嘉文博译英语八级翻译专栏


样 题 Ⅳ(翻译部分 ,原书P. 136-137)

Section A: Translate the following underlined part of the Chinese text into English

(原 文)

  加拿大的温哥华1986年刚刚度过百岁生日,但城市的发展令世界瞩目。以港立市,以港兴市,是许多港口城市生存发展的道路。经过百年开发建设,有着天然不冻良港的温哥华,成为举世闻名的港口城市,同亚洲、大洋洲、欧洲、拉丁美洲均有定期班轮,年货物吞吐量达到8,000万吨,全市就业人口中有三分之一从事贸易与运输行业。

  温哥华(Vancouver)的辉煌是温哥华人智慧和勤奋的结晶,其中包括多民族的贡献。加拿大地广人稀,国土面积比中国还大,人口却不足3000万。吸收外来移民,是加拿大长期奉行的国策。可以说,加拿大除了印第安人外,无一不是外来移民,不同的只是时间长短而已。温哥华则更是世界上屈指可数的多民族城市。现今180万温哥华居民中,有一半不是在本地出生的,每4个居民中就有一个是亚洲人。而25万华人对温哥华的经济转型起着决定性的作用。他们其中有一半是近5年才来到温哥华地区的,使温哥华成为亚洲以外最大的中国人聚居地。

(参考译文)

In 1986, Vancouver, Canada, just marked its centennial anniversary, but the achievements made by the city in its urban development have already captured worldwide attention. To build up a city and model its economy on the basis of a harbor is the usual practice that port cities resort to for their existence and development. After a century's construction and development, Vancouver, which boasts of a naturally-formed ice-free harbor, has become an internationally celebrated port city, operating regular ocean liners with Asia, Oceania, Europe and Latin America. Its annual cargo-handling capacity reaches 80 million tons, with one third of the city's employed population engaged in trade and transportation business.

The glorious achievements of Vancouver is the crystallization (fruition) of the wisdom (intelligence) and the industry of the Vancouver people as a whole, including the contributions made by a diversity of ethnic minorities. Canada is a large country with a small population. Although its territory is bigger than that of China, it only has a population of less than 30 million people. Consequently, to attract and to accept foreign immigrants have become a national policy long observed by Canada. It can be safely asserted that, except for Indians, all Canadian citizens are foreign immigrants, differing only in the length of time they have settled in Canada. Vancouver, in particular, is one of the few most celebrated multi-ethnic cities in the world. At present, among the 1.8 million Vancouver residents, half of them are not native-born and one out of every four residents is from Asia. The 250,000 Chinese there have played a decisive role in facilitating the transformation of the Vancouver economy. Half of them have come to settle in Vancouver only over the past five years, making Vancouver the largest area outside Asia where the Chinese concentrate.

Section B: Translate the following underlined part of the English text into Chinese

(原 文)

In some societies people want children for what might be called familial reasons: to extend the family line or the family name, to propitiate the ancestors; to enable the proper functioning of religious rituals involving the family. Such reasons may seem thin in the modern, secularized society but they have been and are powerful indeed in other places.

In addition, one class of family reasons shares a border with the following category, namely, having children in order to maintain or improve a marriage: to hold the husband or occupy the wife; to repair or rejuvenate the marriage; to increase the number of children on the assumption that family happiness lies that way. The point is underlined by its converse: in some societies the failure to bear children (or males) is a threat to the marriage and a ready cause for divorce.

Beyond all that is the profound significance of children to the very institution of the family itself. To many people, husband and wife alone do not seem a proper family -they need children to enrich the circle, to validate its family character, to gather the redemptive influence of offspring. Children need the family, but the family seems also to need children, as the social institution uniquely available, at least in principle, for security, comfort, assurance, and direction in a changing, often hostile, world. To most people, such a home base, in the literal sense, needs more than one person for sustenance and in generational extension.

(参考译文)

  在某些社会中,人们希望拥有孩子是出于所谓的家庭原因:传宗接代,光宗耀祖,博取祖辈的欢心,使那些涉及到整个家族的宗教仪式得以发挥其应有的作用。此类原因在现代世俗化的社会中似显苍白,但它们在其他地方曾一度构成并确实仍在构成强有力的理由。 此外,有一类家庭原因与下列类别不无共通之处,这便是:生儿育女是为着维系或改善婚姻:能拴住丈夫或者使妻子不致于无所事事;修复婚姻或为婚姻注入新的活力;多子多孙,以为家庭幸福,惟系于此。这一点更可因其相反情形而得以凸现:在某些社会中,无法生儿育女(或无法生育男孩)于婚姻而言可构成一种威胁,并可作为离婚的一个顺理成章的(或现成的)缘由。

  除了所有这一切以外,还有一个原因,那就是后代对于家庭这一体制本身所具有的深远意义。对许多人来说,夫妇两人尚不足以构成一个真正意义上的家庭--夫妻需要孩子来丰富其两人小天地,赋予该小天地以真正意义上的家庭性质,并从子孙后代身上获取某种回报。

  孩子需要家庭,但家庭似乎也需要孩子。作为一种社会体制,家庭以其特有的方式,至少从原则上说,可在一个变幻莫测、常常是充满敌意的世界中让人从中获取某种安全、慰藉、保障,以及价值取向。于大多数人而言,这样的一个家庭基础,即使从其表层意义上来讲,也需要不至一个人来维持其存在,并使其世代相传,生生不息。

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