英汉翻译作业(5) 参考译文

邀请名人做广告，只要商品确实是货真价实，名人又愿意，这应该是广告技巧的上策，会产生很强的名人效应。

但是商品质量差，广告又言过其实，又请名人做广告，这种广告一时也会产生一些好的影响，但最终是砸了自己的牌子，也塌了名人台，影响名人的信誉，因此名人在接受时要慎之又慎。

请名人做广告，付给的报酬高得惊人，而一些名人尤其是政界和科学界的名流往往不肯抛头露面。

这样西方国家的一些广告商便在平民中千方百计物色酷似名流的人来做广告，甚至被弄去参加开业典礼或者开张剪裁以招徕生意。

局外人往往不明真相而受蒙骗。

正因为真假难分，名人替身常遭不测。

To invite those eminent persons to help make advertisements should be regarded as one of the best ad strategies and could of course, produce a spectacular VIP effect, provided that those eminent persons are perfectly willing to accept the invitation and, more importantly, the commodities to be advertised are genuine and their prices fair.
Sometimes, while a commodity is of inferior quality, the ad is full of words lavishing praise on it. If, under such a circumstance, an eminent person comes to help make the ad, the ad could, if anything, be temporarily successful before it turns the brand of the commodity in question notorious and more disastrously, ruins the reputation of the eminent person thereafter. It is precisely for this reason that the eminent persons are well advised to think more than twice before agreeing to appear on a commercial.
Despite the fact that an eminent person could be paid a staggering sum of money after he or she helps make a commercial ad, some eminent persons, those in political and scientific circles in particular, are averse to public exposures. As a result, some advertisers in Western countries have had to try every means possible to scout among the populace at large men or women that are very copies of the eminent persons they are after.
Once recruited, an eminent person’s substitute, apart from appearing on an ad, is often made to show up on certain high profile occasions, such as opening ceremonies or ribbon cutting ceremonies, with a view to soliciting customers. Outsiders, unable to distinguish a real eminent person from his substitute, are usually taken in. However, not every hired substitute is lucky. Some of them may become victims of unexpected attacks aimed at the real eminent persons and suffer unfortunately, for them.
Work Produced against the grain and in marginality by George Steiner in After Babel:
This book was written under somewhat difficult circumstances .I was at the time increasingly marginalized and indeed isolated within the academic community. This is not ,necessarily, a handicap. Tenure in the academy today ,the approval of one’s professional peers, the assistance and laurels in their giving, are not infrequently symptoms of opportunism and mediocre conventionality. A degree of exclusion, of compelled apartness, may be one of the conditions of valid work. In the humanities,in the disciplines of intuitive discourse, committees, colloquia, the conference circuit are the bane. Nothing is more ludicrous than the roll-call of academic colleagues and sponsors set out in grateful footnotes at the bottom of trivia. In poetics ,in philosophy, in hermeneutics, work worth doing will more often than not be produced against the grain and in marginality.
本书的写作完成于相当艰难的情况之下。

当时我日益受到排斥，在学术界里实在算时处境孤立。

不过这倒不一定是坏事。

当今世道，有多少投机取巧之辈，因循守旧之徒，虽从不敢越雷池半步，却既有终生教职，又有同僚吹捧，能得到旁人的帮助与认可。

若是受到一点排挤，也许反倒是真正有所作为的一个条件。

科学研究与进步在本质上提倡合作。

而人文学科呢，在以灵感为特征的学科里，坏事情的恰恰是各种各样的学术讨论会。

最可笑的就是写完一篇无甚价值的东西之后，还要在页脚加上一笔，列出长串名单以资感谢那些同事和赞助人。

在诗歌、哲学、阐释学方面，一个人做得出有意义的事，常常都不是追随主流，在受排挤时能够耐得住寂寞。

韦子凤译
本书是在相当困难的境遇下写成的。

当时我在学术界越来越被主流排斥在外，甚至已经到了孤立的地步。

这倒不见得一定是件坏事。

今天的学术界，学者们为了终身教职，同行认可，以及随之而来的提携和荣耀，常常变得投机取巧，因循守旧，平庸之极。

因此遭受一些排斥，忍受一点孤立也许是从事有意义的工作的一个先决条件。

科学的研究与进步在很大程度上需要合作，这倒也十分符合逻辑。

可是在人文学科内，在需要用直觉把握的学科里，名目繁多的委员会、学术讨论会、走马灯似的报告会，却反而会毁掉一个学者。

在微不足道作品的注释中写上学术同行和赞助人的名字以示感谢，在我看来，实在是十分荒唐。

在诗学、哲学、阐释学的领域，值得为之辛劳的工作常常是在逆境和孤独中完成的。

叶子南译。