[2011.10.15] 带翼之词

引用 yannanchen 2011-12-17 20:08

本帖最后由 yannanchen 于 2011-12-17 20:53 编辑

no more than a splinter
碎木片， 尤其指嵌在手指上的木刺
At last they understand you’re no more than a splinter, bumping up against the wide legs of a woodsman who fells a tree with his axe.  
http://www.massreview.org/news/erri-de-luca-wind-your-face

引用 yannanchen 2011-12-17 20:25

Both Mr Verity and Mr Mitchell give Hecuba’s speech to her husband, Priam, when he tells her of going to retrieve their son Hector’s body from Achilles, a certain shrillness not necessarily heard in the Greek. “Good God! Are you out of your mind?” wails Mr Mitchell’s version, while Mr Verity’s is similarly brusque: “You are mad! Where has your good sense gone…” In contrast, Lattimore captures something far nearer to the original, a mother mourning her son’s death: “Ah me, where has that wisdom gone for which you were famous?” Homer’s epic is not just composed of harridan wives and brave men. It encompasses the whole messy breadth of humanity, and so needs a decent translation to bring this about.

评论： 前两位译者错将母亲讲的话安在父亲身上。 后一位译者才真正搞对了。

引用 yannanchen 2011-12-17 20:45

As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity. The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning. So one generation of men will grow while another dies.
VI. 146-150

引用 yannanchen 2011-12-17 21:00

本帖最后由 yannanchen 于 2011-12-17 21:40 编辑

that delights in the unexpected. 在一些出乎意料的地方出彩
好啊， 真出彩。

文学评论最难译了。从不敢试。

引用 yannanchen 2011-12-17 21:04

本帖最后由 yannanchen 于 2011-12-17 21:08 编辑

red-faced - (especially of the face) reddened or suffused with or as if with blood from emotion or exertion; "crimson with fury"; "turned red from exertion"; "with puffy reddened eyes"; "red-faced and violent"; "flushed (or crimson) with embarrassment"
未必一定就是愤怒，
Diomedes kills “Red-faced quietly like a butcher keeping up with his order”.
我怀疑这里的red-faced 形单意复， 指的是多个敌国的士兵， 脸红不是愤怒， 而是吃力， 面对Diomedes， 他们只有怕的分， 哪有愤怒的资格？说它是复数， 是因为，like a butcher keeping up with his order， 屠夫要应付订单， 是要不断地杀的。

引用 yannanchen 2011-12-17 21:16

Winged Words
widely used apt words, figurative expressions, sayings of historical figures, short quotations, and names of mythological or literary figures that have become part of common usage. For example, “high-sounding nonsense” (M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin), “And who are the judges?” (A. S. Gribo-edov), “Hercules,” and “Oblomov.”

Winged words have their origin in classical and biblical myths, folklore, works of fiction, scholarly literature, journalism, memoirs, and speeches of political and social figures: “I came, I saw, I conquered” (Julius Caesar); “Appetite comes with eating” (F. Rabelais); “Administrative delight” (F. M. Dostoevskii); “From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step” (Napoleon). Certain winged words are not direct quotations from a definite source; rather, they are figurative expressions that are derived from a source and metaphorically convey its general sense: “forbidden fruit” (from biblical mythology), “Potemkin villages” (from 18th century memoirs). These expressions have long since lost direct ties with their original sources and with each historical period have acquired new meanings in conformity with the social and historical conditions of the time.

In their structure, winged words may be complete utterances such as “Après moi, le déluge” (Louis XV), phrases, or individual words that may be composed of the most varied syntactical elements, such as the word manilovshchina (Manilovism: smug complacency, inactivity, futile daydreaming; from Mani-lov, a character in Gogol’s Dead Souls). Winged words are the subject of studies of phraseology.

引用 yannanchen 2011-12-17 21:18

Winged words are words which, first uttered or written in a specific literary context, have since passed into common usage to express a general idea—sometimes to the extent that those using them are unaware of their origin as quotations.[citation needed] The reference is to words, which having "taken wing" in this way, then fly from one person to another.

The expression—deriving from the Homeric phrase ἔπεα πτερόεντα (epea pteroenta)[1] and now itself an example of "winged words"—was first employed systematically in this sense by the German philologist Georg Büchmann in his book Geflügelte Worte (1864). It was later taken up by Thomas Carlyle in an essay about Walter Scott.

引用 yannanchen 2011-12-17 21:31

本帖最后由 yannanchen 于 2011-12-17 21:38 编辑

Ms Oswald translates Homer’s similes literally, but paraphrases the rest, creating a modernised version that delights in the unexpected. She brings the poem’s violence shockingly to life: a figure dies as quickly as “a lift door closing”, suddenly obscured from view, while another soldier, stripping the dead, has “tin-opened them out of their armour”. Diomedes kills “Red-faced quietly like a butcher keeping up with his order”. Ms Oswald is aware that these characters can at times seem more horrific than heroic: “This is horrible this is some kind of bloodfeast”. And Hector waits for Achilles, “Like a man rushing in leaving his motorbike running”, both arrogant and charming at once.奥斯沃尔德把荷马的比喻直译，但是对其它部份进行了意译。这就创造了一个现代版本，在一些出乎意料的地方出彩。她将诗歌中的暴力令人震惊地写活了：一个人物死亡的速度就如“一扇电梯门关上”一样快，突然就从眼前消逝了，而另一名战士，正在剥下尸体身上的盔甲，在“将他们的盔甲如罐头般打开”。狄俄墨得斯杀死一个“愤怒士兵就如屠夫正在赶他的订单一样”。奥斯沃尔德明白这些角色有时看上去更给人以恐怖的感觉，而不像英雄：“这太可怕了，这是某种血宴”。而赫克托尔等待阿喀琉斯时就“如同一个人把摩托车留在外面没熄火，直直冲了进来”，同时给人以傲慢和迷人的感觉。
这段话值得研究。
Ms Oswald translates Homer’s similes literally, but paraphrases the rest,这句话我觉得原文有错。
直译其比喻， 其余的则意译。 什么意思？
荷马的史诗进行分类， 难道就是 比喻和其他， 也就是 比喻和非比喻？
译者对比喻处用直译， 非比喻处用意译？
首先， 把一个史诗分割成比喻和非比喻是不伦不类的。第二， 一个译者不可能是把所有的比喻都直译， 所有的非比喻（那将是90%以上的大部分）都意译。全称判断是非常危险的事情。 一个反例就可以推翻。最著名的不过“马列主义是放之四海而皆准”， “伟光正”
再看别的实例：a figure dies as quickly as “a lift door closing”, suddenly obscured from view, 这是比喻吧？ 翻译的方法这里显然不是直译， 古时何曾有电梯？ 显然， 这就是paraphrase， 用现代的比喻改写。
综上所述， 我提出一个观点： 原文应当写成：Ms Oswald translates some of Homer’s similes literally, but paraphrases the rest, creating a modernised version that delights in the unexpected
一旦这样改了， 我们的着眼点就不是荷马的全诗， 而是其中的比喻。 有的比喻， 其余的比喻。

欢迎辩论。
我的观点建立在这样的假设上：老美（英）的英文可能比我好，但是他们的逻辑却大有可能逊于我。 一旦逻辑错了， 英文再好也是错。

引用 nayilus 2011-12-18 03:32

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我翻的时候因为splinter有碎石碎木的意思，这么看来还是译成木刺较好。

另：我参考的是罗念生老先生的中译本，其中这一句注释是“原文晦涩难懂，不得其意”，因为罗老是从希腊文译的，我不知道splinter是不是正确的译法。

引用 nayilus 2011-12-18 03:34

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不对，这是 give Hecuba’s (speech to her husband, Priam) a certain shrillness
这句很有名，不可能译成普里阿摩斯说的。

引用 Chester99 2011-12-18 08:57

引用 Chester99 2011-12-19 10:28

文章翻译的好！谨代表个人意见，希望牛人不要干涉连一个自由评论都要以某种特定的形式来表达，再加一句，我不欢迎你的回复

引用 理想乡 2011-12-19 19:47

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我同意你的观点，不过有一点我想说：
我觉得作为翻译，应该还原原文，即使逻辑错误，我觉得也要照错误翻，而你这可以在注解处说明。

至少我一直以来是这个理念，此理念若有不妥，欢迎版主纠正

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