English Is the System of Repetitions!

[원문]:Finally, outsiders are likely to perceive people who share something in common as a collective entity before those people do and even if major differences exist among them. Looking at their North American colonies from London, the British saw them as a whole before the colonists did. "The British worried about the whole," John M. Murrin states, "because they did not understand the parts, and they reified their concerns into totality they called America...In a word, America was Britain's idea." (Who Are We? Samuel P. Huntington)


[원문역]: 마지막으로, 외부인들은 무언가를 공유하는 사람들이 그러는 것 보다 먼저 (그들 사이에 상당한 차이들이 있는 경우에도) 그들을 하나의 집단적 단위로 보는 속도가 빠르다. 런던에서 북미의 식민자들을 보며, 영국인들은 그들보다 앞서 그들을 하나의 전체로 보았다. “영국인들은 그 전체에 대해 걱정했다”고 존 M. 마린은 얘기한다. “왜냐하면 그들은 그 안의 부분들을 이해하지 못했기 때문이다. 그래서 그들은 자신들의 걱정을 미국 America이라는 이름의 통합체로 형상화시켰다...한 마디로 말해서, 미국은 영국이 만들어낸 개념이었다. (새뮤얼 헌팅턴의 미국, 김영사)


[정역]: 마지막으로 말하고 싶은 것은, 뭔가 공통점을 가진 사람들이 있는 경우에 그들이 스스로 공통점을 가진 단일체라고 보기 전에 바깥에서 이를 보는 사람들은 이들을 하나의 집단적 주체로 보는 경향이 있다 (사실은 그들이 차이점이 많은데도 불구하고). 식민지 인민들이 스스로를 단일한 총체라고 보기도 전에 런던에서 북미의 영국 식민지 인민들을 보던 영국인들은 이들 식민지를 하나의 전체로 보았던 것이다....중략...한 마디로 말해서, 미국이라는 나라는 영국이 만들어낸 개념이었다.


[comments]::1)What is the most salient characteristic of a mistranslation? It is equivocation. The translator equivocates, that is, he or she makes ambiguous utterances, as if muttering to himself or herself. As a natural result, the reader or the audience doesn't understand what the translator or the interpreter is talking about.


2)This kind of self-deception is caused by the translator's laziness which braves the incompleteness of his understanding. As a result, when asked by his or her audiences what it means by this or that he or she can't clarify his or her statement. I am not being facetious, but the translator will have to say, shrugging his or her shoulders, "I don't know, either," when hearing his or her audiences express their doubts.


3)The culprit, which has caused the mistranslation, or the translator's equivocation, has been the translator's misunderstanding of the verb do. The verb do represents the preceding verb perceive, of course, but does not just represent the verb perceive but represent its objectives. So you can rewrite the sentence as follows:{{Finally, outsiders are likely to perceive people who share something in common as a collective entity [before those people perceive that they share some in common] and even if major differences exist among them.}}


4)You as well as the translator himself or herself should know that the English language is the structure of repetitions. To refer to the paragraph at issue, the four sentences have mutually related, similar and repetitious statements, so the following equation is established: Sentence A=Sentence B=Sentence C=Sentence D.



5)What is the theme of the paragraph? It is about a specific outsiders' tendency of views, one of which was that Britain had conceived the divided parts of the North American colonies as the whole American entity. In plain English, Britain had begun from earlier times to consider her own American colonies as one sovereign entity.