《臺北人》中的人物衣著及其英譯

Translations of Costume in Taipei People

白先勇在《臺北人》裡，描寫人物穿著50多次，其中女性共穿著過15件旗袍和兩件女性長衫。男性角色的穿著則以中山裝和軍裝和學生制服為主。其餘人物因其身分地位，無論是西裝長袍或短襖布衣都帶著些許民國範兒的懷舊風情。除了直接敘述人物心境和身形外表，作者對服飾裝扮的描繪更可以讓讀者在閱讀時將人物的形象具體化，使得故事更歷歷在目。這些國民政府遷臺前後的服飾裝扮有其不同的文化和歷史意涵，翻譯成英文自有其難處，作者本人和合譯者與編者的取、捨、增、補，或許可以提供讀者和翻譯學術研究者閱讀本書的另一個觀點，特別是譯者「怎樣運用美式英語，及其固有的音調、色彩、和詞藻，來表現出中文原文的」人物穿著的藝術境界，以及預設「對中國文化文學有興趣的美國大學生」和「港臺等地對翻譯有興趣的人士」的目標讀者在翻譯策略上的影響。本文希望能用純「視覺」來觀看，試圖避免作者和譯者在衣著打扮前後加諸的形容詞和人物心境的描述，而專注於探討中文源文和英文譯文中人物衣著的「音調、色彩、和詞藻」表現藝術境界。

The purpose of this thesis is to study the loss and gain and the addition and deduction in the English translation of Taipei People by Pai Hsien-yung. By comparing the written clothing in the origin and translated language, we may apply componential analysis to explain the choices of some synonyms in light of the presumptive target readers of the translators including the author himself. The time background of Taipei People before and after the KMT government relocated to Taiwan in 1949 contains continuation and disruption of cultural heritages which are symbolically put on to the various figures in the stories. There are more than 50 plots with detailed discretion of the clothing of certain figures, including more than a dozen of ch’i-p’ao/cheongsam旗袍, several Sun Yat-sen tunic (中山裝), Mandarin/Chinese jacket (馬褂), etc. The cultural contexts and“Republic of China”synchronicity bring challenges to the translators. A few translation tactics, such as endnotes, supplementary explanation, modification, analogy are adopted. The focal points of this paper is to analyze how the author/translators’achieve the goal of representing the artistic form of the tone, color and vocabulary of the characters’clothing without the descriptive moods and emotions.