综合教程2之The jeaning of America的翻译

This is the story of a sturdy American symbol which has now spread throughout most of the world. The symbol is not the dollar. It is not even Coca-Cola. It is a simple pair of pants called blue jeans, and what the pants symbolize is what Alexis de Tocqueville called “a manly and legitimate passion for equality. Blue jeans are favored equally by bureaucrats and cowboys; bankers and deadbeats; fashion designers and beer drinkers They draw no distinctions and recognize no classes; they are merely American 1 . Yet they are sought after almost everywhere in the world including Russia, where authorities recently broke up a teen-aged gang that was selling them on the black market for two hundred dollars a pair. They have been around for a long time, and it seems likely that they will outlive even the necktie.2 This ubiquitous American symbol was the invention of a Bavarian-born Jew. His name was Levi Strauss.3 He was born in Bad Ocheim, Germany , in 1829, and during the European political turmoil of 1848 decided to take his chances in New York , to which his two brothers already had emigrated. Upon arrival, Levi soon found that his two brothers had exaggerated their tales of an easy life in the land of the main chance. They were landowners, they had told him; instead, he found them pushing needles, thread, pots, pans ribbons, yarn, scissors and buttons to housewives. For two years he was a lowly peddler, hauling some 180 pounds of sundries door-to-door to eke out a marginal living. When a married sister in San Francisco offered to pay his way West in1850, he jumped at the opportunity, taking with him bolts of canvas he hoped to sell for tenting.4 It was the wrong kind of canvas for that purpose, but while talking with a miner down from the mother lode, he learned that pants sturdy pants that would stand up to the rigors of the digging were almost impossible to find. Opportunity beckoned. On the spot, Strauss measured the man's girth and inseam with a piece of string and, for six dollars in gold dust 2 , had the canvas tailored into a pair of stiff but rugged pants. The miner was delighted with the result, word got around about “those pants of Levi's” and Strauss was in business. The company has been in business ever since.5When Strauss ran out of canvas, he wrote his two brothers to send more. He received instead a tough, brown cotton cloth made in Nimes, France called serge de Nimes and swiftly shortened to “denim”(the word “jeans” derives from G ê nes, the French word for Genoa, where a similar cloth was produced). Almost from the first, Strauss had his cloth dyed the distinctive indigo that gave blue jeans their name 3 , but it was not until the 1870s that he added the copper rivets which have long since become a company trademark. The rivets were the idea of a Virginia City, Nevada , tailor, Jacob W. Dacis, who added them to pacify a mean-tempered miner called Alkali Ike. Alkali, the story goes, complained that the pockets of his jeans always tore when he stuffed them with ore samples and demanded that Davis do something about it. As a kind of joke, Davis took the pants to a blacksmith and had the packets riveted; once again, the idea worked so well that word got around; in 1873 Strauss appropriated 4 and patented the gimmick and hired Davis as a regional manager.6 By this time, Strauss had taken both his brothers and two brothers-in-law into the company and was ready for his third San Francisco store. Over the ensuing years the company prospered locally, and by the time of his death in 1902, Strauss has become a man of prominence in California . For three decades thereafter the business remained profitable though small, with sales largely confined to the working people of the West cowboys, lumberjacks, railroad workers, and the like. Levi's jeans were first introduced to the East, apparently, during the dude-ranch craze of the 1930s, when vacationing Easters returned and spread the word about the wonderful pants with rivets. Another boost came in World War , when blue jeans were declared and essential commodity and were sold only to people engaged in defense work 5 . From a company with fifteen salespeople, two plants, and almost no business east of the Mississippi in 1946, the organization grew in thirty years to include a sales force of more than twenty-two thousand, with fifty plants and offices in thirty-five countries. Each year, more than 250,000,000 items of Levi's clothing are sold including more than 83,000,000 pairs of riveted blue jeans. They have become, through marketing, word of mouth, and demonstrable reliability, the common pants of America . They can be purchased pre-washed, pre-faded, and pre-shrunk for the suitably proletarian look. They adapt themselves to any sort of idiosyncratic use; women slit them at the inseams and convert them into long skirts, men chop them off above the knees and turn them into something to be worn while challenging the surf. Decorations and ornamentations abound.7The pants have become a tradition, and along the way have acquired a history of their own so much so that the company has opened a museum in San Francisco. There was, for example 6 , the turn-of-the-century trainman who replaced a faulty coupling with a pair of jeans; the Wyoming man who used his jeans as a towrope to haulhis car out of a ditch; the Californian who found several pairs in an abandoned mine, wore them, then discovered they were sixty-three years old and still as good as new and turned them over to the Smithsonian as a tribute to their toughness. And then there is the particularly terrifying story of the careless construction worker who dangled fifty-two stories above the street until rescued, his sole support the Levi's belt loop through which his rope was hooked. 美国牛仔裤史话 卡琳·奎因1 本文讲述的是美国的一个坚实的象征物，如今已经遍及世界大部分地区。此物不是美元，甚至也不是可口可乐，而只是一条称作蓝色牛仔裤的普通裤子。这条裤子所象征的，如亚历克西·德托克维尔所言，是“对平等的果敢而正当的渴求”无论是官员还是牛仔，银行家还是赖帐徒，时装设计师还是嗜酒成性者，都同样青睐蓝色牛仔裤。这种裤子对人不分高低贵贱，只要是美国人都可以穿。不过，牛仔裤几乎在世界各地都广受欢迎其中包括俄罗斯，其当局最近破获了一个在黑市上倒卖牛仔裤的青少年团伙，他们的牛仔裤卖到 200 美元一条。牛仔裤已经流行了很长时间，看来其生命力甚至可能超过领带。2 这个无所不在的美国象征是一个出生于巴伐利亚的犹太人发明的，它的名字叫李维·施特劳斯。3 他于 1829 年出生于德国的巴德奥切姆， 1848 年欧洲政治动荡期间，决定去纽约碰碰运气，他的两个哥哥已经移民去了那里。到了纽约，李维很快就发现，两个哥哥关于在这片充满机遇的土地上生活比较安逸的说法实在有些言过其实。他们说自己拥有土地，可他发现他们在向家庭主妇推销针线、锅罐、缎带、剪刀和钮扣。李维做了两年寒酸的小贩，拉着 180 来磅的杂货挨门挨户地叫卖，勉强维持生计。 1850 年，他的一个嫁到旧金山的姐姐愿意为他提供西行的路费，他急忙抓住这一机会，带着几卷帆布走了，打算卖给人家做帐篷用。4 岂料这种帆布不适于做帐篷。不过，李维跟一个来自主矿脉的矿工交谈时了解到，人们简直买不到能经得起采矿磨损的结实耐穿的裤子。机会向他招手了。施特劳斯当场用一根带子量了那人的腰围和裤长，请人用帆布做成一条粗硬而耐磨的裤子，卖得了 6 美元的砂金。矿工感到很满意，于是有关“李维的那些裤子”的消息不胫而走，施特劳斯从此做起了生意。自那以后，他的公司一直在经营。5 施特劳斯用完了帆布，便写信叫哥哥在发一些过来，不想收到的却是法国尼姆产的一种坚韧的棕色棉布称作“尼姆哔叽”（ serge de Nimes ） , 很快就简称为“劳动布” 英语词 jeans( 牛仔裤 ) 源自于法语的 Genes ，即英语的 Genoa （热那亚），此地生产一种类似的棉布 。几乎从一开始，施特劳斯就把他的布料染成别具一格的靛蓝色，因此便有了蓝色牛仔裤之称。不过，直到 19 世纪 70 年代，他才往裤子上加了铜铆钉；长期以来，这铜铆钉也就成了公司的标志。给裤子加上铆钉是内华达州弗吉尼亚市的裁缝雅各布· W ·戴维斯想出的主意，他这样做是为了抚慰为一个名叫阿尔卡利·艾克的脾气暴躁的矿工。据说他抱怨他往口袋里装矿石标本时，口袋总是被撑破，要求戴维斯想想办法。戴维斯开了个玩笑，把裤子拿到铁匠铺，给口袋上了铆钉。这一招果然奏效，消息再一次不胫而走。 1873 年，施特劳斯采纳了这一小发明，出资为之申请了专利并雇用戴维斯做地区经理。 6 这时候， 施特劳斯已把他的两个哥哥和两个姐夫招进了公司，并准备在旧金山开办他的第三个分店。此后的几十年间，公司在当地生意兴隆。 1902 年施特劳斯去世时，他已成为加利福尼亚的知名人士。在以后的 30 年中，生意虽然不大，但一直在盈利，主要的销售对象是西部的劳工阶层诸如牛仔、伐木工、铁路工之类的人。李维的牛仔裤最初引进到东部，显然是在 20 世纪 30 年代的农场度假热潮中， 西去度假的东部人回家后，便到处宣扬这种带铜铆钉的奇妙裤子。二次大战期间，蓝色牛仔裤又一次走俏，被宣布为紧要商品，只卖给从事防务工作的人。该公司在 1946 年时还只有 15 名销售员，两个加工厂，密西西比河以东几乎没有什么业务，而 30 年后则发展成拥有 2 万 2 千多人的销售队伍，并在 35 个国家设有 50 家加工厂和办事处。每年，李维服装的销售量超过 2 亿 5 千多万件其中包括 8 千 3 百多万条钉有铜铆钉的蓝色牛仔裤。通过市场营销，口口相传，以及显而易见的可靠性，牛仔裤已成为美国的寻常裤装。人们还可以卖到进行过水洗、褪色和缩水处理的牛仔裤，以符合无产者的形象。牛仔裤经过改造还可以供各种癖好的人使用。妇女们将裤管内缝拆开，将裤子改制成长裙；男人们将其从膝盖上方截下，变成冲浪时穿的短裤。人们还给牛仔裤缀上各式各样的装饰物。7 牛仔裤已成为一种传统，在其发展过程中谱写了自己的历史这历史如此丰富多彩，公司在旧金山建立了一座博物馆。例如： 19 世纪、 20 世纪之交的时候，一位列车员用一条牛仔裤代替失灵的列车挂钩；怀俄明州的一个男子用牛仔裤把汽车从沟里拖出来；加利福尼亚的一个人在一个废弃的矿井里捡到几条牛仔裤，穿上后发现这裤子已有 63 年的历史，还依然像新的一样，便将其捐给史密斯学会，以表彰它的结实耐用。还有一个特别惊心动魄的故事：一个粗心的建筑工人悬挂在 52 层楼上，直至获救，他的唯一支撑点就是李维牛仔裤的裤带扣，他的安全绳就扣着这裤带扣。 ( 孙致礼译 ) 注释 1 American 是与（ draw ） no distinctions 和（ recognize ） no classes 相呼应的，其意义须放在上下文中体会，如照字面译为“它们只是美国的”，则在意义上与上文失去了连贯。2 for six dollars in gold dust 意为“付给价值 6 美圆的砂金”。3 注意 that 引导的定语从句在译文中逻辑关系的调整：“因此”。4 对 appropriated 一词的翻译，译者查阅了有关史实：“经查阅，戴维斯因为无钱申请专利，便要求李维出资申请，李维慨然答应。实际上，那专利权归他们俩所有。所以，这里译作“采纳”较好。”（见中国翻译 2000/2 ， 75 页）译者的注释给我们的启示是：词义的定夺，倚重于上下文。但这有时仍然不够充分。词汇使用的具体场景，历史、文化背景都对词义有一定的限定作用。5 以上两句中各有一个状语从句（ when ） , 这体现了英语多用连接词语的形合特征。汉译时常化为形散意合的结构。6 此处的 for example 不宜直译为“例如”或“馆中的展品例如”。如何措辞应考虑上下文的连贯，即如何使用恰当的词语将第一句和下文列举的事件联系起来。用“例如”似和历史的丰富多彩相连，但是中间隔了一句；用“馆中的展品例如”又和下文不合，因为接下来说的是事例而并非展品。如译为“展览的内容包括”，连贯性可能更好些。