Faithfulness In Translation

‘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

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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 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

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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 inevit

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