臺灣英語學習雜誌中譯歐化現象研究

Abstract

英語學習雜誌一直是學習英語的極佳工具，近十年來全台灣的高中幾乎都會選用雜誌做為學生的課外閱讀教材，甚至有不少學校會將雜誌文章納入段考範圍內，因此，英語學習雜誌的讀者可說遍及全台灣，並且高達數萬甚至數十萬人。然而，許多雜誌文章中譯都出現明顯的歐化現象，卻少有人探討。本文以詞彙、詞法、句法三方面討論雜誌中譯的歐化現象：詞彙主要討論定譯問題；詞法則探討多餘的時態標記及冠詞；句法則分成詞組、句子成分、特殊句式來討論。本研究發現雜誌文章中譯歐化例子比比皆是，而且應該不是刻意為之，而是譯者本身中英文能力不足或是編輯長期忽視翻譯品質才造成很多中譯充斥著翻譯腔，進而導致文句不自然或甚至難以理解。

English-learning magazines have long been a helpful tool for English learners. Over the last decade, most high schools in Taiwan have been using the magazines as additional reading materials for students, which usually account for a certain percentage of students’ monthly exams. Thus, it’s safe to say that those magazines have their readers throughout Taiwan, whose number can be up to tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands. However, the Chinese translations of the articles in those magazines are often fraught with a phenomenon called “Europeanization,” but this issue has been rarely discussed. So this study is going to discuss the Europeanization littering in the Chinese translation of the articles based on three categories – Vocabulary, Morphology, and Syntax. Vocabulary mainly deals with “fixed translations” for words; Morphology deals with the redundant tense indicators or articles in Chinese translation; Syntax deal with Europeanization occurring in phrases, functions of pronouns, or certain sentence patterns. This study has concluded that Europeanization is commonly found in Chinese translations in English learning magazines, and this may not be due to translators’ conscious effort but due to translators’ inadequacy or editors’ lack of awareness of this issue, leading to translationese that causes translation hard to read or to understand.