one ‘The Army cost roughly a
quarter of one percent of today’s military juggernaut and looked it.’. Considering
its context meaning, a rather perfect translation ‘… 果然，一分钱一分货。’is adopted.
And we Chinese must be familiar with these lines ‘知否? 知否? 应是绿肥红瘦.’ In the
third line, ‘绿’ refers to the leaf while ‘红’ to the flower, so ‘肥’ and ‘瘦’
also has its context meaning. And the English version is ‘But don’t you know/Oh, don’t
you know/ The red should languish and green must grow?’ However, only does a translator
have a clear understanding of its original context meaning should he faithfully translate
out its extended meaning. Please have a look at this line ‘君不见，玉环飞燕皆尘土.’
We Chinese know that ‘玉环、飞燕’ were the beauty of beauties, but they were apt to
envy others. Here, ‘玉环飞燕’are the metonymy to all the beauties who are apt to envy.
So we can translate this line as ‘Have you not seen, all jealous beauties turn to dust?’
But if we take their body figures into consideration (YanYuhuan was plump while Zhao Feiyan
was slender), we can write a more faithful and beautiful line ‘Have you not seen, both
plump and slender jealous beauties turn to dust?’
Second, sound effect.
In the respect of faithfulness, a very important but always been neglected factor is
the sound effect. Sound effect doesn’t only include the onomatope, the words in imitation
of the sounds associated with the thing concerned (such as ‘gurgle’ and ‘cuckoo’).
What more important is, we should pay due attention to the elements as phonology and
symmetry. To the poems, more attention should be paid to the meter, rhyme and rhythm.
Since there are various kinds of discrepancies in different languages, the translations
will inevitably be longer or shorter than the original. Sometimes a translator has to
reject or add something to retain its original style. Take the Chinese sentence ‘我的
心扑通扑通地跳.’ for example, the translation ‘My heart palpitates.’ has already
achieved its Chinese meaning, but the sentence ‘My heart goes thumpety thump.’ is
better in the style of sound effect. So the latter is a more faithful translation.
However, such an effect is more important in the idioms and proverbs. To the English
proverb ‘As ye sow, so shall ye reap.’, the Chinese version ‘种瓜得瓜，种豆得豆。’
is a good choice. To the Chinese saying ‘养兵千日用兵一时’, it may be all right to say
‘Armies are to be maintained for years but used on a single day.’. But it is better to
say ‘Armies are to be maintained in the course of long years but to be used in the
nick of time.’. For the expression ‘in the course of long years’ is more symmetrical
to the expression ‘in the nick of time’. Let’s have a look at the English saying
‘One boy is a boy, two boys half a boy, three boys no boys.’. The literal meaning of
this sentence is very clear, but how to make a translation reach its original meaning at
the same time not destroy its original sound effect? The Chinese saying ‘一个和尚挑水吃，
两个尚抢水吃，三个和尚没水吃。’ is a perfect choice in the respect of true faithfulness.
When translating a foreign prose or poem, a translator will always lay emphasis on its
original meaning while neglecting its original rhyme and rhythm. So in most cases a
translator should make some changes to maintain its balance, beauty and entity. Take
these lines for example:
In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as they go by,
Dreaming as the summers die.
Please ponder the translation:
本来都是梦里游，
梦里开心梦里游，
梦里岁月梦里游。
In the original, the second and the third lines roughly possess the same meaning. In
the translation, although the translator has added something to the second line and
mingled its original order, these changes haven’t changed the original meaning at all.
On the contrary, these changes descend the ‘feeling-tone’ from the original and the
Chinese version does bring to the readers the spirit hidden in the original.
In conclusion, as long as we have a solid language foundation, as long as we grasp a
wide range of both Chinese and English vocabulary, as long as we have a broad knowledge
of different cultures and traditions of different countries, we will bring to the readers
perfectly the same feeling as the original will give them.
Bibliography:
漫谈翻译
[6] [7] [8] [9]
百度搜索:Faithfulness In Translation
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