晚清英文诗歌翻译摭谈

中国的英诗汉译始于晚清,第一首翻译成中文的英诗是约翰.弥尔顿的商籁体诗《失明,》1854年发表在香港的中文期刊《遐迩贯珍》上。英国传教士开了英诗汉译的先河,后来才有中国人翻译的英文诗歌。晚清用来翻译英文诗歌的语言是文言,诗歌的体裁为中国古典诗歌,晚清的诗歌翻译采用高度归化的策略,读起来犹如用中文创作的诗歌,几乎看不出经过翻译的痕迹,使得英文诗歌的他异性在翻译的过程中消失殆尽。

A Brief Discussion of the Translation of English Poetry in the Late Qing Dynasty

The translation of English poems in China began in the late Qing dynasty,and the first English poem translated into Chinese was John Milton's sonnet On His Blindness,which was published in 1854 in the Hong Kong-based Chinese periodical Xiaer Guanzhen.It was the British missionaries who pioneered the translation of English poems in China,and the Chinese did not begin to translate English poems into Chinese until some time later.The language used when translating English poems was Wenyan(classical Chinese),not the vernacular(modern Chinese),and the translated poems were produced in the classical forms of Chinese poetry.Moreover,the translated poems were highly domesticated,and read like poems composed in Chinese,with nearly no traces of translation left,and with the otherness of English poetry almost completely lost.