![]() ![]() Since this plague killed a third of Europeans between 13, there was paranoia that sneezing was a definite symptom of the bubonic plague and considering it to be a heavenly curse. Some attribute the phrase "Bless you," from "God bless you," to Pope Gregory the Great, who said it in the sixth century during a bubonic plague epidemic. Romans would say "Jupiter preserve you" or "Salve" which means "good health to you." Since the Romans obviously spoke Vulgar Latin, it is not surprising that in Spanish and Portuguese, two of the romance languages evolving from Latin during the Roman Empire breakup from 711 to 1492, also use words that mean "health" when we say "salud" and "saúde" in Spanish and Portuguese respectively. Historically ancient civilizations have directed their well wishes to sneezers. ![]() Why all this special treatment when someone sneezes? It is not the custom to say anything when a person coughs or burps. In Spanish the listener states "salud" and in Portuguese "saúde." If a translation is against Chinese customs, then it’s not a qualified translation in terms of its Chinese expressions, which means, in most cases, free translation is more preferred.The first two expressions, "Bless you" and "Gesundheit" are common expressions used in the US directed to someone after he or she sneezes. Another thing we should bear in mind is complying with Chinese. Language structure is not the crucial element in economy, science, news, politics etc resources, therefore, we should greatly maintain the characters from the original texts. However, we should remember a point that translation resources are not only from literatures in recent days. Using literal translation or free translation becomes a question for translators. Obviously, it doesn’t reflect the metaphor from the original sentence.Īctually, this kind of example is very common in translation. In this point, we can use a little bit free translation style, ”黑人仍生活在贫困的孤岛上,尽管放眼四周,是一片繁华景象。”, which upgrades the reading level. Arranging “汪洋大海” with “物质富裕” is not a wise choice in terms of Chinese customs, in other words, it is inharmonious. In fact, it is rather worse regard of reading level due to maintaining the original metaphor.īesides, manner of writing of this translation is also a problem. Maintaining the metaphor of the author used is its merit. Version 1: “黑人依然生活在物质富裕的汪洋大海中贫乏的孤岛上。” This is a more literal translation, we can see that uses the same images as the original, such as “物质富裕的汪洋大海”. “The Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” In order to deeply analyze these two terms, let’s look at a good example. In general, complying with the original text to a comparatively large degree can be seen as literal translation, while freeing from the original structure and just translating the meaning is considered to be free translation. Actually, different people have different definitions about literal translation. However, English and Chinese have a great gap of meanings, which forces translators to choose between the literal translation and free translation. ![]() Because in this case, literal or free translation is exactly the same. In some cases, literal or free translation is not a problem, such as “I like the movie.” can be simply translated as “我喜欢这个电影。”, which excludes the struggle for literal translation and free translation. Literal translation or free translation has been a controversial issue for a long time. ![]()
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