帕拉第奥《建筑四书》的翻译及其术语解读

Translation and Terminology of Palladio’s Four Books on Architecture

摘要:

对帕拉第奥的研究和诠释，在 17—18 世纪曾经是西方古典建筑复兴运动的焦点，20 世纪以后则成为古典文化研究的重要议题。20 世纪中叶以后，亚洲学者也逐渐参与到对帕拉第奥的翻译和研究之中。在 2009 年至 2015 年间，笔者作为主要译者完成并出版了帕拉第奥《建筑四书》 的首个中文译本。在这项工作中，术语的解读与翻译是最困难也最有趣的问题之一。这不仅因为深厚的西方建筑传统与中国文化之间的巨大差异，也因为帕拉第奥的著作在时间上距今已有四个多世纪，在此期间，建筑学的概念、 实践和表达方式都产生了巨大的变化。这就使得翻译工作既是一个尽可能接近原典的过程，又是一个立足于译者的母语、进行文化比较与互译的过程。本文即从这两个方面展开，第一部分回顾《建筑四书》中译工作中接近原典的尝试，第二部分基于中国与西方古典建筑文化的比较，对 《建筑四书》中部分关键术语的涵义及其与中文互译的可能性进行了探讨。

Abstract:

The study and interpretation of Palladio’s writings used to be the focus of the Classical Revival in seventeenth-and-eighteenth-century Western architecture, and became once more an important topic of classical cultural studies in the twenty-first century. After the midtwentieth century, Asian scholars began to engage with Palladio in a meaningful way. Between 2009 and 2015, the author of this article, as the main translator, completed and published the first Chinese translation of Palladio’s Four Books on Architecture. The interpretation and translation of terms was one of the biggest challenges. One reason for this was the huge difference between the architectural traditions of ancient China and the West. Another reason was that Palladio wrote his books more than four centuries ago, and over those four centuries, the concept, practice, and expression of architecture have experienced great changes. All of this has turned the problem of translation into an opportunity for cultural comparison based on the translator’s mother tongue. With this in mind, the first part of this paper explains the author’s attempt to deliver a translation which is faithful to the original text; the second part, after elaborating cultural differences, discusses the meaning of key terms in Palladio’s Four Books and suggests possible Chinese translations conveying the same message.