《专八英译中答案2.docVIP

In some societies people want children for what might be called familial reasons 1 : to extend the family line or the family name 2 , to propitiate the ancestors; to enable the proper functioning of religious rituals involving the family 3 . 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 4 , namely, having children in order to maintain or improve a marriage: to hold the husband or occupy the wife 5 , to repair or rejuvenate the marriage; to increase the number of children on the assumption that family happiness lies that way 6 . The point is underlined by its converse 7 : in some societies the failure to bear children (or males) is a threat to the marriage and a ready cause for divorce. 8 Beyond all that is the profound significance of children to the very institution of the family itself. 9 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 10 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. 【 概述 】 本文是一篇典型的议论型语篇，用词正式，句法复杂，逻辑严谨，读起来很不顺口。这类文章很难理解，一般需要较高的推理能力。翻译时，要特别注意整篇文章的逻辑关系，特别注意语篇的连贯和衔接。 【 翻译要点评析 】 familial reasons ：家族原因。 to extend the family line or the family name ：就是汉语的传宗接代，延续香火。 to enable the proper functioning of religious rituals involving the family ：字面意思为“ 使那些涉及到家庭的宗教仪式得以正常进行 ”，但这样的译文读起来很生硬，可以意译为“维系礼仪”。 to share a border with sth ： 与 …有联系 。 occupy the wife ： occupy 此处意为使忙碌，即“使妻子忙碌，让妻子有事可做”，不可直译为“占有妻子”。 to increase the number of