反译小练习:中译英01

来源:网络发布时间:2010-09-21

  反译题目:
  现今境况不妙的报社不只泰晤士报一家,整个行业都是如此。美国报业的龙头老大,华盛顿邮报,在过去的五十年间一直处于缓慢衰落的状态,随后的大萧条则加剧了这种恶化。现今华盛顿邮报平日里的销量几乎还不到上世纪九十年代时的三分之二。
  以下参考翻译以及节选句子翻译来自【口译笔译学习·备考·兴趣小组】的学习沪友:
  nasca:Times was not the only one caught in this tough situation, which, in fact, confronted the industry as a whole. Washington Post, top notch of the American newspaper industry, has been in slow decline for the past 50 years, which was deteriorated by the Great Depression. The current circulation of the newspaper hardly reached 2/3 of the sales in the 1990s.
  点评:没有语法错误,全篇语句流畅。notch还是一个蛮高级的词,top notch意为“一流(的)”
  joe036:Not only the Times but the whole industry is in hot water now.
  点评:in hot water:处于困境,是英语中的固定用法,这里用显得很生动也很有新闻腔。
  *****************************************************
  rabbit0217:The Times is not alone.
  点评:第一句话很有电视播报新闻的感觉,一读就能想象到新闻主播说出这句话时的腔调。“不只是Times” - not alone,转换很地道也很巧妙。
  总评:从大家的翻译中可以总结出,对于“美国报业的龙头老大”,有诸如top notch、leading newspaper、giant、dominant newspaper等非常好的翻译,不一定都是很难很高级的词汇,但是都非常准确;
  “衰落”的译法主要有decline、recession、fade等,也有出现downfall、deterioration的译法,但是这两个词偏重于表达“堕落、垮台、恶化”,语气较重,所以这里不是非常合适。另外conniezc同学用到了go downhill这个词组,也是非常好的用法;sutee同学用到的词是downturn,“低迷时期”,同样非常贴切。
  “加剧、恶化”,从大家的译文中看,最常见的就是worsen,还有exacerbate等比较高级的词汇,非常好,但是仍然稍稍有些受中文思维的影响,我们来看看英文原文是怎样的:
  These are hard times for newspapers, and not just the Times. America's other iconic daily of the past half-century, the Washington Post, has been doing a long, slow fade, speeded up lately by the Great Recession. The post's weekday circulation is barely two-thirds what it was in the nineteen-nineties.(英文出自New Yorker)
  原文中的iconic daily是相当地道的用法,icon这个词可以表示“偶像”,iconic则可以用来形容“偶像性的人或物、受人崇拜的人或物”等。这里所表达的“恶化”其实就是用speed up这个词组,我们也可以用accelerate一词,不一定要将思维局限在“恶化”这个意思范围内。