“Involution”与“内卷”概念的翻译对等度考察

An Investigation into the Translation Equivalence between “Involution” and “Neijuan”

摘要: “内卷”作为一个从英语世界译入的外来词，1986年进入国内学术界，而在2020~2021年经过中国网络社区发酵后，中国官方在英语世界解释的“内卷”与1986的译入的“内卷”已意义悬殊。“involution”在中译后获得了“内卷”这一能指符号，该能指符号虽用于经济学语境，但通过中文语料库的研究显示，在大众语境下主要还是反映植物学界的世界观和理论概念。而在2020年“内卷”这一能指挣脱原来的所指范畴，产生了“内耗式内部竞争”这一新的社会心理学所指意义。这一跨文化旅行所带来的符号意义的增加，是理论旅行中文化语境参数的变化带来的概念变异，也是模因传播模仿和复制时产生的语义迁徙。出于经济原则，“involution”与“内卷”直接构成了主流媒体上的对等词，但其对等关系需要进行二度解释才能被西方世界所理解和接受。

Abstract: As a Chinese expression translated from the English-speaking world, “Neijuan” was introduced into Chinese domestic academia in 1986. After its trending in Chinese internet community from 2020 to 2021, the official interpretation of “Neijuan” in the English-speaking world had become different from its connotation in 1986. The Chinese equivalent of “involution”, “Neijuan”, has the signifier used in the context of economics, but the study of the Chinese corpus shows that it mainly reflects the botanical worldview and theoretical concepts. In 2020, the signifier of “Neijuan” transcended its original referential category, producing a new social-psychological meaning of “internal energy-consuming competition”. The increase in meaning brought about by this cross-cultural traveling constitutes a conceptual variation affected by the change in cultural contextual parameters during the traveling of a theoretical term, as well as a semantic migration resulting from the imitation and replication of a meme. For economic reasons, “Neijuan” and “involution” had directly become equivalents in the mainstream media, but their equivalence entails reinterpretation in order to be understood and accepted by the Western world.