2. 论美国学者讲稿

一．关于原作者爱默生：

Ralph Waldo Emerson（1803-1882）：

1.essayist, lecturer, poet, and representative of Romanticism in 19th Century

America;

2.leader of Transcendentalism in America: He was convinced that everything in

nature had its exact counterpart in the mind. From this basic conviction flowed all his ideas:

1) Nature is a vast array of symbols, which could lead their individual interpreter

toward the eternal truth of God and the cosmos;

2) Since such ultimate truth transcends nature or lies behind it. The intuitive

means of discovering it is transcendental;

3) The method of interpretation calls for an intuitive leap without rational

analysis from the thing observed in nature to the spiritual (moral) truth it symbolized.

二．关于原作《论美国学者》：

“The American Scholar”：

1.first delivered at Harvard on August 31, 1837;

2.Emerson charged that the scholar’s job was to lead his people out of their bondage

to old cultures and away from the “popular cry” of received wisdom and everyday modes of thought;

3.Emerson exhorted his audience of native intellectuals to rouse and lead American

society into mental independence and self-reliance;

4.The address proved to be immensely popular, and Oliver Wendell Holmes called

“our intellectual Declaration of Independence”.

三．译文分析：

Para 1:

None is quite perfect.

译文一：凡事皆无绝对之完美。

译文二：万事皆无极致。

As no air-pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, so neither can any artist entirely exclude the conventional, the local, the perishable from his book, or write a book of pure thought, that should be as efficient, in all respects, to a remote posterity, as to contemporaries, or rather to the second age.

译文一：正如气泵无论如何也抽不出绝对真空一样，任何大师都不可能从其书中完全排除习俗、地域和应时应景的影响，或者说都不可能写出纯思想之书——那种在方方面面都能像对其同代人或下代人一样对遥远的后代也有直接作用的书。

译文二：正如没有气泵能够抽出绝对之真空，任何大师都无法免受习俗之束缚，不受时空之桎梏，创作出体现纯粹思想之书。此书要能在方方面面都对同代、下代，乃至后代的后代产生相同的影响。

译注：

①常见词的不同含义，artist：a person whose work shows exceptional creative ability or skill，高手，能手。Eg. You are an artist in the kitchen. 你是一位烹饪大师。

②注意“the+常见形容词”的译法，常译为相应的名词。perishable定义为subject to decay, spoilage, or destruction。而成、住、坏、灭乃一时间进程，故perishable 在此指时间概念。而local指空间，故exclude the local, the perishable from his book 合译为“不受时空之桎梏”。

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

译文一：人们发现，每个时代必须写每个时代的书，更确切地说，每代人都必须为下一代人而写。

译文二：但据发现，一个时代书写一个时代的书，一代人最多为下一代写书。译注：

①注意根据上下文逻辑灵活翻译“rather”，表示转折，表示递进。

The books of an older period will not fit this.

译文一：远古时代的书籍对当今时代也许并不合用。

译文二：因此，历年经久之书在当代并不受用。

译注：

①注意根据上下文逻辑进行合理的增译，使译文逻辑更为明确。

Para 2:

Yet hence arises a grave mischief.

译文一：不过一种苛弊也由此而生。

译文二：一种顽疾由此而生。

译注：

①注意常用词的不常用含义mischief：1) An inclination or a tendency to play pranks or cause embarrassment, 淘气, 顽皮; 2) Damage, destruction, or injury caused by a specific person or thing, 弊端。

The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation, the act of thought, is transferred to the record.

译文一：附于创作行为或思想行为的高贵神圣往往会被转换成历史纪录。

译文二：曾几何时，人们将创造、思辨之过程视为高贵神圣，如今却将创造、思辨之产物奉若神明。

译注：

①注意增译法“曾几何时”，根据来自于“transfer”，表示曾经的情况的转换；

②record字面意思为文字记录，此处进一步理解为人们创造、思辨的产物；

③对同一个英文单词sacredness，分译为两处汉语时，尽量避免重复，分别译为