《北京折叠》英译本的读者召唤与文化知识重构研究

Reader Invocation and Cultural Knowledge Reconstruction in the English Translation of Folding Beijing

摘要: 郝景芳《北京折叠》的英译本成功进入英语世界并获得雨果奖，是中国科幻文学“走出去”的标志性事件。本研究以读者反应批评与知识翻译学为理论框架，通过对中英文本的细读比对，分析刘宇昆翻译中的读者召唤策略与文化知识重构策略。研究发现，刘宇昆通过世界构建的结构化处理、情绪表达的外显化翻译及人物内心活动的强化，降低了英语读者的情感进入门槛；通过社会分层机制的可读化、城市治理机制的去地域化及文化符号的解释化翻译，实现了中国经验的可理解转化。这两种策略协同作用，使《北京折叠》从中国城市寓言转化为全球可读的科幻批判。研究揭示，译者不仅是语言转换者，更是文化策展人与意义生产者，其主体性介入是中国文学跨文化传播的关键环节。

Abstract: The English translation of Hao Jingfang’s Folding Beijing, translated by Ken Liu, successfully entered the Anglophone world and won the Hugo Award, marking a landmark event in Chinese science fiction’s global dissemination. Drawing upon reader-response criticism and transknowletology as theoretical frameworks, this study conducts a comparative close reading of the Chinese and English texts to analyze Ken Liu’s reader-invoking strategies and cultural knowledge reconstruction strategies. The findings reveal that Liu lowers the emotional threshold for English readers through structural processing of world-building, externalization of emotional expressions, and intensification of characters’ inner activities. Simultaneously, he achieves the comprehensible transformation of Chinese experiences through the readability of social stratification mechanisms, de-territorialization of urban governance mechanisms, and explanatory translation of cultural symbols. The synergy of these two strategies transforms Folding Beijing from a Chinese urban allegory into a globally resonant science-fictional critique. The study demonstrates that the translator is not merely a linguistic converter but a cultural curator and meaning producer, whose subjective intervention constitutes a crucial link in the cross-cultural dissemination of Chinese literature.