中国文学英译絮谈

沙枫

龚自珍诗的几种英译

龚自珍的诗及其英译，拙作《中诗英译絮谈》曾经介绍过两首，后来又看到这两首饰有杨宪益等人的英译，现在将之抄录在一起，以便做一比较。《己亥杂诗》第一百二十五首原文是：

九州生气恃风雷，万马齐喑究可哀。
我劝天公重抖擞，不拘一格降人才。

杨宪益的英译如下：

Our whole land needs wind and thunder to revive it,
Sad it is when all horses are mute;
I beg Old Man Heaven to bestir himself,
And send down talents of more kinds than one.

《己亥杂诗》第五首原文是：

浩荡离愁白日斜，吟鞭东指即天涯。
落红不是无情物，化作春泥更护花。

罗旭龢的英译如下：

Like a mighty flood is my grief at parting as the sun declined,
My singing whip points east to the far horizon.
But fallen petals are not heartless matter,
Transmuted into spring soil they will again nurture flowers.

杨宪益的英译如下：

Boundless my grief at leaving as the white sun sinks west,
And the poet points east with his whip to the far horizon;
Red blossoms, though fallen, have some feeling still,
Turned into mud in spring they want to protect the tree.

吴经熊的英译如下：

Boundless sorrows of parting seethe,
in the white beams of the setting sun.
The moment I turn my singing whip eastward,
I find myself already on the border of the sky.
The red flowers, lying on the ground,
Are the things without a heart!
When they are transformed into spring mud,
They nourish coming flowers with their blood!

“落红不是无情物”这一句，罗、杨两人都是直译，吴经熊却故意反译，译作“Without a heart”，故意强调出最后一句最后一个字的“blood”（血）——那也是原诗所无得。早就有人指出，这是翻译的浪漫手法，随意引伸，并非翻译的正宗，殊不信实。

此外，龚自珍另两首诗，也有英译。

一首是《己亥杂诗》之一：

少年哀乐过于人，歌泣无端字字真。
既壮周旋杂痴黠，童心来福梦中身。

杨宪益夫妇的英译如下（刊“Chinese Literature”一九六六年第四期）：

In my youth I felt more intensely than my fellows,
Sang or wept for no reason, and wrote nothing that was untrue;
A man, forced to play the fool or resort to cunning,
I become a child at heart again in my dreams.

另一首是《有所思》：

妙心苦难住，住即与之期。
文字都无著，长空有所思。
茶香砭骨骺，花影上身时。
终古天西月，亭亭怅望谁？

刘德爵的英语如下（刊“Sitting Up At Night And other Chinese Poems”一书）：

A subtle state of mind is difficult to arrest,
Its stay is only of short duration.
Language cannot fix meaning,
in immense space my thoughts afloat.
After the aroma of tea has penetrated me to the bone,
The shadow of flowers climbs on my laps.
In eternity the moon peeps over the west pavilion,
For whom is she so patiently waiting?