文化背景与新四学习
成都新东方国内基础部 李杰
英语语言文化,博大精深,笔者不敢班门弄斧。下面结合《新概念四册》的教学实践,分享些许浅陋之见,以期起到抛砖引玉之用。
众所周知,任何语言都承载着深厚的历史体验和文化精神。学习、领悟和掌握一门语言,肯定离不开该语言背后的文化背景。否则,语言学习就是无源之水,无根之木,很容易步入“得其形骸,弃其神髓”的误区。 同时,在变化万千的语言表现形式中眼花缭乱,很难感悟语言之美,对语言中那些隐文本的微妙之处(subtlety)似懂非懂,囫囵吞枣,买椟还珠,“得形忘意”。
暂举《新概念四册》课本中的几篇文章为例,谈谈英语语言学习和文化背景的关系。
例1:
We can read of things that happened 5,000 years in the
书上的参考翻译:我们从书籍中可以读到5,000年前近东发生的事情,那里的人最早学会了写字。
这个翻译中规中矩,无可厚非。但是如果引入文化的分析和理解角度,就会别有洞天,对这个句子的理解和翻译也会有全新的想法。
首先,这个句子中的三个英语动词read of, happened, learned分别可以通过其形式变化体现出时间,而汉语动词本身无时间和时态变化,翻译中如何体现出这个语言和文化的差异,是需要考虑的一点。
其次,原句中包含了where 引导的从句,课文的参考翻译直接顺译,把主要的信息(we can read of things)放在前面,原因(people first learned to write)放在后面,是否符合汉语的思维特点和表达形式,这也是需要考虑的问题。
最后,the Near East近东,这个名词短语其实也多少反映了西方文化里面的欧洲中心主义(Euro-centrism),即认为基督教的欧洲是世界的中心,在此基础上,才有了the Near East, the Middle East and the Far East的说法。顺藤摸瓜,进而可以感觉西方语言和文化中的东方学、东方主义(Orientalism, 爱德华、萨伊德Edward Said语).
有鉴于此,笔者建议可否将这个句子改译为:早在5000多年前,近东人就率先学会了书写。因此,对当时发生的事情,我们现在还能略知一二。
例2:
“There is only one difference between an old man and a young one: the young man has a glorious future before him and the old one has a splendid future behind him: and maybe that is where the rub is.((《新概念四册》第五课Youth第一段末尾)
在这个地方,rub 是个生单词。如果查一般的英汉字典,作为名词,其释义主要有三个,分别为:
1. 摩擦,擦
2. 磨损处;擦痛处
3. 困难;疑难点;要点
例句:We need money badly, but there's the rub: no one will lend us any.
我们急需要钱,但困难的是:谁也不会借钱给我们。
再查The Oxford Pocket English Dictionary, 作为名词的第二个定义为:impediment or difficulty. 后面的括号里面举了一个例子: there’s the rub.
查了全英文字典后,意思已经比较清楚了。但是如果没有看过莎士比亚的《哈姆雷特》 Hamlet(旧译《王子复仇记》), 肯定就不能理解为什么rub 会有这个意思,而且绝大多数出现的时候,都是以There’s the rub的形式出现,也更没有办法体会第五课这个地方写作的妙处和英语字典中的这个例子了!
下面我们来看看rub这个词语表示difficulty, impediment,(困难,麻烦,左右为难)之意在莎士比亚中的经典例子。
“To be, or not to be- that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die- to sleep-
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die- to sleep.
To sleep- perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub!”
(Act 3, Scene 1, Hamlet by William Shakespeare)
这是哈姆雷特王子发现母亲和叔叔勾搭成奸,害死了自己父亲后的一段独白!此时的他痛苦、疑惑,对人生充满怀疑,很想一死了之, 可又对死亡充满恐惧,不知人死后会不会下地狱。所以在这段独白里,他非常犹豫,思考着是该“生存还是毁灭”(To be, or not to be),是应该“默然忍受命运暴虐的毒箭" ( suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune), 苟且偷生,忍受生老病死的苦难和人世的不公;还是"挺身反抗人世无尽的苦难,通过斗争把它们清扫" (to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?),也就是自杀,一了百了? 。。。。
下面是
“生存还是毁灭?这是个问题。
究竟哪样更高贵,
去忍受那狂暴的命运无情的摧残,还是挺身去反抗那无边的烦恼,
把它扫一个干净。
去死,去睡就结束了,
如果睡眠能结束我们心灵的创伤和肉体所承受的千百种痛苦,
那真是生存求之不得的天大的好事。
去死,去睡,去睡,也许会做梦!
唉,这就麻烦了”。。。。
例3
同样是第五课,在第二段中有出现了一个非常精秒的词语identity, 兹引原文如下:
“When I was a teenager, I felt that I was just young and uncertain -- that I was a new boy in a huge school, and I would have been very pleased to be regarded as something so interesting as a problem. For one thing, being a problem gives you a certain identity, and that is one of the things the young are busily engaged in seeking.”
课文后面的参考翻译为:“我十几岁时,总感到自己年轻,有些事拿不准 -- 我是一所大学里的一名新生,如果我当时真的被看成像一个问题那样有趣,我会感到很得意的。因为这至少使我得到了某种承认,这正是年轻人所热衷追求的。”
这一段文字不难,但是课文的参考翻译有个别地方感觉别扭,隔靴搔痒。诸如象just, boy, huge, would have been very pleased, interesting等词语的理解都不太准确,进而影响了翻译的再现。究其根本原因,还是在于对identity一词的内涵和文化背景理解不够。
Identity 这个词,一般通译为“身份,某个事物所具有之独特品质或特征,差异”,但它有同时有“同一,相似”之意。
不仅这两种意思貌似抵触,其内涵更是深刻。工业革命至今,由于生产方式的日益标准化,导致生活方式和审美的趋同化,与此同时,人的异化(alienation)却与日俱增。进而在文化研究(Cultural Studies)出现了非常重要的课题,包括身份问题研究(identity issue)和身份/认同危机(identity crisis)研究。
查阅其词源,发现“英文identity源自晚期拉丁语identitas和古法语identite,同时受晚期拉丁语essentitas(essence,存在、本质)的影响”。它由表示 ‘同一’(same)的词根idem构成,这一词根类似梵语的idam (同一)。因而,这一术语被用于表述 ‘同一’(sameness)、‘相似’(likeness)、和‘整一’(oneness)的概念。因此,identity的基本含义指:‘在物质、成分、特质和属性上存有同一的性质或者状态;绝对或本质的同一’,如谢林(Schelling)的形而上原则的‘绝对同一’(absolute identity), 即‘想法和事物都是同一物质在现象上的修改’,以及‘在任何场所,任何时刻,一个人或者事物的同一性(sameness)’;一个人或事物是其自身而不是其他的状态或事实。例如,在心理学中的个体特征(personal identity).可见,identity大致处于纵横交错两个维度的张力之中。纵向,它偏重的是个体的差异;横向,他偏重的是群体的同一。(参见:David B. Guralnik, ed. Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American language. New York and Cleveland: The World Publishing Company,1972, p. 696. 又见:王晓路等著,《文化批评关键词研究》,北京大学出版社,2007. p. 278.)
有了上面的背景知识,对原文中的identity和整个段落乃至整个文章有了更加深刻的理解。笔者不揣浅薄,试将这一段改译为:“我十多岁时,总感到懵懂而迷茫:在诺大的一个学校里,我是一个小不点。要是我当时真的被当作问题少年看待,不仅有趣,我本人也是求之不得。因为这至少表明我得到了某种程度的认可,而这恰恰是年轻人所热衷追求的。””
为进一步加深对identity的理解,我再举一个加拿大文化的例子。理解加拿大文化的关键词有2个,一为survival (生存),一为identity(身份/自我认可)。前者survival包括三层含义,即早期的殖民者/移民者要与恶劣自然作斗争,争取biological意义上的生存。到了1763年英国击败法国,统治今日的加拿大后,那就是说法语的人如何在英语环境下的生存(the Francophone survival in a predominantly Anglophone North America)。到了20世纪,英国衰落,美国崛起,加拿大“被英国的衰落推进了山姆大叔的怀抱”,那就是加拿大如何防止自身不被美国同化(to survive against the American spillover, to survive the overwhelming Americanization)。
而identity一词,则是因为加拿大的the Founding Nations为英国和法国,其官方语言为英语和法语。加拿大人和加拿大文化被夹在了英国传统和美国文化中间(culturally sandwiched by British tradition and American influence).加拿大人如何去寻找自身的独特性,进而彰显与英国、美国的差异,维护其国家的独立、统一和文化独特性,一直是加拿大人的巨大挑战和使命。(有兴趣的朋友可以参见:Margaret Atwood, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature 一书,里面有非常精彩的论述。)
例4
Men accustomed to struggling for survival against the elements and Indian were bewildered by politicians, bankers and business-men, and unhorsed by fences, laws and alien taboos. Hart's good-bad man was always an outsider, always one of the disinherited, and if he found it necessary to shoot a sheriff or rob a bank along the way, his early audiences found it easy to understand and forgive, especially when it was Hart who, in the end, overcame the attacking Indians.(《新概念四册》第21课第3段)
例5
The study of custom can be profitable only after certain preliminary propositions have been accepted, and some of these propositions have been violently opposed. In the first place any scientific study requires that there be no preferential weighting of one or another of the items in the series it selects for its consideration. In all the less controversial fields like the study of cacti or termites or the nature of nebulae, the necessary method of study is to group the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant forms and conditions. In this way we have learned all that we know of the laws of astronomy, or of the habits of the social insects, let us say. It is only in the study of man himself that the major social sciences have substituted the study of one local variation, that of Western civilization.
Anthropology was by definition impossible as long as these distinctions between ourselves and the primitive, ourselves and the barbarian, ourselves and the pagan, held sway over people's minds. It was necessary first to arrive at that degree, of sophistication where we no longer set our own belief over against our neighbour's superstition. It was necessary to recognize that these institutions which are based on the same premises, let us say the supernatural, must be considered together, our own among the rest. (《新概念四册》第44课第3、4段)
例4和例5同样都体现了例1中提到的西方文化的重要特点,即欧洲中心主义(Euro-centrism),认为基督教的欧洲是superior, civilized, 与世界其他地方的关系是我们和它者(Us VS Other).也正是在这一系统性的文化和思维定式下,早期的清教徒(Puritans)才可以奉承上帝的旨意,到北美重建失落的天堂(the City on the Hill, the Celestial City)。这是“天命使然,命中注定”( the Manifest Destiny).从而才有了牧歌和清教徒式的拓荒者和牛仔,去征服狂野的西部,散播基督教文明,传播上帝的福音。
因此,在21课的文化隐文本中,印第安人已经丧失了话语权,白人牛仔在书写美国历史,进而以白人的视角来塑造、呈现和演绎西部的历史与现实,印第安人不可避免的成为敌人和被征服的对象, 成为the primitive and the barbarous, only to be civilized by the Christians. 也正因为如此,在例5的44课中,其作者伟大的文化人类学家鲁斯。贝尼迪克特(Ruth Benedict)才会写到 “Anthropology was by definition impossible as long as these distinctions between ourselves and the primitive, ourselves and the barbarian, ourselves and the pagan, held sway over people's minds. It was necessary first to arrive at that degree, of sophistication where we no longer set our own belief over against our neighbour's superstition.”,哀叹只要有这种欧洲中心主义思维的存在,人类学的研究将永远不会公正、完整和透彻。这也正是本文笔者的初衷:学习西方语言,理解其文化和思维定式,取长补短,进而“学好外国语,做好中国人”!