从电影《风月俏佳人》看英语禁忌语

312
2008 年第
6期
安徽文学
说 文 解 字
英语禁忌语实例翻译探讨
——以五部好莱坞英文电影为例
◎刘白玉
（山东工商学院外国语学院
迟明斌 貝
山东・烟台 264005）
摘 要 英语禁忌语是学习英语的一大障碍， 尤其在欣赏英文原声电影时， 其中的禁忌语常常令人费解。探讨其实例翻 译， 不仅能帮助人们彻底地理解原汁原味的英语， 分析电影人物的性格特点， 而且能填补中国翻译ቤተ መጻሕፍቲ ባይዱ业在英语禁忌语翻译 方面的空白。 关键词 禁忌语 原声电影 翻译
引言 1． 随着全球一体化进程的加快和北京 2008 年奥运会的临 近， 中国与世界的交往越来越频繁， 人们学习英语的热潮一浪 高过一浪。 “看英文原声电影， 学原汁原味英语” 已经成了英 语爱好者的普遍共识。但是人们在欣赏英文电影时，却发现 里面有许多禁忌语。 由于这些语言 “课堂里不教， 词典里不收， 研究者更是寥寥无几” （胡士云， ， 1997） 所以很多观众听不懂 电影人物说的话，对英语禁忌语知识的缺乏构成了对英语电 “ 影和文学理解和欣赏的一大障碍” （李文中， 。针对这种 1993） 情况， 笔者通过仔细研究 《教父》《风月俏佳人》《人鬼情未 、 、 了》 阿甘正传》 泰坦尼克号》 、 《 、 《 等五部经典好莱坞英文电影， 从 260 句禁忌语中挑选出 30 句颇有代表性的禁忌语， 将其翻 译成中文， 旨在帮助读者更好地理解英文电影， 学好英语。 实例翻译 2． （1） stood in the courtroom like a fool. And those two basI tards，they smiled at me. (The Godfather，1998) 禁忌词： fool， bastard. 译文： 我像个傻瓜一样站在法庭里， 那两个狗杂种还冲着 我笑呢。 （2） What is it? Hey，it’ my sister’ wedding! Goddamn s s FBI， don’respect nothing. 禁忌词： t goddamn. 译文： 怎么回事？这是我妹妹的婚礼！去他妈的联邦 嘿， 调查局， 什么都不放在眼里。 （3） They shot my father — that’ business? You ass …… 禁 s 忌词： ass. 译文： 他们打死了我父亲， 难道这也是做生意？你这头蠢 驴… （4） Clean it up! Clean that up you son of a bitch! Clean it! 禁 忌词： of a bitch. son 译文： 扫干净！扫干净！你这婊子养的！扫干净！ （5） Come on， — kill me. Get out here! Get out here! 禁 you 忌词： out here. get 译文： 杀呀， 你杀呀！你给我滚出去！滚出去！ （6） was banging cocktail waitress two at a time! 禁忌词： He bang. 译文： 他同时玩弄两个鸡尾酒女招待！ （7） Edward: Two thousand. Vivian: Three thousand. Edward: Done! Vivian: Holy shit! (Pretty Woman， 1998) 禁忌词： shit. holy 译文： 爱德华： 两千。 薇薇安： 三千。 爱德华： 成交！ 薇薇安： 太他妈的好了！ （8） And how the hell did you put something like that off? 禁 忌词： hell. 译文： 你他妈的是怎么让这个推迟的？ （9） Listen to me! She is not a spy. She is a hooker. She is a hooker! 禁忌词： hooker. 译文： 听着， 她不是间谍， 她是个妓女。她是个妓女！ （10） What are you， pimp now? 禁忌词： my pimp. 译文： 你是谁？给我拉皮条吗？ （11） Oh，it was so good. I almost piss my pants. 禁忌词： piss. 译文： 太好了！好得我都尿裤子了。 哦， （12） Bullshit! This is such bullshit! It’ the kill you love， s not me. 禁忌词： bullshit. 译文： 胡说八道！真是胡说八道！你喜欢的是钱， 不是我。 （13） woman: What happened? A A man: Some chick. She bottled it over there. 禁忌词： chick. 译文： 女人： 出了什么事？

从电影《风月俏佳人》析英语禁忌语
刘白玉
【期刊名称】《电影评介》
【年(卷),期】2007(000)011
【摘要】禁忌语是语言的有机组成部分,尤其是在电影作品中,更起着不可替代的作用.文章以原声电影《风月俏佳人》为例,分析了英语禁忌语的种类及作用,并将一些典型的禁忌语翻译成中文,旨在帮助读者较好地理解英文电影作品.
【总页数】2页(P57-58)
【作者】刘白玉
【作者单位】山东工商学院外国语学院
【正文语种】中文
【中图分类】J9
【相关文献】
1.美国电影《风月俏佳人》中会话含义分析 [J], 刘慧
2.英文电影在"文化体验式"英语教学中的应用——以《律政俏佳人》为例 [J], 张园园
3.英文电影对大学英语禁忌语教学的促进 [J], 邵炎
4.如何利用英语电影片断进行英语禁忌语教学 [J], 莫慧泳
5.电影《风月俏佳人》人物内心变化的外在表现符号研究 [J], 刘仲慧
因版权原因，仅展示原文概要，查看原文内容请购买。

My Review On Pretty WomanOn the surface, the movie follows a standard fairy-tale-style formula of an hooker girl falling in love and being rescued from her old lifestyle. It spins this into a modern update with more relevant themes - mainly prostitution. Actually it’s not really about falling in love with a prostitute. It is about transformation of a prostitute into a lady; transformation from perceiving a woman as a prostitute to seeing the woman as a wife.Because of "Pretty Woman" stars Richard Gere, Hollywood's most successful male sex symbol, and because it's about his character falling in love with a prostitute, it is astonishing that "Pretty Woman" is such an innocent movie - that it's the sweetest and most openhearted love fable since "The Princess Bride." Here is a movie that could have marched us down mean streets into the sinks of iniquity, and it glows with romance.Rather than the plot itself, the beautiful Julia Roberts makes this movie worth watching...and not simply because of her 88 inches of leg! Always endearing in her roles, she is at her absolute most endearing portraying Vivian in this picture. She brings a realvulnerability to the role, showing us that just like everyone else, prostitutes do indeed floss their teeth! Richard Gere pulls off quite convincingly the role of Edward, the ruthless, calculating millionaire businessman, who takes over companies only to sell them off piece by piece, quite unmindful of the interests of any people involved. To give Gere credit, I was quite impressed that he actually plays the piano in one of the movie's scenes.Naturally, given Vivian's membership in the 'oldest profession', old fashioned and strict as I am, thought there would be some inappropriate scenes, and that is so award since we have boys classmates in the classroom. Fortunately, the most truly intimate moment in this film is not during the more explicit sex but rather, simply a kiss.It seems to be constructed out of the stuff of realism, all right. It stars Gere as an out-of-town millionaire, visiting Los Angeles, who borrows his friend's car and gets lost on Hollywood Boulevard. He asks a hooker for directions to his hotel. She offers to tell him, for five dollars. For $10, she'll guide him there.It's one of those chance meetings as Roberts is looking to pay hers and roommate Laura San Giacomo's rent.He agrees. It is important to understand that he is looking for directions, not sex, and that he has broken up - coldly and efficiently - with his current girlfriend only half an hour earlier in a terse telephone conversation. The girl gets into the car and it turns out that she knows a lot about cars. This attracts him, and the result is that he invites her to join him in his hotel suite. But not for sex, of course, he says. But you still have to pay, of course, she says.Turns out he needs her for a business date as he's negotiating with Ralph Bellamy and Alex Hyde-White for their company. Gere essentially does what Danny DeVito does in Other People's Money, but with a little more class. But with lube or not, Bellamy and Hyde-White aren't taking this one without a fight.She is played by Julia Roberts ("Mystic Pizza" and anOscar-nominated role in "Steel Magnolias") as a woman who is as smart as she is attractive, which makes her very smart. Like many prostitutes, she is able to perform the mental trick of standing outside of what she does, of detaching herself and believing that her real self is not involved. That's what she does. She overhearsone of his telephone conversations and wants to know what he does.He's a takeover artist. He buys companies, takes them apart and sells the pieces for more than he paid for the whole. "But what about the people who work for those companies?" she wants to know. "People have nothing to do with it," he explains. "It's strictly business." "Oh, she says. Then you do the same thing I do." What is happening in these scenes is that the characters are emerging as believable, original and sympathetic. Gere and Roberts work easily together; we sense that their characters not only like one another, but feel comfortable with one another. The catch is, neither one trusts the feeling of comfort. They've been hurt so often, they depend on a facade of cynical detachment. Everything is business. He offers her money to spend one week with him, she accepts, he buys her clothes, they have sex and of course (this being the movies) they fall in love.They fall into a particularly romantic kind of love, the sort you hardly see in the movies these days - a love based on staying awake after the lights are out and confiding autobiographical secrets. Thisis the first Gere film containing more confession than nudity. During the day, the lovers try to recover their cold detachment, to maintain the distance between them. If the love story in "Pretty Woman" is inspired by "Cinderella," the daytime scenes are "Pygmalion," as the hotel manager (Hector Elizondo) takes a liking to his best customer's "niece" and tutors her on which fork to use at a formal dinner.There is a subplot involving Gere's attempts to take over a corporation run by an aging millionaire (Ralph Bellamy) - a man whose lifework he is prepared to savage, even though he actually likes him.There are broad Freudian hints that Gere's entire career is a form of revenge against his father and that Bellamy may be the father figure he is searching for. But he has an impulse to hurt what he loves, and there is one particularly painful scene in which Gere reveals to a friend that Roberts is a prostitute and Roberts gains a certain insight by how hurtful that betrayal is.My favorite scene in the movie is when Vivian and Edward are in bed, talking and Vivian goes on about how she ended up in LosAngeles to begin with by following a "bum" that her mother called her a "bum magnet" "If there was a bum within a fifty mile radius I was completely attracted to him." But the line that stuck with me the most was "When people put you down enough you start to believe it" and Edward replies "I think you are a very charming, very beautiful woman" Vivian's reply is full of emotion when she replies "The bad stuff is easier to believe...have you ever noticed that?" Which is true.Maybe it's just me, but I think that this movie is just a fairytale, and fairytales are there to make you believe in something that is totally unbelievable. This movie gives you hope, shows you that even if your life is miserable, that even if you are a bum magnet; if you don't give up hope a millionaire in a Lotus might be just around the corner.演员评价The acting is good. Roberts and Gere obviously understand their characters; Roberts perfectly captures the hooker "mentality", and Gere portrays his character believably. I also found various ofthe supporting characters to be very credible, well-acted and interesting. I actually would have liked if Laura San Giacomo's character, Kit De Luca, would have had more screen-time than she did, as I found her to be one of the better and more interesting members of the supporting cast.Julia Roberts plays Vivian Ward, an attractive and smart hooker with a heart of gold. She gives her character a great sense of humor, charming Edward with her honesty. She is intensely appealing and amusing, making any man feel comfortable."Pretty Woman" was the film that made Julia Roberts a star and a major player in Hollywood (for a while she held the record for being the highest-paid actress in Hollywood)."Pretty Woman" is one of her better films. She plays a prostitute who's "employed" by a rich playboy (Richard Gere) to pose as her girlfriend for a little while. He tries to culture her and instill good taste, manners and general class; meanwhile others raise a suspicious eyebrow when she embarrasses herself in public, clearly not belonging in the upper-class group.个人评价Lots of romantic scenes showed in the film, from a picnic in the park to jetting off in a private plane for a Big Night on the Town. And etiquette lessons...Vivian displays charming, amusing, curious innocence when she experiences with Edward her first opera (all the while looking knock out gorgeous in a stunning red gown), her first polo match, and her introduction to escargots. As the movie progresses, she is transformed Pygmalion style, from the street smart hooker provocatively dressed in tall black boots and mini skirt, to a sophisticated looking, elegantly gowned and coiffed young lady. But it's merely appearance...Vivian's heart of gold and her vulnerability both remain unchanged.The status conscious snobbery of Beverly Hills dress shops and ritzy hotels, judging people by wealth and class, is well depicted here. When Vivian goes shopping for a 'more appropriate' wardrobe at some exclusive Rodeo Drive boutiques, she is not 'well received' by the sales ladies, who like all too many of us, are overly inclined to judge by appearance. You'll want these snobs to gettheir comeuppance. Actually, perhaps the most touching relationship in this entire film is the one between Vivian and Barney, the quite proper but kind desk manager at the high class hotel (where she is sharing a penthouse suite with Edward), who is able to see beyond appearance. He develops a genuine fondness and even more importantly, respect for her.I mentioned that the movie is sweet and innocent. It is; it protects its fragile love story in the midst of cynicism and compromise. The performances are critical for that purpose. Gere plays new notes here; his swagger is gone, and he's more tentative, proper, even shy. Roberts does an interesting thing; she gives her character an irrepressibly bouncy sense of humor and then lets her spend the movie trying to repress it. Actresses who can do that and look great can have whatever they want in Hollywood.Gere's career is on a roll right now, after this movie and the completely opposite, swaggeringly erotic character he plays in "Internal Affairs." In Esquire magazine a few months ago, a collection of Hollywood jokes included one where the punch linewas that a producer was going to be stuck with Richard Gere in his movie. After these two movies, the joke doesn't work anymore.The movie was directed by Garry Marshall ("The Flamingo Kid"), whose films betray an instinctive good nature, and it is about as warmhearted as a movie about two cold realists can possibly be.I understand that earlier versions of the screenplay were more hard-boiled and downbeat, and that Marshall underlined the romance.There could indeed be, I suppose, an entirely different movie made from the same material - a more realistic film, in which the cold economic realities of the lives of both characters would make it unlikely they could stay together. And, for that matter, a final scene involving a limousine, a fire escape and some flowers is awkward and feels tacked on. But by the end of the movie I was happy to have it close as it does.As has often been pointed out, that is not a realistic story line. Indeed, this film has been criticized for its lack of realism, but romantic comedies, especially that sub-category of the genredealing with love between people of different social backgrounds, are not generally supposed to be exercises in kitchen-sink realism. Contrary to what we might have been led to believe by "Maid in Manhattan", for example, most Republican senators (or Democrat ones for that matter) are not married to Latina chambermaids. Nor (pace Richard Curtis in "Notting Hill") do female Hollywood superstars generally find the love of their life working in small bookshops in West London. It is a historical fact that no British Prime Minister has ever married his tea-lady (not even Palmerston, whose appetite for working-class girls was legendary), so it seems that Mr Curtis got it wrong in "Love, Actually" as well. Like "Maid in Manhattan" and "Love, Actually", "Pretty Woman" is a modern dress version of all those old fairy tales about the poor girl who falls in love with a prince.Many people think the story is too fake, nothing like that would happen in real life, how can a millionaire fall in love with a poor hooker just out of her beautiful appearance? I must say Vivian has many good qualities that distinguished her from other girls in her condition.She is healthy, not on drugs, not on alcohol, not even a smoker; no syphilis, no gonorrhea, no AIDS wounds on her legs, nothing,she is just perfectly absolutely healthy. Body and mind. She is not a criminal, not inclined to steal anything, she even values love and dignity more than money. Oh, she has no pimp, who would be the other man (other than Richard Gere) in her life; nobody to protect her from smart types who walk off without paying; the pimp would explode the whole romance instantly. (Instead, a girl friend.)、She has a golden soul, full of goodness, and loves art, and feels for art. High-society types around them appear silly, artificial, stuffy. She is natural. She even was a good student and might be again. She loves to bathe, and half the time we see her happy in the bath tub (which is a powerful signal and symbol for clean, clean; she even sings so super-ultra-charmingly in the bath; she wants to wash off the foolishness of her previous few months of street. And she can do it.With all those qualities, and her good looking, why would she ever become a prostitute in the first place? Don't think, don't think. Just dream, it is lovely.The film has also been criticized by certain moralists for giving an excessively romantic and glamorized picture of prostitution.Certainly, it is not exactly realistic to suggest that every prostitute is a beautiful, healthy, carefree Julia Roberts lookalike who ends up marrying a handsome millionaire. On the other hand, the moralists' preferred position on prostitution- that every prostitute is a drug-addicted disease-ridden crack whore living in squalid poverty who ends up either dying of AIDS or being murdered by a modern Jack the Ripper- is equally unrealistic. Vivian is an example of the "tart with a heart", a stock character who has been part of the literary tradition going back at least as far as "La Dame aux Camellias" (when Vivian and Edward go to the opera together, it is to see "La Traviata", based upon Dumas's story) and part of the cinematic tradition since at least the sixties, when film censorship began to be relaxed.All in all, it’s a quite entertaining and worthwhile romantic comedy, that is worth watching, even for people who usually loathe romance in movies. I recommend it to pretty much anyone who enjoys romantic comedies, comedies in general and fans of any of the actors. This is probably also a good movie to get for guys whose girlfriends demand to see a romantic comedy.。

【剧情导读】⼀段另类的爱情故事。

堕⼊情的是⼀位商界巨⼦和⼀位下层妓⼥。

妓⼥维维安与爱德华邂逅街头，很快她成为了爱德华⾦钱下的情妇，维维安答应陪爱德华⼀个星期。

然⽽短暂的相聚使他们感到不能够离开彼此。

尽管是⼀段让⼈耻笑的情缘，但是爱德华最终摆脱了世俗的羁绊，驱车来到维维安的住处，向维维安求婚。

整个场⾯在浪漫的节拍中结束。

风⽉俏佳⼈（Pretty Woman）【⿍⼒星阵】导演：加⾥·马歇尔 (Marshall Garry)主演：李察德·基尔 (Gere Richard)朱丽娅·罗伯茨 (Roberts Julia)拉尔夫·贝拉⽶ (Bellamy Ralph)出品： 1990美国试⾦⽯影⽚公司【获奖奖项】荣获⾦球奖⾳乐和喜剧电影⼥主⾓（商业巨⼦爱德华在⽐华利⼭迷路了，他邂逅了妓⼥维维安。

维维安主动要求给理查德指路，于是他们⼀起到了酒店。

）精彩对⽩:Vivian: Hey sugar, are you looking for a date?维维安: 嘿，亲爱的，想找个伴吗？Edward: No! I want to find Beverly Hills, could you give me the directions?爱德华: 不是的，我想去⽐华利⼭，能告诉我怎么⾛吗？Vivian: Sure, five bucks.维维安: 可以，五美元。

******************************************************额外成就事实上，在美国⼝语中美元⽤ buck 代替dollar 更为常见。

*****************************************************Edward: That's ridiculous【荒谬的】!爱德华: 太荒谬了！Vivian: Price just went up to ten.维维安: 现在是⼗美元了。