寫作風格的意識

我想閱讀此書的意義便是想學習，英文學做上的觀念。 但可惜的是這本真的是一本翻譯書。  書中完完全全翻譯的全文.........

內文引用很多英文段落來當作探討寫作的題材，可惜的是連英文段落文具都一併翻譯成中文，讓我看不懂很多想要表達的意思。

可能需要買原文書來對照看，才能真正了解其中含義。

I am the translator of the book, and I am a legitimate member of books.com.tw. I don’t want to hide my identity. Pinker’s The Sense of Style is a challenging book to translate, as parts of the book are highly technical. (Try to find someone to translate Chapter 4, the chapter on grammar, and see what a mess it might become.) I have tried my best to make even the most technical part of the book comprehensible to the general reader, and I believe to a large extent I succeeded in doing so. Of course the translation is far from perfect. It was done within a tight timeframe. Many improvements can indeed be made. Taking all the circumstances into consideration, I would give myself four stars for the translation. But if someone is to give one star and says that the translation is wholly incomprehensible, without giving any concrete examples and hiding her true identity, it looks like plain cyberbullying to me, which is unacceptable in any civilized society.

這是一本高難度的翻譯書，讀者若能精研英文到這種程度，其實基本上也不需要購買中文翻譯。英文作者並非語言學家，而是頗受普羅大眾喜愛的知名哈佛心理學教授，若是細讀原文不難發現許多句子過於炫耀賣弄，甚至有些例子引喻失當扭曲的語言學的真實意涵，往往為了賣弄而刻意一個句子長達一頁之長。翻譯的最高境界在於「信、達、雅」，譯者江先聲是美國威斯康辛大學語言學博士及哲學博士，儘管他看出英文作者部分探討語言論點的誤謬和曲解，他依舊忠於譯者的責任忠實呈現原文。

這本書翻得其實不差。重點是這是一本談英文寫作的書。作者列舉了許多英文散文的範例，但是中文版卻沒有附上英文原文，所以讀者只得透過中文來理解許多英文用字遣詞的細節，當然會是隔靴搔癢，甚至一頭霧水。我是看了中文版後 再買英文版來看。兩相對照，倒是饒富趣味，學到不少。

此書的翻譯翻得非常糟，完全不知所云，翻譯過度貼近原文句型，讀起來不像中文非常不流暢，冗言贅字也過多。奉勸有意購買的人三思，是不是願意買一本自己要花三倍時間理解的書...