第十三届“韩素音青年翻译奖”竞赛原文及参考译文（汉译英）2010-3-26 23:32|发布者: sisu04|查看: 881|评论: 0
摘要: 韩素音青年翻译奖
歌德之人生启示
宗白华
人生是什么？人生的真相如何？人生的意义何在？人生的目的是何？这些人生最重大最中心的问题，不只是古来一切大宗教家哲学家所殚精竭虑以求解答的。世界上第一流的大诗人凝神冥想，深入灵魂的幽邃，或纵身大化中，于一朵花中窥见天国，一滴露水参悟生命，然后用他们生花之笔，幻现层层世界，幕幕人生，归根也不外乎启示这生命的真相与意义。宗教家对这些问题的方法与态度是预言的说教的，哲学家是解释的说明的，诗人文豪是表现的启示的。荷马的长歌启示了希腊艺术文明幻美的人生与理想，但丁的神曲启示了中古基督教文化心灵的生活与信仰，莎士比亚的剧本表现了文艺复兴时人们的生活矛盾与权力意志。至于近代的，建筑于这三种文明精神之上而同时开展一个新时代，所谓近代人生，则由伟大的歌德以他的人格，生活，作品表现出它的特殊意义与内在的问题。
歌德对人生的启示有几层意义，几种方面。就人类全体讲，他的人格与生活可谓极尽了人类的可能性。他同时是诗人，科学家，政治家，思想家，他也是近代泛神论信仰的一个伟大的代表。他表现了西方文明自强不息的精神，又同时具有东方乐天知命宁静致远的智慧。德国哲学家息默尔（Simmel）说：“歌德的人生所以给我们以无穷兴奋与深沉的安慰的，就是他只是一个人，他只是极尽了人性，但却如此伟大，使我们对人类感到有希望，鼓动我们努力向前做一个人。“我们可以说歌德是世界一扇明窗，我们由他窥见了人生生命永恒幽邃奇丽广大的天空！
再狭小范围，就欧洲文化的观点说，歌德确是代表文艺复兴以后近代人的心灵生活及其内在的问题。近代人失去了基督教对一超越上帝虔诚的信仰。人类精神上获得了解放，得到了自由；但也就同时失所依傍，彷徨摸索，苦闷，追求，欲在生活本身的努力中寻得人生的意义与价值。歌德是这时代精神伟大的代表，他的主著《浮士德》是这人生全部的反映与其问题的解决。歌德与其替身浮士德一生生活的内容就是尽量体验这近代人生特殊的精神意义，了解其悲剧而努力以解决其问题，指出解救之道。所以有人称他的浮士德是近代人的圣
经。
但歌德与但丁莎士比亚不同的地方，就是他不单是由作品里启示我们人生真相，尤其在他自己的人格与生活中表现了人生广大精微的义谛。
What Goethe’s Life Reveals
Zong Baihua
What is life? What are the true nature, meaning and purpose of life? Since ancient times, great philosophers and scholars of religion have strained their energy and intellect to the limit for an answer to these crucial and central questions in a person’s life. But they are not alone. First-rate poets in the world have done the same by contemplating and pondering over the questions—now delving into the depth of their souls—now communing with Nature. They envision Paradise through a flower and see the meaning of life in a dewdrop. Then, with their gifted pens, they picture a kaleidoscopic world and act upon act of the drama of life. In the end their works serve no other purpose than revealing the truth and meaning of life. Faced with these questions, scholars of religion adopt the attitude and approach of trying to prophesy and exhort; philosophers to explain and expound; poets and men of letters to portray and reveal. Homer’s epics enlighten us about the kind of refined, colorful life and ideal in Greek art. Dante’s Divina Comedia reveals people’s minds and faith in the Christian culture of the Middle Ages. Shakespeare’s plays reflect the contradictions in men’s lives and the "will to power" during th e Renaissance. As to the kind of life in modern times, which derives from the three civilizations mentioned above and heralds a new age, it is the great Goethe who, through his personal character, life and works, demonstrates its special meaning and innate problems.
Goethe reveals to us different layers and aspects of the meaning of life. Taking the human race as a whole, we may say that Goethe’s personality and life represent the best possible in man. He is at once a poet, scientist, statesman, thinker and an outstanding representative of pantheistic faiths of modern times. He is the embodiment of both the spirit of unremitting endeavor in western civilization and the oriental wisdom of easy contentment and internal peace with foresight. Simmel the German philosopher once said, "The reason that Goethe can give us infinite excitement and deep solace is that he is but a human being, and he does nothing more than bringing out the best in human nature. Yet he is so great, and his greatness makes one see the hope
in mankind’s future and serves to encourage everyone of us to forge ahead and be a worthy man." We may say that Goethe is like a window on the world, through which we can see the eternal, serene, uniquely beautiful and boundless skies of life.
In a narrower sense, viewed in the perspective of European culture, Goethe indeed represents people of the post-Renaissance period in terms of their intellectual life and their inner problems. In modern times people have abandoned their strong Christian faith in an omnipotent God. Their spirit has been emancipated and they have acquired freedom. Yet, on the other hand, they have lost what gave them strength. They are nervously groping in the dark; they are spiritually tormented; they engage in a quest, trying to find the true meaning and value of life through their mundane efforts. Goethe is a great representative of our Zeitgeist. His most important work, Faust, is a reflection of everything in this kind of life and a solution to its problems. All that Goethe and Dr Faust, his stand-in, do throughout their lives is to experience to the fullest the peculiar spirit and meaning of life in modern times, try to understand its tragedy, strive to solve its problems and show people the way of deliverance. This is why his Faust is deemed the Bible of modern times.
But Goethe is different from Dante and Shakespeare, in that he does not merely enlighten us about the true meaning of life through his works. His personal character and behavior does even more in demonstrating the great and subtle truth of life.
评第十三届“韩素音青年翻译奖”英译汉参考译文
2006-2-28 15:43 【大中小】【打印】【我要纠错】【加入收藏】
评第十三届“韩素音青年翻译奖”英译汉参考译文朱志瑜(香港理工大学中文及双语系)
近年中国翻译研究发展很快，但翻译批评始终落后。理论界早就注意到了这一点，但到目前为止，对翻译批评却还是说得多做得少。其中原因是多方面的。要批评就要将原文、译文从头至尾或者至少将重要章节对照一遍，费时费力；批评写出来，可能牵涉到译者和译文出版者的利益（如译者声誉、译文销量等），学报是否支持发表，译文出版者是否欢迎──几年前听说过译文出版者打电话给学报编辑阻止评论发表的事情──这些都是在撰写批评之前需要慎重考虑的，否则费力不讨好，说得严重点，可能影响到评者的人际关系以至声誉。这本不是健康学术的表现，但在中国这个大的学术环境之下，批评始终难以开展确实是个事实。翻译批评的落后不但是中国翻译学科不成熟的反映，而且还会阻碍学科的发展。
本文仅就第十三届“韩素音青年翻译奖”英译汉“参考译文”（以下简称“译文”）和评者在“译文评析”（简称“评析”）中对参赛译文的评述提出一些看法，也算是一种翻译批评，希望对青年翻译家、学者能有所帮助。两篇文章都载于《中国翻译》2001年第一期。今年十月在广州开会的时候，我也顺便征求了广外部分参与奖项评议的同事的意见，回来又做了些修改，写成了这篇文章。我首先要指出的是，“译文”经过认真的研究、讨论，是了一篇相当优秀的译文；“评析”也指出了一些粗心的译者常犯的错误和应该注意的问题。“译文”和“评析”虽然有值得讨论的地方，但瑕不掩瑜，这恰恰说明了“译无止境”这个道理。我这里只是抱着精益求精、共同提高的态度，对评委的“评析”和“译文”提出一些意见。还有一点要指出的是，没有不犯错误的翻译家；尤其是比赛参考译文，一旦刊出，几万只眼睛挑毛病，实在不容易讨好；但是指出别人的翻译错误却是很容易的一件事情。
原文是一篇散文，属于文学类型。根据功能主义的原则，原文为“表情类”（expressive）。“评析”提出的“字斟句酌、形义并重”的原则，是正确的翻译策略，即译文不仅要表达原文的内容，而且要反映原文为了表达这个内容所使用的修辞、句法等手段。“译文”基本上达到了这个要求。“字斟句酌、形义并重”这八个字也是我这篇短文所要提倡的翻译态度。这篇散文翻译起来不容易，难的倒不是语言问题，主要还是其中很多美国特有的文化内容，在一般工具书中不易找到，如: “C-2 zoning”，“guerrilla war”等等。如果评析人员能在报告中指出参考资料和查找方法，则对于参赛的学者、译者都会有更大的益处。
下面的讨论分两部分，先谈“译文”，然后分析“评析”中的几点问题；个别问题在两处同时出现，就放到“评析”部分讨论。“译文”和“评析”都不长，我就不注出页数了。
一）参考译文
1、词汇
“译文”有的地方选词不够准确，不排除有理解上的误差。
原文第一段有这样一句话：
原文：We live in dusty houses (“D-U-S-T”, he once wrote with his finger on surfaces all over the house).译文：我们住在灰蒙蒙的屋子里。
“灰蒙蒙”在汉语中多用来形容空气的质量，与原文意思有偏离，甚至会引起不必要的联想；似可译为“满是灰尘”或“到处都是灰尘”，因为可以用手指在上面写字。第二段：
原文：〔We〕were … to find in family life the source of all tension and drama.译文：……经受家庭生活中种种紧张和冲突…
这里drama译成“冲突”；由于前面已经有了“紧张”，再用一个类似的词有点重复。Drama有excitement的意思，是中性，和前面 tension连起来用甚至可以指好的一面，而“紧张”与“冲突”在这里都带有贬意。这句话中的tension译为“冲突”比较好，drama 可译为“刺激”之类的中性词。同一段里的anxiety一词译成“忧虑”，而实际上它没有“忧”的意思；不如照辞典译成“焦虑”。这段里还有一句：
原文：We did not fight. Nothing was wrong.译文：我们没吵过架，也没出过岔子。
Nothing was wrong.其实表示的是“没有什么问题”，或“没有什么不妥”，甚至“一切正常（normal）”的意思，与它对应的并非就是“出岔子”、“出错”。另外此句标点也值得讨论，后面再谈。同段作者提到五十年代离开家时的复杂心情是现在的年轻人没有经历过的，原文是这样说的：
原文：I suspect that it is irrelevant to the children born of the fragmentation after World War II.译文：这个问题大概与二战后破碎家庭里出生的孩子无关。
将irrelevancy 译成“无关”有点费解，而且语气不够，根据上下文应该是“想都想不到”的意思。“fragmentation”译成“破碎家庭”，范围限制得太窄了。英文的抽象名
词最难译，因为汉语经常是用具象来表达，所以评者加上了“家庭”二字。原文的意思应该是泛指二次大战给社会、政治、价值观、以至家庭等等造成的“破裂”与“断层”。译成“废墟”也过于具体，不如稍微引申一点，说“二战后的动荡时期”，甚至“破裂时期”都可以。
还有一些小的选词问题，如My husband likes my family but is uneasy in their house，其前半部分被译成“丈夫不是不喜欢我娘家人”，在此不知是否有必要一定将likes前面加上双重否定?
再如将I see no one中的see一词译成“访晤”，似嫌太大、太正式，不如简单译成“我谁都没去见”。将uneasily译成了“拘束”，不如照原文的否定式译为“不安”来得贴切。另外将horehound drop译成“带苦味的薄荷糖”本来也没有什么错误，只是太长，而且读来不像是一种名称。原文是一个名词，译文不宜改成解释性的短语。不如译成“苦味薄荷糖”（中文有“怪味鸡”）或“苦薄荷”，甚至“薄荷糖”，让读者知道是块糖就够了，因为它在原文中的“功能”就是拿来哄小孩的一块糖而已，它的味道怎样并不重要,加上“带苦味的”反而容易引起读者不必要的联想。
2、句法、语意
原文第一段：
原文： Nor does he understand that when we talk about sale-leasebacks and right-of-way condemnations we are talking in code about the things we like best, the yellow fields and the cottonwoods and the rivers rising and falling and the mountain roads closing when the heavy snow comes in.
译文：其实丈夫不明白，我们谈售后回租和依法征用公地时侯，是在用娘家人特有的语言谈论最来劲儿的东西，像金黄色的田野、棉白杨、时涨时落的河水，以及下大雪时封闭的山路。
首先原文中Nor一词表示和上文的衔接关系，在“译文”没有体现出来；加上一个“也”字就解决了。可能译者认为如果使用“也”的话，前面不宜用句号，所以用了“其实”来衔接，可是这样意思就有出入了。其次，原文中连用了三个and，有一定的修辞效果，这点也未能传译出来。这里中文连用三个“和”字可能效果未必如原文那样，但是可以使用其它补救手段，如加上“甚么…啊，〔甚么〕…啊”之类的短语，或译成“我们谈…，谈…，谈…”也能达到一些连词重复的效果。另外right-of-way condemnations的意思是指政府在修路架桥时可能会占用一些私人土地，这就否定了私人对土地的“优先使用权”（right-of-way）；译成“依法征用公地”，从逻辑上讲也有问题，因为既然是公地就不需“征用”了；应是“私地”。
第二段：
原文： There was no particular sense of moment about this, none of the effect of romantic degradation, of “dark journey,” for which my generation strived so assiduously.译文：这没有什么特别的意思，与浪漫沉沦沾不上边儿，与我们这一代人所驱趋之若骛的“黑暗之旅”也沾不上边。
这句话理解有些错误，which 的先行词应该是effect，而“译文”把它理解成journey 了。原文中第二个of（“dark journey”）前实际上省略了一个none，而which分句应该是修饰前面两者，即“浪漫沉沦”的效果（effect）和“黑暗之旅”的效果，如果像“译文”中那样，则只修辞邻近的一句。所以，“与我们这一代人所驱趋之若骛的”应该放在“浪漫
沉沦”前面。这句话的分析可以从语意入手，就是靠对全文的理解和语感；还有一种方法就是看句法。如果which修饰journey的话，为了清楚起见，作者就不会在journey后面使用一个逗号。差别虽然细微，译者只要细心留意还是能够看出区别的。另外文中的sense of moment（意思是sense of importance）译成“没有什么特别的意思”不好懂，应是“毫无意义”。
第三段最后一句：
原文：We get along very well, veterans of a guerrilla war we never understood.译文：我们现在相处得很好，就像打过游击战的老兵一样，真不明白过去为何时有龃龉。
这是最难译的一句，“译文”处理得不是很好。如果光看译文，读者很难理解为甚么在这里突然出现“游击战”这个词；而且译文中三个短句的关系也不清楚。是因为“我们相处得好”才“像游击战的老兵”，还是因为“像老兵”所以“不明白”？仔细对照原文我们可以看出，“译文”的理解不能算错，因为在译者心中，“游击战”和“龃龉”可能是一回事，就是：“就像游击战的老兵一样，但是我们不明白过去为甚么打游击战”（暗喻改为明喻也不好）。其实原文的两个分句之间的关系也不清楚，可能有不同的理解：
1）We get along very well, (in spite of the fact that we are) veterans of a guerrilla war we never understood. 2) We get along very well, (because we are) veterans of a guerrilla war we never understood.
模糊性、多义性是文学作品的特点，作者刻意要这样写，译者非不得已应尽量保留。这句话可以译成：“我们相处得很好，打了半辈子连自己都莫名其妙的游击战。”
但是这不解决“游击战”的问题，读者仍然无法想象它的具体涵义甚至会理解为她们真的打过仗。综观全文，作者讲的就是“家”或自己与家庭的冲突。作者对家的印象如果用一个词来表达就是“负担”，主要是精神上或情感上的，她用了这样的词来描绘家：burden、baggage、tension and drama、ambushes等，但这个家表面上却是normal、happy。前面说的nameless anxiety 和文章最后的ambushes等词描写的就是这种“游击战”。家对作者来说是一种复杂的关系，自己对家是留恋的，但是家里又实在没有真正值得留恋的东西，无论是人还是物。第三段收拾旧物的描写表达的就是这种复杂心情：作者要提起勇气才能面对过去的“家”(I decide to meet it head-on)，但最后以和母亲喝咖啡而不了了之。“游击战”是对当时家庭冲突的比喻，在西方已经成了普通常识，但是中国读者却很难联想到这个内容，“译文”的问题关键就在这里。翻译时大概只能用注释来解决。这里我想提出一个比较大胆的解决办法：为了突出主题，把前面的nameless anxiety干脆译成“无名的游击战情结”，把最后的ambushes（“译文”是“家庭生活的陷阱”）译成“突袭战”、“伏击战”之类和“游击战”相关的词，这样前后呼应可以省去一个注。当然这未必是最佳的方法，我只是提出来供大家参考。这句话还有一个小问题，译文前半句中的“现在”一词可去掉。
文章倒数第二段：
原文：I go to visit my great-aunts. A few of them think now that I am my cousin, or their daughter who died young.译文：我去看望姑婆们。其中几位把我当成了我的堂妹，或她们早逝的女儿。
这里的意思是姑婆们老糊涂了，把我当成了另一个人。问题是英文的or和中文的“或者”是否完全对应。英文中的连词or有两种基本用法，１）or前后所指为不同的事物，２）前后为同一物。而中文的“或者”基本上只有前一种的意思，第二种用法并不是完全没有，但很少见，要在语意非常清楚的情况下才能使用，否则容易引起误解。“译文”跟随原文加了一个逗号很奇怪，好象不符合汉语用法，因为连词“或”的前后短语并不太长，没有必要用逗号分开。原文的or明显是第二种用法，my cousin和their daughter应该是同一个人；
但是根据“译文”我们却只能把“或”前后所指理解为两个不同的人。这里原文的分析和上面“黑暗之旅”那句一样，从语意上看，第二种用法的可能性最大；从句法上看，如果是第一种用法，中间的逗号就多余了，所以只能理解为or前后为同一人。Or的这种用法，汉语通常是“或者说是”、“也就是”等词。
如果“或”的前后是同一个人，辈分就有问题了。姑婆的女儿怎么会是“堂妹”？英文cousin可指直系（祖）父母、兄弟、姊妹、伯叔、舅姨、甥侄等以外的任何有血缘关系的亲戚，可以隔代相称，既能是表哥表妹也能是堂叔、表姨或叔伯甥侄，可是英汉辞典很少有把这一点说清楚的。比如陆谷孙主编的《英汉大辞典》的定义就是这样的：
1 堂兄弟（或姊妹）；表兄弟（或姊妹）…２远亲、远房亲戚…
给人的印象是远亲可以跨辈分，近亲不能，可是堂叔表姨算远亲吗？应该把堂表爷、婆、姑、舅甚至甥、侄（孙、孙女）都放在第一条里，第二条就不必要了。
最后一段：
原文：…and perhaps it is just as well that I can offer her little of that life.译文：也许，我还是让她少过这种生活吧。
这句话语气上有些出入，“译文”好象是指“将来时”，而实际上应是“一般现在时”，甚至“现在完成进行时”，故此句应该译成：“也许，我没有让她过这样的生活到是好些。”
3 标点
应该说英语中的标点符号用法比汉语要严格得多，意思完整了，就放一个句号。汉语标点的随意性却很大，有时纯粹因为句子太短而将两句并为一句，也可能因为句子长而拆成几句。在翻译中有些译者为了行文流畅，会灵活使用标点，这文学翻译中也是常见的现象。但是在这篇文章中，有些标点的使用是作者营造特殊效果的重要手段，有作者的意图在内，不宜随意改动。比如原文第三段：
原文：I decide to meet it head-on and clean out of a drawer, and I spread the contents on the bed. A bathing suit I wore the summer I was seventeen. A letter of rejection from The Nation, an aerial photograph of the site for a shopping center my father did not built in 1954. Three teacups hand-painted with cabbage roses and signed “E.M.,” my grand-mother‘s initials.译文：我决意正视过去，清理出一个抽屉，把东西摊在床上。一件我十七岁那年夏天穿的泳衣；一封《民族》周刊的退稿信；一张从空中拍摄的选址照片，1954年父亲曾打算在那儿建购物中心；还有三只茶杯,上面有…
原文共有四句，除了第一句以外都是名词短语。第二句“译文”连续用了三个分号，大概觉得汉语不应该用句号来分割短语，但这正是作者的意图；还是照原文将第二句里的分号改成句号好。
第二段和第五段有这样的句子：
原文：Days pass. I see one. We did not fight. Nothing was wrong.译文：我们没吵过架，也没出过岔子。日子一天天过去，我没访晤任何人。
这里都把原文的句号改为逗号了，还是不改为好，理由上面说过了。
二）译文评析
我这里只指出报告中几点不大准确的地方。
论者认为有的参考译文把freeway译成“免费高速公路”是错误的。在英国freeway
可以泛指高速公路，这样，论者是正确的；但是在美国，高速公路确实有免费（toll free）和收费（toll way）之分，叫法也不同。Freeway就是toll free，除此之外的高速公路就不叫freeway。联邦公路基本是免费的，可译为“国道”，但是中国读者未必明白“国道”与“州道”的区别，所以参赛者译为“免费高速公路”也不能算错。如果考虑到这是美国的话，简单译成“高速公路”反而应该认为是错误的。
在“句子层”分析译例中，有一句这样的话：
…and we appear to talk exclusively about people we know who have been committed to metal hospitals, about people we know who have been booked drunk-driving charges, and about property, particularly about property, land , price per acre and C-2 zoning and assessments and freeway access. property 出现了两次，其语义是显然不同的。前一个泛指“财产”，而后一个与地价、住宅区规划和评估等并列，说明它指“地产”。
划线部分从句法上很难看出这两个property的关系，大概要凭语感来判断。但是要做理性分析也不是不可能。如果像评者分析的那样的话，那么我们只能说作者写的不好，她不应该在同一句里使用两个拼法相同而意思不同的词，而且写得这么近，除非是文字游戏，但
是在这个地方游戏一下实在没有甚么意义。好的作家不会这么做。另外，英文property前如果不加修饰语（如my、personal等）的话，通常指房地产。经过分析也能发现，这两个词同一个意思。第一个 property和上面的两个people并列，后面的property是强调式，不“与地价、住宅区规划和评估等并列”，而“地价”，“住宅规划”等等是对“地产”的补充，解释他们谈论“地产”的具体内容。况且“地产”也不可能与“土地”并列，因为它们是一回事。这里的“土地”是“地产”，“地产”包括“土地”。后面的“地价”、“规划”、“评估”、“公路”都影响到私人“地产”，也不会与地产并列。这句话应该这样理解：“我们谈到认识的人…，谈到地产，特别是地产，土地、地价…”（property也可译成“房地产”；注意：地产后是逗号，而土地后是顿号）。
这一段评论的最后一句是“The question of whether or not you could go home again was a very real part of the sentimental and largely and literary baggage with which we left home in the fifties.”有的参赛译文将the sentimental and largely literary baggage译为“情感的，大部分是文学素材的行囊”，而参考译文是“伤感的、多半是书籍的行囊”。
光看译文就知道参考译文有误，因为抽象词“伤感的”和具体的“书籍”相冲突。“baggage”一语双关，既指具体的背包，也比喻家庭的“负担”。汉语“行囊”也能有两个意思，所以并不造成翻译上的困难。参考译文的错误在于理解。literary一词就是“文学的”意思，可指当时的描写家庭问题的作品，也可能是文学情怀的意思，但是译成中文“文学的行囊”好象不大通，可以译成“诗意的”（poetic）。参赛者将它翻译成“文学素材的行囊”也不算全错，总比参考译文贴近原义。
原文中的C-2 zoning，“译文”照抄而没有译，下的注释为“住宅区规划”。这里的C 代表Commercial，C-2 zoning是商业区的规划的意思。世界上很多国家地区的商业区内的规划都有一定的部署，不能随便开甚么店都行。比如１区卖日用杂货，2区服装，3区饮食等等。加州情况读者可参考这个网址：http:
//https://www.doczj.com/doc/1911913040.html,/pln/zone_code/2000zc/2000pdf/10cz.pdf。如果认为这些细节不重要的话，译成“商－2区”就够了，不必加注。
最后谈一下标题On Going Home的翻译。评者列举了参赛译文多种，如：“还乡杂感”、“归省情思”、“梁园幽思”、“回家小记”、“情归故园”、“重返家园”、“还乡记”、“回娘家”、“回乡感怀”、“回家──失落的情结”、“娘家探亲触心弦”等。评者指出这些译法是在“添油加醋”，“与文章内容不符，出现文不对题的现象”，认为应该“本着俭约的原则，依照字面译为‘回家’”。评者没有看出这些参赛译文正是“依照字面”翻译的。参赛者加的这些字是因为原文有个On。如果为了俭约，作者也完全可以不用On的。既然用了，就有它的意思，翻译时不能随便简化。“译文”不但对不起作者，同时也辜负了参赛者的苦心。
On Irritability Irritability is the tendency to get upset for reasons that seem – to other people – to be pretty minor. Your partner asks you how work went and the way they ask makes you feel intensely agitated. Your partner is putting knives and forks on the table before dinner and you mention (not for the first time) that the fork should go on the left hand side, not the right. They then immediately let out a huge sigh and sweep the cutlery onto the floor and tell you that you can xxxx-ing do it yourself if you know better. It was the most minor of criticisms and technically quite correct. And now they’ve exploded. There is so much irritability around and it exacts a huge daily cost on our collective lives, so we deserve to get a lot more curious about it: what is really going on for the irritable person? Why, really, are they getting so agitated? And instead of blaming them for getting het up about “little things”, we should do them the honour of working out why, in fact, these things may not be so minor after all. The journey begins by recognising the role of fear in irritability in couples. Behind most outbursts are cack-handed attempts to teach the other person something. There are things we’d like to point out, flaws that we can discern, remarks w e feel we really must make, but our awareness of how to proceed is panicked and hasty. We give cack-handed, mean speeches, which bear no faith in the legitimacy (even the nobility) of the act of imparting advice. And when our partners are on the receiving end of these irritable “lessons”, they of course swiftly grow defensive and brittle in the face of suggestions which seem more like mean-minded and senseless assaults on their very natures rather than caring, gentle attempts to address troublesome aspects of joint life. The prerequisite of calm in a teacher is a degree of indifference as to the success or failure of the lesson. One naturally wants for things to go well, but if an obdurate pupil flunks trigonometry, it is – at base – their problem. Tempers can stay even because individual students do not have very much power over teachers’ lives. Fortunately, as not caring too much turns out to be a critical aspect of successful pedagogy. Yet this isn’t an option open to the fearful, irritable lover. They feel ineluctably led to deliver their “lessons” in a cataclysmic, frenzied manner (the door slams very loudly indeed) not because they are insane or vile (though one could easily draw these
Irritability is the tendency to get upset for reasons that seem – to other people – to be pretty minor. Your partner asks you how work went and the way they ask makes you feel intensely agitated. Your partner is putting knives and forks on the table before dinner and you mention (not for the first time) that the fork should go on the left hand side, not the right. They then immediately let out a huge sigh and sweep the cutlery onto the floor and tell you that you can xxxx-ing do it yourself if you know better. It was the most minor of criticisms and technically quite correct. And now they’ve exploded. There is so much irritability around and it exacts a huge daily cost on our collective lives, so we deserve to get a lot more curious about it: what is really going on for the irritable person? Why, really, are they getting so agitated? And instead of blaming them for getting het up about “little things”, we should do them the honour of working out why, in fact, these things may not be so minor after all.
第二十届韩素音青年翻译奖竞赛参赛原文 1楼2008-05-14 15:00回复查看(800) 回复(2) 1楼 cathyhello cathy 积分2008等级6入室弟子 英译汉部分：Philosophy vs. Emerson (Excerpt)“HE is,” said Matthew Arnold of Emerson, “the friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit.” These well-known words are perhaps the best expression of the somewhat vague yet powerful and inspiring effect of Emerson,s courageous but disjointed philosophy. Descended from a long line of New England ministers, Emerson, finding himself fettered by even the most liberal ministry of his day, gently yet audaciously stepped down from the pulpit and, wi t h little or no modification in his interests or utterances, became the greatest lay preacher of his time. From the days of his undergraduate essay upon “The Present State of Ethical Philosophy” he continued to be preoccupied wi t h matters of conduct: whatever the object of his attention—an ancient poet, a fact in science, or an event in the morning newspaper—he contrives to extract from it a lesson which in his ringing, glistening style he drives home as an exhortation to a higher and more independent life. Historically, Emerson marks one of the largest reactions against the Calvinism of his ancestors. That stern creed had taught the depravity of man, the impossibility of a natural, unaided growth toward perfection, and the necessity of constant and anxious effort to win the unmerited reward of being numbered among the elect. Emerson starts with the assumption that the individual, if he can only come into possession of his natural excellence, is the most godlike of creatures. Instead of believing with the Calvinist that as a man grows better he becomes more unlike his natural self (and therefore can become better only by an act of divine mercy), Emerson believes that as a man grows in excellence he becomes more like his natural self. It is common to hear the expression, when one is deeply stirred, as by sublime music or a moving discourse: “That fairly lifted me out of myself.” Emerson would have said that such influences lift us into ourselves. For one of Emerson’s most fundamental and frequently recurring ideas is that of a “great nature in which we rest as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere,” an “Over-Soul, within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one wi t h all other,”which “evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand and become wisdom and virtue and power and beauty.”This is the incentive—the sublime incentive of approaching the perfection which is ours by nature and by divine intention—that Emerson holds out when he asks us to submit us to ourselves and to all instructive influences. Natur e, which he says“is loved by what is best in us,”is all about us, inviting our perception of its remotest and most cosmic principles by surrounding us with its simpler manifestations.“A man does not tie his shoe without recognizing laws which bind the fart hest regions of nature.”Thus man “carries the world in his head.” Whether he be a great scientist, proving by his discovery of a sweeping physical law that he has some such constructive sense as that which guides the universe, or whether he be a poet behol ding trees as“imperfect men,”who“seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground,”he is being brought into his own by perceiving “the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind of material objects, whether inorganic or organized.”Ranging over time and space with astonishing rapidity and binding names and things together that no ordinary vision could connect, Emerson calls the Past also to witness the need of self-reliance and a steadfast obedience to intuition.The need of such independence, he thought, was particularly great for the
The Posteverything Generation I never expected to gain any new insight into the nature of my generation, or the changing landscape of American colleges, in Lit Theory. Lit Theory is supposed to be the class where you sit at the back of the room with every other jaded sophomore wearing skinny jeans, thick-framed glasses, an ironic tee-shirt and over-sized retro headphones, just waiting for lecture to be over so you can light up a Turkish Gold and walk to lunch while listening to Wilco. That’s pretty much the way I spent the course, too: through structuralism, formalism, gender theory, and post-colonialism, I was far too busy shuffling through my Ipod to see what the patriarchal world order of capitalist oppression had to do with Ethan Frome. But when we began to study postmodernism, something struck a chord with me and made me sit up and look anew at the seemingly blasé college-aged literati of which I was so self-consciously one. According to my textbook, the problem with defining postmodernism is that it’s i mpossible. The difficulty is that it is so...post. It defines itself so negatively against what came before it –naturalism, romanticism and the wild revolution of modernism –that it’s sometimes hard to see what it actually is. It denies that anything can be explained neatly or even at all. It is parodic, detached, strange, and sometimes menacing to traditionalists who do not understand it. Although it arose in the post-war west (the term was coined in 1949), the generation that has witnessed its ascendance has yet to come up with an explanation of what postmodern attitudes mean for the future of culture or society. The subject intrigued me because, in a class otherwise consumed by dead-letter theories, postmodernism remained an open book, tempting to the young and curious. But it also intrigued me because the question of what postmodernism –what a movement so post-everything, so reticent to define itself – is spoke to a larger question about the political and
第二十六届“韩素音青年翻译奖”竞赛原文 英译汉竞赛原文： How the News Got Less Mean The most read article of all time on BuzzFeed contains no photographs of celebrity nip slips and no inflammatory ranting. It’s a series of photos called “21 pictures that will restore your fait h in humanity,” which has pulled in nearly 14 million visits so far. At Upworthy too, hope is the major draw. “This kid just died. What he left behind is wondtacular,” an Upworthy post about a terminally ill teen singer, earned 15 million views this summer and has raised more than $300,000 for cancer research. The recipe for attracting visitors to stories online is changing. Bloggers have traditionally turned to sarcasm and snark to draw attention. But the success of sites like BuzzFeed and Upworthy, whose philosophies embrace the viral nature of upbeat stories, hints that the Web craves positivity. The reason: social media. Researchers are discovering that people want to create positive images of themselves online by sharing upbeat stories. And with more people turning to Facebook and Twitter to find out what’s happening in the world, news stories may need to cheer up in order to court an audience. If social is the future of media, then optimistic stories might be media’s future. “When we started, the prevailing wisdom was that snark ruled the Internet,” says Eli Pariser, a co-founder of Upworthy. “And we just had a really different sense of what works.” “You don’t want to be that guy at the party who’s crazy and angry and ranting in the c orner—it’s the same for Twitter or Facebook,” he says. “Part of what we’re trying to do with Upworthy is give people the tools to express a conscientious, thoughtful and positive identity in social media.” And the science appears to support Pariser’s philosophy. In a recent study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, researchers found that “up votes,” showing that a visitor liked a comment or story, begat more up votes on comments on the site, but “down votes” did not do the same. In fact, a single up vote increased the likelihood that someone else would like a comment by 32%, whereas a down vote had no effect. People don’t want to support the cranky commenter, the critic or the troll. Nor do they want to be that negative personality online. In another study published in 2012, Jonah Berger, author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On and professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, monitored the most e-mailed stories produced by the New York Times for six months and found that positive stories were more likely to make the list than negative ones. “What we share [or like] is almost like the car we drive or the clothes we wear,” he says. “It
汉译英原文： 居在巷陌的寻常幸福 隐逸的生活似乎在传统意识中一直被认为是幸福的至高境界。但这种孤傲遁世同时也是孤独的，纯粹的隐者实属少数，而少数者的满足不能用来解读普世的幸福模样。 有道是小隐隐于野，大隐隐于市。真正的幸福并不隐逸，可以在街市而不是丛林中去寻找。 晨光，透过古色古香的雕花窗棂，给庭院里精致的盆景慢慢地化上一抹金黄的淡妆。那煎鸡蛋的“刺啦”声袅袅升起，空气中开始充斥着稚嫩的童音、汽车 启动的节奏、夫妻间甜蜜的道别，还有邻居们简单朴素的问好。巷陌中的这一切，忙碌却不混乱，活泼却不嘈杂，平淡却不厌烦。 巷尾的绿地虽然没有山野的苍翠欲滴，但是空气中弥漫着荒野中所没有的 生机。微黄的路灯下，每一张长椅都写着不同的心情，甜蜜与快乐、悲伤与喜悦，交织在一起，在静谧中缓缓发酵。谁也不会知道在下一个转角中会是怎样的惊喜，会是一家风格独特食客不断的小吃店？是一家放着爵士乐的酒吧？还是一家摆着高脚木凳、连空气都闲散的小小咖啡馆？坐在户外撑着遮阳伞的木椅上， 和新认识的朋友一边喝茶，一边谈着自己小小的生活，或许也是一种惬意。 一切，被时间打磨，被时间沉淀，终于形成了一种习惯，一种默契，一种文化。 和来家中做客的邻居朋友用同一种腔调巧妙地笑谑着身边的琐事，大家眯起的眼睛都默契地着同一种狡黠；和家人一起围在饭桌前，衔满食物的嘴还发着 含糊的声音，有些聒噪，但没人厌烦。 小巷虽然狭窄，却拉不住快乐蔓延的速度…… 随着城市里那些密集而冰冷的高楼大厦拔地而起，在拥堵的车流中，在污 浊的空气里，人们的幸福正在一点点地破碎，飘零。大家住得越来越宽敞，越来越私密。自我，也被划进一个单独的空间里，小心地不去触碰别人的心灵，也 不容许他人轻易介入。可是，一个人安静下来时会觉得，曾经厌烦的那些嘈杂回想起来很温情很怀念。 比起高楼耸立的曼哈顿，人们更加喜欢佛罗伦萨红色穹顶下被阳光淹没的古老巷道；比起在夜晚光辉璀璨的陆家嘴，人们会更喜欢充满孩子们打闹嬉笑的万航渡路。就算已苍然老去，支撑起梦境的应该是老房子暗灰的安详，吴侬软语的叫卖声，那一方氤氲过温馨和回忆的小弄堂。 如果用一双细腻的眼眸去观照，其实每一片青苔和爬山虎占据的墙角，是 墨绿色的诗篇，不会飘逸，不会豪放，只是那种平淡的幸福，简简单单。 幸福是什么模样，或许并不难回答。幸福就是一本摊开的诗篇，关于在城市的天空下，那些寻常巷陌的诗。 夜幕笼罩，那散落一地的万家灯火中，有多少寻常的幸福正蜗居在巷陌……
第十三届“韩素音青年翻译奖”竞赛原文及参考译文（汉译英）2010-3-26 23:32|发布者: sisu04|查看: 881|评论: 0 摘要: 韩素音青年翻译奖 歌德之人生启示 宗白华 人生是什么？人生的真相如何？人生的意义何在？人生的目的是何？这些人生最重大最中心的问题，不只是古来一切大宗教家哲学家所殚精竭虑以求解答的。世界上第一流的大诗人凝神冥想，深入灵魂的幽邃，或纵身大化中，于一朵花中窥见天国，一滴露水参悟生命，然后用他们生花之笔，幻现层层世界，幕幕人生，归根也不外乎启示这生命的真相与意义。宗教家对这些问题的方法与态度是预言的说教的，哲学家是解释的说明的，诗人文豪是表现的启示的。荷马的长歌启示了希腊艺术文明幻美的人生与理想，但丁的神曲启示了中古基督教文化心灵的生活与信仰，莎士比亚的剧本表现了文艺复兴时人们的生活矛盾与权力意志。至于近代的，建筑于这三种文明精神之上而同时开展一个新时代，所谓近代人生，则由伟大的歌德以他的人格，生活，作品表现出它的特殊意义与内在的问题。 歌德对人生的启示有几层意义，几种方面。就人类全体讲，他的人格与生活可谓极尽了人类的可能性。他同时是诗人，科学家，政治家，思想家，他也是近代泛神论信仰的一个伟大的代表。他表现了西方文明自强不息的精神，又同时具有东方乐天知命宁静致远的智慧。德国哲学家息默尔（Simmel）说：“歌德的人生所以给我们以无穷兴奋与深沉的安慰的，就是他只是一个人，他只是极尽了人性，但却如此伟大，使我们对人类感到有希望，鼓动我们努力向前做一个人。“我们可以说歌德是世界一扇明窗，我们由他窥见了人生生命永恒幽邃奇丽广大的天空！ 再狭小范围，就欧洲文化的观点说，歌德确是代表文艺复兴以后近代人的心灵生活及其内在的问题。近代人失去了基督教对一超越上帝虔诚的信仰。人类精神上获得了解放，得到了自由；但也就同时失所依傍，彷徨摸索，苦闷，追求，欲在生活本身的努力中寻得人生的意义与价值。歌德是这时代精神伟大的代表，他的主著《浮士德》是这人生全部的反映与其问题的解决。歌德与其替身浮士德一生生活的内容就是尽量体验这近代人生特殊的精神意义，了解其悲剧而努力以解决其问题，指出解救之道。所以有人称他的浮士德是近代人的圣
摘要: 韩素音青年翻译奖 歌德之人生启示 宗白华 人生是什么人生的真相如何人生的意义何在人生的目的是何这些人生最重大最中心的问题，不只是古来一切大宗教家哲学家所殚精竭虑以求解答的。世界上第一流的大诗人凝神冥想，深入灵魂的幽邃，或纵身大化中，于一朵花中窥见天国，一滴露水参悟生命，然后用他们生花之笔，幻现层层世界，幕幕人生，归根也不外乎启示这生命的真相与意义。宗教家对这些问题的方法与态度是预言的说教的，哲学家是解释的说明的，诗人文豪是表现的启示的。荷马的长歌启示了希腊艺术文明幻美的人生与理想，但丁的神曲启示了中古基督教文化心灵的生活与信仰，莎士比亚的剧本表现了文艺复兴时人们的生活矛盾与权力意志。至于近代的，建筑于这三种文明精神之上而同时开展一个新时代，所谓近代人生，则由伟大的歌德以他的人格，生活，作品表现出它的特殊意义与内在的问题。 歌德对人生的启示有几层意义，几种方面。就人类全体讲，他的人格与生活可谓极尽了人类的可能性。他同时是诗人，科学家，政治家，思想家，他也是近代泛神论信仰的一个伟大的代表。他表现了西方文明自强不息的精神，又同时具有东方乐天知命宁静致远的智慧。德国哲学家息默尔（Simmel）说：“歌德的人生所以给我们以无穷兴奋与深沉的安慰的，就是他只是一个人，他只是极尽了人性，但却如此伟大，使我们对人类感到有希望，鼓动我们努力向前做一个人。“我们可以说歌德是世界一扇明窗，我们由他窥见了人生生命永恒幽邃奇丽广大的天空！ 再狭小范围，就欧洲文化的观点说，歌德确是代表文艺复兴以后近代人的心灵生活及其内在的问题。近代人失去了基督教对一超越上帝虔诚的信仰。人类精神上获得了解放，得到了自由；但也就同时失所依傍，彷徨摸索，苦闷，追求，欲在生活本身的努力中寻得人生的意义与价值。歌德是这时代精神伟大的代表，他的主著《浮士德》是这人生全部的反映与其问题的解决。歌德与其替身浮士德一生生活的内容就是尽量体验这近代人生特殊的精神意义，了解其悲剧而努力以解决其问题，指出解救之道。所以有人称他的浮士德是近代人的圣经。 但歌德与但丁莎士比亚不同的地方，就是他不单是由作品里启示我们人生真相，尤其在他自己的人格与生活中表现了人生广大精微的义谛。
“CATTI杯”第二十七届韩素音青年翻译奖竞赛 英译汉竞赛原文： The Posteverything Generation I never expected to gain any new insight into the nature of my generation, or the changing landscape of American colleges, in Lit Theory. Lit Theory is supposed to be the class where you sit at the back of the room with every other jaded sophomore wearing skinny jeans, thick-framed glasses, an ironic tee-shirt and over-sized retro headphones, just waiting for lecture to be over so you can light up a Turkish Gold and walk to lunch while listening to Wilco. That’s pretty much the way I spent the course, too: through structuralism, formalism, gender theory, and post-colonialism, I was far too busy shuffling through my Ipod to see what the patriarchal world order of capitalist oppression had to do with Ethan Frome. But when we began to study postmodernism, something struck a chord with me and made me sit up and look anew at the seemingly blasécollege-aged literati of which I was so self-consciously one. According to my textbook, the problem with defining postmodernism is that it’s impossible. The difficulty is that it is so...post. It defines itself so negatively against what came before it – naturalism, romanticism and the wild revolution of modernism – that it’s sometimes hard to see what it actually is. It denies that anything can be explained neatly or even at all. It is parodic, detached, strange, and sometimes menacing to traditionalists who do not understand it. Although it arose in the post-war west (the term was coined in 1949), the generation that has witnessed its ascendance has yet to come up with an explanation of what postmodern attitudes mean for the future of culture or society. The subject intrigued me because, in a class otherwise consumed by dead-letter theories, postmodernism remained an open book, tempting to the young and curious. But it also intrigued me because the question of what postmodernism – what a movement so post-everything, so reticent to define itself – is spoke to a larger question about the political and popular culture of today, of the other jaded sophomores sitting around me who had grown up in a postmodern world. In many ways, as a college-aged generation, we are also extremely post: post-Cold War, post-industrial, post-baby boom, post-9/11...at one point in his famous essay, “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” literary critic Frederic Jameson even calls us “post-literate.” We are a generation that is riding on the tail-end of a century of war and revolution that toppled civilizations, overturned repressive social orders, and left us with more privilege and opportunity than any other society in history. Ours could be an era to accomplish anything. And yet do we take to the streets and the airwaves and say “here we are, and this is what we demand”? Do we plant our flag of youthful rebellion on the mall in Washington and say “we are not leaving until we see change! Our eyes have been opened by our education and our conception of what is possible has been expanded by our privilege and we demand a better world because it is our right”? It would seem we do the opposite. We go to war without so much as questioning the rationale, we sign away our civil liberties, we say nothing when the Supreme Court uses Brown v. Board of Education to outlaw desegregation, and we sit back to watch the carnage on the evening news. On campus, we sign petitions, join organizations, put our names on mailing lists, make small-money contributions, volunteer a spare hour to tutor, and sport an entire wardrobe’s worth of Live Strong bracelets advertising our moderately priced opposition to everything from breast cancer to global warming. But what do we really stand for? Like a true postmodern generation we refuse to weave together an overarching narrative to our own political consciousness, to present a cast of inspirational or revolutionary characters on our public stage, or to define a specific philosophy. We are a story seemingly without direction or theme, structure or meaning – a generation defined negatively against what came before us. When Al Gore once said “It’s the combination of narcissism and nihilism that really defines postmodernism,” he might as well have been echoing his entire generation’s critique of our own. We are a generation for whom even revolution seems trite, and therefore as fair a target for bland imitation as anything else. We are the generation of the Che Geuvera tee-shirt.