e we do translations.
Suppose we read from a book that ‘这个人身高五英尺六英寸’(‘This man is five feet six
inches tall.’), we Chinese will can’t help wondering what exact the height he is. And
for the first time we learn that ‘它有16盎斯重’(‘It weights 16 ounces.), in fact we
don’t know it really weights 28.35 grams. To solve these problems, the most popular
means the translators adopt is to add a footnote saying ‘5 feet 6 inches is equal to
1.68 meters.’, or ’16 ounces is equal to 28.5 grams.’. In most cases this adoption
will achieve the original faithfulness, but under certain circumstances such a footnote
will not work and we should employ a popular and idiomatic way of expression. For
example, the popular Chinese saying of ‘at sixes and sevens’ is ‘七零八落’ or
‘七颠八倒’. And the idiomatic English saying of ‘半斤八两’ is ‘tweedledum and
tweedledee’ or ‘much of a muchness’.
On the other hand, ‘faithful to the original’ means that a translator should not
only translate out all the original content, but also pass to the readers the
‘feeling-tone’ of the original lines. ‘feeling-tone’ which is originated from
the word ‘Gefuhlston’ in linguistics, simply means the meaning between the words.
Language is used not just to express one’s idea, what more important is, to convey
one’s feelings, or even to move the readers, to persuade the readers into thinking
what the author is thinking about. Poets are good at exert the influence of language,
to give readers a kind of hint, a kind of impulse. When we read the two lines ‘山重水
复疑无路，柳暗花明又一村’, we are influenced by the magic of language, and we can’t
help imagining as if, we ourselves were just on the scene.
To successfully convey the ‘feeling-tone’ of the original, a translator should pay
enough attention to the following two aspects.
First, figures of speech.
Words used in their original meanings are used literally, while words used in
extended meanings for the purpose of making comparisons or calling up pictures in the
reader’s mind are used figuratively. Only does a translator convey the extended meaning
to the readers can we say that he is faithful to the original. There are various kinds
of figures of speech – metonymy, metaphor, simile, personification, irony, alliteration,
etc.. But in translation, the most popular figures of speech a translator would come
across are metonymy and metaphor.
Metaphor is the use of a word which originally denotes one thing to refer to another
with a similar quality, and it is used to make the article more vivid. In the sentences
like ‘he is the soul of the team’, ‘irrigation is the life blood of agriculture’,
‘soul’ and ‘lifeblood’ are used metaphorically. Sometimes these metaphors can be
translated literally. For example: ‘He ran his administration as a one-man show, and
loved to exercise authority.’ Here, ‘one-man show’ can be translated literally as
‘独脚戏’. In the sentence ‘Arthur Krock reported that “he was the boss, the dynamo,
the work”.’, ‘the boss, the dynamo, the works’ can also be translated literally as
‘是老板，是发电机，是钟表的发条’. Sometimes, a metaphor in English corresponds to
another metaphor in Chinese. Take this sentence for example ‘Once she wondered whether
her outspokenness might be a liability to Franklin.’, here the metaphor ‘liability’
corresponds to the metaphor ‘包袱’ in Chinese. And we can see from the above that in
most cases we can find a rather faithful and vivid expression in Chinese to match the
one in English. But in certain cases, we have to speak clearly what the original
metaphor really means. For instance, ‘…discrediting the BEF became the official
line… Some of the dirt was bound to stick.’. For the latter part of the sentence, we
have no choice but to make it clear that ‘受过污蔑就洗也洗不掉’.
To the metonymy in English, we can add some Chinese to achieve its original sense,
but we can seldom reach its original brevity. For example, ‘No phrase was borrowed;
it was pure Roosevelt.’. The appropriate translation for the metonymy ‘pure Roosevelt’
is ‘纯粹是罗斯福的口吻’. The sentence ‘She … set what was conceded to be the finest
table in White House history.’ Can be translated as ‘她的食谱据说是白宫历史上最讲究的。’
. Let’s take a look at this sentence: ‘If Main Street didn’t understand this, Wall
Street did.’ In this sentence, ‘Main Street’ and ‘Wall Street’ also have their
context meaning. So the rather faithful translation should be ‘这一点，一般人不理解，
华尔街那些大老板们却是明白的。’ The same case with this
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