汉语中有些说法与汉文化密切相关。我们习以为,常的词语时要考虑西方读者的理解与接收能力,常有必要增添注释以填补文化差异。比较以下四种译文中对“而立之年”的处理。你喜欢哪一种,为什么? 谁知道他将到“而立之年”,竟被小尼姑害得飘飘然了。
A.
How was it to be anticipated that at the late age of forty, he should be brought so low by a little nun so to feel that he was fluttering, flutteing, fluttering.
B.
Who would have thought that at the "age of moral independence" he should be succumb to the evil spell of a little nun? age of moral independence: that is, thirty, at which Confucius was said to have achieved this state.
C.
Who should tell that close on thirty, when a man should "stand firm", he would lose his head like this over a little nun? stand firm: Confucius said at thirty he "stood firm". The phrase was later used to indicate that a man was thrity years old.
D.
Who could have possibly foreseen that just as he was approaching the age when, like Confucius, he should have "stood firm”, Ah Q would be so subverted by a yound Buddhist nun that he would go around walking on air. stand firm: In a well-known passage of The Analects Confucius says, "At thiry, I stood firm."