By Jim Jones | 钟杰木 著
魔王交易命运未卜
A word from the editors:
There is more to translation than finding equivalents, and translators need to get beneath the surface to look for the elusive “intention” of the source text. Jim Jones’ story below illustrates this point nicely. To make it fun, we put a couple of errors in the translation on purpose. Hint: to detect one of the errors, you need to know the author’s intention.
It is the year 2820, and a major shareholder in Devil Incorporated, God Management, says that God opposes a $10 billion deal for the U.S. giant to go private. The investment group, which owns ten percent of Devil, says that the potential deal “undervalues Devil.” John Smith of Financial News reported Saturday that if the company did go private, Jack Devil’s $5 billion stake in his company could eventually triple.
光阴往前跳到 2820 年，美国商业巨擘魔王有限公司主要股东上帝管理集团宣称上帝将反对总额百亿美元的魔王私有化交易。拥有魔王百分之十股权的投资公司上帝觉得这项交易“低估了魔王的价值”。财经新闻记者约翰•史密斯星期六报导，公司私有化将使杰克•魔王所拥有的五十亿美元股权增值三倍。
Said God’s Director, in a phone conversation with John Smith, “That guy Jack Devil just annoys me. Why does he not just go and play elsewhere?”
上帝一主管在电话上对约翰•史密斯说：“杰克•魔王这人真让我头疼!他为什么不跟别人耍他的把戏？”
Devil’s board said this week that going private would be the best way for the company to reinvent itself, which they felt would be necessary in light of the alien invasion last year. The ensuing war, which is now in its tenth month, having played out on three battle-scarred continents, has taken away more than a quarter of Earth’s human population. So far the aliens have only lost a handful of their thousands of interstellar ships. They have lost no personnel yet. For people on Earth, there has been a very certain anti-technology trend because everyone is afraid that things could get worse. People are losing hope because of the aliens’ use of a giant magnetic technology that takes away much of the world’s electrical power for great blocks of time. No one knows the true capability of this technology yet.
魔王董事会这星期说私有化是公司脱胎换骨的最好机会。董事会觉得自从去年外星人攻击地球以来，公司更需要彻底改革。这场对抗外星人的苦战现在已持续了十个月，使三大洲战伤累累，并毁灭了地球四分之一以上的人口。外星人拥有数以千计的太空船，但只丧失了其中的几艘,并且尚未有亡者。地球居民觉得局势将更加恶化，因而造成了他们反科技的心态，这是非常明确的趋势。最使居民感到绝望的是，外星人有能力应用一项庞大的电磁技术在长时间内掠取世界的电力，而迄今无人知晓这项技术真正有多厲害。
People began to notice the phenomenon shortly after the aliens lost their first ship off the coast of Australia last year. At first, the news of the unexpected victory, the result of a joint Australian and Chinese military op, rallied everyone around the world. But within a few hours, there were reports from many places of electricity going out or becoming intermittent for a few days at a time, as well as the temporary non-functioning of vehicles and smaller electrical devices.
这个现象是地球居民在去年外星人在澳洲海岸丧失第一艘太空船之后的短时间内察觉的。最初，这项由澳洲与中国联合军事行动所获得的意外胜利让全世界的人们欢欣鼓舞。但几个小时后，许多地方开始出现停电、电力不继的报导,汽车与小型电气装置也开始出毛病。这些故障有时会持续几天。
The Grand Council, the collection of diplomatic representatives of the Alien War Operations Board from every individual nation-state, stated that the Great Electrical Outage (now dubbed the 1A Great Electrical Outage) that came shortly after Victory 1A, that first downing, signified that the aliens themselves were caught off-guard, and would seem to indicate that the aliens were not necessarily all-powerful, just very powerful.
由所有民族国家的外星人抗战委员会外交人员所组成的大议会称，“1A 胜利”（即第一艘太空船的毁灭）稍后发生的大停电（即现在所谓的“1A 大停电”）所显示的是地球的战略使外星人措手不及，意味着外星人的力量是强大的，但不是无限的。
Back to Devil: “This deal is so unfair to shareholders,” says Dick Dogood, chief investment officer at Knowledge Investment Management (KIM, a company that is on the Korean peninsula), a major shareholder. KIM estimates Devil Management’s value to be close to $30 per share.
回到上述的魔王交易。位于朝鲜半岛的知识投资管理公司（KIM）首席投资顾问狄克•行善说：“这项交易对股东太不公平了！”为魔王有限公司主要股东之一的KIM 估计魔王股价在三十美元左右。
In a late-night phone conversation on Friday, the second one of that day, the Head of God said, angrily, “This alien issue is one thing, but the Devil thing is quite another. I have a feeling that people are going to beat the aliens, eventually, but if Jack Devil gets his way, who knows? I mean, in this case, I cannot say for sure what’s gonna happen. People might give up hope, ya know?”
在星期五深夜，也是那天第二通电话谈话中，上帝负责人气愤地说：“外星人和魔王是两码子事。我相信外星人最后会被打败的。如果杰克•魔王的计谋得逞，那就难说了。谁知道以后会是什么局面？人们可能会觉得没有希望了，对不对？”
Janet Tease, of Devil, stands firm. “It is a good deal, given the situation,” she says, “and consider this: people are making inroads into the alien thing. Why just last month they managed to take down another of their giant ships. It is only a matter of time now.”
魔王的珍娜•提丝则不苟言笑地说：“这项交易其实无懈可击。想想看，对抗外星人已经有所进展，我们不是在上个月又摧毁了另一艘太空船吗？我们只需要一点时间而已。”
Devil’s shares closed up for the week.
这星期，魔王股价呈涨势。
Jim Jones first learned Mandarin in the US Midwest 30 years ago in college. He is a 20-year and award-winning member of STC (Society for Technical Communication stc.org). He does translation, editing, writing, cartooning, and other things. Find him at LinkedIn.com/in/jimxlat.
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