Multiple-choice cloze
For questions 1-8, read the text below and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap.
Ask a literary translator what the job involves and you are likely to be told that it is less a matter of finding equivalent words than of a voice. A novel is not simply a sequence of statements to be carried from one language to another; it has rhythm, humour and silences, and these rarely the journey intact. Translators therefore make hundreds of small decisions, each of which may seem on its own but which together determine whether the book a chord with its new readers or falls flat. Puns are the most notorious block: a joke that depends on two meanings of a single word must often be abandoned altogether and replaced with a different joke that works in the target language. Subtler problems arise with forms of address, dialect and the countless cultural references that a native reader would pick up a second thought. Some translators argue that they should be as invisible as possible; others believe their presence in the text should be openly . Either way, readers who complain that something has been 'lost in translation' might do to remember how much has been found.
提示: 点击空白编号跳转到对应题目.