论毛泽东诗词翻译中意象的传达

THE IMMORTAL—REPLY TO LI SHUYI
Tune:” BUTTERFLIES LINGERING OVER FLOWERS”
May 11，1957
You’ve lost your Willow and I’ve lost my Poplar proud,
Their souls ascend the highest heaven, light as cloud.
The Woodman，asked what he has for wine，
Brings out a nectar of laurels divine．
The lonely Goddess of the Moon, large sleeves outspread，
Dances up endless skies for these immortal dead.
From the earth comes the news of the tiger o’erthrown，
In a sudden shower their tears fly down．[7]
                                                      —Xu’s translation
 In the image of “butterflies lingering over flowers”, Xu chages “love” to “linger”, different from Gu’s translation, which is more concrete and dynamic with strong expressive ability. In this way, a beautiful picture of butterflies flying among flowers is taken on in front of readers. “Their souls ascend the highest heaven, light as cloud” adopts the verb “ascend” and adds a figure of speech “light as cloud”, which is more concrete and vivid. He also changes “Wu Kang” to “the Woodman”, which has the effect of partial tone and is easy to understand. In order to understand the original work easily and make the translation fluently, he changes the concrete image with number to other image without number on condition that it will not change the original meaning. For example, he changes “ten thousand miles sky” to “endless skies” for briefness and easy understanding. The images of “the lonely Goddess of the Moon, large sleeves outspread” and “the tiger o’erthrown” not only rhyme properly but also make images livelier. In this way, readers can understand the indication of images and enjoy the beauty of images as well.

北国风光，
千里冰封，
万里雪飘。（《沁园春•雪》）
See what the northern countries show:
Hundreds of leagues ice-bound,
Thousands of leagues of flying snow! （Tr. Xu Yuanzhong）
This is the scene in that northern land;
A hundred leagues are sealed with ice,
A thousand leagues of whirling snow.（Andrew Boyd &Gladys Yang）[9]
These two versions are selected from Snow Tune: “Spring in a Pleasure Garden” of Mao Tse-tung’s poetry. “Wan”, similar to “thousand” in English, is a distinctive numeral only used in China. In fact, a Wan is equal to ten thousand. As we all know, there is not “Wan” in English. Thus, translators can not find a corresponding word to translate it. Here, the poet does not emphasize the number but describe the scene of heavy snow flying in extensive area. So the two versions both omits “Wan”, translate it to “thousands of” and “a thousand”, which is more clear and easier to understand.转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net