一点翻译心得与观察

说到英译中和中译英，这对在英语为官方语言国家生活的华人都是很难避免的。

我本人也在努力学习提高中，同时也想和大家分想一下心得以供探讨和共同进步。

很多人翻译就是从原文开始，逐字逐句译。我的建议是换个角度，也就是说翻译要侧重于听的一方，而不是说的一方。为什么呢，因为说的一方说完了，我们要想办发让听的一方明白呀。所以，译者要做两件事：其一，明白说者的真正意图。其二，想一下这个意思用听者的语言应该怎样自然地重新说出来。

这两样说起来容易，做着很难，因为译者要有对两种语言和文化有深刻的了解和素养后才能译得自如，准确和精彩。这需要很多努力和积累。

简而言之就是说，当你看到一句精彩中文时，不要先想着怎样把精彩之处变英语，而是首先搞明白其中含意，再把这个意思用地道英语说出来。

When talking about translation, either from English to Chinese or vice versa, it's not avoidable for the Chinese who live in English speaking countries.

 

I'm in continued efforts to learn and improve, in the meanwhile want to share some understandings with others and improve together.

 

As I've observed, many people focus on the sentences said or written, and start to translate word by word and sentence by sentence into another language. However, I personally believe the focus should be on the language that we're translating into. 

 

Why is that? Since when the message is delivered by the speaker or writer, that part is done.  The job of the translator is to make sure that message will be picked up accurately by the recipients. The translator has to do two things in order to achieve that goal. Firstly, she needs to accurately grasp the true meaning of the message delivered in the original language. In addition, she needs to have the skills and knowledge in the other language, so as to reassemble the message into it.

 

This is easy being said than done, since the goal cannot be achieved without a deep understanding about both languages and cultures, which demands a lot of hard work and a natural accumulation process.