如何在翻譯中抹去後現代風格：施叔青《寂寞雲園》描述性的翻譯研究

Abstract

施叔青的《寂寞雲園》是一部帶有鮮明後現代風格的歷史書寫後設小說。本書原文的一大特點，在於施叔青將真實世界的自己寫進了作品的美學現實，透過這位本書主角與曾孫女的對話內容，形成這部作品。然而，本書英文譯文的譯寫過程卻抹去了施叔青的後現代風格，將原文的複調敘事替代為全知敘事觀點，也將事件重新排列為線性敘事。《寂寞雲園》作為施叔青「香港三部曲」的第三部，不同於前兩部採用第三人稱敘事的後殖民批評風格，改為後現代風格的歷史書寫後設小說，由兩位戲劇化的敘事者之間的對話來推動情節（syuzhet）。然而葛浩文與林麗君的譯文 City of the Queen 卻捨棄了這種敘事結構，將情節重新安排，並刪去原文關鍵的後現代元素，使得中文原文與英文譯文出現極大差異。而透過描述性翻譯分析，正可呈現施叔青原文當中的表達風格有何效果，以及譯文經過重寫後的不同。

為了討論原文與譯文重寫後的不同之處，本研究將原文與譯文切分成個別敘事單元，並找出原文對話進行時的地點。以四個不同章節，分別對施叔青作品中的四項後現代元素進行文本分析。第一章點出原文有著獨特的女性時間觀，不斷往復循環，而譯文卻成了單純的線性敘事。第二章討論將真實自我放入作品美學現實的作法。第三章探討原文所展現的歷史書寫主體性問題。第四章則探討了原文的敘事空間性（narrative spatiality）：在呈現情節時，空間的重要性高於時間。正由於英文譯文省略了以上這些後現代元素，對翻譯的討論也成為難得的機會，得以敘述並對比呈現施叔青寫作風格帶出的效果。Shih Shu-ching's The Lonely Cloud Manor is a work of historiographic metafiction that showcases a distinctive postmodern style. A unique feature of this work is Shih's writing in of her flesh-and-blood person (FBA: flesh-and-blood author) into the aesthetic reality of the source text (ST) as a way to complete the story of her protagonist through conversational discourse with her great-granddaughter. The English target text (TT), however, writes Shih's postmodernist style out of the translation and replaces the source text’s polyphonic narrative with an omniscient voice that conveys events in a rearranged linear chronology.Shih's third volume in her Hong Kong Trilogy, The Lonely Cloud Manor, shifts from a style of postcolonial critique written in third-person narrative of the first two installments to a postmodernist historiographic metafiction voiced through the conversations of two dramatized narrators. The TT, City of the Queen, translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin, however, omits this narrative structure, rearranges the syuzhet, and eliminates key markers of the ST’s postmodern elements. These distinctive differences between the ST and its English language TT offer an opportunity to demonstrate the effect of Shih’s style through a descriptive narratological analysis of the source and target trexts that contrasts the expressive elements of the source text against its rewritten target text.As a means to differentiate ST style versus that of the rewritten TT, each version was sliced into narrative units, and for the ST, sites of conversation have been identified. Four postmodern elements in Shih's work have also been highlighted for discussion in four separate chapters of the textual analysis. Chapter one contrasts the ST's distinctive use of oscillating women's time versus the TT's linear chronology to portray the narrative. Chapter two reviews the insertion of the FBA into theaesthetic reality of the text. Chapter three probes the problematics of subjectivity in historiography as demonstrated by the ST’s use of discourse in the form of conversations between two dramatized narrators to construct historical narrative. And, chapter four investigates the ST use of narrative spatiality that prioritizes space over time in the presentation of its syuzhet. Owing to the omission of each of these elements in the translated target text, this discussion offers a unique opportunity to describe and contrast the effect of Shih's style.