Lu Siyuan

(College of Foreign Languages,University of Shanghai for Science and Technology,Shanghai 200093,China)

In the spring of 2002,at the invitation of the Chinese University Press of Hong Kong,the w riter had a joyful occasion to compile and translate the British Cassell Dictionary of English Idioms①The compiler of this dictionary is Rosalind Fergusson,a senior freelance editor and author,whose publications include The Penguin Dictionary of Proverbs(1983),The Ham lyn Dictionary of Quotations(1989) and The Chambers Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases(1995)..The dictionary takes a fresh look at some 10 000 English idioms,and most of them are new English phrases and expressions.Before rendering the dictionary into Chinese,the director of the CUPHK asked the w riter to compile 7 500 more English idioms w ith Chinese versions based on the actual situation of China and its culture.To put it more precisely,the dictionary, altogether,contains more than 17 500 English idioms,including adages,proverbs,slangs and racy expressions.As a natural result,it has become a very useful reference tool and guide for the Chinese readers.At the end of 2003,the dictionary came off the press printed by the CUPHK in Hong Kong,and in January of 2006,Beijing University Press bought the copyright from CUPHK and reprinted it in Beijing.

As the painstaking translating and compiling job has been done,the w riter considers it worthwhile to put down some summ ing-up notes as a brief retrospect of that memorable work.

I.How to Translate an English Idiom

To begin w ith,the w riter would like to treat something about the nature of English idioms.As we know,idioms,no matter whether English ones or Chinese ones,are one of the most interesting and difficult parts of vocabulary.English idioms are not only interesting but also colorful and lively[1].However,they are sometimes not so easy to comprehend or to render into appropriate Chinese.That is why an idiom can be defined as a phrase whose meaning cannot be readily understood from its component parts.For instance,the idiom “white hope” is a metaphor,whose practical meaning has nothing to do w ith the word “hope”[2].Actually it refers to a person or a member of a group who is expected to achieve much success or bring glory to his team or people.Why so? It is simply because this idiom originally comes from the sport of boxing,where it refers to a white boxer or fighter who is thought capable of beating a black champion such as Tyson or Hollyfield.Both of them are well-known black boxers in the United States toward the end of the 20th century.So,the Chinese version for “white hope” is not “白色的希望”.The proper version should be “众望所归的人”or “肩负重任的人”.Similarly,the idiom “white lie” does not mean “白色的谎言”,as its real sense is “a pardonable fiction or misstatement”.The proper Chinese version for it should be somewhat like “没有恶意的谎言” or “出于好意而说的谎话”.For instance,there is such an English sentence: “The other day I told Alice a white lie when I said she looked so beautiful.” The Chinese would be “那一天，我对爱丽丝说，你长得真美呀，当时我是说了一句无.伤.大.雅.的.谎.言.”.In the Cassell Dictionary,the lion’s share of the entries belongs to such a type.

In the course of translating and compiling those definitions and examples,the w riter frequently resorted to a number of books or articles on translation theories and techniques for help,particularly whenever or wherever coming across something difficult to render.Among those monographs on the art of translating,he found Eugene A.Nida’s and Geoffrey Leech’s works are most helpful and useful.Of course,Noam Chomsky’s “Surface Structure” and“Deep Structure” also rendered a great help to his translation work[3].

II.Nida’s Guiding Principles of Translating

Before taking some concrete examples from the Cassell Dictionary of English idioms to deal w ith theoretically and rhetorically,the w riter would like to quote some well-known guiding principles of translating from Nida’s works.On page 12 of the book The Theory and Practice of Translation,Eugene A.Nida and his coauthor,Charles R.Taber w rote:

Translating consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source-language message,first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style.Translating must aim primarily at “reproducing the message”…

To do anything else is essentially false to one’s task as a translator.But to reproduce the message one must make a good many grammatical and lexical adjustments…

The translator must strive for equivalence rather than identity.In a sense this is another way of emphasizing the reproduction of the message rather than the conservation of the form of the utterance…[4]

In 1991,Nida w rote another book entitled Language,Culture,and Translating.On page 118,he put forward a new principle,that is “Functional Equivalence” or “Functional Identity”,Nida said,“In general,it is best to speak of ‘functional equivalence’ in terms of a range of adequacy,since no translation is ever completely equivalent[5].So,an ideal definition could be stated as the readers of a translated text should be able to understand and appreciate it in essentially the same manner as the original readers did.”

The above several short passages have made outstanding and profound contributions to the science of translating.Now he’ll demonstrate how he applied Nida’s guiding principles of translating to his own translation works.

In the eighties and nineties of the last century,the editor-in-chief of College English kindly asked the w riter to offer some articles for the magazine.In 1987,the fourth issue of College English published his article “Strive for Equivalence Rather Than Identity”(P55－P59).In that piece of w riting,he dealt w ith Nida’s guiding principles of translating in some detail and then translated the well-known Canadian doctor Norman Bethune’s essay “The True Artist” into Chinese to illustrate his point of view about Nida’s theories of translating.

Now let’s make a comparison between the source language and target language of Dr.Bethune’s “The True Artist”.

The True Artist

Norman Bethune

The true artist lets himself go.He is natural.He“swims easily in the stream of his own temperament.”He listens to himself.He respects himself.

He comes into the light of every-day like a great leviathan of the deep,breaking the smooth surface of accepted things,gay,serious,sportive.His appetite for life is enormous.He enters eagerly into the life of man,all men.He becomes all men in himself.

The function of the artist is to disturb.His duty is to arouse the sleepers,to shake the complacent pillars of the world.He reminds the world of its dark ancestry,shows the world its present,and points the way to its new birth.He is at once the product and preceptor of his time.After his passage we are troubled and made unsure of our too-easily accepted realities.He makes uneasy the static,the set and the still.In a world terrified of change,he preaches revolution—the principle of life.He is an agitator,a disturber of the peace—quick,impatient,positive,restless and disquieting.He is the creative spirit working in the soul of man.

真正的艺术家

诺尔曼·白求恩

真正的艺术家在进行创作时是不受任何约束的。他自由自在，悠然自得地在符合自己个性的川流中畅游。他倾听自己的心声，顺从自己的意愿。

他以深海巨鲸的姿态，出现在我们日常的生活世界，扰乱人们自以为常的平静的生活海洋。他轻松愉快、严肃认真、嬉笑自若。他热爱生活，渴望与各种人物生活在一起，以把他们的特点融为一体。

艺术家的职责就是要在平静的生活海洋里激起波涛，唤醒沉睡的人们，震撼那些自鸣得意的社会栋梁。他提醒世人不要忘记过去暗无天日的岁月，向他们展示当今的世界，并为他们指引新生的道路。他既是时代的产儿，也是时代的先锋。当他们露面之后，人们就惶恐不安，开始对那些本来深信不疑的事物产生了怀疑。他使那些僵死不变，纹丝不动的事物变得动荡不安。在一个惧怕变革的世界里，他公开宣扬，革命乃是生活的源泉。他是一个鼓动家，一个扰乱平静生活的人物——动作敏捷、性格暴躁、办事果断、勤奋不息和令人不安。他是活跃于人类灵魂中富有创造力的精灵。

(卢思源 译)

A fter comparing the original text w ith the translated one,we find there are some striking differences lying between the SL and TL[6].Now let’s deal w ith them one by one.

1.Norman Bethune,in the essay “The True Artist”,employed a great number of rhetorical devices—sim ile,metaphor,metonymy,parallel structure,elegant variation and repetition.The language he used is somewhat like that of free verse.Some words and sentences are ambiguous in sense.They have the ambiguities of the poetic language.That is why we cannot translate the essay in the usual literal way.For instance,the first paragraph should not be turned into:“一个真正的艺术家是到处走动的。他是自然的。他‘在自己气质的小河中遨游’。他倾听自己的声音，他尊敬他自己。”To render those five short sentences into proper Chinese,and reproduce the original image and deep structure meaning,the w riter employed the translation technique of rendering a word conveying abstract notion into a term conveying concrete sense or a general word into a specific one; in the meanwhile,he supplied some words in the sentences by means of amplification.So,his Chinese version for the first paragraph is: 真正的艺术家在进行创作时是不受任何约束的。……