Passage Translation

Outline

I. Definitions of a passage/text/discourse/utterance

II. Levels of translation

III. Passage translation

1. Comprehension stage

A. Words in the context

B. Logic analysis

C. Pragmatic analysis

2. Representation stage

A. Creating / Intensifying the atmosphere

B. Meeting the style

C. Cohesion & coherence

What is a passage / text / discourse / utterance?

As linguistic concepts:

• passage – written, consisting of paragraphs;

• text – usu. written, may be a word / phrase / sentence / paragraph / book;

• discourse – usu. the broadest concept;

• utterance – usu. the spoken, may be a word / phrase / speech

Basis of passage translation:

Word translation Sentence translation

• Semantic analysis

• collocation

Techniques?

• analysis – gr. & sem.

• restructuring

Techniques?

• What calls for the attention?

• What strategies to adopt?

Comprehension stage:

• Understanding words in the whole context• life / ambition• “leadership” in On Leadership; • “Typical,” in There Is Only Luck; • “make choices” in A Valentine to One Who

Cared – Too Much; • “won’t power / will power” in Rules Every

Achiever Knows• “discipline” in Rules Every Achiever Knows• “yes / no” in Rules Every Achiever Knows• “delay gratification” in Rules Every Achiever

Knows


• Understanding words in the whole context• Logic analysis

• I was thinking, they could be saying all of this over my dead body

• People all over the neighborhood had called to report our screams

• I remembered this same scene as it had been in the summer, l remembered my first glimpse of the river.

• To us it was just another place on the map.


• Understanding words in the whole context• Logic analysis• Pragmatic analysis

• My son was born in this town.• but she could never really understand.• And now, it’s raining, again.• A young widow with three children decided to

invest her insurance settlement in a college education for herself. She considered the realities of a tight budget and little free time, but …

Representation stage

• Words / structures for the atmosphere

• 看到他们都走了，我反倒觉得高兴。他们一直在喋喋不休地谈论着什么要刑罚更严哪，要恢复死刑哪，总统将要来个什么全国大肃清哪。……激愤之下，我把本应针对歹徒的怨忿一下子转向了这些心安理得的人。这群人只会站在自己温暖舒适的家门口，空谈着自己要买什么样的枪支。枪支对于我和杰瑞米又有何益处？

• Judy 喂鸭一段如何遣词渲染气氛？什么气氛？• 艾勒立即冲过桥去，越过栏杆，奔向水边。艾勒在岸上无法安全地把小孩救上来，于是他就步入河中。



• Words / structures for the style and rhetoric

• 原先没有开门的邻居们现在倒是挥着棒球棒出来了，还帮着杰瑞米找到了眼镜和钥匙。

• 我伏在桥栏上，凝望着桥下。桥下的河水阴沉暗淡，没有一丝意趣。桥头的路灯洒着幽幽的寒光，寒光下的霜花晶晶闪亮。远处灯火烁烁，透着融融的暖意；桥上却空空荡荡，冷冷清清。

• 领导艺术全在于使下级工作人员不断发挥所长，帮助他们最大限度地发掘潜力，激励他们为共同事业而奋斗。

• 人们会把别人的成就归功于其脑子灵、身体壮以及运气好，而籍由自己并不具备这三者优势而为自己开脱。当然，这并不是说，……，而是说，……。




• 我的头一条忠告是，你可得要挑选好你的先人啊。我的父母年纪轻轻就去世了，可是说到祖辈，我还是选得不错了。 /我想吃什么就吃什么，想喝什么就喝什么，眼睛睁不开了就睡觉，从来不为对身体有益而搞什么活动。

• 我想一个人能做到对合适的活动兴趣盎然、不计较个人得失，那么，他就极易享有成功的晚年，因为长期积累的经验在此可以结出累累硕果，而由经验产生的智慧在此时既有用武之地，而又不至咄咄逼人。




• (大河上下，歌声起伏。 ) 或许，那是船夫们唱的歌谣，响亮而有力。他们一边唱着，一边划着船顺着急流而下——船的一端高高翘着，船的桅杆斜向一边。或许，那是纤夫们唱的调子，沉雄而急促。他们一边唱着，一边奋力地拖着船逆流而上……

• ( 沿河上下，你都能听见那歌声。 )你有时会听见船夫们一边响亮有力地唱着，一边划着船顺着急流而下——船的一端高高翘着，船的桅杆斜向一边；有时又会听见纤夫们一边唱着更加急促的调子，一边奋力地拖着船逆流而上……




• What is difference in style among the following passages?

1) There Is Only Luck 2) Good-bye / A Valentine to One Who Cared – Too Much

3) Four Years of College, Why? 4) On Leadership / Rules Every Achiever Knows 5) The Song of the River• Is “How to Grow Old” wholly in the same style?• Reorganization in the tr. of The Song of the River




• Cohesion & coherence

In Contrastive Rhetoric: Cross-Cultural Aspects of Second-Language Writing, Ulla Connor defines cohesion as "the use of explicit linguistic devices to signal relations between sentences and parts of texts." These cohesive devices are phrases or words that help the reader associate previous statements with subsequent ones.

In Cohesion in English, M.A. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan identify five general categories of cohesive devices that signal coherence in texts: 1) reference 2) ellipsis 3) substitution 4) lexical cohesion 5) conjunction What about in Chinese?

In Text and Context: Explorations in the Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse, Teun A. van Dijk (p. 93) argues convincingly that coherence is a semantic property of discourse formed through the interpretation of each individual sentence relative to the interpretation of other sentences, with "interpretation" implying interaction between the text and the reader.

Examples from previous practice:

• 2nd-3rd paragraphs in There Is Only Luck – How to deal with that many “I remember …”?

• 2nd paragraph in Good-bye – reorganization of sentences in Chinese;

• Over there was light and the hint of warmth. Out here on the bridge it was lonely and cold. 远处灯火烁烁，透着融融的暖意；桥上却空空荡荡，冷冷清清

• It was all the more surprising because we had both forgotten that this was a riverside town. 原来这是个河滨小镇，我和朱迪居然都给忘了！

• 题目虽然这样写，实际上本文所要谈的却是人怎样才可以不老。

Examples from previous practice:

• 有些老人为死的恐惧所困扰。如果年轻人有这种恐惧，那倒无可厚非。年轻人有理由害怕战死沙场；当他们想到被骗走了生命所能给予的美好生活，他们有理由愤愤不平。但对于一个备尝人生甘苦，业已完成该做的一切的老人来说，怕死就有点不大可取了。

• This is nothing like back home in Colorado. // We have rains there, too.这跟家乡科罗拉多的情况迥然不同。 // 科罗拉多也下雨。

• We will achieve this only if we apply our will and work at it. // How can we acquire stick-to-itiveness?唯有坚持不懈方能事有所成。 //如何才能坚持不懈呢？

Relationship between cohesion & coherence:

A text may be cohesive without necessarily being coherent: Cohesion does not spawn coherence. "Cohesion," Connor writes, "is determined by lexically and grammatically overt intersentential relationships, whereas coherence is based on semantic relationships."

Ex. 2A: Can you go to Edinburgh tomorrow?B: B.E.A. pilots are on strike.

Ex. 1 I bought a Ford. The car in which President Wilson rode down the Chaps Elysees was black. Black English has been widely discussed. The discussions between the presidents ended last week. A week has seven days. Every day I feed my cat. Cats have four legs. The cat is on the mat. Mat has three letters.

More examples for cohesion and coherence

Large clouds play tag in the sky overhead, while at the opposite end of the field, the stern chiefs of local villages sit dressed in traditional robes, each carrying a staff topped by a gild talisman of authority. 头顶上，大片的白云在蓝天里追逐嬉戏；白云下，当地的村长们身着传统的长袍，手握顶端镶有镀金护符的权杖，正襟危坐。原文中 while是一个表示时间概念的连接副词，不仅连接两个分句，而且使两个分句的内容相互衬托。译文没有使用表示时间对比的“而”字，而采用空间对比办法，用“白云下”与“头顶上”相呼应。


Mr. Kirsch, having lost all his money by this time, followed his master out into the moonlight, where the illuminations were winking out. (from Vanity Fair) 基希先生这时输得两手空空，便跟着主人走出屋来；月光下，彩灯闪闪烁烁，渐渐熄灭。

译文用分号把人物活动和环境描写拆开来译，译文顺畅明了。同时把“月光下”置于两个分句之间，又加强了语篇的衔接，使人物活动和环境描写有机地连结在一起。


He took out his key and opened the door, and we all went to a stone hall, and bare gloomy and little used. (from Great Expectation) 句中跟在 a stone hall 后面的是环境描写部分， went是人物的行为。这种人物行为和环境描写交织在一起的信息内容，英语可用一句话一口气说完，汉语却不同，需要增加一些词。

他取出钥匙开了门，大家跟着走进一间石头砌成的大厅，里面空无人物，阴森森的，看来平时绝少有人。

“ 里面”一词承上启下，由人物活动自然引入环境描写。


One moment he’s in China. The next he’s in Panama. Then, almost before you know it, Carter is swooping down on Africa. And this week, the former president is to convene negotiations between the government of Ethiopia and the Eritrean ( 厄立特里亚，埃塞俄比亚北部一省 , 濒临红海 ) rebels. 卡特一会儿跑到中国，一会儿跑到巴拿马，后来又神不知鬼不觉地对非洲来个突然袭击，而本周，这位美国前总统将把埃塞俄比亚政府和厄立特里亚的反政府分子召集在一起，进行谈判。

译文完全再现了译文的时空关系。为了加强译文的内聚力，增加一个“又”字，取消了中间的三个句号。


Without a steady supply of fresh blood, without the oxygen it carries, the human brain is quickly impaired. In four minutes, brain cells, starved for oxygen, begin to die, and serious brain damage results. In another few minutes, the brain is completely destroyed. This was the crux of a stubborn problem. The heart could not be taken out of action for more than four minutes – very little time to repair a heart defect. Until a solution could be found, operation on the open heart would be impossible.


人脑如果得不到稳定的新鲜血液，得不到血液中的氧，就会很快受到损伤。大脑细胞缺氧四分钟后就开始死亡，导致严重的脑损伤。如果缺氧时间再长几分钟，大脑就彻底损坏了。心脏停止跳动不能超过四分钟。问题难就难在这里。用这点时间来修补心脏的缺陷是远远不够的。不解决这个棘手的问题，就不能打开心脏进行手术。

这两段文字形式上似乎没有什么联系，但语义上的联系是紧密的。第一段讲大脑，第二段讲心脏。第一段的关键词是“血液”和“氧”，而供血（血液中含氧）正是心脏的功能。语义的这种连贯在原文中明显地反映出来。翻译这样的段落时，要把主题语提到段落的前面，以加强段落间意念上的联系。上述两段段首的“大脑”和“心脏”两句就是如此。

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Passage Translation