So! You’ve spent an hour Googling through the Web for your graduate research

游客2023-12-11  9

问题     So! You’ve spent an hour Googling through the Web for your graduate research paper, you’ve played the Google drinking game, heard the Google theme song and vanity-Googled yourself (again).
    Just for a change you turn on the TV and find they’re even talking about Google on "Sex and the City" and "The West Wing".
    What the heck was life like before Google?
    The last six years have seen Google become not just the world’s most popular Internet search engine but a verb, a household word and a cultural phenomenon.
    And on Thursday it entered a whole new chapter when it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to become a publicly listed company and sell $2.7 billion in stock.
    Google’s the place people turn to in more than 80 languages more than 200 million times a day if they want to locate a long-lost friend, find a recipe for maple walnut mousse pie or research a business competitor on a different continent.
    And Google delivers the answers with such ease, without fear or favor, that New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was moved to ask last year "Is Google God?"
    "There are clearly a lot of people who spend a lot of time with it and feel close to it," said Joe Janes, a University of Washington Information School professor who taught the world’s first university course on Google this spring.
    "I don’t think I would go as far as saying people treat it as a friend but it fills a couple of those roles — it helps you find things, it’s always there."

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答案     哦!你为了毕业论文已经在网上用谷歌搜索了1个小时,也玩过了谷歌酒量比赛游戏,还听过了谷歌主题曲,还出于虚荣心,用谷歌搜索了自己的名字(再一次)。
    有时为了换换口味,你打开电视,却发现人们甚至在《欲望城市》和《白宫精英》这样的节目里谈论谷歌。
    哎呀,在谷歌出现之前生活到底是什么鬼模样呀?
    过去6年里,谷歌不仅仅变成了世界上最受欢迎的搜索引擎,还变成了一个动词,变成了一个家喻户晓的名字,甚至变成了一种文化奇迹。
    周四谷歌翻开了新的一页:它向美国证券交易委员会提交了公开上市计划,并要出售价值27亿美元的股票。
    每天人们通过谷歌用80多种语言搜索两亿次以上,人们用谷歌来寻找失散多年的朋友,找到核桃枫叶慕思派的制作方法,或者研究另一大陆上的商业竞争对手。
    谷歌能够驾轻就熟地提供答案,并且公平公正,所以纽约时报专栏作家托马斯.弗里德曼去年颇有感触地问道:  “谷歌是上帝吗?”
    华盛顿大学信息学院的乔.简斯教授说:  “显然,很多人在谷歌上花了很多时间,因而和它有很深的感情。”他今年春天在全球率先开了大学谷歌课程。
    “我想我不至于说人们把谷歌当朋友,但是它确实担当了朋友的部分角色——谷歌帮你找到东西,谷歌总是随时待命。”

解析     本篇节选自2004年4月29日路透社的一篇题为How Google Became a Cultural Phenomenon?(《谷歌网站如何成为一种文化奇迹?》)的文章。行文流畅,紧跟时代潮流,翻译时考虑新闻语言的用词特色。
so:句首的“so”是感叹词,其作用是用来表示惊讶等。比如:  “So! You’ve completed your study eventually.(哦!你终于完成功课了。)”。
The West Wing:以美国白宫西翼为背景,是NBC热播的一部连续剧,也可译为《白宫群英》、《白宫风云》或《白宫西翼》。总统的椭圆形办公室虽然是政务的中心,但是白宫的日常运作却全靠位于白宫西侧忙碌的行政办公室。
a household word:可以采用增译的方法,译为“成为一个家喻户晓的名字”。
a cultural phenomenon:这里不是指“文化现象”,  “phenomenon”此处意为“不同寻常的、非凡的事实或事件;奇迹”,故联系上下文,译为“文化奇迹”。
the Securities and Exchange Commission:为了使译文读者更好地理解原语文化,建议增加“美国”二字,译为“美国证券交易委员会”。
without fear or favor:意为“in an equal and fair way”,即“公平地;公正地”,而非“不慌不忙”。
it’s always there:如果译为“它老是在那儿”,显得过于呆板、僵硬。是否能够往前跨一步,进入“化境”呢?建议译为:谷歌总是随时待命。
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