(专八历年翻译真题详解.docVIP

【2001年8级测试英译汉】 Possession for its own sake or in competition with the rest of the neighborhood would have been Thoreau’s idea of the low levels1. The active discipline of heightening one’s perception of what is enduring in nature would have been his idea of the high2. What he saved from the low was time and effort he could spend on the high. Thoreau certainly disapproved of starvation, but he would put into feeding himself only as much effort as would keep him functioning for more important efforts. Effort is the gist of it3. There is no happiness except as we take on life-engaging difficulties. Short of the impossible, as Yeats put it, the satisfaction we get from a lifetime depends on how high we choose our difficulties4. Robert Frost was thinking in something like the same terms when he spoke of “The pleasure of taking pains”5. The mortal flaw in the advertised version of happiness is in the fact that it purports to be effortless6. We demand difficulty even in our games. We demand it because without difficulty there can be no game. A game is a way of making something hard of the fun of it. The rules of the game are an arbitrary imposition of difficulty7. When someone ruins the fun, he always does so by refusing to play by the rules. It is easier to win at chess if you are free, at your pleasure, to change the wholly arbitrary rules, but the fun is in winning within the rules. No difficulty, no fun. 【概述】 这是一篇说理性的议论文，文章评论美国19世纪哲学家、思想家、作家亨利·大卫·梭罗对人生幸福的看法。用词正式，逻辑严谨，哲理性强。译好这类文章有一定难度，但在近年的8级考试中出现的概率较高，不可忽视。翻译时要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】 1. Thoreau: Henry David Thoreau (1817 — 1862), 美国哲学家、作家、“一个人的乌托邦”的倡导者和实践者，年轻时代师从美国“先验论者”爱默生，其论著在美国有一定影响。idea of the low levels和idea of the high, 是梭罗所理解的“低层次境界”和“高层次境界”。 2. active discipline: 主动律己；heightening one’s perception: 提高自己的感悟能力；what is enduring in nature: 自然界永恒存在之物；在his idea of the high短语中，后边省略了levels,与上句idea of the low levels相对应。 3. gist: 与essence同义，意为“精要；精髓”。此句可译为“全力以赴，便是其精髓所在”。 4. short of: 除……之外。short of the imposs