華人中譯英的形合問題：從一篇英籍專業人士的修改譯文談起

The Hypotactic Problems of Chinese to English Translation: Examined from a Revised Translation by an English Professional

楊淑媖(Shu-Ying Yang)

《語文與國際研究》 5期 (2008/12) Pp. 45-66

https://doi.org/10.7084/LIS.200812.0045

摘要

本文從一篇短文的英譯，討論華人中譯英的形合問題。筆者對照兩個版本的英譯及中文原文，從銜接、介詞和冠詞等方面進行討論。譯文一爲華人所譯，譯文二則爲一位英藉專業人士修改譯文一後的譯文。
筆者發現譯文一和譯文二最大的不同是句子間的銜接。由於漢語爲意合的語言，重意念上的流暢，不重結構形式的連接，譯文一有些漢語遷移的痕跡。例如流水句的寫法、行文結構的鬆散及邏輯思維的模糊。譯文二則結構嚴謹，尤其重視句子間的連接。以Halliday & Hasan的銜接架構爲基礎，本文指出譯文二中有關指涉、連接詞和詞彙銜接的巧妙運用，而這些正是譯文一所缺乏的。
以往的華人翻譯學者談介詞，卻沒談冠詞。筆者從假設到印證，認爲英語中冠詞和一些介詞一樣，字義常不明顯，只具文法形式功能，是形合語言的特質之一，所以對習慣意會的華人譯者，自然不易掌握。
本文最後指出，雖然華人翻譯學者一直把形合譯爲hpyotaxis，中文所謂的形合含蓋面其實比hypotaxis更廣更細。筆者認爲可能句法學的專門用語functional（功能）更貼近形合的「形」。本文以實際華人譯文做例子，相信具有實證參考價值。

關鍵字

形合 ； 功能 ； 銜接 ； 冠詞

並列摘要

With a short text translated from Chinese to English, this study examines the problems of hypotaxis in Chinese translators. English is said to be a hypotactic language, where a syntactic relation between successive units is shown from either embedding a clause or inserting conjunctions. Chinese is said to be a paratactic language, which generally obtains syntactic relation from semantic flow. Based On the major differences between Chinese and English in this regard, this work contrasts two Chinese-to-English translation versions. Version 1 was done by a native Chinese speaker while version 2 was a revision of version 1 by a native English teacher. The author fluids that version 1 has some transfers from the paratactic Chinese. The most obvious problem in version 1 is the issue of cohesion-the way syntactic units are put together. Version 1 tends to have run-on sentences and loose logical connections.
Even though the term hypotaxis has been translated into Chinese as 形合(xinghe), the author finds that xinghe covers a more broad and detailed range than hypotaxis. The use of prepositions is generally considered to be a cohesion device in English, however, articles are rarely mentioned by Chinese translation researchers in relation to cohesion. Adopting Halliday & Hasan's view, the author assumes that articles are also one of the elements of cohesion. Moreover, given that English articles are classified as a functional category, which indicates that they are primarily used for grammatical purposes, the author suggests that the syntactic term functional probably works better than hypotaxis in describing the formal cohesive devices in English.

並列關鍵字

hypotaxis ； functional ； cohesion ； articles

參考文獻

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