The 27th Liang Shih-Chiu Literary Award
─Translation Contest in Prose Translate the following passages into Chinese:
I.
Three grades of evil can be discerned in the queer world of verbal
transmigration. The first, and lesser one, comprises obvious errors due to ignorance or misguided knowledge. This is mere human frailty and thus excusable. The next step to Hell is taken by the translator who intentionally skips words or passages that he does not bother to understand or that might seem obscure or obscene to vaguely imagined readers; he accepts the blank look that his dictionary gives him without any qualms; or subjects scholarship to primness: he is as ready to know less than the author as he is to think he knows better. The third, and worst, degree of turpitude is reached when a masterpiece is planished and patted into such a shape, vilely beautified in such a fashion as to conform to the notions and prejudices of a given public. This is a crime, to be punished by the stocks as plagiarists were in the shoebuckle days.
The howlers included in the first category be in their turn divided into two classes. Insufficient acquaintance with the foreign language involved may transform a commonplace expression into some remarkable statement that the real author never intended to make. . . . And inversely, innocent words in an English novel such as “first night” and “public house” have become in a Russian translation “nuptial night” and “a brothel.” These simple examples suffice. They are ridiculous and jarring, but they contain no pernicious
purpose; and more often than not the garbled sentence still makes some sense in the original context.
The other class of blunders in the first category includes a more sophisticated kind of mistake, one which is caused by an attack of linguistic Daltonism suddenly blinding the translator. Whether attracted by the far-fetched when the obvious was at hand . . . , or whether unconsciously basing his rendering on some false meaning which repeated readings have imprinted on his mind, he manages to distort in an unexpected and sometimes quite brilliant way the most honest word or the tamest metaphor. . . .
The second, and much more serious, sin of leaving out tricky passages is still excusable when the translator is baffled by them himself; but how
contemptible is the smug person who, although quite understanding the sense,
fears it might stump a dunce or debauch a dauphin! Instead of blissfully nestling in the arms of the great writer, he keeps worrying about the little reader playing in a corner with something dangerous or unclean.
From “The Art of Translation”
by Vladimir Nabokov
II.
Betwixt the Lake Ontario and Erié, there is a vast and prodigious Cadence of Water which falls down after a surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its Parallel. ‘Tis true, Italy and Suedeland boast of some such Things; but we may well say they are but sorry Patterns, when compared to this of which we now speak. At the foot of this horrible Precipice, we meet with the River Niagara, which is not above half a quarter of a League broad, but is wonderfully deep in some places. It is so rapid above this Descent, that it violently hurries down the wild Beasts while endeavoring to pass it to feed on the other side, they not being able to withstand the force of its Current, which inevitably casts them down headlong above Six hundred foot.
This wonderful Downfall is compounded of two great Cross-streams of Water, and two Falls, with an Isle sloping along the middle of it. The Waters which fall from this vast height, do foam and boil after the most hideous manner imaginable, making an outrageous Noise, more terrible than that of Thunder; for when the Wind blows from off the South, their dismal roaring may be heard above fifteen Leagues off.
From “A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America” (1697)
by Louis Hennepin (c.1640-c.1702)
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