Judging from the scientists I know, including Eva and Ruth, and those whom I"ve read about, you can"t pursue the laws of nature very long without bumping into beauty 1 .“I don"t know if it"s the same beauty you see in the sunset,” a friend tells me, “but it feels the same.” This friend is a physicist, who has spent a long career deciphering what must be happening in the interior of stars. He recalls for me this thrill on grasping for the first time Dirac"s equations describing quantum mechanics, or those of Einstein describing relativity. “They"re so beautiful,” he says, “you can see immediately they have to be true. Or at least on the way toward truth.” I ask him what makes a theory beautiful, and he replies, “Simplicity, symmetry, elegance, and power.”
Why nature should conform to theories we find beautiful is far from obvious. The most incomprehensible thing about the universe, as Einstein said, is that it"s comprehensible. How unlikely, that a short-lived biped on a two-bit planet should be able to gauge the speed of light, lay bare the structure of an atom, or calculate the gravitational tug of a black hole. We"re a long way from understanding everything, but we do understand a great deal about how nature behaves. Generation after generation, we puzzle out formulas, test them, and find, to an astonishing degree, that nature agrees. An architect draws designs on flimsy paper, and her buildings stand up through earthquakes. We launch a satellite into orbit and use it to bounce messages from continent to continent. The machine on which I write these words embodies hundreds of insights into the workings of the material world, insights that are confirmed by every burst of letters on the screen, and I stare at that screen through lenses that obey the laws of optics first worked out in detail by Isaac Newton.
By discerning patterns in the universe,
I spent my teenage years scrambling up the mountain of mathematics. Midway up the slope, however, I staggered to a halt, gasping in the rarefied air, well before I reached the heights where the equations of Einstein and Dirac would have made sense 2 . Nowadays I add, subtract, multiply, and do long division when no calculator is handy, and I can do algebra and geometry and even trigonometry in a pinch, but that is about all that I"ve kept from the language of numbers. Still, I remember glimpsing patterns in mathematics that seemed as bold and beautiful as a skyful of stars.
I"m never more aware of the limitations of language than when I try to describe beauty. Language can create its own loveliness, of course, but it cannot deliver to us the radiance we apprehend in the world 3, any more than a photograph can capture 4 the stunning swiftness of a hawk or the withering power of a supernova. Eva"s wedding album holds only a faint glimmer of the wedding itself. All that pictures or words can do is gesture beyond themselves toward the fleeting glory that stirs our hearts. So I keep gesturing 5.
“ All nature is meant to make us think of paradise,” Thomas Merton observed. Because the Creation puts on a nonstop show, beauty is free and inexhaustible, but we need training in order to perceive more than the most obvious kinds. Even 15 billion years or so after the Big Bang, echoes of that event still linger in the form of background radiation, only a few degrees above absolute zero. Just so, I believe, the experience of beauty is an echo of the order and power that permeate the universe. To measure background radiation, we need subtle instruments; to measure beauty, we need alert intelligence and our five keen senses.
Anyone with eyes can take delight in a face or a flower 6. You need training, however, to perceive the beauty in mathematics or physics or chess, in the architecture of a tree, the design of a bird"s wing, or the shiver of breath through a flute 7. For most of human history, the training has come from elders who taught the young how to pay attention. By paying attention, we learn to savor all sorts of patterns, from quantum mechanics to patchwork quilts. This predilection brings with it a clear evolutionary advantage, for the ability to recognize patterns helped our ancestors to select mates, find food, avoid predators. But the same advantage would apply to all species, and yet we alone compose symphonies and crossword puzzles, carve stone into statues, map time and space.
Have we merely carried our animal need for shrewd perceptions to an absurd extreme? Or have we stumbled onto a deep congruence between the structure of our minds and the structure of the universe?
I am persuaded the latter is true. I am convinced there"s more to beauty than biology, more than cultural convention. It flows around and through us in such abundance, and in such myriad forms, as to exceed by a wide margin any mere evolutionary need. Which is not to say that beauty has nothing to do with survival: I think it has everything to do with survival. Beauty feeds us from the same source that created us. It reminds us of the shaping power that reaches through the flower stem and through our own hands. It restores our faith in the generosity of nature. By giving us a taste of the kinship between our own small minds and the great Mind of the Cosmos, beauty reassures us that we are exactly and wonderfully made for life on this glorious planet, in this magnificent universe 8. I find in that affinity a profound source of meaning and hope. A universe so prodigal of beauty may actually need us to notice and respond, may need our sharp eyes and brimming hearts and teeming minds, in order to close the circuit of Creation 9.
【 概述 】
本文是 2005年第十七届“韩素音青年翻译奖”英译汉部分的参赛原文。选自《当代美国散文选》(上海外语教育出版社2003年8月出版)中“ Beauty ” 一文的结尾部分。桑德斯的这篇 “ Beauty ” ，充满抒情散文的浓郁文采。作者阅历丰富，思路开阔。全文用词简隽，风格大气，行文如流水，洒脱自如，虽是散文，却富有诗的韵律和节奏，充分展 示了英语抒情散文的优美风格。
【 翻译要点评析 】
1． …, you can"t pursue the laws of nature very long without bumping into beauty.
“not…without” 明显是一个双重否定结构，相当于汉语“不 …… 就不能”、“只要 …… ，就会 …… ”的意思。不要译为“ …… 要是没有与美邂逅的话，就不能更进一步探索自然规律”，因果颠倒，歪曲了原意。
2. Midway up the slope, however, I staggered to a halt, gasping in the rarefied air, well before I reached the heights where the equations of Einstein and Dirac would have made sense.
句中“ would have made sense ”是虚拟语气，意为“当时若要弄明白的话”。
3. but it cannot deliver to us the radiance we apprehend in the world,…
“ radiance ”一词须斟酌， 其本意为“辐射”，译时不妨从中得到联想，引申为“意境”，与“感悟” (apprehend) 正好吻合。
4. …, but it cannot deliver to us…, any more than a photograph can capture.
这是本文的语法难点之一。句中 “ any more than…” 应与前 “cannot” 连用，表否定意义“不能 …… 也不能 …… ”，相当于 “not any more / no more …than…” 结构 (=not…just as…not…) 。 正因为 “any more than” 前面有逗号，应把它看成下一句中的省略形式，即 “(it can not deliver)any more (to us…)than a photograph can capture…” 或 “(it can deliver) no more (to us)…than…” ， 意为“语言不能 …… 就像照片不能 …… 一样”。
5. So I keep gesturing ： 这是本文的难点之一，要译好这一段，有必要对这一段中作者的思路进行梳理：语言（贫乏——照片（强不到哪去）——伊娃的相册（不过是全景之一瞥）——结论：照片、文字只能是摆弄一下姿态 / 比划比划 (gesture) ——作者自己：既然语言如此贫乏，那我的文章岂不是也只能触其表而未及其里，跟着做做样子，“比划比划” (gesture) ？故作者笔锋一转，自我调侃。故译为：因而，我只好在这儿跟着“比划”下去了。解读原文意义须结合整体语篇考虑，说话人自有其特定的交际意图和说话逻辑，不然说出来毫无意义。
6. Anyone with eyes can take delight in a face or a flower.
正常人都有双眼，说这话意义不大。“翻译最难是口吻”（毛荣贵， 2002 ），原作者的“口吻”和“语气”其实就在字里行间，译时不要把一篇优美的散文译成了干瘪的说明文。只要稍做变通，原文神采便跃然纸上：“凡眼见于俏脸、鲜花，无人不赏心悦目”。
7.You need training, however, to perceive the beauty in mathematics or physics or chess, in the architecture of a tree, the design of a bird"s wing, or the shiver of breath through a flute.
译时应注重散文的文学美感与韵味，参考译文供大家欣赏：然而要参透数学、物理或棋弈之美，欣赏树之有形、鸟之翼趣，乃至对长笛奏出的悠悠颤音心领神会，则必经专门训练方可体味。
8. … we"re exactly and wonderfully made for life in this glorious planet, in this magnificent universe.
要译出原文的神采和丰韵，就必须力争做到“神形兼备”，其主要特点就是“追求‘不似之似"，追求‘离形得似"，也就是说译文看似与原文若即若离，实则得原文之真髓。参考译文：如此绝妙天成的人类，原本就是为这煌煌星球、泱泱宇宙应运而生的。
9. .. in order to close the circuit of Creation
这里如把“ close ”一词译为“关闭”，“终结”，岂不与上下文语义相悖？其实，“ close ”尽管有多种意思，但与“ circuit ”连用，意思则有改变：“接通电路”。当然这一语义仍与上下文不合。因此，不妨从此本意出发，引申为“沟通 …… 之间的交流与循环”，有“周而复始”的含义。
（参考贾文波执笔的评析）
论 美 ( 节选 )
我认识的 ( 包括伊娃和鲁思认识的 ) 和书中读到的科学家们都认为，只要去探寻自然法则，不用多久，必有与美邂逅的一天。“那种美” , 用我一位朋友的话来说：“ 不知能否与夕阳晚照媲美，但感受绝对是一样的 ” 。我的这位物理学家朋友，为破解星体内部之谜耗去了大半辈子的光阴。回想初次顿悟量子力学狄拉克方程式或爱因斯坦相对论所带给他的那份狂喜，他会说 ：“真是太美了 ! 一看就知道那必是真理，或至少接近真理”。当问及何谓理论之美，答曰：“简洁、对称、典雅、力量”。
大自然为何与我们所见之 " 美的理论 " 这般吻合 ? 个中道理尚不得而知。然而，如爱因斯坦所言，宇宙之妙就在于其最不可知者其实可知。试想，在一颗丁点儿大的星球上，一群生命不长的两足动物竟能测定光速、解构原子、计算黑洞引力，是何等地不可思议 ! 诚然，知晓世间万物尚远非人力所能及，但自然界的活动规律，的确被人类弄清了许多。一代又一代，人类推导出的各种公式定理，几经验证，竟发现与自然界惊人的一致 ；建筑师在薄纸上绘制出的建筑蓝图，建成后竟能经地震而屹立不倒；人类将卫星送入空间轨道，便可在地球各大洲传递信息；我用来打字的这台电脑， 同样是人类千百次探索与认知物质世界的结晶，眼前跳现于荧屏上的一个个字母就是最好的例证； 而我的双眼透过镜片凝视荧屏， 这镜片又是遵循艾萨克·牛顿当年阐释的光学原理研制而成。