文化语境与意义重构：《苗族古歌》文化特质及英译难点研究

Cultural Context and Meaning Reconstruction: A Study on the Cultural Characteristics and Difficulties of English Translation of “Miao Ancient Songs”

摘要: 本文旨在从文化语境与意义重构的视角，分析《苗族古歌》在英译与对外传播中面临的主要难点，并说明其文化负载单位在跨语际转换中的意义损耗机制。研究以《苗族古歌·融水卷》整理文本为主要材料，采用“语境嵌入、意义层级梳理与策略适配”的路径，对仪式性信仰词汇、民俗仪式词与社会制度词进行类型化考察，并结合表演理论、口头程式理论、翻译社会学与动态对等等理论资源展开分析。研究发现，古歌英译的关键困难并非停留在词汇层面的对应不足，而主要表现为源语宇宙观与制度逻辑在目标语认知框架中的进入路径受阻，进而引发译名的概念误置、功能错配与象征结构压缩。基于上述认识，本文认为应根据文化单位的意义密度与传播场景实施分层处理，综合运用音译并配合分层注释、功能还原与文化转写等策略，以在文化保真与读者可接受性之间形成可操作的动态平衡。

Abstract: This paper aims to analyze the main challenges faced by the English translation and international dissemination of “Miao Ancient Songs” from the perspective of cultural context and meaning reconstruction, and to explain the mechanism of meaning loss of cultural loaded words in interlingual conversion. The study takes the organized text of “Miao Ancient Songs · Rongshui Volume” as the main material, adopting the approach of “contextual embedding, meaning level sorting, and strategic adaptation” to conduct typological examination of ritualistic belief vocabulary, folk ritual terms, and social system terms (modified according to the fourth point’s suggestions), and analyzes them with theoretical resources such as performance theory, oral formula theory, sociological translation theory, and dynamic equivalence. The study finds that the key difficulties in translating ancient songs into English do not lie in the lack of corresponding at the lexical level, but are primarily manifested as the blocked entry of the source language’s cosmology and institutional logic into the target language’s cognitive framework, which in turn leads to conceptual misplacement, functional mismatch, and symbolic structure compression of translated names. Based on these understandings, this paper argues that a stratified treatment should be implemented according to the meaning density of cultural units and the communication context, comprehensively using transliteration paired with hierarchical annotations, functional equivalence, and cultural transcriptions to achieve a dynamic balance between cultural fidelity and reader acceptability.