下面文章出自： http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/articles.php?issue=025searchterm=025_translation.inc Dimensions of Fidelity in Translation with Special Reference to ChineseYuen Ren Chao 趙元任 University of California There are translations and translations. Whenever a sentence of this type is heard by Bertrand Russell, he will almost invariably remark dryly: 'Then there must be at least four translations.' Now how would you translate the sentence 'There are translations and translations' into a language that has no distinction between the singular and plural forms of nouns, or for that matter into a language that has a dual number in addition to singular and plural forms? The answer is, you cannot. If you try to translate it word for word, or even if you smooth out the grammar, to infer from it that there are at least four translations would then be completely non sequitur. I cite this example in order to show that translation is such a multidimensional affair that for any given material there are not only four translations, but usually many more than four translations according to the relative importance to be assigned to various dimensions. Fig.1 'Fluency'. (Photograph: GRB) In the late 1800's the prolific Chinese writer Yen Fu 嚴復 (1853-1921), who translated into Chinese Thomas Huxley's Essays , John Stuart Mill's System of Logic , Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology , among other things, used to set up three requirements for translation: fidelity, lucidity, and beauty-well, to give up the sound effect (on which more later) for a closer translation of the content of his three criteria, let us say: fidelity, fluency, and elegance for what Yen Fu called shinn, dar, yea (信, 達, 雅). But the third requirement, namely, elegance, is not always valid. Suppose at a court trial, for example, a man is sued for having said in English : 'You are a damn fool,' and the Chinese court interpreter renders it as: Nii sh ig heen bu jyhhuey de ren (你是一个很不智慧的人), the translation has no doubt gained in elegance, but will certainly not be a faithful translation of the original and might even affect the outcome of the case. As for the second requirement, that of fluency, it is generally a desirable quality in a discourse, as for example when an interpreter translates for the doctor the inarticulate or incoherent speech of a sick or injured person. However, in the case of a novelist or dramatist who is portraying differences in personality by the differences in expressiveness in the speech of his characters, it will of course not do to translate all the dialogues with equal clarity and fluency. Thus, we have to come back to the first factor, namely, fidelity, as the main desideratum in translation. But before I take up the various dimensions of fidelity I must first raise the question as to the nature and size of the unit to be translated. The material to be translated may be a book, a poem, a dialogue in a play, or a speech, and the medium in which it is to be translated may be either written or spoken. The size may vary anywhere from a word to a whole encyclopedia. One important aspect of the translational situation is that language, whether in the form of live speech or in the form of written text, is not apart from the rest of life, but forms a part of life. This truism would hardly need repeating if it were not for the fact that students, and sometimes even we linguists, often forget it and treat language as if it were something sui generis. But when you translate a text, it is always in a context, and when you translate something spoken, it is always spoken in a situation. In this connection, attention should be called to the interesting borderline phenomena of language and non-linguistic symbolic behavior, such as voice quality, intonation, gesture, and so forth. If the same desired effect is to be attained, sometimes a word or a sentence in one language may have to be ' translated,' so to speak, by a gesture. For example, in a certain situation an English sentence: may better be translated into French by a shrug of the shoulders than by the words Je ne sais pas spoken in any French intonation. On one occasion, when I was giving a lecture in Chinese to a Japanese audience and punctuated the ends of paragraphs with pauses, my interpreter into Japanese translated my pauses into sḥ —, that is, a sort of s or sh, with the air drawn in, as he rose from a 90⁰ bow. Now is this language? If not, then we have a translation of language into non-language. Again, in the so-called simultaneous translation setup at the United Nations, the majority of the interpreters are quite good in the total fidelity of their translations. At one time, one interpreter for the Soviet Union, who was an American citizen, was so good in rendering the exact effect of the speeches that he constantly received letters of complaint, accusing him of unpatriotism or even of treason. It was of course simply his job, and if he did not do it somebody else could. It was not recorded, however, when a certain delegate from the Soviet Union emphasized his point by putting his shoe on the table, whether his interpreter on his part also put his shoe on the table. To return to the question of the size of the unit to translate, there is no translation at the level of single phonemes. A distinction is usually made between translation and transliteration. For example, when Oxford appears as Nioujin (牛津) 'Ox-ford,' it is translation, while New York as Neou'iue (紐約) is transliteration. But when Cambridge is rendered as Jiannchyau (劍橋), it is half transliterated and half translated. Similarly, Longguoofu (龍果夫) for Dragunov is the same thing in reverse, namely, with the first part in translation and the second part in transliteration. A further distinction is usually made between transliteration and transcription. Transliteration in the strict sense is the conversion from the elements of the writing system of one language into those of another, whether systematically or haphazardly ad hoc. For example, when words in Cyrillic or Greek letters are spelt in Roman letters, it is transliteration. But when English words are written in Japanese kana according to certain rules of writing the sounds (as opposed to the spelling) of English words, it is transcription. For writing systems in which the graphic unit is the syllabic morpheme, such as the Chinese, rules of both transliteration and transcription will be rather complicated to establish, whence the great divergence in writing foreign names in characters. Add to this the divergence in the dialects of the writers and the result is even more complicated. I used to know the name of the famous English natural philosopher as 奈端, which is Nayduan in Mandarin. It was not until many years later that I learned that in some variety of Cantonese the characters are pronounced Noaytoan, being a fair approximation to the German pronunciation of the name Newton. Efforts have been made, in which I have taken part, to establish equivalences between syllabic types in Western languages and Chinese characters for at least a one-way consistent system of transcription of sounds, if not a system of transliteration, but because of considerations of elegance and compatibility in length (see below on sound effects), no system has yet been adopted either officially or in practice. A somewhat unimportant form of transliteration is the conversion of one form of writing into similar-shaped elements of another system of writing, called by C. J. Catford 'graphological translation.' For example: Original СПУТНИК Graphological Translation CHYTHNK Transliteration SPUTNIK Another example is in the name of the honor society in oriental languages at the University of California. Because Chinese and Japanese are the major languages of the Orient, its name in Greek letters is 'Phi Theta,' that is, 中日. Trivial as such examples are, graphological translation may be of increasing importance in view of the possibility of graphical scanning in machine translation and other mechanical treatment of written text. Translation proper begins when we deal with meaningful units from morphemes and words on. While everyone is more or less aware of the multiplicity of meanings for the same word, translators often forget that the levels of units between languages need not always correspond. For example, while Western translators usually render correctly each character in classical Chinese into one word or one morpheme, as in yii wei (以為) 'take (it) to be,' suoo yii (所以) 'wherewith,' swei ran (雖然) 'although (it is) so,' they often overtranslate when handling modern Chinese, in which many compounds should be translated as single words. Thus, the forms in the preceding examples would be yiiwei 'to think (mistakenly),' suooyii 'therefore,' sweiran 'although.' As to the multiplicity of meanings for the same word, it is usually a safe guide, as I. A. Richards has observed (in a conversation with the writer), to tell whether the same word occurring in different places is to be translated into the same word or different words by noting whether the meanings come under the same numbered definition in a monolingual dictionary. For instance, the word 'nice' under number one goes into German fein, under number two into German hübsch; or, again, the word 'state,' under number one is German Zustand, under number two, Staat. This is of course not to imply that one language is more ambiguous than the other, since it works both ways. Thus, we have: in which tzuoh is ambiguously 'do' or 'make' and jiaw is ambiguously 'make' or 'call,' while 'make' is ambiguously tzuoh, shyy, or jiaw. Similarly, we have the following chain ambiguities: The most specific kind of context in which a word or a sentence occurs is that of an actual instance of occurrence in a situation. This constitutes what is in the terminology of communication theory a token of the word or sentence as a type. Thus, when Mencius interviewed King Huey of Liang and the king said: 'Soou 叟 (Sir) !' the word soou (which happened also to be a one-word sentence) was a token of the type soou. Because philologists are chiefly concerned with the analysis of actual texts in specific contexts, while linguists are primarily interested in typical forms in general, I often characterize the difference between the two disciplines by saying that philology is the study of tokens and that linguistics is the study of types. Translation of a historical text is then the translation of a token and should, after adequate research in the context, yield a definitive translation of the original. This is, however, only true in so far as the interpretation of the original is concerned. Since the user of the translating language and the hearer or reader may each vary as to his own background and as to the circumstances of hearing or reading, there may still be the necessity of differences in the translation even for the same specific text. Hence the controversies over the old versus the new versions of the Christian Bible, since to readers of the older generation the Authorized, or Douay Rheims, version will have very definite associations and overtones which they miss in the modern versions. On the other hand, the new generation may possibly get better approximations to the effect of the original from a modern version, so its defenders claim, than from an old version, since it never grew up with it in the first place. So much for the problems of size in translation. Now, to examine more closely the various dimensions of fidelity, one important dimension is that on the scale of semantic versus functional fidelity. Is the translation to tell what the original means, or is the translation to do what the original does in the given situation of use? As an extreme case of purely functional translation, with zero degree of semantic fidelity, I shall cite the example of Dr. P. C. Chang's interpreting of the lectures by the famous female impersonator Mei Lan-fang. This was how it went at the beginning of one of Mei's lectures in 1930: Mei: 'Sheaudih jehshie ryhtz cherng gehwey inchyn jauday, jensh gaanshieh de heen.' (小弟這些日子承各位殷勤招待, 真是感謝的很) Chang: 'The fundamental principle of Chinese drama is simplicity itself. ' and so it went on for the rest of the hour. But as examples of translation in a more serious sense, take the sentence: Ne vous dérangez pas, je vous en pris ! A semantic translation of it into English might be 'Do not disturb yourself, I pray you!' while a functional translation might be simply 'Please don't bother!' The second translation is functional because that is what one would say in English under the same circumstances. But if we look closer at the constituents being translated in this and in fact any other material for translation, we shall find that the difference between the semantic and the functional is a matter of degree. To be sure, there would be no point in equating dérangez to 'derange' since that would be giving the etymological cognate and not translating. But a close semantic translation could be 'disturb yourself.' On the other hand, 'l request you' for je vous en pris is closer semantically, while 'please' is functionally what one would more likely say in cases where one would say je vous en pris. But isn't the meaning of a word in a context or in fact isn't the meaning of any linguistic form that which one would normally say under those circumstances? If so, then the best semantic fit in a translation will have to be also functionally the most suitable to use. The idea of semantic translation, however, is not completely without meaning—no pun intended. By semantic translation one usually refers to the most commonly met with meaning of a word, and, other things being equal, to the etymologically earlier meaning. This is again a matter of degree, since all semantic meaning is in one sense functional. Correlated highly, though not identical, with the semantic-functional dimension, is that of literal versus idiomatic translation. The term literal is a misnomer, since it would seem to mean transliteration. In actual usage, of course, a literal translation means a word-for-word or morpheme-for-morpheme translation. The sign Tsyy Luh Bu Tong (此路不通) says literally 'This road doesn't go through,' but the idiomatic equivalent is 'Not a Through Street' (or 'No Thoroughfare' in England). Jau Tie Jih Sy (招貼卽撕) says literally 'Signs Pasted (will be) Immediately Torn,' but is idiomatically equivalent to 'Post No Bills.' From another point of view a literal translation may also be regarded as a fine-grained translation, but not necessarily of high overall fidelity if it is not idiomatic or functionally misleading. In this literal-idiomatic dimension there are also differences of degree on a sliding scale. Thus, between the French and the English forms of signs about smoking, there are the following possible steps to consider: Prière de ne pas fumer Original 'Prayer of not a step to smoke' Literal translation 'Request of not smoking' Grammatical but not idiomatic 'No smoking, please' Idiomatically acceptable 'No smoking' The usual sign There is one usage by which a literal translation is applied to a smoother form than a word-for-word translation. To quote again from Catford, adding a comparison with Chinese, we have: English: It's raining cats and dogs Original French: II est pleuvant chats et chiens Word-for-word tr. II pleut des chats et des chiens. Literal tr. II pleut à verse. Free (idiom.) tr. Chinese: Ta sh shiahj mhau her gooumen. 他是下著貓和狗們. Shiahj mhau goou ne. 下著貓狗吶. (Yeu dah de jeanjyr sh) shiah mhau shiah goou Ie. (雨大的簡直是)下貓下狗了. Chingpern dah-yeu Ie. 傾盆大雨了. Note that the French and the Chinese happen to agree literally, too. A word of warning should be said here against the strong temptation to use an interesting literal translation at the cost of fidelity in the other dimensions. If a translation is both literal and idiomatic, well and good, as in the French and Chinese above. Again, in: Ta bu hwai hao-yih (他不懷好意) 'He doesn't harbor good intentions,' the equating of hwai with 'harbor' is very apt. When 'The style is the man' is translated as Wen ru chyi ren (文如其人), it is fairly close, though the Chinese is in wenyan, while the English is neutral in that respect. When, however, Shiawhuah! (笑話!) is equated to 'Ridiculous!' then there are problems. For while the Chinese can be used either as non-polite or as insulting language, the English can only be the latter if applied to the person being spoken to. Even more subtle are the shades of differences between donq₀syyle (凍死了) and 'frozen to death.' Most of the time, both are used either in the literal sense or as a hyperbole and the Chinese form with or without neutral tone can be used either way too. But depending upon context, one may be idiomatic in one but not in the other language. A very important dimension of fidelity which translators often neglect is comparability in frequency of occurrence, or the relative familiarity of the expressions in the original and the translation. Too great a discrepancy in this respect will affect fidelity, even though the translation is accurate in other respects. As is well known in information theory, the less often a thing is talked about, the more it means to talk about it. Sometimes the very things one talks about may be a familiar thing in one culture and strange and exotic in another. In such a case, if the thing is the main topic of the discourse, it cannot be helped. An account of a game in the World Series can very easily be translated into Japanese, but would make poor reading in Chinese, in which terms about soccer are heard every day, but not those of baseball. However, in cases where a familiar expression is used casually as a figure of speech, then sometimes a translation by a different figure of speech of the same import but with a comparable degree of familiarity will result in a higher degree of overall fidelity than an apparently faithful translation which is very unfamiliar. For example, to speak of reaching the third base might be rendered, in Chinese, as reaching the 'listening stage' in a game of mahjong, where the apparently 'free' translation has greater fidelity, because it is a better match in the frequency of occurrence. Technically, the third base is in Chinese dihsan leei (第三壘). But at the lecture on these problems of translation, at which there were probably thirty or forty Chinese-speaking members of the audience, I asked how many had heard the expression dihsan leei and not one of them raised his hand. My daughter, Rulan Pian, was in the audience, but did not raise her hand, because she had just learned the term that same afternoon, as I had myself. Before continuing with the consideration of the other dimensions, let us consider for a moment one aspect of the translation which has to do with the dimension of size, literalness, and frequency, namely the phenomenon of calque, or translation borrowing. In ordinary borrowing from one language to another, a foreign word or expression is taken over and adapted to the phonemes of the borrowing language, as for example, English menu or from French menu , or English chopsuey from Cantonese dzaapsy (雜碎). In such cases, whether there is a change of meaning or not—and usually there is—no translation is involved. In translation borrowing, on the other hand, one translates the constituent parts of foreign words and makes up new combinations, thus forming neologisms. For example, the German noun for telephone is Fernsprecher, tele- translated as fern- and -phone freely translated as -sprecher. On the other hand, in the verb telephonieren, there is direct borrowing from the Greek (except for the addition of the German verbal suffix). Another example is German Einfluss, from Latin in + fluens. Sometimes, especially in translation borrowings of phrases instead of compound words, the borrowings may be so naturalized that most users are hardly aware of their foreign origin. Examples are: 'That goes without saying' a va sans dire, or the colloquial 'How goes it?' Wie geht's? 'Long time no see,' however, is not a translation borrowing, since Hao jeou bu jiann Ie (好久不見了), if translation-borrowed, would come out as 'Good long not met.' Much more tricky are what I call skewed translation borrowings. By a skewed translation borrowing I mean one in which you translate a foreign word with meanings A, B, C, D, etc. with a certain native word for meaning A and then, instead of choosing other suitable words for the other meanings B, C, D, etc., just go on using the same native word for A mechanically whenever you see the foreign word. The result amounts to an importation of foreign meanings which the native word never had before. Present-day Chinese is full of such skewed translation borrowings, such as: Old meaning Added meaning weimiaw (微妙) 'delicate (of things)' 'delicate (of situations)' chyangdiaw (強調) 'stress (in pronunciations)' 'to emphasize' chingsuann (清算) 'liquidate (accounts)' 'liquidate (persons)' Iiisheangde (理想的) 'ideal (adj. of idea)' 'ideal (perfect)' Such borrowings always take time before they are quite naturalized and are mostly limited to journalistic language or discourse in a journalistic style. Some of the new ones appearing in headlines, especially in overseas Chinese newspapers, are hardly intelligible without reading on in the text or retranslating them into the source language. For example, one headline says that the crime rate in San Francisco had a shihjiuhshinqde (戲劇性的) decrease last month. It made no sense to me until I realized that shihjiuhshinqde did not mean 'theatrical,' but 'dramatic': there was a dramatic decrease in crime rate. Another news item, about a manifesto concerning the hydrogen bomb signed by Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, and others, said in Chinese: 'Ever since the tests at Bikini, lianghao de dangjyu (良好的當局)—excellent administrators—unanimously have pointed out the danger that a war of hydrogen bombs can destroy the whole of mankind.' I had to read the column twice before I realized that what they called lianghao de dangjyu was a skewed translation borrowing of 'good authorities,' good authorities have pointed out etc. To be sure, this sort of lazy man's translation is constantly being committed by students in foreign language classrooms. But when a new meaning becomes established, even though through foreign influence, it becomes part of the language—shall I say lingo?—whether you like it or not. But I am sure that excellent administrators for 'on good authority' is still unintelligible at the present stage. To continue with the consideration of dimensions of fidelity, another dimension in which a translator may fall into the trap of what may be called false fidelity is the presence of obligatory categories in languages. A noun in English has to be either singular or plural, a verb either present or past. A friend in German has to be either male or female. A cousin in Chinese has to be not only either male or female but also either on the father's side or on the mother's side, either older or younger than oneself. What a translator has to do is of course to omit the obligatory distinctions, whether lexical or grammatical, if they are not obligatory in the translating language and if they are not relevant in the context. For instance, Chinese beau (表) is an adjective for relatives of different surnames and mey (妹) is a female relative of the same generation younger than oneself. But if the obligatory distinctions do not matter in a certain context, then the combination beaumey can very well be undertranslated simply as 'cousin,' otherwise one would have to say things like: 'Good morning, my femalecousin-on-mother's-or-paternal-aunt's-side-younger-than-myself!' Again, in Chinese, as in Russian, to be married is one word for men (cheu 娶, жeнaт) and a different word for women (jiah 嫁 , эамужем). Once, when I was interpreting a lecture by Dora Black in Peking, she said something about unmarried men and unmarried women, and I got the words cheu and jiah mixed up and came out with meiyeou jiah de nanren gen meiyeou cheu de neuren (沒有嫁的男人跟沒有娶的女人). Of course the audience roared with laughter at this, and when the speaker was puzzled and asked me what they were laughing about, all I could do at the moment was to whisper to her, 'It'll take too long now, I'll have to explain it to you afterwards.' It is easy enough to take care of such striking and obvious cases of obligatory categories, but it is the less obvious cases that are more tricky and more easily mislead the translator. Take the innocent-looking or sounding sentence: 'He put on his hat and went on his way.' In nine cases out of ten, a French, a German, or a Chinese student of English would translate it 'faithfully' with the pronoun 'his' in both places, whereas if he were to start composing the message in his own language, say in Chinese, he would probably just say: Ta dayle mawtz tzooule (他戴了帽子走了). Of course if overtranslation of obligatory categories is written and gets read on a large scale, it can establish a new usage, at first as a neologism, then as an accepted new style. Thus, starting with an imperfect knowledge of the uses of tense in English, a Chinese translator adds mechanically the suffix Ie whenever he sees a verb in the past form, even though in his own talk and writing he does not use the suffix Ie in many instances of reference to the past. Again, he uses a preposition bey (被) for 'by' whenever he sees a passive voice in the English verb, unaware of the fact that Chinese verbs have no voice and the direction of action of a verb works either way, depending upon context, and also forgetting that the preposition bey for passive action is used only before verbs with unfavorable meanings. However, once this sort of translatese is written often enough, it gets to be written in originals, even when no translation is involved. When this happens, it constitutes what in linguistics is known as structural borrowing, that is, instead of borrowing specific words or phrases discussed above, one borrows functional ('empty') words or a whole type of structure. So nowadays, one suffers not only scolding and beating but also being praised or rewarded. Besides the translation or omission of obligatory categories, there is also the natural tendency, unless one is on guard against it, to translate noun for noun, verb for verb, or in the case of phrases, nominal for nominal expressions, verbal for verbal expressions, etc. Other things being equal, this will of course be a contributing factor toward fidelity. But since other things are never equal, they must all be considered and given no more than proper weight. For example, quelle merveille! is a nominal expression, but to render it as 'what marvel!' would be too strong, nor is it comparable in the dimension of frequency of occurrence. Instead, 'how marvelous !' would have a higher degree of overall fidelity, even though it is an adjectival and not a nominal expression. Likewise, the adjectival phrase jen taoyann (真討厭) is better translated by the nominal phrase 'what a nuisance' than the adjectival phrase 'how annoying.' So is jen haowal (很好玩ㄦ), an adjectival phrase, better translated by the nominal phrase 'what fun,' whereas the corresponding adjectival phrase 'how funny' would be entirely wrong. In Luen daw nii le (輪到你了) 'It's your turn now,' luen is a verb and 'turn' a noun. In Nah sh shyunhwan de (那是循環的) 'It's a vicious circle,' shyunhwan de is an adjective and 'circle' a noun, with 'vicious' understood in the Chinese. A translator would be strongly tempted to translate keeren (可人), which has a nominal root, as 'personable,' which, however, is not as accurate as 'lovable,' with a verbal root. Sometimes, especially in clichés and proverbs, the most faithful translation will be of an entirely different structure. In Woo terng (我疼), woo is subject, but in 'It hurts' the 'me (understood)' is object. Chii yeou tsyy lii (豈有此理) is a whole sentence in wenyan, but used in speech as an adjective and should be translated as 'ridiculous.' 'I wish' followed by a contrary-to-fact clause could be equated to Woo yuannyih… , as in Woo yuannyih nii bye nemmyanql long (我願意你別那麼樣ㄦ聾) 'I wish you were not quite so deaf,' but a closer translation is ... (nah) dwo hao ( 多好), preceded optionally by woo yuannyih. Huu tour sher woei (虎頭蛇尾) lit. 'Tiger's head, snake's tail' is a phrase of two nominal expressions; its equivalent 'anticlimax' is one noun. Jiin-shanq tian hua (錦上添花) and 'carrying coals to Newcastle' are fairly close in structure, but its counterpart in Chinese sheue-lii sonq tann (雪裏送炭), a verbal phrase, has its best equivalent in 'A friend in need is a friend indeed,' which is a full sentence. Sometimes, not only the form classes do not need to correspond, but even radically different categories of linguistic elements may turn out to be the best translational equivalent. There is a very common grammatical form in Chinese consisting of a predicate, which may be a verb or an adjective, followed by the verb 'to be' sh(yh) (是), then followed by a repetition of the same predicate, as in hao sh hao (好是好). One can analyze this as '(as for being) good, (it) is good.' But this is really explaining the Chinese to a student of the language and not actually translating it. How then would you translate sentences of this type? Well, you translate this Chinese formula of words into an intonation in English. The English intonation which fits this Chinese formula best is what Harold E. Palmer calls 'the swan,' so-called because its time-pitch graph makes a double turn like the neck of a swan. The plain statement Hao means 'It's good': but in the form Hao sh hao it means 'It's good (but).' It is of course also possible to render this formula by such phrases as 'to be sure,' or the more colloquial 'all right,' as in '(It's good) all right ',' (with a low rising intonation), but the swan intonation is about as faithful a translation of the Chinese formula as any translation by the use of words. In extreme cases, language is even translated by non-language, such as gesture, as mentioned above. Similar to the problem of obligatory categories, there is the problem of translating the endless varieties in different cultures of the subcategories of things and qualities, units of measure, money and coinage, names of colors, and the very names of numbers themselves. English has no juotz (桌子) 'table' – 'desk'; no shia (蝦) 'shrimp' – 'prawn' – 'lobster'; no che (車) , since 'vehicle' would be out of style in most contexts; no ta (他), though current Westernized writing differentiates 他: 她: 它; there is not even ren (人), and 'man' often has to serve as 'woman.' When you call a woman huay-ren (壞人) you can neither call her 'bad woman,' nor 'bad man,' and 'bad person' would again be out of style, and you may have to settle for 'bad girl.' There are four equally common auxiliary verbs in Chinese: neng, keen, keeyii, and huey (能, 肯, 可以, 會), with overlapping equivalences with English 'can' and 'may,' with keen equatable to the awkward and therefore less frequently used 'be willing to.' There is only one word 'hot' for both tanq (燙) for temperature and lah (辣) for the taste. Among Chinese dialects, the sentence in Mandarin: Jeh tang tay tyan, keesh bu gow shian (這湯太甜, 可是不狗鮮) 'This soup is too sweet, but not tasty enough' would be difficult to translate into Cantonese without some circumlocution, as both tyan and shian would be called dhim (甜) in Cantonese. In names of colors there is no 'brown' in Chinese and there is no ching (青) in English. Many languages have no word for a length comparable to a yard, and the conception of teen-age would not be translatable unless the language happens to have a common feature from thirteen to nineteen. It is easy enough to translate such items, even with a high degree of accuracy, if it is a matter of giving the mathematical, physical, or economic equivalents. But since such expressions are often used for other than their purely quantitative import, fidelity in the other dimensions such as function, idiom, frequency, etc. will have greater weight. For instance, for a language with no word for dozen, 'a couple of dozen' will appear better as 'a couple of tens' than as 'about twenty-four.' Incidentally, such linguistic and cultural differences sometimes even affect wholly non-linguistic matters. Thus, it is not only often difficult to translate 'quarter' into a language that has a dollar-like unit but divides it into five twenty-cent pieces, but the existence of the quarter (or 20-cent piece, as the case may be) actually affects the prices of things that can be conveniently sold over the counter-and in slot machines!—so that the dimension of frequency will be affected in the translation of such items. Nobody would have said pas un sou if there had not been such a coin as the sou. Nobody would have said meiyeou ig benqtz (蚌子) if there had not been such a coin as the square-holed 'cash.' Style is another dimension in which too much discrepancy will obviously affect the fidelity of translation. One may jazz up serious literature into modern slang, but that would be parody and not translation. Today's style in one language can of course be best translated in today's style in another, especially if the subject is one which is being talked about today. If it is a text of a past age, the translation leads to problems. I have already mentioned the problems involved in translating the Bible, and whole treatises have been written about them. For example, that very readable book, Trials of the Translator by Ronald Knox (New York, 1949), is mainly concerned with such problems. As for the age of the languages involved, there is no necessity, or even special virtue, in matching period with period. Must one, for example, translate The Divine Comedy in the language of The Canterbury Tales? If such a translation already exists in its own right, well and good, but there is no special virtue as to fidelity in matching periods as such. Moreover, what if the text to be translated, say the Chinese classics, was written long before the age of the translating language, say before the formation of what might be called the English language? The wise course in such a case, and this is the course that has been commonly adopted by most translators of the older texts, is to write in as timeless a style as possible. This practice, to be sure, may involve a loss of color and life, but it will at least be free from suggesting the wrong color. It is true that in the long run what seems timeless to the translator of one age will eventually be dated and that is why there had to be retranslations of important works, as people have done with the Bible and as John Ciardi has been doing with his 'Englishment' of the Paradiso . The important thing about handling the older texts is that one should at least avoid the use of local color and narrowly dated expressions. For nothing gets as easily off color as that which is full of local color and nothing so quickly out of date as that which is right up to date. An extremely important but often neglected dimension of fidelity is what might be called the sound effects of the language. I refer to such elements as length, symmetry, and, in the case of verse, meter, rhyme, and other prosodic elements. Now, since the semantic range of words and the obligatory categories of two languages never coincide, if all that is in the original has to be accounted for, the translation will necessarily be longer; but in trying to include everything and not to lose anything in the original, the translator will unavoidably add extraneous elements because of overlapping categories in the translating language. In practice, therefore, a translator will have to make a compromise between the sins of omission and the sins of commission and try to take into account all the dimensions of fidelity, including that of aiming at comparability in length. Take the French expression for talking nonsense et patati et patata. If you translate it as 'gibberish,' it will sound rather weakish; 'yak yak' is better, since it has a more similar pattern, and 'yakety yakety' will be even closer to the sound effects of the French et patati et patata. Translating Woode shin putelputelde tiaw (我的心撲忒ㄦ撲忒ㄦ的跳) as 'My heart palpitates' seems to give a pretty close sound effect, but 'My heart goes thumpety thump' has the advantage of comparability in length and style. To quote from John Ciardi: Every word has a certain muscularity. That is to say, it involves certain speech muscles. Certainly any man who is word-sensitive is likely to linger over the difference between the long-drawn Italian carina and the common, though imprecise, American usage 'cute' when applied to an attractive child. The physical gestures the two words invite are at least as different as the Italian child's goodbye wave ('Fa ciao, carina') with the palm of the hand up, and the American child's ('Wave bye-bye') with the back of the hand up. Even street names have to be translated with due regard to comparability in length. One writer, in making fun of the street name 'Avenue of the Americas,' says: 'Yes, this is the Street-of-the-Great-Leap Forward -of-our -glorious -People's -Commune -System -over -the -Capitalist-Butchers-of-the-West, but everybody here still calls it Sixth Avenue.' To keep on the same theme, it is reported that the street in Peking on which the Russian embassy is situated has been renamed 'Anti-Revisionist Avenue': nine syllables. But in an actual photograph of the new street sign that I saw in The New York Times, it says: 反修路—only three syllables. Proverbs and common sayings are often equatable between one language and another, preferably with similar rhythmic effects. For example, 'As ye sow, so shall ye reap' goes quite well into Chinese as Jonq gua der gua, jonq dow der dow (種瓜得瓜, 種豆得豆), which says something like 'Plant melons (and you) get melons; plant beans (and you) get beans.' In translating songs to be sung to the same melody, the requirement of sound effects is of course even more strict. Take, for example, the first two lines of Schubert's Erlknig : Wer rei — tet so spt durch Nacht -und -Wind? 'Who rides +there so late through night +so +wild?' -Es -ist +der Va — ter mit sei — nem Kind. 'A +lov — ing fa — ther with his +young child.' Here the words marked + and - are those which have been added or omitted, respectively, for reasons of rhyme and rhythm. (Note also the bad stress pattern in 'his young.') The preceding is still a fairly close translation. In the Haiden-Rslein, however, the demands of rhyme and rhythm are so strong that there is even no point in counting the pluses and minuses, as can be seen in the opening lines: Sah ein Knab' ein Rs — lein steh'n, 'Once a boy a wild — rose spied,' Rs — lein auf der Hai — den, 'In the hedge- row grow — ing,' War so jung und mor — gen schn, 'Fresh in all her youth — ful pride,' Lief er schnell, es nah zu seh'n, 'When her beau — ties he de — scried,' Sah's mit vie — len Freu — den. 'Joy in his heart was glow — ing.' At the other extreme, as examples of sacrifice of sound for the sense is the usual type of translation of classical Chinese verse, such as that of the Book of Odes by James Legge or T'ang poems by Arthur Waley, in which the number of syllables is three or four times that of the original. While the message and imagery is usually very well conveyed in such translations, they give the feeling, to us who were raised in the concise and rhythmic swing of the shorter lines, of big mouthfuls of dough, if indeed not quite wey ru jyau lah (未如嚼蠟). The more rhythmical is, however, not necessarily the more concise. Take the no spitting notice on trains of the Shanghai-Nanking Railway. The Chinese says: Swei chuh tuu-tarn, 隨處吐痰 'Everywhere spit, Tzuey wei eh-shyi. 最為惡習 Most bad habit. Jih ree ren yann, 既惹人厭 It is loathsome Yow ay weysheng. 又礙衛生 And bad for health. Chejann yuehtair, 車站月台 Stations, platforms, You shiu chingjye. 尤須清潔 Must keep clean, neat. Taang yeou weiJann, 倘有違反 If you violate, Miann chyh moh guay. 面斥莫怪 We will rebuke.' The translation above is more rhythmic than literal. But the actual sign in English says in one sentence: IN THE INTEREST OF CLEANLINESS AND PUBLIC HEALTH PASSENGERS ARE REQUESTED TO REFRAIN FROM SPITTING IN THE TRAINS OR WITHIN THE STATION'S PREMISES To be sure, in the early days of that railroad, which was run by foreigners, there were in the Chinese notice overtones of the civilized management instructing those uncouth country people how to behave, while the English version was in a language of equals talking to equals. But the use of rhythmic forms in notices is very common in Chinese in any case. When, however, it is a matter of translation between English and modern spoken Chinese, as I did for the Lewis Carroll books, I did not have the handicap of having to work with such disparate states of languages, and the rendering of sound effects was easier without sacrificing as much fidelity in the other dimensions. In Through the Looking-Glass especially, I was able not only to make point for point in the play on words but also keep practically the same meter and rhyming patterns in all the verses. Take, for instance, the first stanza in Jabberwocky: 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogoves And the mome raths outgrabe. In Mandarin it is: While this sounds almost like the English—if Jabberwocky can be called English—all the sounds in it are nevertheless within the phonemic inventory of the initials, finals, and tones of Mandarin. When spelt in the National Romanization, it even looks like the English in places: Yeou 'tian beirlii, nehshie hwojihjide toutz Tzay weybial jiinj gorng jiinj berl. Hao nansell a, nehshie borogoutz, Hair yeou miade rhatz owdegerl. And later on, when Humpty Dumpty explains the etymology of the difficult words, it will of course have to come out right in the translation. For example, 'in the wabe' is translated as tzay weybial, since just as 'wabe' comes from 'way before,' 'way behind,' and 'way beyond,' so does weybial come fromjeybial, neybial, and waybial, that is, 'this side,' 'that side,' and 'outside.' In connection with the liberty taken with the original text for reasons of rhythm, length, etc. is it legitimate to add what was not in the original beyond just some necessary fillings? For example, to quote from Through the Looking-Glass again, when the Lion asks whether Alice is animal or vegetable or mineral: donqwuh, jyrwuh, kuanqwuh (動物, 植物, 礦物) and the Unicorn says she is a monster, the only natural translation for the word is guaywuh (怪物), which, though quite literal, is an overtranslation. Again, when the penultimate stanza in the epilogue: In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die: is translated as: Beenlai dou sh menqlii you, 本來都是夢裏� . Now this involves the use of the 'voiced h,' a non-existing sound in the normal list of Mandarin phonemes and is therefore on the borderline of language and non-language. To put it in English, the usual practice is of course simply to write the word sigh, which is then translating quasi-language and not ordinary language. One would then be giving a stage direction in place of giving a translation of the dialogue. Sometimes, during the act of translating live speech, the situation itself changes before the translation is finished. Then what should the translator do? If he finishes the translation, he will be translating a true sentence into a false sentence. If not, what? Here is what a resourceful airline pilot did in announcing an emergency landing, presumably on a transatlantic flight. He starts with French: Attention, mesdames et messieurs. C'est votre commandant. Attachez vos ceintures de sécurité et préparez-vous pour un atterrissage d'urgence. Achtung, meine Damen und Herren, hier spricht ihr Flugzeugführer. Bitte, befestigen Sie ihren Sicherheitsgürtel und bereiten Sie sich auf einer Notlandung vor. Ladies and gentlemen, forget it. Everything is A-OK. Now is this a translation? And if so, what is the degree of fidelity? In all the preceding discussions about dimensions of fidelity, treating them as if they were measurable, independent variables, it must be admitted that they are really neither measurable nor completely independent. We are far from reaching a workable quantitative definition of any of the dimensions, not to speak of formulating a mathematical function with a view to maximize its value. The present state of affairs is still what in some of the formal disciplines is known as the pre-systematic stage, which is just another way of saying that the ideas are still half-baked. We are still not much beyond the stage, as stated by J. P. Postgate more than fifty years ago: 'By general consent, though not by universal practice, the prime merit of a translation proper is Faithfulness, and he is the best translator whose work is nearest to his original.' But since nearness is a matter of degree, we are back to the problem of measurement of fidelity-back where we started. One useful test is to retranslate the translation into the original language and see if one can find a better fitting equivalent in the original language. If one can, then the translation is not faithful enough, as Mark Twain has well demonstrated. This is to be sure only a testing procedure and the problem of multidimensionality is still with us. But so far as that is concerned, in what field of inquiry is one not troubled with the problem of multidimensionality? Notes: That is, in so far as pitch characteristics are not a part of the phonemic system of the language being used. Naoyeuk in standard Cantonese, but pronounced Niouyoak in another southern dialect, presumably spoken by the original transliterator of this name. 劍 in Cantonese is kimm. C. J. Catford, A Linguistic Theory of Translation (Oxford, 1965), p. 66. Probably not as blunt as 'Old man!' or as deferential as Legge's 'Venerable sir!' Op. cit., pp. 25-26. A subscribed circle indicates optional neutral tone, that is, either donq-' syyle or donq.syyle. The Chinese World, San Francisco, February 14, 1968. The Chinese World, San Francisco, July 11, 1955. For details on these terms, see Y. R. Chao, 'Chinese Terms of Address,' Language 32 (1956).1.217-241. In my translation of Through the Looking-Glass, in which the Red Queen objected to Alice's saying that she had lost her way because all the ways belonged to the queen, I had of course to render 'her' literally in order to make the point. For further details, see CYYY (Ts'ai Yüan-p'ei Commemorative Volume) 1933, p.148. An example of Yiddish intonation as a grammatical form is found in Catford, p. 54. To be published, according to a letter from Mr. Ciardi, in 1968 or 1969. Saturday Review , October 7, 1961. Schirmer's Library ed., Vol. 343, Eng. tr. Th. Baker, 1895, 1923, pp. 214, 228. Under the title of Tzoou Daw Jinqtz Lii (走到鏡子裏), it will form Volume II of Readings in Sayable Chinese (Asian Language Publications, San Francisco, 1968), where a better version of the following lines can be found on p. 32, lines 1-4 (first stanza) . From a cartoon in Punch, October 19, 1966, p. 577. A beginning in the quantitative study of quality is found in John B. Carroll's 'An Experiment in Evaluating the Quality of Translations,' Mechanical Translation and Computational Linguistics 9.3; 4.55-66 (1966). J. P. Postgate, Translation and Translations (London, 1922), p. 3.
微信所传中文《青春》不知何人所译，查互联网见英语大家王佐良先生译文与此极近。译文甚雅，尽显译者之中文功底，但略呈雕琢过度之气。读《青春》原文，直白朴实，有柳宗元、韩愈之古风。品《青春》译文， 华丽 幽雅，似六朝之骈文。译文与原文风格颇有不同。以严复的信、达、雅标准度之，雅有余而信、达可商榷。笔者一直认为翻译应以信、达为重，尽量尊重原文风格。原文雅则雅，质朴则质朴，不可强质朴以为雅。信、达乃同物之两面，意达原文则信及，不达则无信。虽然翻译时经常需改变、增添些许内涵以符合本语言的行文习惯，但微信所传《青春》译文，似乎发挥有余，信、达稍欠。笔者崇尚直白朴实之风，今以大白话译《青春》，欲使七龄学童亦能会其意。 青春 萨缪尔 · 厄尔曼 青春不是人生的一段时光，而是心态。青春不是粉 色 的面颊、红润的嘴唇、灵活的肢体，而是坚韧的意志、卓越的想象和炽热的感情。青春是生命深泉迸发的清新。 人常有放弃安逸 去历险 的怯弱愿望，而青春正是让这一愿望实现的豪迈气概。六旬男子经常比二十后生更有这一气概。没有人由于年龄增长而变老，我们变老是因为抛弃了自己的理想。 岁月只增加皮肤的皱纹，激情丧失却使灵魂衰颓。忧烦、惶恐和丧失自信使心智低落，精神化为灰尘。 无论六十岁还是十六岁，每个人心中都有奇迹的召唤 、 孩童般永不满足的好奇心和生活的欢乐。 你我心中均有一个无线电接收站，只要它还从人们及宇宙万物那里接收美好、希望、欢乐、勇气和力量的信息，青春就与你同在。 如果天线倒落，你的精神被玩世或悲观的冰雪覆盖，即使年方二十，你已经变老。只要你的天线耸立，不停地接收乐观的电波，你就有希望在八十高龄告别尘寰时依然年轻。 附：微信所传之《青春》中英文及介绍 萨缪尔美文《青春》一文，仅 400 字，原文译文皆精彩！ 作者：萨缪尔 · 厄尔曼 1840 年生于德国，儿时随家人移居美利坚，参加过南北战争，之后定居伯明翰，经营五金杂货，年逾 70 开始写作。 行文如下： 青春不是年华，而是心境；青春不是桃面、丹唇、柔膝，而是深沉的意志、恢宏的想像、炽热的感情；青春是生命的深泉涌流。 青春气贯长虹，勇锐盖过怯弱，进取压倒苟安。如此锐气，二十后生有之，六旬男子则更多见。年岁有加，并非垂老；理想丢弃，方堕暮年。 岁月悠悠，衰微只及肌肤；热忱抛却，颓唐必致灵魂。忧烦、惶恐、丧失自信，定使心灵扭曲，意气如灰。 无论年届花甲，抑或二八芳龄，心中皆有生命之欢愉，奇迹之诱惑，孩童般天真久盛不衰。 人的心灵应如浩淼瀚海，只有不断接纳美好、希望、欢乐、勇气和力量的百川，才能青春永驻、风华长存。 一旦心海枯竭，锐气便被冰雪覆盖，玩世不恭、 自暴自弃油然而生，即使年方二十，实已垂垂老矣；然则只要虚怀若谷，让喜悦、达观、仁爱充盈其间，你就有望在八十高龄告别尘寰时仍觉年轻。 YOUTH Samuel Ullman Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a body of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiam wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust. Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young. When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty. 此文一出，不胫而走，以至代代相传。二战期间，麦克阿瑟与日军角逐于太平洋时，将此文镶于镜框，摆在写字台上以资自勉。 日本战败，此文由东京美军总部传出，有人将它灌成录音带，广为销售；甚至有人把它揣在衣兜里，随时研读。 多年后，厄尔曼之孙、美国电影发行协会主席乔纳斯 · 罗森菲尔德 访问日本，席间谈及《青春》一文，一位与宴者随手掏出《青春》，恭敬说：“乃翁文章，鄙人总不离身。”主客皆万分感动。 1988 年，日本数百名流聚会东京、大阪，纪念厄尔曼的这篇文章。松下电器公司元老松下幸之助感慨的说：“ 20 年来，《青春》与我朝夕相伴，它是我的座右铭。”欧洲一位政界名宿也极力推荐：“无论男女老幼，要想活得风光，就得拜读《青春》。” 网传王佐良先生译文最后两段（其他各段与微信版本相同）： 人人心中皆有一台天线，只要你从天上人间接受美好、希望、欢乐、勇气和力量的 信号，你就青春永驻，风华常存。 一旦天线下降，锐气便被冰雪覆盖，玩世不恭、自暴自弃油然而生，即使年方二十，实 已垂垂老矣；然则只要树起天线，捕捉乐观信号，你就有望在八十高龄告别尘寰时仍觉 年轻。
【博主说明】以下博文内容是我根据【游客】 versatile888999 对我在3月31日所写博文 城市，如何能让生活更美好？ 【1】 的评论整理而成，内容是上海俱能翻译服务有限公司的顾玉宝对上海世博会主题的译文Better City，Better Life的翻译过程的说明。由于最初是按照本网博客评论的显示次序是后入先出，读起来比较困难，后来评论人重新调整了次序，但仍受限于字数分成了多条评论，而且字号偏小，不便于阅读，为此，我专门把这些评论整理成正常的次序，适当调整了字号和行间距，以便于大家阅读。在我看来，这既是对这一主题的中英文表述的说明，澄清了我等的一些模糊认识，同时也是一个供我们学习的很好的翻译案例。 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 信、达、雅翻译准则与世博会主题的译文 Better City, Better Life 顾玉宝 （上海俱能翻译服务有限公司） 摘要： 城市，让生活更美好！ 凝结着集体智慧，以极其凝练的语言高度肯定了城市在人类文明进步和美好生活中所起的作用，同时也间接地表达了人们通过能动地建设美好和谐的城市，让生活变得更加美好的愿望，具有博大精深的内蕴。作为 城市，让生活更美好 ! 的译文， Better City, Better Life. 采用对称优美的结构和丰富动态的内蕴，通过经典的双比较级传递因果关系，同时兼顾语体整体韵律和语感，以最大程度地展现译文的神韵，使得译文与原文形异而神不移，在不同的语言环境下相得益彰、异曲同工，勉力遵循 信、达、雅 的翻译准则。译文克服了 城市，让生活更美好 ! 主题中 城市 词素静态的缺陷，在城市（ City ）和生活 (Life) 中均带有一个自体比较的 Better, 创造出随着城市的不断美好和谐、生活也因之变得更加美好的动态效果，反映了人们通过能动地建设美好和谐的城市从而享受更美好生活的寓意，使得译文表达更辩证、内涵更丰富，提升了语言的直接表达力，借助英语作为世界语言的载体，以优美的语言结构和韵律向世界的受众辩证地解读上海世博会主题丰富的内涵，引起了全球的共鸣。世博会主题也因此完成了从 城市，让生活更美好 ! 到译文 Better City, Better Life. 最后到 更好的城市，更好的生活！ 的诠释这样完善升华的过程，市领导都认为译文比原文更好，更好地传递出上海世博会的精髓。 一、 前言 1. 世博会主题 城市，让生活更美好！ 借助译文 Better City, Better Life. 完成其蜕变升华的过程，用 更好的城市，更好的生活。 丰富其内涵并作出更加辩证的诠释，提高了语言的冲击力。 早在 2002 年中国申办世博会时，就提出 城市，让生活更美好！ 这个主题。如果说 城市，让生活更美好！ 让十几亿炎黄子孙了解世博，为中华民族获得此殊荣和机遇欢欣喜鼓舞的话， Better City, Better Life. 则是上海世博会走向世界的使者，敲开国际博览局和白宫的大门，走向莫斯科和伦敦，借助英语作为世界语言的载体，以完美的语言结构和韵律向世界解读上海世博会主题丰富的内涵，得到了全球的共鸣，使得全世界的脉搏随着世博倒计时的指针不停地跃动。上海世博会参与具有前所未有的广度和深度，吸引了很多有影响力，也非常有多样性的全球参与者，除了上海和中国的吸引力外，世博主题译文也发挥了桥梁和纽带作用。市领导都认为 Better City, Better Life. 比原文 城市，让生活更美好！ 更好，更能传递出上海世博会主题的宗旨。 我刚看到 城市，让生活更美好！ 征求最佳译文时，感到 城市，让生活更美好！ 的表达极其简练，甚至达到 增一字则赘，去一字则损 的境界，是不可多得的语言精品。仅仅 8 个字就充分地表达了美好和谐的城市与人们美好生活之间存在因果关系， 世博会主题中的 更 字表达了人们对城市在人类文明进步和美好生活中做起作用的肯定，可以间接地赋予世博主题 人们能动地建设美好和谐的城市，让生活更美好 等更深层次的内涵 ( 因为汉语中 更 用于比较时，隐含比较对象都具有某种属性的意义。例如，这栋楼比那栋楼高，只是说明这两栋楼的相对高低，可能它们都不高。但如果说环球金融中心比金茂大厦更高，则意味着环球金融中心比金茂大厦都高，只不过环球金融中心相对更高 ) 。 在翻译的过程中，我发现 城市，让生活更美好 ! 主题中 城市 是静态的，重点强调了城市在美化人们生活中的积极作用，但伴随这城市化进程出现的人口膨胀、交通拥挤、环境污染、资源紧缺、城市贫困、文化摩擦等负面因素会不可避免地影响人们对 城市，让生活更美好 ! 理解和认同度。因此在中文意义上，城市化进程与生活美好之间的辩证关系只有通过城市副主题和其他文件作进一步阐述。很显然， 城市，让生活更美好 ! 承载的信息量不如 更好的城市，更好的生活！ 的诠释那样更精确地更辩证地反映出上海世博会的本意，即 人们通过能动地建设美好和谐的城市从而享受更美好生活 。因此，如果严格按照 城市，让生活更美好 ! 的结构直译，也会同样不能传递出所含的 城市 与 生活美好 之间辩证能动的关系，致使国外受众对世博会主题认知度和认同度降低。因此，必须对译文进行精心处理，提高译文的表达力，使其具有完美的表达形式并蕴含足够的信息，在国外受众初次听到或看到 Better City, Better Life. 关键几秒内就能留下深刻的印象。 经过两次推敲和修改，我在不削弱 城市，让生活更美好 ! 中对 城市 强调作用的前提下，引进经典的双比较级结构，克服了 城市，让生活更美好 ! 主题中 城市 词素静态的缺陷，在城市（ City ）和生活 (Life) 中均带有一个自体比较的 Better, 最终将译文定为 Better City, Better Life. ，创造出随着城市的不断美好和谐、生活也因之变得更加美好的动态效果，传递出原文难以直接表达的 人们通过能动地建设美好和谐的城市从而享受更美好生活 的寓意。翻译的过程请见下文。 2. 翻译行业有三大重要准则 信、达、雅 。 严复在《天演论译例言》中提出称为译事三难的 信、达、雅 三大翻译准则，泰勒也提出类似的三原则： 1. 译文应完整地再现原作的思想（类似于严复的 信 ）。 2. 译作的风格与笔调应贴近原作（类似于严复的 雅 ）。 3. 译文的行文应原作一致，流畅自然（类似于严复的 达 ）。尽管严复的三字诀与泰勒的三原则在语意义内涵存在差异， 信、达、雅 的准则仍为古今中外的翻译大师认同。信（ Faith ）就是充分尊重原文，达（ Eloquence ）就是充分表达，行文流畅。雅（ elegancy ）就是译文要措辞优雅，从语感韵律、语言结构上尽可能展现目标语言的魅力，凸现译文的品味。上海一位知名教授这样说 从事翻译的人员，往往把自己当成了工匠，而忽视了他们成为 大师的必须的语言技巧 。这也反映在翻译实务中， 雅 往往被译者忽视。在古代经典的诗词中，很强调作品神和韵（内容和形式），不仅要求作品具有丰富的内涵，而且还要求通过韵律、优美的结构来提升语言的冲击力、感染力。 二、 比较级的特点 1. 自体比较和异体比较 在此，我先说一下在比较级当中，存在静态和动态差异。即有些比较级是与时间和过程结合在一起的，具有动感。静态和动态的差异主要取决于比较的内容是异体属性还是同体属性。 异体属性指的是比较的内容是不同对象的某个属性。这样的比较是静态的。例如：环球金融中心比金茂大厦高，比较的内容是这两个建筑物的高度，属于不同的对象，这样的比较就是静态的。 The car runs faster than that one( 这辆车比那辆车快 ) 。 The street is wider than that one( 这条街比那条街宽 ) 。 而同体属性是指比较的内容是同一对象的某个属性在不同时期或阶段的状态，这样的比较就与时间和过程结合在一起，具有动态的特点。例如： Spring comes, it becomes warmer and warmer( 春天来了，天气越来越暖和 ) 。 The price is getting higher and higher( 物价越来越高了 ) 。 His health is getting better and better( 他的体质越来越好 ) 2. 双比较级结构的特点 我们从同体属性比较的例子中，可以看到一个常用的比较句型 More and More, 比较的属性与时间和过程结合起来，具有动态特性。但 More and More 结构中只有一个过程在不断增长，例如前面的三个例句中 温度升高 、 价格上升 和 体质变好 ，同时句子结构中，语义与语感是明显不对称，侧重突出句子后面成分。 然而，借助 the more, the more 这样的双比较级句型可以实现译文在结构和语义上的对称，简化句子的结构，增强译文的动感，通过主从句传递所需的因果关系，在某些情况下，还能提高了译入语（目标语言）的表达力。例如： （ 1 ） The higher the ground (is), the cooler the air (will be) ( 地势越高，气温越低 ) 。 （ 2 ） The sooner ， the better( 越快越好 ) 。 （ 3 ） The more, the merrier( 人越多高兴 ) 。 （ 4 ） More haste ， less speed.( 欲速则不达 ) 。 （ 5 ） The higher the temperature (is), the faster the liquid evaporates. （温度越高，液体挥发越快）。 不难看到，采用经典的双比较级结构 the more, the more 以后，译文可以在如下几方面受益： a. 使译文获得对称优美的表达结构。 b. 可以在无损句子原意或者对原句理解的前提下（尊重 信 ），省略到结构中的部分词项或成分，避免译文冗赘或词语重复，使得语言更加简洁流畅（追求 达 和 雅 ）。 c. 增强了译文的动感。 More and More 结构中，只有一个过程在不断增长，而在 the more, the more 这样的双比较级句型中，却表示两个过程在同时递增。 d. 经典的双比较级结构可以传递因果关系。 the more, the more 的双比较级结构实质上是由两个从句构成，包含第一个 the more 的句子为从句，包含第二个 the more 的句子为主句，从句所述的内容与主句的内容存在因果关系。我们可以通过上述例子体会这样的因果关系。 三、 翻译过程 1. 初译 在将 城市，让生活更美好 ! 翻译成英语时，通常会翻译成 City brings people good lives ， City makes life better and better 。如果从 更 字作比较角度考虑，将农村视为城市的比较对象，将城乡之间的生活好坏的差异归因于城市化进程，则可将 城市，让生活更美好 ! 翻译为 Urbanization makes a better life 。 当然也可通过强调性句型突出 城市 这个关键词，相应将其译为 It is city that makes life better 。 City brings people good lives 只是静态地说明城市是让人们生活美好的动因。 City makes life better and better. 动态地反映了美好的生活是个可以不断提升的过程。 Urbanization makes a better life 有点片面强调城市化的作用。 It is city that makes life better 虽然突出 城市 这个中心词，但与其他译文一样在结构和语感上不对称。作为标题的译文，这些译文在语感韵律、表达简练等方面明显没有达到令人满意的程度。 根据 城市，让生活更美好 ! 中城市与生活美好之间存在的因果关系，我将世博会的主题初步翻译成 Good City, Good Life ，这样就解决了译文结构对称性的问题，同时也传递了原文中因果关系。用两个简单的句子翻译，突出了城市这个重要语素，与原文 城市，让生活更美好 ! 中城市后面的逗号分隔造成的语感停顿和强调效果是一致的，因此，译文在语感和表达结构上确实逼近原文。 用信达雅的标准来衡量 Good City, Good Life ，译文是忠实地反映了原文各语素及其逻辑关系，尽量恪守了 信 的准则，从语言表达的角度，完全对称的结构和语言也充分考虑了 雅 的要求。然而，该译文只是一种静态的表达， 城市，让生活更美好 ! 中的 更 没有能够充分处理到位，说明译文在 充分表达 方面仍然存在欠缺，在 达 字上仍需改进。 如何让译文 Good City, Good Life. 动 起来？如何在译文中充分地表达出 更 字？在 Good City, Good Life. 基础中引入经典的双比较级结构后，一切问题迎刃而解。 2. 最终译文 在 Good City, Good Life 基础上引进了双比较级结构，就得到了世博会主题的译文 Better City ， Better Life. 。 Better City ， Better Life 通过经典的双比较级传递 城市 与 美好生活 之间的动因关系，意译出 城市，让生活更美好 ! 博大精深的内蕴，做到译文形异而神不移，遵循了 信、达、雅 的翻译准则中 信 ，采用严格优美的结构和丰富动态的内蕴，兼顾语体整体韵律和语感，以最大程度地展现译文的神韵，使得译文与原文异曲同工，在不同的语言环境下相得益彰，勉力遵循 达 和 雅 的翻译准则。 Better City ， Better Life 不仅尊重了世博会主题的原意，而且在城市（ City ）和生活 (Life) 中均带有一个自体比较的 Better, 创造出随着城市的不断美好和谐、生活也因之变得更加美好的动态效果，反映了人们通过能动地建设美好和谐的城市从而享受更美好生活的寓意。译文中表达出两个递增的过程，而世博会主题的原文 城市，让生活更美好 ! 中仅有一个动态过程，即生活不断美好的过程，其中 城市 是静态的，需要通过其他进一步阐述才能揭示城市及其主体 人 之间的能动和互动关系。从这个角度看， Better City ， Better Life 的表达力更佳。 当然，如果将 City makes life better and better. 与 Good City, Good Life. 结合起来，也可以得到世博会主题的译文 Better City, Better Life. 。 参考文献 王宏印著，中国传统译论经典诠释 - 从道安到傅雷 湖北教育出版社。 刑殿普 马仁泉主编，英语特殊结构（ Special Structure in English ），天津人民出版社。 章振邦，新编英语语法教程，上海外语教育出版社。 ================================================= 吕 老师和其他各位朋友， 看到你们对世博会主题这样感兴趣，我很感动。在很久之前，看到吕老师的博客时，就想～把我翻译过程中的思路与大家分享。即使在世博会召开后，你们也这样关注，我对上海世博会的成功充满信息。我希望各位知道，中国和上海不仅有精彩的世博会，而且也有堪称极品的世博会主题，从中英文的角度展现中国文化和语言的风采。 希望更多的人能像吕老师和其他各位朋友支持和关心世博，更好地了解和体会世博会主题 城市，让生活更美好！ 及其译文 Better City, Better Life 的精华和精妙之处。 顾玉宝 上海俱能翻译服务有限公司 地址：普陀区真光路 962 号 电话： 021-62066002 传真： 021-62065206 网址： http://www.aceetran.com 公交： 948 ， 827 ， 947 ， 143 ， 837 ， 727 ， 62 ， 562 ， 807 ， 876, 沪嘉线 长征 1 号线 站点标识：中环百联，普陀科技广场，梅川路，祥和公园，真源小区 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 参考： 【1】吕喆： 城市，如何能让生活更美好？ http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=307782
标签: 信达雅
