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22届韩素音青年翻译大赛英译汉原文解读
颜林海
本博主从事翻译理论研究与实践二十余年。

曾想从理论上探索什么是翻译，企图寻找翻译的普遍法则，然纵观古今中外学者译者的论述，何谓翻译？学者莫衷一是，译者各有心得。

但本博主重在对翻译过程与翻译心理的“研究”。

因此，但凡翻译必有全程录像。

下面是博主对照《中国翻译》杂志上的参赛原文的翻译过程录像，将理解过程进行了后期文字转写（由于全部avi录像高达3g，因此，无法挂在网上，见谅）。

转写过程并非一天完成，而是经过接近20天对录像中的每一个动作进行回忆和解读。

由于时间跨度20天，因此，各段解读和回忆时的审美心境不同，可能导致解读用词不一致，有时是站在写作教学角度加以评述，有时有站在作者写作心态加以评述。

欢迎各位网友能对照原文和译文进行有的放矢的批评，具体到语音、字词、句式和篇章。

严禁无的放矢的批评，既无原文具体的例句，也无译文具体的用词，而是采用谩骂以及人生攻击的方式断语，但凡此类断语，皆表明此人无甚教养，且孺子不可教也，因此，格删无论。

本译作基于理论与实践相结合而成。

相关理论难以尽述于此，本博主认为：
“翻译之本质在于译其心译其意。

欲译其心译其意，必先获其心获其意。

欲获其心获其意，译者与作者必须心灵交融，用心灵体验作者所描绘的景象，世事的冷暖：
“翻译是一种心灵交融，是译者与作者在精神上之融会贯通，合而为一。

翻译过程中，译者就是作者，是作者的心，想其所想；是作者的口，言其所言；是作者的眼，见其所见，是作者的手，书其所书，是作者的腿，行其所行。

唯有如此，方可获其心获其意。

“翻译是一种心灵体验，可随原著人物的喜怒哀乐而喜怒哀乐。

翻译过程中，没有任何世俗的功名利禄，只有纯净的意象世界。

置身原著意象世界中，仿佛为其中一员，是天地，或云或雨；是山川，壑深水激；是平原，一望无际；是一草一物，一枯一荣；是春夏秋冬，冷暖更迭。

是北冥之鲲，是南海之鸳雏，怒而飞，若垂天之云，观世间百态，览人间之疾苦。

唯有如此，方可明作者之意图。

”（见《堪城遗孤》译后记）
以上只是理论主张，每个译者都有自己的翻译观点，本博主无意评价各种观点的是与非，翻译实践中是否达到这种主张，只有待时间检验和网友的有的放矢的评论。

“Hidden Within Technology's Empire, a Republic of Letters”
【标题分析】：根据Mary S. Spangler & Rita T. Werner编著的写作教材Paragraph Strategies，1）文章标题多以词、短语为主，句子较少用作标题，即使做标题，多以感叹句、疑问句为主且可以打上标点号和疑问号，极少使用陈述句做标题。

汉语不同，因为汉语的词、短语和句子构成具有一致性，如“地震”既可以看作是词，也可以看作是短语和句子。

本文标题是一个倒装式的分词复合结构。

2）标题设置必与中心意思有关（The title must suggest the main idea）。

从本文的标题看，作者试图要谈论在崇尚“Technology's Empire”的时代，“a Republic of Letters”的出路问题，隐含了对文坛出路的担忧。

有担忧总得提出解决办法。

3）写作必有意图。

意图有直白式的，也有隐含式的。

本文写作意图直到文章末尾才道出，即推销自己创办的杂志。

注意：文章中心思想与写作意图并非一回事，二者不能等同。

Saul Bellow
【作者分析】：对文章的分析理解，特别是翻译中的理解，一般采用两种方法；（一）用中国传统文学批评的方法，即“知人论世”（对Saul Bellow的知人论世见相关的博文，此处略）；（二）用西方新批评中close reading（细读法）。

录像中，翻译时对作者进行了百度和谷歌。

（1）When I was a boy “discovering literature”, I used to think how wonderful it would be if every other person on the street were familiar with Proust and Joyce or T.E. Lawrence or Pasternak and Kafka. （2）Later I learned how refractory to high culture the democratic masses were. （3）Lincoln as a young frontiersman read Plutarch, Shakespeare and the Bible. But then he was Lincoln.
【段落分析1】：西文文章引入有起始句，中心意思句和过渡句。

这几种句子的写作和设置方式多样。

起始句有引文式、评论式、直陈式、叙事式等；中心意思句有直白式和隐含式。

过度句也有直白式和隐含式（以上皆是个人教学经验总结出来，如果术语与你的术语不同，请见谅）。

第一次阅读本文时，没读明白，因为找不到其中的中心意思句，写作意图也不容易弄明白。

后来仔细一想Saul Bellow有点“狡猾”，文学作家呀，怎么可能直白告诉自己的中心意思呢？反复地close reading，原来第一句就是中心意思句。

Key words是“how wonderful it would be”（读书很重要啊）前提是“ if every other per son on the street were familiar with Proust and Joyce or T.E. Lawrence or Pasternak and Kafka.”（2）是评论句，评论自己第一句中的期盼是不可能的实现啊，（3）句作者用了林肯作为例子来证明读书的重要性。

林肯年青时作为一个普通民众却读了那么多书，最后却成美国总统。

可见读书多么重要啊。

（4）Later when I was traveling in the Midwest by car, bus and train, I regularly visited small-town libraries and found that readers in Keokuk, Iowa, or Benton Harbor, Michigan, were checking out Proust and Joyce and even Svevo and Andrei Biely. （5）D.H. Lawrence was also a favorite. （6）
And sometimes I remembered that God was willing to spare Sodom for the sake of 10 of the righteous. （7）Not that Keokuk was anything like wicked Sodom, or that Proust’s Charlus would have been tempted to settle in Benton Harbor, Mich. （8）I seem to have had a persistent democratic desire to find evidences of high culture in the most unlikely places.
【段落分析2】（4）句承接（1）。

（1）陈述when I was boy的事，那后来长大后呢，那就是（4）句所说的when I was traveling，作者儿时的文学梦想仍然没有泯灭，（如果泯灭了，就没有这个伟大的作家了）却有意外收获，中西部小镇居然有人读阳春白雪式的文学作品（包括（5）句），作者心中不由得发出一种感叹，真实上帝开眼啊，当今这么个物欲横流的社会，居然还有人读书啊（中西部可是边远区域，远离大城市），这可是上帝的功劳啊。

由此进一步联想到（（6）句And sometimes I remembered…）wicked Sodom本应该被毁灭，但终究因为十义士而得到上帝“眷顾”而幸免于难，人类不是因为贪婪遭到上帝毁灭吗？如今社会物欲横流，也该遭到上帝毁灭，好在啊还有人爱读书，上帝自然宽仁。

（7）句是对（6）句类似联想加以评述。

（8）又回到（1）句中key words“how wonderful it would be”。

（1）（8）句核心意思相同，表述不同。

其中persistent 表明作者从儿时起的那种desire。

（9）For many decades now I have been a fiction writer, and from the first I was aware that mine was a questionable occupation. （10）In the 1930’s an elderly neighbor in Chicago told me that he wrote fiction for the pulps. （11）“The people on the block wonder why I don’t go to a job, and I’m seen puttering around, trimming the bushes or painting a fence instead of working in a factory. But I’m a writer. I sell to Argosy and Doc Savage,” he said with a certain gloom. “They wouldn’t call that a trade.” （12）Probably he noticed that I was a bookish boy, likely to sympathize with him, and perhaps he was trying to warn me to avoid being unlike others. （13）But it was too late for that.
【段落分析3】：1-2段那是儿时的梦想，通过对过去的回顾阐述自己的中心意思，读书重要，可以改变人生。

（9）句承接（4）作者回到现实，以自己的写作生涯为例，说明读书可以改变一个人，正因为作者的执着（persistent desire）而成为一个a fiction writer，但几十年的职业生涯却饱受了人们的质疑（questionable），这种质疑并非个人的专利而是普遍现象，作者用邻居的遭遇来说明这种普遍现象（10-11句），（12）句直白地告诉自己遭到质疑是一种普遍现象。

从而（11）、（12）照应了（2）句，（13）表明作者的执着，这种必然有代价。

也就是下一段。

（14）From the first, too, I had been warned that the novel was at the point of death, that like the walled city or the crossbow, it was a thing of the past. （15）And no one likes to be at odds with history. （16）Oswald Spengler, one of the most widely read authors of the early 30’s, taught that our tired old civilization was very nearly finished. （17）
His advice to the young was to avoid literature and the arts and to embrace mechanization and become engineers.
【段落分析3】：（14）直接陈述自己有文学梦想时就遭到了人们的警告，说小说过时了。

既然过时了，谁愿意去违背历史的车轮了（15），但是，这种小说过时论的警告来自何方？原因何在？原来一切都归因于一个人，即Oswald Spengler，对其进行“知人论世”，原来Spengler出版了一本书《西方的没落》（第一卷1918年第一次世界大战临近结束时出版，第二卷于1922）。

该书比较早地、比较自觉地批判“西方中心论”的学者。

他列举了人类历史上的八大文化，即古典文化、西方文化、巴比伦文化、中国文化、埃及文化、墨西哥文化、阿拉伯文化、印度文化等，他认为，古典文化、西方文化并不比其他文化优越。

这本书在全世界的影响都很大。

（16）这本书对上个世纪三十年代的年轻人（文化根基主要是西方文化的美国人来说）无疑是一个沉重的打击，连自己的文化根基都没落了（即《西方的没落》），读书还有何用，难怪民众不读阳春白雪的作品，既然如此，写小说还有何用。

如此这般，（17）Spengler’s advice to the young 自然就是要to avoid literature and the arts，而要来点实际的即to embrace mechanization and become engineers.
（18）In refusing to be obsolete, you challenged and defied the evolutionist historians. （19）I had great respect for Spengler in my youth, but even then I couldn’t accept his conclusions, and (with respect and admiration) I mentally told him to get lost.
【段落分析4】：《西方的没落》产生如此大负面影响，那咋办？所以本文作者提出对“evolutionist historians”要进行challenged and defied（18）。

（19）本来“我”Saul Bellow年轻时对你spengler尊敬有加，但你spengler 导致如今的人都不读书，剥夺了写书者的生存权，本来都不赞同你的结论，我Saul Bellow实在忍不住了要马爹骂娘，要爆粗口“I mentally told him to get lost”。

（20）Sixty years later, in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal, I come upon the old Spenglerian argument in a contemporary form. （21）Terry Teachout, unlike Spengler, does not dump paralyzing mountains of historical theory upon us, but there are signs that he has weighed, sifted and pondered the evidence. （22）He speaks of our “atomized culture,” and his is a responsible, up-to-date and carefully considered opinion. （23）He speaks of “art forms as technologies.”（24） He tells us that movies will soon be “downloadable”—that is, transferable from one computer to the memory of another device—and predicts that films will soon be marketed like books. （25）He predicts that the near-magical powers of technology are bringing us to the threshold of a new age and concludes, “Once this happens, my guess is that the independent movie will replace the novel as the principal vehicle for serious storytelling in the 21st century.”
【段落分析5】作者本以为spengler的阴魂会随着时间的推移而消散，（20）然而没想到短短60年（从20年代到80年代）又冒出一个Terry Teachout。

对此君进行“知人论世”，该君29岁就成了Harper's Magazine的editor；才华横溢，批评家、传记作家、博客。

维基记载此君为“the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal, the chief culture critic of Commentary, and the author of "Sightings," a column about the arts in America that appears biweekly in the Saturday Wall Street Journal.”为什么Saul Bellow对Terry Teachout 心存芥蒂呢？原来（22）此人对倡导原子文化，强调人的个性独立的流行文化（而非传统的主流文化）推崇备至。

在Terry Teachout 看来，（23）艺术形式就是科学技术。

具体地说就是（24）将来电影可以下载。

在上个世纪80年代，电脑不像现在这么普及和发达，而Teachout却能做出如此大胆，而且如此准确的预测。

想想现在的Mp3，Mp4和Mp5.设备，想想avi，rmvb，rm等格式的电影电视节目，实在让人佩服之至啊。

难道Teachout的预测不准确吗？正如他的预测（25），科学技术的确将我们引入了一个新的时代，你可以到影院去看《唐山大地震》，我可以在网络上看《唐山大地震》，而他可以买《唐山大地震》的碟子回去慢慢欣赏。

仔细想象，当今网络时代信息如此丰富，还有多少人去买书读书呢？此段作者虽然看似客观陈述事实，心中毕竟还是有点不满。

于是乎，Bellow 开始挑刺了，文人挑刺有两种方式，1）对对方的观点的挑刺；2）对对方观点的证据挑刺；只要任何一点有挑出纰漏，观点自然不成立了。

当对对方观点无法驳倒时，就无理取闹地爆粗口：滚你妈的蛋，施本格勒。

不过，挑证据的刺就容易多了。

欲知Bellow是怎样挑Teachout观点的证据的刺，且看下段分解。

（26）In support of this argument, Mr. Teachout cites the ominous drop in the volume of book sales and the great increase in movie attendance: “For Americans under the age of 30, film has replaced the novel as the dom inant mode of artistic expression.” （27）To this Mr. Teachout adds that popular novelists like Tom Clancy and Stephen King “top out at around a million copies per book,” and notes, “The final episode of NBC’s ‘Cheer,’ by contrast, was seen by 42 million people.”
【段落分析6】：（26）作者此段开头用了一个介词短语In support of this argument，心中酸楚尽显，你Teachout为了证明自己的观点，居然用书籍和电影的销售数量来说话，你怎么不用从乡野村夫到总统的林肯来做证据呢，能成为一国总统，可不是现代科学技术的功能而是读书的功劳。

你居然说还拿（27）Tom Clancy and Stephen King的小说和NBC的Episode的读者观众数量巨额差异来说事。

你现代科学技术能培养出一个林肯来吗？
（28）On majoritarian grounds, the movies win.（29）“The power of novels to shape the national conversation has declined,” says Mr. Teachout. （30）But I am not at all certain that in their day “Moby-Dick” or “The Scarlet Letter” had any considerable influence on “the national conversation.” （31）In the mid-19th century it was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” that impressed the great public. “Moby-Dick” was a small public novel.
【段落分析7】你不就说拿数量说事嘛（28），不外乎就是，（29）未能产生轰动效应嘛，虽说（30）“Moby-Dick” or “The Scarlet Letter”这两部小说是否产生你认为的轰动效应，我不敢肯定，但是我要告诉你的是，（31）19
世纪中叶的小说“Uncle Tom’s Cabin”，导致了“洛阳纸贵”，产生了“全民热议”。

当然了，“Moby-Dick”的读者数量要少些。

（32）The literary masterpieces of the 20th century were for the most part the work of novelists who had no large public in mind. （33）The novels of Proust and Joyce were written in a cultural twilight and were not intended to be read under the blaze and dazzle of popularity.
【段落分析8】：要知道，（32）20世纪的文学巨著，绝大多数作者写作时并没有想去取悦和迎合读者去写作，而是发自内心的，对时代、文化、人类自身的思索。

（33）Proust如此，Joyce也是如此。

看看，你Teachout所主张的只强调自我而对整个人类不负责任的原子文化。

你那种以销售数量为标准的玩意儿能产生出对整个人类都产生巨大影响的东西来吗？
（34）Mr. Teachout’s article in The Journal follows the path generally taken by observers whose aim is to discover a trend. （35）“According to one recent study 55 percent of Americans spend less than 30 minutes reading anything at all…. It may even be that movies have superseded novels not because American have grown dumber but because the novel is an obsolete artistic technology.”
（36）“We are not accustomed to thinking of art forms as technologies,” he says, “but that is what they are, which means they have been rendered moribund by new technical developments.”
【段落分析9】你Teachout作为the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal, the chief culture critic of Commentary, （34）不外乎就是想通过数量来窥视人们的思想动态嘛，你不就是想说（35）当今美国人喜欢看电影，而不太爱看书嘛，你不就是想说小说过时了嘛，何必一定要冠冕堂皇地说according to one recent study。

（36）居然还假心心地说，我们还不太习惯于把艺术形式当做科学技术，但你骨子里就是这样认为的what they are，你不就是想说当今社会影视已经逼死了小说吗，何必冠之以new technical developments，你真够虚伪的。

（37）Together with this emphasis on technics that attracts the scientific-minded young, there are other preferences discernible: （38）It is better to do as a majority of your contemporaries are doing, better to be one of millions viewing a film than one of mere thousands reading a book.（39）Moreover, the reader reads in solitude, whereas the viewer belongs to a great majority; he has powers of numerosity as well as the powers of mechanization. （40）Add to this the importance of avoiding technological obsolescence and the attraction of feeling that technics
will decide questions for us more dependably than the thinking of an individual, no matter how distinctive he may be.
【段落分析10】：你不就是想说，（37）科学技术对年轻人很吸引人嘛，不过，你话中还有话，（38）人要随大流，不要去看书，而是要去看电影嘛。

（39）你居然还说什么“读者读书独自赏，而观者观看大众乐” 还说什么“观众人多势众，且有机械化之优势”，你有意思吗？（40）你又何必用冠冕堂皇术语“科学技术”来唬人吧，你他妈的忒毒了，真能忽悠呀，你走你的路，干嘛让我无路可走啊，我作家喝西北风啊。

但我就偏不信邪，不信啊，让我一一道来。

（41）John Cheever told me long ago that it was his readers who kept him going, people from every part of the country who had written to him. （42）When he was at work, he was aware of these readers and correspondents in the woods beyond the lawn. （43）“If I couldn’t picture them, I’d be sunk,” he said.（44） And the novelist Wright Morris, urging me to get an electric typewriter, said that he seldom turned his machine off. “When I’m not writing, I listen to the electricity,” he said. “It keeps me company. We have conversations.”
【段落分析11】（41）你丫能，能过John Cheever吗？小说写得老好了。

他告诉我，说他不停地写啊写，因为他的读者粉丝老多了。

（42）多到边远山区，草坪森林无处不有。

（43）而且John Cheever写作很敬业的。

当然还有（44）Wright Morris也鼓励我去买打字机，还以他为例说，他从不关打字机，打字机就是他，他就是打字机，二者融为一体，多敬业啊，多有个性啊。

你Teachout 不是主张人的个性吗？难道John Cheever，Wright Morris没有读者粉丝群，他们没有个性？
（45）I wonder how Mr. Teachout might square such idiosyncrasies with his “art forms as technologies.” （46）Perhaps he would argue that these two writers had somehow isolated themselves from “broad-based cultural influence.” （47） Mr. Teachout has at least one laudable purpose: He thinks that he sees a way to bring together the Great Public of the movies with the Small Public of the highbrows. （48）He is, however, interested in millions: millions of dollars, millions of readers, millions of viewers.
（49）The one thing “everybody” does is go to the movies, Mr. Teachout says. How right he is.
【段落分析12】（45）你不是说“艺术形式不过是科学技术”吗？你把艺术看得这么简单化，那我倒要看看你怎么用艺术形式不过是科学技术解释上面提到的那些人的个性？（46）也许，你会说，这两位作家与主流文化的确有点格格不入才使得个性张扬。

（47）不过，你Teachout还是有一点良心，没有让作家无路可走，企图调和电影大众与小说小众的关系。

（48）不过，你小子又太在乎数
字了，来不来就用“数以百万”一词来说事。

（49）你说得也有一定道理，只要到电影院就明白了。

（50）Back in the 20’s children between the ages of 8 and 12 lined up on Saturdays to buy their nickel tickets to see the crisis of last Saturday resolved. The heroine was untied in a matter of seconds just before the locomotive would have crushed her. Then came a new episode; and after that the newsreel and “Our Gang.” Finally there was a western with Tom Mix, or a Janet Gaynor picture about a young bride and her husband blissful in the attic, or Gloria Swanson and Theda Bara or Wallace Beery or Adolphe Menjou or Marie Dressler. And of course there was Charlie Cahplin in “The Gold Rush,” and from “The Gold Rush” it was only one step to the stories of Jack London.
【段落分析13】：说到看电影，让我Bellow想起了（50）20年代看电影的事情。

（51）There was no rivalry then between the viewer and the reader. （52）Nobody supervised our reading. We were on our own. We civilized ourselves. We found or made a mental and imaginative life. （53）Because we could read, we learned also to write. （54）It did not confuse me to see “Treasure Island” in the movies and then read the book. There was no competition for our attention.
【段落分析14】：我承认电影吸引人，（51）但20年代，小说和电影并不存在拉客现象，读者与观众也不存在对立现象。

（52）那时，读书纯属自愿，无人敦促，自我熏陶，过着一种精神生活。

（53）但那时读书的确有不少好处，能读自然能写。

（54）那时看同名电影和小说，并无区别，不存在比较好坏。

（55）One of the more attractive oddities of the US is that our minorities are so numerous, so huge. A minority of millions is not at all unusual. But there are in fact millions of literate Americans in a state of separation from others of their kind. （56）They are, if you like, the readers of Cheever, a crowd of them too large to be hidden in the woods. （57）Departments of literature across the country have not succeeded in alienating them from books, works old and new. （58）My friend Keith Botsford and I felt strongly that if the woods were filled with readers gone astray, among those readers there were probably writers as well.
【段落分析15】（55）美国与其他国家不同，是一个多元社会，奇人异事不少，小众群体数量多，但彼此分散，难成统一的主流文化。

尽管如此（56）他们都喜欢Cheever，读者大城市有之不说，边远山区，森林草坪之中也不乏有之。

（57）像施本格勒之流的高校老师，无论怎么鼓吹文化已经没落，但是到处都有Cheeve的读者粉丝。

（58）我与老友常想，要是迷惘的读者能读书该多好，博
览群书自成作家啊。

可是，我这些老家伙，江郎才尽了，怎样才能培养新的作家呢？
（59）To learn in detail of their existence you have only to publish a magazine like The Republic of Letters. （60）Given encouragement, unknown writers, formerly without hope, materialize. （61）One early reader wrote that our paper, “with its contents so fresh, person-to-person,” was “real, non-synthetic, undistracting.” Noting that there were no ads, she asked, “Is it possible, can it last?” and called it “an antidote to the shrinking o f the human being in every one of us” And toward the end of her letter our correspondent added, “It behooves the elder generation to come up with reminders of who we used to be and need to be.”
【段落分析16】（59）其实，很简单，出一本杂志，比如The Republic of Letters 一类的杂志，（60）一旦得到鼓励，那些名不见经传的作者，必将美梦成真。

举例说明吧（61）。

（62）This is what Keith Botsford and I had hoped that our “tabloid for literatures” would be. And for two years it has been just that. （63）We are a pair of utopian codgers who feel we have a duty to literature.（64） I hope we are not like those human do-gooders who, when the horse was vanishing, still donated troughs in City Hall Square for thirsty nags.
【段落分析17】写了这么多，目的就一个，（62）我要推销《文人小报》，（63）杂志有崇高目的，而非电影一般赚取数以百万的美金为目的。

（64）说一点期望。

（65）We have no way of guessing how many independent, self-initiated connoisseurs and lovers of literature have survived in remote corners of the country. （66）The little evidence we have suggests that they are glad to find us, they are grateful.（67） They want more than they are getting. （68） Ingenious technology has failed to give them what they so badly need.
【段落分析18】聊些担忧：（65）杂志的担忧一：读者将有多少，不得而知。

（66）担忧之二：能否满足读者的胃口，不得而知。

（67）读者的胃口是欲壑难填啊，（68）科学技术不管如何精湛，都难以满足读者迫切的需求。