语言与文风2019lithub.com
论易译文学的同质化危险
On the Homogenizing Dangers of Easily Translated Literature (2016)
导读
这篇文章讨论所谓“村上春树效应”：全球英语市场的扩张让那些能被顺畅翻译、文化指涉较少的作品更容易走向国际，而依赖本土语境的作品则被边缘化，长远看会让各国文学在风格与题材上趋于同质。对写作者来说，它值得一读，因为它逼你思考一个问题：你的声音里有多少是真正属于你的文化质感，有多少是为了“好翻译、好出口”而主动磨平的。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
写完一段后问自己：这段话离开本土语境还剩多少信息？如果全靠读者已有的背景知识才能成立，就要想办法把关键背景写进文本本身，而不是依赖读者自带的语境。
- 02
别把“句子简单、容易翻译”当成优点来追求；语言的节奏、双关、方言和口语质感往往正是作品不可替代的部分，删掉它们就等于删掉辨识度。
- 03
面向国际读者写作不等于讨好陌生读者：像《星球大战》衍生小说那样，读者愿意先补足背景再进入故事；你可以靠故事本身把读者拉进来，而不是把世界削平。
- 04
可以用“翻译测试”检查自己的稿子：找一位不了解背景的读者读一遍，凡是需要你口头补充说明才成立的地方，都是需要修改的地方。
HN 评论精选
对“国际化压力普遍存在”这一前提提出质疑，不同文学传统的作者对海外市场的在意程度差别很大。
英语的支配地位日益增强，意味着欧洲、非洲、亚洲和拉美作家如果无法触达国际读者，就会被认为是“失败”的。这话真的成立吗？对德国、英国、荷兰这类把美国视为知识与政治中心的国家的作家，或许如此；但像法国这样自视国际地位甚高，或像意大利、俄罗斯这样对本民族文化高度自信的国家，作家真的那么看重美国市场吗？
barry-cotter查看英文原文
> The growing dominance of English has come to mean that European, African, Asian, and Latin American writers are considered to have “failed” if they are unable to reach an international audience. Is this really true? I can absolutely see it as a possibility for countries that see the US as the centre of the intellectual and political world, like Germany, the U.K. or the Netherlands, but do countries with highly inflated senses of their international importance and power, (France) or a great sense of the beauty or transcendence of their high culture (Italy, Russia) really look to the US so much?
真正的门槛是读者对背景世界的投入程度，而不是语言转换；所谓“同质化危险”多半是受众结构问题。
文中举的那些“翻译困难”的例子，其实不是翻译本身的问题，而是读者缺乏背景，因此无法判断这部作品为何值得一读。比如有作家为夏目漱石未完成的《明暗》续写了一个风格精准的结尾，但这部续作依附于一部在日本之外鲜有人知的经典，离开那个语境就几乎无法被理解。反过来，如果它续写的是一部已有英译的《明暗》，读者群大概也不会有多大——就像《星球大战》衍生小说，读者必须先对那个宇宙有投入，才愿意读下去，而这跟翻译毫无关系。
yorwba查看英文原文
The mentioned difficulties do not appear to actually be due to translation, but instead due to lacking the background to appreciate a given work as worth reading. > Zoku meian [Light and Darkness continued], is a tour de force in which she creates a very plausible, stylistically pitch-perfect ending to Meian [Light and Darkness], the last, unfinished masterpiece by Natsume Sōseki, Japan’s most important modern novelist. ... > As a fragmentary, dependent work, standing in relation to a classic text that is largely unknown outside Japan except to a handful of experts, it is, in effect, impossible to render into comprehensible English or, for that matter, any other language If "Light and Darkness continued" had been written as a continuation of an English translation of Meian, it is likely that it would have failed to gather any significant readership except translated into Japanese as Zoku meian. That's simply due to targeting an audience that is already familiar with Meian and might pay attention to a well-written continuation. A similar problem arises for Star Wars novelizations, without any translation involved. Being invested into the universe that serves as backdrop for the story is essentially a prerequisite for becoming a reader. If you tried to "translate" an English Star Wars novel for the English mass market, you'd fail the same as when translating a novel full of Japanese cultural references for the same market. The "homogenizing danger" then isn't so much about writing to be translated, but about writing to be read by the largest possible number of readers, be it in translation or not. Other literature can exist, but you shouldn't expect it to get popular outside a small niche. Sometimes the niches are separated by language boundaries, other times they're not. I'd assume translated Star Wars novels to also appeal to Japanese Star Wars fans, for example.
“易翻译”不等于“低劣”，从可译性推导出文学价值是站不住的。
像大多数文学批评一样，我对这套说法持怀疑态度。反过来想：《雪崩》比《神经漫游者》好翻译，《神经漫游者》又比《芬尼根守灵夜》好翻译。但这并不意味着《雪崩》就属于某种同质化的大杂烩，或者比那两部小说低一等。评论家大概会更推崇乔伊斯而不是斯蒂芬森，但艺术里没有绝对标准，只有人们喜欢什么。
ijpoijpoihpiuoh查看英文原文
As with most literary criticism, I'm pretty skeptical of this. Thinking in the opposite direction, Snow Crash would be easier to translate than Neuromancer. Neuromancer would be easier to translate than Finnegan's Wake. That doesn't mean that Snow Crash is part of some homogeneous morass or any less worthy than those other two novels. Though I suppose many literary critics would prize the Joyce over the Stephenson, there are no absolutes in art. There is just what people like.
推荐侯世达关于翻译之难与之美的书，可作为思考“不可译性”的延伸阅读。
我还没从头到尾读完，但我很喜欢侯世达《Le Ton beau de Marot》的形式与结构——它像是一场关于翻译之难、之美乃至之不可能的延展对话。当然，以侯世达的写法，它不只谈语言翻译，但那是个切入点。
bglusman查看英文原文
I still haven't finished reading it end-to-end, but I love the form and shape of Hofstadter's "Le Ton beau de Marot"[0] which is sort of an extended dialogue on the difficulty, beauty and/or impossibility of translation. It's not just about language translation of course, being Hofstadter, but that's the entry point. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Ton_beau_de_Marot
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