翻译资料 (36)

2012第1周翻译练习及答案

1．汉译英：

在元朝末年，朝廷变得腐败无能。许多读书人都坚信蒙古人已失掉了天命，不再能统治天下了。然而他们当中谁曾料到，天命竟然会落到朱元璋这样一位几乎终生目不识丁的人头上。明太祖朱元璋出身极其微贱，除了天生才具之外一无所有。他的父母是极其贫苦的农民，因饥荒而背井离乡。为了不至于全家都饿死，他们把儿子卖进了寺庙。朱元璋做了几年小和尚，然后就跑掉当了土匪。在当时天下大乱、反叛四起的情况下，他这么做倒是顺理成章。过了一些年，他在南京登基坐殿，开创了明朝近三百年的江山。

In the final years of Yuan dynasty, the imperial government had become corrupt and incompetent. Many scholars firmly believed that the Mongols had lost the mandate of heaven to rule the country. But none of them expected that the mandate of heaven would be passed onto Zhu Yuanzhang, who remained virtually illiterate all his life. Zhu Yuanzhang, the Emperor Taizu of Ming, was a man of the most humble origin，with nothing but his natural ability at his disposal. His parents were poor peasants. Forced to leave their homeland because of famine, they sold their son into a Buddhist monastery to save both his life and their own. After a few years as a novice monk, Zhu ran away and became a bandit．This was a logical step for him to take, considering the great confusion of the age, with revolts breaking out everywhere. Some years later, he ascended the throne in Nanjing and proclaimed the founding of the Ming dynasty, which was to last nearly 300 years.

2．英译汉：

The Weather in His Soul

George Santayana

Let me come to the point boldly; what governs the Englishman is his inner atmosphere, the weather in his soul. It is nothing particularly spiritual or mysterious. When he has taken his exercise and is drinking his tea or his beer and lighting his pipe; when, in his garden or by his fire, he sprawls in an aggressively comfortable chair; when well-washed and well-brushed, he resolutely turns in church to the east and recites the Creed (with genuflexions, if he likes genuflexions)without in the least implying that he believes one word of it; when he hears or sings the most crudely sentimental and thinnest of popular songs, unmoved but not disgusted; when he makes up his mind who is his best friend or his favorite poet; when he adopts a party or a sweetheart; when he is hunting or shooting or boating, or striding through the fields; when he is choosing his clothes or his profession——never is it a precise reason, or purpose, or outer fact that determines him; it is always the atmosphere of his inner man.

To say that this atmosphere was simply a sense of physical well-being, of coursing blood and a prosperous digestion, would be far too gross; for while psychic weather is all that, it is also a witness to some settled disposition, some ripening inclination for this or that, deeply rooted in the soul. It gives a sense of direction in life which is virtually a code of ethics, and a religion behind religion. On the other hand, to say it was the vision of any ideal or allegiance to any principle would be making it far too articulate and abstract. The inner atmosphere, when compelled to condense into words, may precipitate some curt maxim or over-simple theory as a sort of war-cry; but its puerile language does it injustice, because it broods at a much deeper level than language or even thought. It is a mass of dumb instincts and allegiances, the love of a certain quality of life, to be maintained manfully. It is pregnant with many a stubborn assertion and rejection. It fights under its trivial fluttering opinions like a smoking battleship under its flags and signals; you must consider, not what they are, but why they have been hoisted and will not be lowered. One is tempted at times to turn away in despair from the most delightful acquaintance——the picture of manliness, grace, simplicity，and honor, apparently rich in knowledge and humor——because of some enormous platitude he reverts to, some hopelessly stupid little dogma from which one knows that nothing can ever