此刻納悶ing：You can't even 譯對簡淺的內容，why？
看到 [1] 引述兩段譯文，內容談到一個人的 primary tongue 和 mother tongue，頗有意思，便下意識「腦饞手癢」找出《此刻》原文來瞧瞧，結果真令人大失所望，卻也司空見慣。短短兩段話的翻譯（相信未經引述者刻意刪減或改動，故能準確反映紙書原譯），就有好幾處文意遺漏或譯不到位，嚴重的「欠額翻譯」(under-translation)，最後還來一個大錯，顛倒文意的輕重次序。（提示藏在此文標題中。這類錯誤，不諳英語者並不罕見。）這些遺漏和錯誤暫時不一一指出，留給有興趣的讀者從以下的英中對照自行探一探究竟，歡迎留言。
\\ I think I am at odds with you over the question of mother tongue (though I note that you tend to eschew that rather feeling-laden phrase in favor of “first language”). I agree that one’s weltanschauung is formed by the language that one speaks and writes most easily and, to a degree, thinks in. But it is not formed so deeply that one can never stand far enough outside that language to inspect it critically—particularly if one speaks or even just understands another language. That is why I say that it is possible to have a first language yet nonetheless not feel at home in it: it is, so to speak, one’s primary tongue but not one’s mother tongue.
……一個人的世界觀很容易受他用來說話和寫作的語言所形塑。但我不認為這種影響總是深得讓人無法從該種語言抽身，站在一個距離之外對它進行批判性審視（會說另一種語言的人尤其能夠如此）。這就是何以我會說，一個人是有可能對自己的第一語言感到不自在的。在這種情況下，一個人的首要語言便不等於他的母語。
This phenomenon is more widespread than one might think. In Europe, for instance, before the arrival of the nation-state and the triumph of national languages, Latin—which was no one’s mother tongue—was the currency of intellectual life. The same situation exists in Africa today vis-à-vis English and (to a lesser extent) French and Portuguese. In Africa it is not practically possible to be an intellectual in your mother tongue; you can’t even be much of a writer. In India and Pakistan, where it is the home language of only a minuscule minority, English is the medium of much of literature and all of science.
這現象比我們以為的要更普遍。例如，在民族國家出現和民族語言得勝以前，拉丁文是知識生活的流通貨幣，但卻不是任何人的母語。這種情形也見於英語之於今日的非洲（法語和葡萄牙語在較低程度上亦復如此）。在非洲，你不可能靠母語當上知識分子，要當上作家更不可能。在印度和巴基斯坦，英語只是極少數人的母語，但卻是大部分文學作品和全部科學作品的語言。
──保羅．奧斯特、柯慈《此刻》，頁八十九 //
書訊：[2]
此刻：柯慈與保羅．奧斯特書信集（2008-2011）
Here and Now: Letters
作者：J.M. Coetzee, Paul Auster
latin phrase in english 在 Latin Words & Phrases in English Vocabulary (Migratory Words 的推薦與評價
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