英汉口译中文化因素的传达（三）

　　“It’s very kind of you”→“您太客气了”

　　“That won’t be the end of the world”→“天塌不下来”

　　“He is braver than wise”→“他有勇无谋”

　　“Take care how you do so”→“千万别这样做”

　　“Pull sb’s legs”→“嘲弄某人”

　　Similarly, in interpreting this English sentence, “This piece of information has not been made public yet, so keep it under your hat”, we can grasp the real meaning of the sentence from the context and render it into.“这条消息尚未发表,因此你要保密。”

　　2)to transmit the attributes of culture

　　The term “attribute” here means “a quality or feature, especially one that is considered to be good or useful”(Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 1997).The attributes of a culture also refer to the good or useful parts of its language. To be a good interpreter, one should certainly interpret the good and useful parts of the target language. For instance. Some foreigners often speak coarse language, such as “Fuck” “Damn it” , which are better not to be interpreted for the listeners’ sake. Fortunately, some good expressions, such as “go and see” “Trust the future; trust the young” are widely accepted by Chinese people. With the development of science and technology, people in different countries will get to know each other better.

　　3)to pass on the connotation of culture

　　Some words or phrases in English reflect the connotation of its culture, such as idealism and materialism. As a term of philosophy, idealism, its opposite is materialism, doesn’t contain any ameliorative or derogatory meaning in English. But it is different in Chinese, which means.“唯心主义”On the contrary, materialism means“唯物主义”in Chinese, which is an ameliorative word. But the two terms “idealism” and “materialism” are not always ameliorative or derogatory. For example:

　　“I came here out of conviction and idealism.”

　　我是抱着信念和理想而来的。

　　“A lot of people are prepared to turn their back on the materialist way of life.”

　　很多人都准备放弃追求物质享受的生活方式。(A Dictionary of British and American Culture , Hu Wenzong 1995)

　　From the above examples, we can see that “idealism” is ameliorative and “materialism” is derogatory.

　　The above requirements may be somewhat abstract, But in fact, it is what an interpreter has to do.

　　3The techniques of cultural factors’ transmission

　　In the case of E-C interpretation, which involves two well-developed languages that are carriers of two vastly different cultures, techniques do play a helpful role. Besides explanation and conversion, techniques of E-C interpretation include subordination, diction, implication, omission, negation and division, etc. But explanation and conversion are the two basic techniques of cultural factors transmission.

　　As far as the content of E-C interpretation is concerned, it includes conversation, interview, ceremonial speech, informative speech, persuasive speech, academic speech, business speech, popular science speech etc. No matter what kind of interpretation is, it can’t avoid cultural factor transmission. How to transmit the cultural factors of target language is the problem most interpreters face. Here’s how.

　　3.1Equivalence in E-C interpretation

　　Although Cultures and languages of both English and Chinese are different, it is not difficult for an interpreter to find equivalents in Chinese language in E-C interpretation. For instance. “Welcome to Shanghai, Mr. Roberts” “Nice to meet you” “Thank you so much for your concern” can be interpreted as“欢迎来上海,罗伯茨先生”“很高兴见到您”“非常感谢您的关心”。Fortunately, we find an interesting fact that some expressions, sentence structures and words in English are similar or have the same meaning in Chinese, such as “May I hereby declare openly…” “May I propose a toast…” “cheers” “opening ceremony” “market economic,” etc. Human experiences and observations of the world are similar in many respects. So, in spite of the dissimilar cultural backgrounds of the Chinese and the English-speaking peoples, the number of proverbs or sayings in the two languages that are equivalent or approximately close is rather surprising. Consider the following: