翻译课前练习

2010级本科：

嘿嘿，下个学期《英汉互译》就由我来上了，哈哈，作为英语专业考研的传统的三大方向之一：翻译、文学、语言学，到现在的翻译硕士的研究生考试，我感到非常的“得瑟”，哈哈，只怕你们是“哆嗦”，你又是学英语专业的，难道能不会翻译，所以翻译课的重要性不言而喻。

课前作业就在后面，希望大家还是抓紧时间记点单词，以迎接翻译课的学习，以及迎接全国口译大赛（湖南赛区）的比赛。

提前预祝大家新春快乐！

知名不具

翻译课前练习

英译汉

We embarked by ship on our journey in the halcyon days of the winter solstice. “It is the most auspicious time for new beginnings,” I told Ed. I had bought some beautiful earrings made of blue-green kingfisher feathers, and I told Ed about the charming superstition taught me by an Old China Hand sea captain: The halcyon days were the fourteen days at the time of the winter solstice when the sea was unnaturally calm, so that the halcyon, or kingfisher, could brood on its nest floating in the ocean. All nature, sun and sea, obeyed the halcyon bird in its breeding season.

The world stood still on halcyon days. It was a time for the birth of Christ and for Joshua to pretend to command the sun and for King Canute to command the waves. It was time for the Word to go forth upon the living waters, a time to create new worlds. It was a time for sailors to forswear their profane oaths. It was a time for an odyssey under the Southern Cross following in the wake of Magellan. It would always be the time for the big events in my life, though I never planned it that way. I did not like living death or darkness. I struggled towards the light at the winter solstice.

On that halcyon journey, those two young people were unafraid. They were claiming kinship with all of nature in all hemispheres, with all people in all countries, with all minds in all kinds of books.

For reading on the ship we took G. B. Shaw’s The Intelligent Women’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, and H. G. Well’s Outline of History as well as his 1932 book, The Work, Wealth, and Happiness of Mankind. Americans had not as yet started to think, but we carried along George Dorsey’s Why We Behave Like Human Beings, which I showed to the British pukka sahib Resident in Borneo with one word inserted: Why Don’t We…

We had both read Spengler’s The Decline of the West-- I had read it in the States. In a cursory way we had studied the Age of Empire-- that of Japan in Taiwan, of the British in Borneo, Hong Kong, and the China treaty ports, of the Dutch in the Celebes, Java, and Bali, of the Portuguese in Macao.

汉译英

一个人的语言与其在社会中的身份其实密不可分。记得我在澳大利亚生活时，一位邻居要竞选议员，他便每天早上起来练习发音，以令自己的讲话让人听起来悦耳、有身份。

的确，语言是一个人社会身份的标志，特别是在多民族、多元文化的社会里。所谓“身份”，也是一种知识结构，表明你来自那个社会群体的文化背景、知识程度甚至地理位置等。

语言会影响对于相应文化的认知。例如，有人调查发现，对于讲双语的中国人，在用中文问到其关于文化观念等问题时，他们的回答显然比用英文问他们此类问题时显示出更多的中国人的做派。有意思的是，当讲广东话的港澳人被用普通话问到关于中国的文化、信仰等问题时，他们的回答往往比听到用广东话问到此类问题时的回答更接近西方人的表达方式。

其实，对于学习外语的华人来讲，大部分的还不是真正意义上的所谓“双语人”，而是“双语使用者”；后者是在语言与表达层次，而前者则是思维与生活习性。但是，这个过程并不是静止的，而是可以转换的。

所以，语言学习者所学习的实际上是一种社会关系，一种他所理解的跨越时空所形成的关系。因而，他所面对的不仅仅是语言学的，而更是多重、变换着的社会身份问题。