7. 对任何人发脾气,都不能够像对太太那样痛快。父母兄弟不用说,朋友要绝交,用人要罢工,只有太太像荷马史诗里风神的皮袋,受气的容量最大,离婚毕竟不容易。
There is no one on whom a person can vent his anger with as much all-out relish as on his wife. Friends will break off and servants will go on strike, not to mention parents and brothers. Only a wife, like the Wind God’s leather bag in Homer’s epic poem, has such a tremendous capacity for taking in hot air, for divorce after all is not easy.原文请+QQ3249,114辣'文.论,文'网
The preposition phrase ‘the island of Circe in Greek mythology’ invokes the reader’s imagination about the legendary story of Odysseus who was at Troy for ten years, and for another ten years, he traveled across the oceans, shipwrecked, eventually deprived of all his companions, frequently within an inch of his life, until in the twentieth year he landed once more on the shores of his island home. Circe, the sorceress, who possesses the magical power of giving human beings the animal shape by offering men food, and with it she mixed a drug which caused them to forget their native land; and when they had finished, she struck them with her wand and drove them off into the pig-sties. As for ‘the Wind God’s leather bag’, the western readers are at home.
8. 这吻的分量很轻,范围很小,只仿佛清朝官场端茶送客时的把嘴唇抹一抹茶碗边,或者从前西洋法庭见证人宣誓时的把嘴唇碰一碰圣经,至多像那些信女们吻西藏活佛或罗马教皇的大脚指,一种敬而远之的亲近。
The kiss was so light and covered such a small area, it was like the way a Mandarin host brushed his lips against the brim of the teacup as a subtle hint to a guest who had overstayed his welcome in the Ch’ing dynasty, or else it was like the way a witness taking the oath in count in the West touched the Bible to his lips. At most it was similar to the way female disciples kissed the Living Buddha of Tibet or the Pope’s big toe—a kind of respectful intimacy.
The last example is a mixture of Western culture and Eastern culture. The kiss was so light that it is compared to Mandarin host (typically in Qing dynasty) brushed his lips against the brim of the teacup: a sign of cold politeness or a witness taking the oath in count in the west touched the bible to his lips: a ritual. These two similes represent vividly the western and eastern culture respectively.
All in all, from the above examples, we can perceive the two different cultures clearly---Western culture and Eastern culture intermingled with each other harmoniously in Ch’ien’s novel Fortress Besieged. Figures of speech like this, which reflect culture, are strewn all over the novel. Hence, we could conclude that language is an integral part of culture. The concept of culture as a totality of knowledge, proficiency and perception is fundamental in our approach to translation.
Consequently, we could conclude if language is an integral part of culture, the translator needs not only proficiency in both languages, but also be at home with two cultures as well. In other words, he must be bilingual and bicultural. The extent of his knowledge, proficiency and perception determines not only his ability to produce the target text, but also his understanding of the source text.
1.4 Comments on the English Version of Fortress Besieged
The English Version of Fortress Besieged translated by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao has kept the original images and meaning by adopting similar expressions; and appropriate explanation. Generally speaking, it is quite successful.
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Features of Metaphor in Fortress Besieged
What’s rhetoric phenomenon? According to Chen Guang-lei, it refers to the writer or speaker employs the literature material, manipulating various presentation devices to express his/her thought and emotions to readers or listeners. This phenomenon lies universally in the activities of human society in which people communicate with each other with language. So we can say that every word you choose, every sentence you speak consist of a kind of rhetoric phenomenon.