汉译本增用圆括号解析——以《童年哲学》为例

Analyzing the Addition of Parentheses in Chinese Translation—The Case of The Philosophy of Childhood

摘要: 作为一种修辞手法，圆括号与文体风格之间存在紧密联系。译本中增用圆括号的情形虽时有发生，但并未得到学界的普遍关注，现有文献未见对此现象进行系统描写和深度阐释。本文以汉译本《童年哲学》为例，对增用的圆括号材料进行深入解析。本文首先对照英语原文，识别出译本中66个增用圆括号实例。然后将这些实例归纳为三种类型：1) 原文为独立成分；2) 原文为非独立成分；3) 非原文文字内容。数据显示，被增用的圆括号多数对应的是原文为独立成分的情况，而被逗号分隔的独立成分占比最高。希望本文的发现对译者创造性使用标点符号提供些许启示。

Abstract: As a rhetorical tool, uses of parenthesis are closely related to stylistic features. Although the use of parentheses in the translation occurs from time to time, it has not received widespread attention from the academic circle, and this phenomenon has not been systematically described and explained in depth in the existing literature. This paper takes the Chinese translation of The Philosophy of Childhood as an example to describe and analyze the added parentheses. In this paper, with the Chinese translation being compared with the original English text, 66 examples of added parentheses are identified and summarized into three types: 1) the corresponding original text being an independent component; 2) the corresponding original text being a dependent component; 3) lacking of corresponding content. The data show that the majority of the added parentheses correspond to the situation where the original text is in form of independent component. The original texts are mostly separated by commas. It is hoped that the findings of this paper will provide some enlightenment to the translator’s creative use of punctuation marks.