鲁迅的翻译思想

简介

Lu Xun is an eminent translation theorist. His views on translation were formed by inheriting and absorbing Chinese and foreign traditional translation theories. He adopted different translation strategies at different stages of his translation.

Stage

The early stages of Lu Xun”s translation activities are from the year of 1903 to 1918,which means he began to study in Japan until the eve of the May 4th movement, in this stage, translation works introduce one’s reflecting the people’s suffering and the n ational liberation movements about Russia Northern Europe and Poland and other countries. The second stage is from 1919 to 1927,which also focuses on the people’s suffering and the aspects of social darkness in Russia, Japan and so on . The last stage is from 1927 to 1936, which was from the eve of revolutionary literature controversy to the proletarian literature movement. Lu Xun emphasizes the Soviet revolutionary and proletarian literature theory.

类型

Practice of Lu Xun’s translation

1.Science novels

2.Short stories of Eastern Europe

3.Foreign arts

4.Children’s literature

5.Children’s works

6.After 1919

Strategy

In the early period of his translation career, he adopted free translation, that is, between 1903 to 1906, but very soon in 1906 to 1909, he shows his new ideas about translation in his series of literary works especially in his co-published Stories from Abroad with his younger brother Zhou Zuoren, which marked his great change of translation methods from free translation

Free translation and adaptation

Free translation reproduces the matter without the manner, or the content without the form of the original. Usually it is a paraphrase much longer than the original, a so-called “intralingual translation”, often prolix. Another method adopted by Lu Xun at his early translating stage is

adaptation, the “freest” form of translation, the source culture converted to target language and the text rewritten.

Stiff or literal translation（直译与硬译）

The literal translation here doesn’t mean the literal translation we usually refer to, but Lu Xun’s translation strategy of adhering to the source language text or foreignization or “rigid translation”. For the literal translation generally means that the source language grammatical constructions are converted to their nearest target language equivalent, but the lexical words are again translated single, out of context. While Lu Xun’s literal translation is far beyond this. He laid much emphasis on the faithfulness to original forms, and the uniqueness in his literal translation is that he emphasizes the faithfulness at the level of grammatical structures of source language in his Chinese version. For Lu Xun, this is one of the feasible ways to preserve the original mood and flavor in Chinese version or “preserve the exoticism”.

Faithfulness and smoothness（宁信而不顺）

Lu Xun advocated “faithfulness and smoothness”, he protested “smoothness but unfaithfulness”. In Letters of Translation(《关于翻译的通信》), he says: "I still prefer "faithfulness" than "smoothness". Naturally, the "non-smoothness" does not mean"kneel" is translated into“跪在膝之”，"the Milky Way" into“牛奶路”.I mean the translations need to be chewed with great effort, not to be swallowed down in several mouthfuls just like drinking teas and eating. Here comes the question: Why not be completely sanitized to save labors of the readers? ...My answer is, this is also translation. Such translation introduces not only new subject matter, but also new ways of expression. The mind of Chinese language is not clear. To remedy that, we will have to undergo a little ordeal, that is, to bring in bizarre ways of constructing sentences---ancient, outlandish, foreign ways, incorporating them into our language. This is not imaginative.

“non-smoothness” Lu Xun advocated in translation means introducing new subject matter as well as new ways of expression. And a part of the translation will became smooth from its non-smoothness and part of it will be cast away and kicked off because of its “non-smoothness”.

主要翻译作品

日本武者小路实笃著戏曲《一个青年的梦》

日本厨川白村著论文《苦闷的象征》、《出了象牙之塔》

俄国爱罗先珂著童话剧《桃色的云》

后人评价

Translating foreign literature is an important way for Lu Xun to put his literary values into practice.