读者提问常让我自卑——“难句”一例

byXIAOLAIon2009/05/06·14 COMMENTS

in我要问笑来

有读者提问:

“It is impossible to imagine Superman being as popular as he is and speaking as deeply to the American character were he not an immigrant and an orphan.” From:<What Makes Superman So Darned American?>

此句中”and speaking as deeply to the American character were he”如何理解，与”It is impossible to imagine Superman being as popular as he is not an immigrant and an orphan.”是何关系?

这句话乍一眼看去没看懂。愣了一下直接怀疑原文是否真的如此。于是在Google上搜索了一下（再次慨叹Google Book真好），发现这是一本叫“Popular culture”的书中的原句，书的作者是John G. Nachbar和Kevin Lausé。

又重新认真读了两三遍才基本搞定，而后再跟翟少成和余晟确认了一下，才放心写这个回复。

这个句子的整体框架应该是这样：

It is impossible to imagine … were he not an immigrant and an orphan.

也就是说，“were he not”相当于“if he were not…”，即，虚拟语气省略“if”的倒装。相当于：

It is impossible to imagine … if he were not an immigrant and an orphan.

而句子中还有一处省略，

It is impossible to imagine Superman being as popular as he is and speaking as deeply (as he is) to the American character were he not an immigrant and an orphan.

翻译（意译，并调整了一下语序）：

如果他不是一个移民和孤儿的话，就很难想象超人（对美国角色来说）可以那么受人欢迎并且谈吐那么深刻。

事后补充：
一位读者留言中的翻译更好一些；结合另外一个读者的建议（speak to是个短语），可以改成：

如果他不是移民、不是孤儿，那么很难想象超人会那么受欢迎，（也很难想象他）作为一个美国角色那么令人信服。

另，将来我再讲比较句写法的时候，要把这个句子当作经典例句。