翻译述评小论文.doc

美国佬军官翻译及述评0 导言文学翻译是翻译中历史悠久的重要组成部分。文学翻译的特点是，不仅忠实原文要表达的内容，更注重译文的表现形式。早在1934年就明确使用过“艺术化的翻译 ”（translation as an art）1:111来阐述文学翻译的本质。茅盾先生在论提高文学翻译质量问题时曾明确指出“:对于一般翻译的最低限度的要求, 至少应该是用明白畅达的译文, 忠实地传达原作的内容。但对于文学翻译, 仅仅这样要求还是很不够的。文学作品是用语言创造的艺术, 我们要求于文学作品的, 不单单是事物的概念和情节的记叙, 而是在这些以外, 更具有能够吸引读者的艺术意境, 即通过艺术的形象, 使读者对书中人物的思想和行为发生强烈的感情。文学的翻译是用另一种语言, 把原作的艺术意境传达出来, 使读者在读译文的时候能够象读原作时一样得到启发、感动和美的感受”。 原文本选自纽约客x期中的深度报道（report at large）专栏。选择此文本作为翻译实践项目，一是个人兴趣所在。很早就被古巴战争时期领导人的个人魅力所吸引，尤其是卡斯特罗和切格瓦拉经典的大胡子、雪茄烟造型和他们的奇闻轶事，试图通过此次翻译更深一层了解历史的真相。二是通过翻译深度报道这类特殊的新闻报道（类似于报告文学体裁），把握介于新闻与文学间的文体风格，对此类文本翻译策略和技巧有所感悟，同时提高斟酌字句的能力，实现从翻译过渡到写作此类文本的目的。 该翻译述评将首先对原文本及其作者进行必要的介绍，并分析选文的意义。接着明确读者定位，并以此为据，结合文本本身的特点，选取相应策略进行对文本的翻译处理。在具体翻译处理中，选取此次翻译实践中遇到的主要问题分别讨论。最后，总结以上分析讨论，回顾整个翻译过程，增进对理论的理解，并提高实际应用的能力。1 作者及文本1.1 作者生平 文学成就 写作风格大卫格雷恩（3月10，1967年，出生于纽约市）是美国文学记者和畅销书作家。现为纽约客特约撰稿人。作为一位文学记者，他曾经为多家报社撰写文章，如纽约时报、大西洋月刊、华盛顿邮报、华尔街日报等等。作为一名畅销书作家，众所周知的Z的失落之城：亚马逊致命痴迷的故事（“The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon,”）是他的第一本书，由道布尔迪于2009年2月出版。出版后一个星期，它首次亮相纽约时报畅销书榜。此后的魔鬼和福尔摩斯：谋杀，疯狂和痴迷的故事也好评如潮。谈及写作风格，一方面，拥有“卖力的记者”（“workhorse reporter”）之称的他，报道通常关注事件本身的真实性以及报道的深入性。新纽约客“编辑大卫雷姆尼克说：“这个故事和其他一切大卫Grann的报道，他确实是潜心在其关注的事实和基调。我们主张与大卫Grann和背后的故事，相信西服有没有好处。（David Granns reporting on this story and everything else he does is painstaking in both its attention to the facts and tone. We stand with David Grann and behind the story and believe the suit has no merit.）另一方面，在科幻悬疑等畅销书中，大卫格雷恩又充分发挥其想象力，同时借助出神入化的表现手法，将读者带入了一个非凡的世界。就像他自己说的那样，“我喜欢故事的魔力和力量。”（I love the magic of stories and the power of stories）。1.2 原文本分析： 该文本是对古巴战争中一位美国佬军官的人物报道。主要讲了他充满神秘色彩的一生：从一个美国中产阶级家庭“个性不羁”的孩子，到逃到古巴，寻找叛军队伍，投奔卡斯特罗，中间经历了一系列的爱情、革命、甚至背叛，最终死在卡斯特罗的枪口下。专题人物报道，运用文学手法表现现实生活中具有典型意义的真人真事的一种文体。它兼有新闻和文学的双重特点，是处于新闻和文学之间的一种“边缘”体裁。1 鲜明的新闻性：真实性是新闻性的内核。包括两个方面：一方面是所反映的事物必须是现实生活客观存在的事物，不夸大，不缩小，更不能无中生有。另一方面，要反映正确，即能够揭示事物的本质和主流。两者结合才能构成完全真实。2 强烈的文学性：专题人物报道，它是报道，也是文学。它的新闻性（主要是真实性）与文学性不是 互相排斥的，而是互为表里、相辅相成的。“除了虚构与概括的手法不宜引进报告文学，其 它一切属于表现形式的文学手法都可以在报告文学中充分调动。调动得越好，就越逼真；越 真实，就越富于艺术的感染力。”（理由：和青年谈谈报告文学） 虽然是一篇新闻报道，作者仍运用了丰富的文学手法。从文章的篇章结构上来讲，曲笔入题，层层深入，伏笔铺垫，过渡照应，文章结构紧凑而错落有致，让人读来饶有趣味；从表达方式上来讲，主要是以记叙和描写为主，开头部分通过一段场景描写，然后便采用倒叙的手法，开始讲述故事。讲述过程中夹叙夹议，情景交融；作者的描写也是可圈可点的：动静结合、虚实结合、点面结合、粗笔勾勒等等。从修辞方法上来讲，文中有比喻、引用、反问、设问、借代等。该故事发生在古巴革命战争时期。19531959年，古巴人民为推翻亲美独裁政权而进行的革命战争。1952年3月10日，F.巴蒂斯塔萨尔迪瓦在美国支持下发动军事政变再次上台，实行独裁统治。古巴人民对此十分不满，各地不断发生示威、罢工和武装暴动。1958年3月17日，卡斯特罗发表宣言，号召各游击队对巴蒂斯塔政权发动全面战争。58月，各游击队英勇奋战，粉碎政府军17个营的夏季攻势，俘敌433人。起义队伍迅速扩大，威震古巴岛，并在全国范围内发动总攻。在大势已去形势下，独裁者巴蒂斯塔于1959年1月1日逃亡国外。3日，起义军占领首都哈瓦那。6日，新的古巴共和国宣告成立。至此，古巴革命战争胜利结束。 原文为那些对历史（尤其是古巴革命战争）感兴趣的读者打开了一扇窗：让尘封的历史真相浮出水面，让读者感受不为人知的美国指挥官如何卷入异国他乡的战争，如何在这场战争中经历体力、智力、情感等各方面的考验等等。原文读者群设定参照登载该文的The New Yorker 杂志。该杂志创刊于1925 年，是美国最有影响力的杂志之一，屡获美国国家杂志奖的各种奖项。该杂志风格轻松幽默但又不失严肃，内容涵盖面很广，包括文艺及时政评论等，并且常常介入社会现实，深入报道重要题材和新闻事件。它的读者定位是受过良好教育、有一定地位、对社会热点较敏感的美国中产阶级（殷晓蓉，2006：25），在其80 多年的发展史中也始终以他们的阅读需求为导向（欧亚，2007：30-31）。因此按照设定，原文读者和译文读者在年龄层次、文化程度、社会地位等方面基本一致，应等同于中国新闻周刊的市场定位，它的读者应具有一定知识水平，中产阶级收入，同时关注社会发展的主流动向并乐于思考（王惠娟，2009：104）。翻译时在语体和风格的选择上可保持一致。 关于古巴战争时期的领导人的作品有：乔恩李安德森的切格瓦拉传，他是美国作家、传记作者、调查记者、也为纽约客杂志撰稿；巴西记者克劳迪娅福丽娅蒂花费九年心血写成卡斯特罗传；卡斯特罗自己撰写的菲德尔卡斯特罗历史将宣判我无罪等。关于这两位古巴战争的主要领导人的报道相对较多，作者一方面通过特别许可，掌握了极其充分的现实材料，另一方面运用丰富的文学表现手法，使读者身临其境，大大满足了普通大众的偶像崇拜和猎奇心理，读罢大快朵颐，因此很快便成为畅销书。本篇报道虽不及传记般详细具体，但在内容和效果上，实为异曲同工。1.3 节译部分文本分析 ： 节选文本内容概要：所选内容主要对早期摩根事迹的追溯。1957年，摩根穿越福罗里达州，来到古巴，他默默忍受各种考验，且屡立战功，赢得反叛军的信任，随着名气的上升，摩根的身份也开始受到美国、古巴各安全部门的关注和质疑。在调查中发现，摩根出生于一个典型美国中产阶级，从小就聪明但叛逆，个性“随性、自我、冲动”，渴望了解外面的世界并成为大人物。选文到摩根告别父母，踏上入伍之路止。 文章开头主要通过倒叙的手法，描写摩根被执行死刑的情景，把读者的目光聚焦到他身上，然后抽丝剥茧，按照一定的逻辑和时间顺序说开去。节选命名为“第一个诡计”，主要注意力集中在摩根加入革命之上，构成这个“爱、革命和背叛”中的“革命”的一部分。 2 翻译分析：一 ：“He was standing, with his back against a bullet-pocked wall, in an empty moat surrounding La Cabaaan eighteenth-century stone fortress, on a cliff overlooking Havana Harbor, that had been converted into a prison.” “La Cabaa 这座18世纪的石砌堡垒矗立在悬崖之上，俯瞰哈瓦那湾，如今这里已成为监狱。在一条空旷的护城河内，他站在那，背对着满是弹孔的墙。”这句话主句很简单，即“他站在那“,接下来则是一连串的从句，若按照原文本的顺序翻译，则较为生硬，受到英语语言表层结构的束缚，思考再三后，决定译为：“La Cabaa 这座18世纪的石砌堡垒矗立在悬崖之上，俯瞰哈瓦那湾，如今这里已成为监狱。在一条空旷的护城河内，他站在那，背对着满是弹孔的墙。”一方面，从文章可读性上来看，这符合中国读者的表达习惯，描写铺垫在前，重点在后。另一方面，这与下文紧接着讲到的“不远处”出发地点相同，若把“他站在那”放在句首，连贯性则不强了。二：With a stark jaw, a pugnacious nose, and scruffy blond hair, he had the gallant look of an adventurer in a movie serial, of a throwback to an earlier age appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world. 他外貌英勇棱角分明的下颌，好斗的鹰钩鼻，一头凌乱的金发，像极了系列电影里的冒险家，穿着复古的队服，关于他的照片遍布世界各地的报纸与杂志。这一句主要是讲外貌，于是就先把“the gallant look”提炼出来做主语，而with引导的从句则用分号作为补充说明的部分，这样一来逻辑就很清楚。“pugnacious”是好斗的意思，可是说“好斗的鼻子”很奇怪，但又要译出“英勇”的味道，于是根据文章首页的照片和常识，译为“好斗的鹰钩鼻”。这与下文中的“an untamed beard”属于一个类型，并不译为“不可驯服的胡子”，而是“络腮胡子”。三：It was March 11, 1961, two years after Morgan had helped to overthrow the dictator Fulgencio Batista, bringing Castro to power.那是1961年3月11日，两年前的这个时候，摩根辅佐卡斯特罗推翻独裁者富尔亨西奥巴蒂斯塔，建立政权。 这里涉及一个时间的处理问题。“two years after”要译成“两年前的这个时候”。 此外，摩根“help”的宾语对象卡斯特罗提前，更符合中文阅读习惯。四：“, and the U.S. government would stash documents about him in classified files, or “sanitize” them by concealing passages with black ink.”同时美国政府将把关于他的档案以分类文件束之高阁，或通过隐瞒一些事实来给档案记录“消毒”。 “sanitize”在牛津字典中的解释是“ (disapproving) to remove the parts of sth that could be considered unpleasant”，它的本意是“采取卫生措施使安全清洁”，在这里有比喻义。一开始我选择了“肃清”记录，可是查了字典发现“肃清”有连根拔起全部消除的意思，有过度翻译（over translation）的嫌疑；后来又用了“刷新”档案记录，可是刷新又有再创造的意思，这里并没有添加记录的成分，不符合；最终决定用给档案记录“消毒”，既保持了单词原来的意思，又使比喻义也跃然纸上。“black ink”是黑墨水。黑墨水过处，自然原本面貌不可见。这里就采取了意译的方法，译为“隐瞒一些事实”。这与后文中：“I looked like a real fat-cat tourist,” he later joked.“我看上去简直就是一个寻花问柳的王老五”，后来他这样调侃自己。这一句中的“fat cat”的翻译相似。五 The gunmen gazed at the man they had been ordered to kill. 受命执行死刑的枪手们注视着摩根，When Morgan arrived in Havana, in December, 1957, he was propelled by the thrill of a secret. 1957年12月，摩根在一个秘密的刺激鼓动下抵达哈瓦那。 这其中涉及到被动语态的处理问题。第一句中，我把被动语态的从句转换成定语修饰主语，第二句中则转换成状语，可见，在不同的语境下，被动语态的处理方式是灵活多样的。结语 这次翻译实践项目只是匆匆做了文章中的一小部分，所见也较为粗浅，多为自我在翻译过程中的一点切身感受，其中不排除由于理解偏差引起的翻译不到位。局限性在于，对翻译理论虽有所认识，但与实践结合的理解甚少，因此不敢草率引用，在接下来的翻译中，将继续思考，争取实现在理论与实践结合上的小小突破。参考文献1 钱钟书.论不隔A.钱钟书集人生边上的边上M. 北京:三联书店，2002.2翻译理论与翻译技巧论文集, 中国对外翻译出版公司选编, 1 9 8 3 年版, 第17 页.3 欧亚. 从文化标签到时代镜鉴解读美国中产阶级杂志纽约客的历史转型J. 新闻与写作，2007（2）. 4 王惠娟. 三联生活周刊与中国新闻周刊比较研究J，新闻爱好，20095 殷晓蓉. “现代专门杂志”与城市脉动的关系以美国纽约客为例N，杭州师范学院学报（社会科学版），2006（5）.The Yankee ComandanteA story of love, revolution, and betrayalby David Grann May 28, 2012 For a moment, he was obscured by the Havana night. It was as if he were invisible, as he had been before coming to Cuba, in the midst of revolution. Then a burst of floodlights illuminated him: William Alexander Morgan, the great Yankeecomandante. He was standing, with his back against a bullet-pocked wall, in an empty moat surrounding La Cabaaan eighteenth-century stone fortress, on a cliff overlooking Havana Harbor, that had been converted into a prison. Flecks of blood were drying on the patch of ground where Morgans friend had been shot, moments earlier. Morgan, who was thirty-two, blinked into the lights. He faced a firing squad.The gunmen gazed at the man they had been ordered to kill. Morgan was nearly six feet tall, and had the powerful arms and legs of someone who had survived in the wild. With a stark jaw, a pugnacious nose, and scruffy blond hair, he had the gallant look of an adventurer in a movie serial, of a throwback to an earlier age appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world. The most alluring imagestaken when he was fighting in the mountains, with Fidel Castro and Che Guevarashowed Morgan, with an untamed beard, holding a Thompson submachine gun. Though he was now shaved and wearing prison garb, the executioners recognized him as the mysteriousAmericanowho once had been hailed as a hero of the revolution. It was March 11, 1961, two years after Morgan had helped to overthrow the dictator Fulgencio Batista, bringing Castro to power. The revolution had since fractured, its leaders devouring their own, like Saturn, but the sight of Morgan before a firing squad was a shock. In 1957, when Castro was still widely seen as fighting for democracy, Morgan had travelled from Florida to Cuba and headed into the jungle, joining a guerrilla force. In the words of one observer, Morgan was “like Holden Caulfield with a machine gun.” He was the only American in the rebel army and the sole foreigner, other than Guevara, an Argentine, to rise to the armys highest rank,comandante.After the revolution, Morgans role in Cuba aroused even greater fascination, as the island became enmeshed in the larger battle of the Cold War. An American who knew Morgan said that he had served as Castros “chief cloak-and-dagger man,” andTimecalled him Castros “crafty, U.S.-born double agent.”Now Morgan was charged with conspiring to overthrow Castro. The Cuban government claimed that Morgan had actually been working for U.S. intelligencethat he was, in effect, a triple agent. Morgan denied the allegations, but even some of his friends wondered who he really was, and why he had come to Cuba.Before Morgan was led outside La Cabaa, an inmate asked him if there was anything he could do for him. Morgan replied, “If you ever get out of here alive, which I doubt you will, try to tell people my story.” Morgan grasped that more than his life was at stake: the Cuban regime would distort his role in the revolution, if not excise it from the public record, and the U.S. government would stash documents about him in classified files, or “sanitize” them by concealing passages with black ink. He would be rubbed outfirst from the present, then from the past.The head of the firing squad shouted, “Attention!” The gunmen raised their Belgian rifles. Morgan feared for his wife, Olgawhom he had met in the mountainsand for their two young daughters. He had always managed to bend the forces of history, and he had made a last-minute plea to communicate with Castro. Morgan had believed that the man he once called his “faithful friend” would never kill him. But now the executioners were cocking their guns.THE FIRST TRICKWhen Morgan arrived in Havana, in December, 1957, he was propelled by the thrill of a secret. He made sure that he wasnt being followed as he moved surreptitiously through the neon-lit capital. Advertised as the “Playland of the Americas,” Havana offered one temptation after another: the Sans Souci night club, where, on outdoor stages, dancers with frank hips swayed under the stars to the cha-cha; the Hotel Capri, whose slot machines spat out American silver dollars; and the Tropicana, where guests such as Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando enjoyed lavish revues featuring the Diosas de Carne, or “flesh goddesses.”Morgan, then a pudgy twenty-nine-year-old, tried to appear as just another man of leisure. He wore a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar white suit with a white shirt, and a new pair of shoes. “I looked like a real fat-cat tourist,” he later joked.But, according to members of Morgans inner circle, and to the unpublished account of a close friend, he avoided the glare of the citys night life, making his way along a street in Old Havana, near a wharf that offered a view of La Cabaa, with its drawbridge and moss-covered walls. Morgan paused by a telephone booth, where he encountered a Cuban contact named Roger Rodrguez. A raven-haired student radical with a thick mustache, Rodrguez had once been shot by police during a political demonstration, and he was a member of a revolutionary cell.Most tourists remained oblivious of the many iniquities of Cuba, where people often lived without electricity or running water. Graham Greene, who published “Our Man in Havana” in 1958, later recalled, “I enjoyed the louche atmosphere of Batistas city and I never stayed long enough to become aware of the sad political background of arbitrary imprisonment and torture.” Morgan, however, had briefed himself on Batista, who had seized power in a coup, in 1952: how the dictator liked sitting in his palace, eating sumptuous meals and watching horror films, and how he tortured and killed dissidents, whose bodies were sometimes dumped in fields, with their eyes gouged out or their crushed testicles stuffed in their mouths.Morgan and Rodrguez resumed walking through Old Havana, and began a furtive conversation. Morgan was rarely without a cigarette, and typically communicated through a haze of smoke. He didnt know Spanish, but Rodrguez spoke broken English. They had previously met in Miami, becoming friends, and Morgan believed that he could trust him. Morgan confided that he planned to sneak into the Sierra Maestra, a mountain range on Cubas remote southeastern coast, where revolutionaries had taken up arms against the regime. He intended to enlist with the rebels, who were commanded by Fidel Castro.The name of Batistas mortal enemy carried the jolt of the forbidden. On November 25, 1956, Castro, a thirty-year-old lawyer and the illegitimate son of a prosperous landowner, had launched from Mexico an amphibious invasion of Cuba, along with eighty-one self-styled commandos, including Che Guevara. After their battered wooden ship ran aground, Castro and his men waded through chest-deep waters, and came ashore in a swamp whose tangled vegetation tore their skin. Batistas Army soon ambushed them, and Guevara was shot in the neck. (He later wrote, “I immediately began to wonder what would be the best way to die, now that all seemed lost.”) Only a dozen or so rebels, including the wounded Guevara and Castros younger brother, Ral, escaped, and, exhausted and delirious with thirstone drank his own urinethey fled into the steep jungles of the Sierra Maestra.Morgan told Rodrguez that he had been tracking the progress of the uprising. After Batista mistakenly declared that Castro had died in the ambush, Castro allowed aTimescorrespondent, Herbert Matthews, to be escorted into the Sierra Maestra. A close friend of Ernest Hemingway, Matthews longed not merely to cover world-changing events but to make them, and he was captivated by the tall rebel leader, with his wild beard and burning cigar. “The personality of the man is overpowering,” Matthews wrote. “Here was an educated, dedicated fanatic, a man of ideals, of courage.” Matthews concluded that Castro had “strong ideas of liberty, democracy, social justice, the need to restore the Constitution.” On February 24, 1957, the story appeared on the papers front page, intensifying the rebellions romantic aura. Matthews later put it this way: “A bell tolled in the jungles of the Sierra Maestra.”Yet why would an American be willing to die for Cubas revolution? When Rodrguez pressed Morgan, he indicated that he wanted to be both on the side of good and on the edge of danger, but he also wanted something else: revenge. Morgan said that he had an American buddy who had travelled to Havana and been killed by Batistas soldiers. Later, Morgan provided more details to others in Cuba: his friend, a man named Jack Turner, had been caught smuggling weapons to the rebels, and was “tortured and tossed to the sharks by Batista.”Morgan told Rodrguez that he had already made contact with another revolutionary, who had arranged to sneak him into the mountains. Rodrguez was taken aback: the supposed rebel was an agent of Batistas secret police. Rodrguez warned Morgan that hed fallen into a trap.Rodrguez, fearing for Morgans life, offered to help him. He could not transport Morgan to the Sierra Maestra, but he could take him to the camp of a rebel group in the Escambray Mountains, which cut across the central part of the country. These guerrillas were opening a new front, and Castro welcomed them to the “common struggle.”Morgan set out with Rodrguez and a driver on the two-hundred-and-seventeen mile journey. As Aran Shetterly details in his incisive biography “The Americano” (2007), the car soon arrived at a military roadblock. A soldier peered inside at Morgan in his gleaming suit, the only outfit that he seemed to own. Morgan knew what would happen if he were seizedas Guevara said, “in a revolution, one wins or dies”and he had prepared a cover story, in which he was an American businessman on his way to see coffee plantations. After hearing the tale, the soldier let them pass, and Morgan and his conspirators roared up the road, up into the Escambray, where the air became cooler and thinner, and where the three-thousand-foot peaks had an eerie purple tint.Morgan was taken to a safe house to rest, then driven to a mountainside near the town of Banao. A peasant shepherded Morgan and Rodrguez through vines and banana leaves until they reached a remote clearing, flanked by steep slopes. The peasant made a birdlike sound, which rang through the forest and was reciprocated by a distant whistle. A sentry emerged, and Morgan and Rodrguez were led to a campsite strewn with water basins and hammocks and a few antiquated rifles. Morgan could count only thirty or so men, many of whom appeared barely out of high school and had the emaciated, straggly look of shipwreck survivors.The rebels regarded Morgan uncertainly. Max Lesnik, a Cuban journalist in charge of the organizations propaganda, soon met up with the group, and recalls wondering if Morgan was “some kind of agent from the C.I.A.”Since the Spanish-American War, the U.S. had often meddled in Cuban affairs, treating the island like a colony. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had blindly supported Batistabelieving that he would “deal with the Commies,” as he put it to Vice-President Richard Nixonand the C.I.A. had activated operatives throughout the island. In 1954, in a classified report, an American general advised that if the U.S. was to survive the Cold War it needed to “learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective methods than those used agains