What Changes Have Been Made? A Textual Comparison of Chinese Translations and English Texts of Thirteen Picture Storybooks

中文譯文做了那些改變？十三本中文翻譯兒童繪本之譯文比較

劉文雲(Wen-Yun Liu)

《高應科大人文社會科學學報》 9卷1期 (2012/07) Pp. 73-99

https://doi.org/10.29888/KUASJHSS.201207.0004

摘要

翻譯這門學科在學術領域當中具有相當的獨特性，其研究範圍不但包含語言本身、跨文化溝通、及實務訓練的培養，也跨及其它專業知識領域。許多研究將其重心專注在找尋有問題的譯文，研究內容多討論與裁定譯文的不恰當性，並提出論證來說明譯者做了錯誤的翻譯。這樣的研究忽略了討論翻譯者在下最後的決定－該如何翻譯時所歷經的翻譯思考過程。本篇文章比對十三本中文兒童文學繪本之英文原文與中文譯文，記錄與呈現中文譯文在翻譯過程中所做的改變，並嘗試分析譯文改變的主要形式與所做的譯文處理。本研究發現在這十三本圖畫繪本中被更動的譯文可歸納為三類：分別為書名、詞彙替換以及段落結構重組。研究結果也揭示翻譯者在做與原文相異的譯文更動時，背後的主因是為了能吸引買氣，解決英文與中文在語言本身上文法與句法的差異，符合中文閱讀者的閱讀預期習慣，提升中文讀者對文本的閱讀理解力與接受度。此一研究也證實改寫與意譯是童書翻譯最常被運用的翻譯策略。

關鍵字

文本比較研究 ； 文本分析 ； 兒童文學 ； 繪本研究 ； 翻譯策略

並列摘要

Translation as an academic subject has been a particular area that involves studies of language and culture, practical training, and professional knowledge that crosses various disciplines. In most studies that have been done in the field, considerable attention has been placed to determine the inappropriateness of a translation, and a lot of effort has been made to prove the point that the translator did not make a good translation. What has been ignored is the thinking process that translators might go through in the process of making final decisions of how a text should/could be translated. This paper made an attempt to conduct a textual comparison to document the changes that had been detected in the Chinese translations of the thirteen children's picture storybooks and present an analysis that interpreted the possible reasons for making text alterations. The study concluded that most patterns of changes observed in the thirteen books fell into three main categories: book title, word replacement and sentence and paragraph organization. Text alterations were made mainly to serve the functions of attracting buyers, settling differences in grammar and syntax between English and Chinese, compromising differences between two cultures, meeting the expectations of Chinese readers, and achieving higher acceptability in reading. The study furthermore confirmed that adaptation and paraphrase are the two commonly used translating strategies for children readers.

並列關鍵字

comparative study ； textual analysis ； children's literature ； study of picture storybooks ； translation strategy