共生翻译学视域下《道德经》中部分自然意象英译研究

A Study on English Translations of Selected Nature Imagery in Daodejing from the Perspective of Symbiotic Translatology

摘要: 《道德经》是中国古代哲学与道家思想的结晶。古往今来，众多国内外学者受其内容吸引并对其展开翻译活动。其中，理雅各译本与林语堂译本是《道德经》翻译发展历程中不同阶段的两个典型代表，这两个译本在忠于原文内容的基础上既具时代特点又具个人特色。本研究基于共生翻译学中的“译本共生”等理论，从词汇、句法、叙述视角三个层面出发，对理雅各与林语堂译本中的部分自然意象的英译案例进行数据分析并加以解释。研究发现，二者虽在词汇选择、句法结构安排、叙述视角倾向上存在一定差异，但这些差异相辅相成而非相互排斥，它们反映了两个不同时代译者的翻译策略，并以更完整的方式呈现出《道德经》中的哲学智慧，使译者共生、译本共生、译本与原本共生。

Abstract: Daodejing, the crystallization of ancient Chinese philosophy and Daoist thought, has attracted numerous translators across centuries. Among them, James Legge and Lin Yutang produced two representative English versions that are both faithful to the original and characteristic of their respective times and personal styles. Grounded in the theory of “translational symbiosis”, this study conducts a corpus‑based comparative analysis of natural imagery translations in the two versions from three perspectives: lexicon, syntax, and narrative voice. The findings indicate that although the two translations differ in lexical selection, syntactic structuring, and narrative preferences, these differences are not contradictory but complementary. They reflect the translators’ distinct strategies shaped by different historical contexts, and collectively present the philosophical wisdom of the Daodejing in a more complete manner, achieving symbiosis between translators, between the two translations, and between the translations and the original.