"Unable to communicate" and "Deviation in communication"

"Unable to convey" and "communication deviation"

Translation is a bridge for us to understand foreign works. However, different languages ??have different cultural backgrounds, and translations often cannot fully convey The charm of the original text may even produce "transmission deviation", so translation is also a regrettable art.

The famous translator Yan Fu suffered bad luck when he was young because of "untransmission" in translation. It is said that in 1879, 26-year-old Yan Fu returned to China after studying in England and was summoned by Emperor Guangxu. At that time, the emperor was smoking a hookah, holding a smoking device in one hand and lighting paper media in the other. Guangxu pointed to the paper media in his hand and asked Yan Fu: "What is this called in England?" However, the word "paper media" could not be found in English at that time, and Yan Fu couldn't translate it. After a period of silence, the emperor changed his color and said: "You enjoy the lonely You have been serving the family for so many years, but you can’t even understand such an ordinary thing. What kind of knowledge can you talk about? From now on, you will not be allowed to hire me.” From then on, Yan Fu lost the opportunity to show his talents for the country. , I had to spend my whole life translating! In fact, the cause of this tragedy was not Yan Fu's incompetence, but the fact that the word "paper media" cannot be translated.

There are actually many things that cannot be translated. For example, in Chinese, delicious food is called "fresh", and chicken and duck soup is fresh. There is no way to directly translate the word "fresh" into English. Others, such as Chinese characters and Chinese poems, cannot be translated literally. Especially those puns, like ***'s "The willows are flying straight up to the sky", are even more difficult to translate well. Once, when a Russian translator translated this sentence, he asked Mr. Mao Dun for advice on this matter. In the end, the Russian translation had to add a long list of notes.

There is a similar phenomenon in language translation between other countries: there is no word for "sheep" in the Eskimo language, so Lamb of God had to be translated as Seal of God (God's seal).

Although this phenomenon of being unable to be translated literally is a pity for readers, it is still due to objective reasons after all. Some translation jokes are due to the translator's fault, such as insufficient understanding of foreign language idioms and polysemy of words, and lack of understanding of foreign allusions, which resulted in some deviations in communication.

In Greek mythology, the Milky Way was formed when Hera's milk spread out. So it's called theMilk-way. Half a century ago, a translator in Shanghai literally translated it as "Milk Road". In another place, he mistranslated the mythical half-man, half-tauur (Der Zen-taur) as half-man, half-horse, so there was such a limerick at that time: "Poor Vega, turned into a groom's wife." Even though the translator wanted to change his mind afterwards, it became a lifelong regret and made the Fang family laugh.

In 1947, there was a British film "The Voice of the Turthee" that someone translated as "The Voice of the Turthee". In fact, this allusion comes from the "Song of Solomon in the Bible". Turthe is actually the abbreviation of tur-thedoue (turtle dove). The literal translation of the full name should be "the voice of the turtle dove", and the free translation is "spring comes to the world".

These mistranslations caused by ignorance of foreign customs are not just regrets but lessons for the translators.