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English to Chinese: 5th ProZ.com Translation Contest - Entry #3139
Source text - English All travel is now merely a means of moving a camera from place to place, all travellers are ruled by the all-powerful lens. Visitors old-fashioned enough to wish only to stand and look with their anachronistic eyes are shoved aside by the photographers, who take it for granted that while they do their ritual focusing, nothing else may move or cross their vision. Those peculiar souls without a camera must step aside for those more properly occupied, must wait while the rituals take place, and must bide their time while whole coaches stop and unleash upon the landscape the Instamatic God. And the populations of whole countries seeing themselves cannibalised, swallowed up, vacuumed into the black-ringed staring eye, wrench what they can from the cannibals. You want picture my house, my camel? You pay.
None of this would matter, perhaps, if anything worthwhile was being accomplished. If all the constant busyness and clicking produced, at its end, what had not existed before, images of beauty captured or truth told. But, sadly, this isn't so. The camera is simply graffiti made respectable.
The camera is the means by which we stamp ourselves on everything we see, under cover of recording the Wonders of the World already wonderfully
recorded by professionals and on sale at every corner bookshop and newsagent. But what use to show Aunt Maud, back home, postcards of the Tuscan landscape, since we are not in the picture to prove that we were there?
No stretch of rocks has verity unless I am within it. No monument exists
but for my wife, leaning against it. No temple is of interest without my face beside it, grinning. With my camera I appropriate everything beautiful, possess it, shrink it, domesticate it, and reproduce it on my blank sitting-room wall to prove to a selected audience of friends and family the one absolutely vital fact about these beauties: I saw them, I was there, I photographed them, and, ergo, they are.
from "Amateur Photography: the World as it isn't and our Fred" by Jill Tweedie in the Guardian
Translation - Chinese 今时今日,旅行仅是将相机从一处移到另一处的方式。旅行者无不受全能的镜头摆布。参观者若十足老古董——只希望站一站,用不入时的眼睛看一看—— 终会被摄影家们挤到一边。摄影家们仪式化地调焦时,理所当然闲杂人等不可穿插进他们的视野。不带相机的异类,应当让位给装备更妥当者;应当等候摄影家的仪式开始;应当费时守候整车人马停下来对着风景祭出“傻瓜式”神圣。遍乡全民,在黑光圈前,皆遭蚕食、吞噬、掏空,却只图算计从蚕食者所获为何。想照俺房子、骆驼?交钱!
先说我一些犯难之处。首先即是标题。通读上下文,也难全部明了为何有此标题。虽然完整的原稿结尾处有此标题句出现:" ... That is the summit of the amateur photographer's art - total unreality. (The World As It Isn't, and our Fred).Travel with camera wonderfully narrows the mind", 并在文中大写,也难知此言出处,此意为何。唯感觉哲学意义深厚,只好以空释空,以色释色,以糊涂释糊涂,借用佛谒 “ 如是世界 ”,以“ 世界非如是 ” 解读"The World As It Isn't"。至于 “and our Fred" 更费参详。考虑到《卫报》(Guardian) 原为《曼彻斯特卫报》(The Manchester Guardian),而红魔曼彻斯特队的吉祥物名为"Fred", 或许这跟标题勉强有些联系。看看近期英国为不能出征欧洲杯举国悲伤,若这篇文章不是年代久远,作者估计也不免俗,会对足球发烧。既然我有此歪解,并顺着之前借佛释义的手法,索性说佛说到底,用 "如来菩萨“ 来指吉祥,求个意境,至于忤了多少原意,也懒得顾了。
作者其他有讲究之处,还有"and, ergo, they are." 这恐怕化用了笛卡尔的“我思故我在" (Cogito, ergo sum) (I think therefore I am). 作者信手拈来,哲思深邃,但估计要难为译友。此外,像讽刺傻瓜相机的"Instamatic God",描述乡民(the populations of whole countries) 斤斤计较说话时的不规范语法 "want picture“,都值得翻译时斟酌体会。
另外,proz出题所作的删改,也精心设置了不少陷阱。比如 " If all the constant busyness and clicking produced, at its end, what had not existed before, images of beauty captured or truth told" 之后省去 "then who could complain?" 从而使文意中断,翻译时需要自行补充。同样的,“ The camera is simply graffiti made respectable” 之后省略一段阐述"made respectable"的原文:" Nice people do not cut their initials on walls any more. Nice people aim their lenses, develop their film, and prove in that way the same age-old human message - Kilroy Was Here. " 翻译就要自行拿捏 “made respectable"的精确含义。另外像 "cannibals. (You want take picture me? You pay.) You want picture my house, my camel? ..." 和 " ... newsagent. (But what use to us an illustrated book of perfect photographs? ) What use to show Aunt Maud ..." 之类的省略,也考验在更少的原文时如何准确理解和推测原意。
English to Chinese: 7th ProZ.com Translation Contest - Entry #5554
Source text - English Winters used to be cold in England. We, my parents especially, spent them watching the wrestling. The wrestling they watched on their black-and-white television sets on Saturday afternoons represented a brief intrusion of life and colour in their otherwise monochrome lives. Their work overalls were faded, the sofa cover—unchanged for years—was faded, their memories of the people they had been before coming to England were fading too. My parents, their whole generation, treadmilled away the best years of their lives toiling in factories for shoddy paypackets. A life of drudgery, of deformed spines, of chronic arthritis, of severed hands. They bit their lips and put up with the pain. They had no option but to. In their minds they tried to switch off—to ignore the slights of co-workers, not to bridle against the glib cackling of foremen, and, in the case of Indian women, not to fret when they were slapped about by their husbands. Put up with the pain, they told themselves, deal with the pain—the shooting pains up the arms, the corroded hip joints, the back seizures from leaning over sewing machines for too many years, the callused knuckles from handwashing clothes, the rheumy knees from scrubbing the kitchen floor with their husbands' used underpants.
When my parents sat down to watch the wrestling on Saturday afternoons, milky cardamon tea in hand, they wanted to be entertained, they wanted a laugh. But they also wanted the good guy, just for once, to triumph over the bad guy. They wanted the swaggering, braying bully to get his come-uppance. They prayed for the nice guy, lying there on the canvas, trapped in a double-finger interlock or clutching his kidneys in agony, not to submit. If only he could hold out just a bit longer, bear the pain, last the course. If only he did these things, chances were, wrestling being what it was, that he would triumph. It was only a qualified victory, however. You'd see the winner, exhausted, barely able to wave to the crowd. The triumph was mainly one of survival.
Translation - Chinese 英格兰昔日常有的寒冬时节里,我们一家子靠观看摔跤比赛来消磨时光,我的父母尤其钟情如此。礼拜六下午在黑白电视里看到的摔跤比赛,勉强给他们带来一丁点儿变化与色彩,否则他们的生活将一如既往单调无光。他们的工作,总的说来乏味平淡;就连他们躺着的沙发,沙发布经年未换,已经褪色暗淡;而他们来英格兰之前是何等摸样,印象也正依稀惨淡。我的父母亲,连同那整整一辈人,只为那微薄寒酸的工资条,将生命中最好的年华,消耗在了工厂里单调不变、没有尽头、辛辛苦苦的劳作中。一辈子苦工,换来的是脊梁弯曲、慢性关节炎乃至双手残疾的命运。可他们除了咬紧嘴唇、忍受痛苦,别无他法。按他们的想法,唯有对周遭际遇表示麻木 --- 对同事的怠慢轻视已习以为常;领班尖牙利嘴劈里啪啦的训斥声中,他们不敢昂头还以脸色;还有,若是印度妇女,被丈夫粗暴对待也只能逆来顺受。不管是手臂刺痛、臀关节磨损、还是因为太多年伏在缝纫机上落下后背痉挛的病根、抑或是洗衣服洗出的指节老茧、还是用自家男人废弃不用的短裤抹地弄得膝盖湿淋淋,他们始终告诫自己,要忍受痛苦,要化解苦难。
Specialty: Finance and IT, particularly mobile internet related materials.
Client Companies: Huawei, Lenovo,Moody, Fidelity, Intel, Phillips, etc.
Client Agencies: Asian Absolute; TTD; Celeston; Jingwen; HBY; Maxsun; Exodus Trans, Inc., Taiwan, etc.
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