Envy is a bad emotion that is good to none but worse to yourself. The covetous you may nurse a grudge against a successful personage or young beauty. Then how to overwhelm the envious psyche? First of all, do not compare others’ strengths to your weaknesses, for a comparison generally breeds the envious emotion. According to psychologists, it has no bearing on you how much others obtain. Since “the number of successes” is not reduced in the world on account of their achievements, you stand the show of making great hits as they have ever done.
正確翻譯首先就依賴于對“妒忌”一詞的準確翻譯。漢語“妒忌”常常對應(yīng)著英語中的兩個詞,envy和jealousy,他們雖然可以互換使用,但從心理學上講,還是有區(qū)別的,envy通常指由于缺少別人所擁有的事物而痛苦,jealousy則是指害怕失去自己擁有的東西,特別是戀愛中失去自己的愛人。由此可以看出,本文中的“妒忌”更多的是指前者,即envy。另外,envy也是基督教本人(pride, envy, wrath, gluttony, lust, sloth and greed)之一。再者,原文第一句話涉及對于envy的定義,要準確翻譯必須找出envy一詞準確的上義詞,筆者根據(jù)詞典的定義使用了emotion或psyche等詞。
“損人不利己”的翻譯多種多樣,但要注意“人(others)”和“己(oneself)”二者之間的關(guān)聯(lián)性,有網(wǎng)友用cut off one’s nose to spite off one’s (own) face,感覺重點是放在了損害自己身上,由于漢語“損人不利己”具有互文性,所以一些網(wǎng)友也把它翻譯成了do harms to both oneself and others。在句法方面,“不要和別人的長處比較。妒忌心理往往來源于將自己的短處與別人的長處進行比較。”這兩句話中包含重復的部分,可以合并處理,以使其適應(yīng)英語的表達習慣。
我們看一個未合并處理的例子: First of all, Compare not your demerits with others' demerits. Jealousness generally originates from the comparison with advantage and disadvantage(原文照錄),這里兩句話明顯出現(xiàn)了不必要的重復(demerits和disadvantage的重復)。