枕中记》of Dang dynasty,which means the dream-like rich and prosper that is unreal and easily goes in vain. Another example is the three Chinese characters in the third line:“金”,“花”and“柳”.In Chinese classics,“金”is often used to emphasize the dignity and nobility;“花”is the word that to describe the beauty of female. In this sentence, it was used to modify the svelte and elegant figure of female.So, the information is abundant: the gentle and weak lady, the wolf-like husband and the terrible ending of Jia Ying-chun and so on. David Hawkes’s translation:
“Paired with a brute like the wolf in the old fable,
Who on his saviour turned when he was able,
To cruelty not used, your gentle heart
Shall, in a twelvemonth only, break apart.”
Yang Xianyi’s translation:
For husband she will have a mountain wolf,
His object gained he ruthlessly berates her;
Fair bloom, sweet willow in a golden bower,
Too soon a rude awakening awaits her.
Both Hawkes and Yang Xianyi maintained the image of wolf. This is because that in both the English and Chinese, the word “wolf” has the same conceptual meanings and the culture connotations: a representative of brutal, ruthless and ungrateful person.In Hawkes’s translation, the textual information was kept, while the information of allusion was missing, which is a loss to those foreign readers and they may be wondering about the “fable”in the expression:“wolf in the fable”.For the third line:“金闺花柳质”, Hawkes just used one word “gentle” to describe the lady, which made the readers can not gain the enough information of Ying-chun. Yang successfully kept all the three images of the culture-loaded words by using“bloom”,“willow” and“golden”,and the use of adjectives “fair”and “sweet” also serves well to the expressiveness. Yang’s translation of the final line, in my opinion, is a classic of foreignization.The skillful use of the word “awakening” is really excellent. This word not only reminds the readers the allusion of the story of“黄粱”, but also implies the break of the dream of the red mansion which is accidentally the novel’ name.
So,Hawkes adopted liberal translation and cleared away the obstacles of understandings for foreign readers. Mr. Yang is more like a responsible translator. His strategy is to adopt semantic translation with annotation. By doing this, the loss of meanings of culture allusions can be effectively compensated and the exotic favor can also be retained to the great extent.
3.3 The Comparative Study of the Poem “虚花误”
This poem is one of the fourteen “Hong Loumeng” songs. The poem is:
“将那三春勘破,桃红柳绿待如何？把这韶华打灭,觅那清淡天合。
……
似这般,生关死劫谁能躲？闻说道西方宝树唤婆娑,上结着长生果。”
This poem is the description of Xi-chun, the youngest granddaughter of the Jia Mansion. Having been disillusioned by the cruel reality, she decided to get away from the earthly affairs and chose to sacrifice herself to the Buddhism. The first line directly described the short time span of the beautiful early springs. Here the word “三春” not only means spring, but also hides the other three granddaughters of the Jia Mansion, namely, Yuan-chun, Ying-chun and Tan-chun. So, Mr. Yang translated the line as: “She will see through the three Springs.” And he also added the missing information by the annotation that: “A pun meaning the three months of Spring and the three elder Chia girls. All the Chia girls had the character chun or spring in their names.”This way of translation effectively informed the inner connection between Xi-chun and other girls and the exquisite design of their names. By the way, if we connect the first character of the four names of these girls, then a phrase can be gained, which reads as: “原应叹息”. This phrase can be takes as the basic tone of Hong Loumeng. Hawkes simply put: “三春” as the “triple springs”,which lost the rich implied meanings of the original text.
As for the last couplet, Mr. Yang added the annotation in translating: “西方宝树”,a special term of the Buddhism. He explained in the foot note that: “it was said that Sakyamuni attained Buddhahood in a grove of sal trees.” Hawkes’s translation is: “In Paradise there grows a precious tree, which bears the fruit of immorality.”Actually, Hawkes replaced the specialty of Chinese culture, “Buddhism”by“paradise” the typical symbol in the culture of English which is a comparatively strong language with more power and influence.
4 Conclusion
The Chinese famous translator Wang Zuoliang once commented translation as a process of the communication between two cultures. So,a translator should be a faithful introducer of the semantic meaning as well as the culture of the source language and has the responsibility of maintaining the national tint in order to satisfy the different requirements of the various readers. In order to promote the communications between different cultures, the translator should respect the conventions and characteristics of the less powerful languages.
In the year of 1973,with the invitation of the Penguin Books Publishing House, Hawkes began to translate Hong Loumeng. His direct purpose clearly is to let more readers to understand and enjoy the novel. Mr. Yang successfully meets the three standards of the foreigniation proposed by Sun Zhili.
Actually, it is very difficult to judge which method is better, the purpose of translation decides the choice of different translation strategies.
参考文献
[1] 周方珠.翻译多元论[M].北京:中国对外翻译出版公司,2004.
[2] Schleiermacher, Friedrich. On the Different Methods of Translating[C]. Chicago&London:The University of Chicago Press,1992.
[3] Venuti,Lawrence.The Translators Invisibility:A History of Translation[M].London:Routledge Publishing, 1995.
[4] David Hawkes.The Story of The Stone[M].London:Penguin Books Ltd. Press,1973.
[5] Yang Xianyi and Gladys.A Dream of Red Mansion[M]. Beijing:Foreign Language Press,1978.
[6] 曹雪芹,高鹗.红楼梦[M].合肥:黄山书社,1994.