中譯英仲介語中的作格動詞

A Study of English Ergative Verbs in Chinese into English Translation

英語「作格動詞」（ergative verbs）是中譯英過程中困擾母語中文學生的一個問題。即使英語能力較高者，在英語作格動詞用法上仍存在各種錯誤。本研究以本校翻譯系四年級學生、翻譯研究所二年級學生，業界母語為中文專業譯者及母語為英語專業譯者各15名譯者為研究對象，每位譯者中譯英2篇中文社論文章，共獲取譯文120篇。本研究首先對母語中文譯者的譯文（此一特殊仲介語）使用「作格動詞」進行統計分析，發現不同英語程度譯者的使用偏好和差異，進而將其與母語為英語譯者譯文中「作格動詞」的使用進行比較。研究結果顯示，三組母語為中文譯者「作格動詞」的使用較母語為英文譯者產出明顯不足。由於本研究受試者英語程度跨越四個層次，本研究認為，母語中文譯者「作格動詞」使用產出明顯不足可能是英語能力、中英文「作格動詞」差異共同作用的結果。由此，本研究建議提高高級英語教學中對「作格動詞」的重視，並針對本研究發現的「作格動詞」用法上的具體問題加強施教。

English ergative verbs have been identified as posing great difficulties for L2 learners including native-Chinese speaking translators, whose translations from Chinese into English are considered a special form of interlanguage. This study looks at the pattern of native Chinese speaking translators in their use of ergative verbs when translating Chinese editorials into English. A small translation corpus has been built consisting of 120 translations from four groups of translators of different translation and English language competence levels. This study reveals that the native-Chinese speaking translators produce significantly fewer ergative verbs than the native-English speaking translators. The study suggests that the production of ergative verbs in translation is correlated with the translator's competence level and the typological language differences between Chinese and English.