晓闻心雨 » 积少成多

out of thin-air

jacobxx — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 09:59:13 +0000

今天翻译的时候碰到一个据说现在Twitter上比较出名的一个女同胞，Laura Roeder制作的一个视频，叫做“creating fans out of thin-air ”。
这个词组该怎么翻译呢？
顾名思义，air是空气，空气，thin-air高空中稀薄的空气，试图从空气中搞点什么名堂出来，一般是“无终生有”，“凭空捏造”的意思。
例如：The tabloid makes up the most rediculous stories out of thin-air. 小报凭空捏造最荒谬的新闻。
不过不要以为这个词组都是贬义词哦，其实可以看与其搭配的词来判断词性，最后再翻译。
例如，前面一句用到“make up”本身就有“捏造”的意思了。
而我今天碰到的“creating fans out of thin air‘，前面是creat，所以应该不能翻译成贬义的了。
哎可惜，具体该怎么翻译，由于我的词汇实在不行，我只能翻译成“粉丝从无到有”，真是郁闷。
还找到另外一个例句也是褒义的，
The company is flat broke. Unless the boss can pull something out of thin air and borrow a lot of money by Friday, we’ll have to go into bankruptcy and I’ll have to look for other work.
这家公司现在已是财源枯竭，除非老板神通广大能在星期五之前筹措到大笔钱款摆脱困境，否则我们就只得陷入破产的境地，而我也必须另找工作了。

为啥我的脑袋词汇就这么枯竭呢，看人家神通广大翻译得多好啊！

Karma

jacobxx — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:39:15 +0000

Karma
第一次看到这个单词，不知道什么意思，记录下。查了下百度百科karma

可以理解为 因果报应，常用作“宿命”之意，

如：It’s my karma to fall in love with you. 爱上你是我的宿命。

最后谷歌一下翻到去年“惊人的”莎朗斯通粗鲁言论，对中国人民造成巨大伤害，话说当时我也知道点，不过只是听说，也不清楚她究竟说了什么内容，现在终于知道了，看来她受我们的BS，this is really her karma：

French fashion house Christian Dior said Thursday it has dropped Sharon Stone from its Chinese ads and released a statement from the actress apologizing for saying China’s earthquake may have been bad karma for its treatment of Tibet.

法国时尚品牌克里斯汀.迪奥周四表示他们已经撤下了莎朗斯通在中国的广告，并发表了来自莎朗斯通本人关于对之前中国地震是中国政府的”因果报应”一说的道歉信。

莎朗斯通伤害中国人们的粗鲁言论原文:
“I’m not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else,” Stone said. “And then this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and then I thought, is that karma? When you’re not nice that the bad things happen to you?”

下面才是我今天翻译时的内容，不会错了“good karma”应该就是善举了，查看原文（鼓励大家写blog不要抱着非得赚钱的心态，而应该以一种分享的心态，把真正有意义的内容奉献给大家，包括其他blogger。）

I’ve only recently realized the benefits of good Karma.Greed and blogging doesn’t go well together at all. Right off the bat I wanted to say that if you’re thinking of starting a blog strictly for money and your heart isn’t in the blog topic, you will not only fail but you will lose all that time you’ll spend creating the blog and writing content that will be extremely difficult to produce just because it’s not something you believe in but just something you think has a high monetary rate of return. There are two ways to looking at blogging: 1. Every other blogger is your competition, or 2. Every other blog out there is an opportunity.

Plastic,bells and whistles

jacobxx — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:08:10 +0000

Plastic, (informal) a way of talking about CREDIT CARDS

居然有信用卡的意思，呵呵

摘录下：

Visitors who are concerned about the insecurity to their plastic will never become customers.

免得以后把信用卡就当一塑料给扔了。

字面意思，铃和哨子。但是你知道在下面句子中什么意思吗？

Unless you have an unlimited budget, you probably want to make sure you get the best pricing as well as all the bells and whistles that you require.

bells and whistles :special features and extras that ordinary products don’t have.

可译为“额外功能”很地道的表达。