【丟人廣播】之三終於整出來了

 

Now, the VOA special special English program: translation words and their stories
Today, we are going to learn some words and their synonyms by working on the third sentence in our translation practice. For listeners who have just tuned in, I am attaching in the script the links to the previous 2 episodes and the original posting of the translation practice.

http://bbs.wenxuecity.com/zhongyiingfanyi/96989.html

http://bbs.wenxuecity.com/mysj/97100.html

http://bbs.wenxuecity.com/mysj/97266.html

The reason for the long hiatus between this episode and the previous ones is that I couldn’t find a good way of talking. I listened to my previous episodes, they sounded so bad, embarrassingly bad, that even with a thick face like me, I couldn’t gather the courage to do another episode in that way of talking. This afternoon, I was reading VOA words and their stories and suddenly had this brilliant idea about doing this broadcast in VOA special English style. So here we are. First, this is the Chinese sentence and what I think Faith Lapidus would sound like if she spoke Chinese.

對於我來 說，萊溫斯基的糾紛似乎隻是政治對手炮製的又一個惡毒的醜聞。

Here is my translation:
To me, the Lewinski affair is only another vicious scandal created by Bill’s political enemies.
Here is 學英語3151’s translation:
Luwinsky matter to me is nothing but a scandal masterminded by political opponents.
Original: For me, the Lewinsky imbroglio seemed like just another vicious scandal manufactured by political opponents.
The sentence structure is pretty straightforward. So this time, we will focus on the words and their usage.
imbroglio /im-ˈbrōl-(ˌ)yō/ is the first word we will learn. It’s an Italian word and the g is silent. It is a synonym of scandal. I believe it is used here to avoid repetition with the "scandal" in the same sentence. “Affair” I used is pretty close but “matter” is not a very good choice.

“Manufacture” was very well used in the original writing. Its synonyms are contrive, cook up, create, devise, fabricate, hatch, make up, produce, think up, trump up. The “create” I used is one of the synonyms but it’s not as vivid as “manufacture”. I thought someone from the forum suggested “fabricate”, but couldn’t find it in the threads, which would be equally good as “manufacture”. I like the word “mastermind” 學英語3151 used, but it might have a slightly different meaning. “Mastermind” sounds like a more organized, bigger-scale conspiracy.

The last word group we are going to learn is Opponent vs enemy: both學英語3151 and好學又好問 used political opponents, which is more appropriate than enemy. An opponent is in opposition. An enemy not only opposes but causes harm and injury. To put it in a simple way, an opponent wants to beat you but an enemy wants to kill you.
This VOA Special Special English program was written by 非文學青年. I am Faith Lapidus. You can find more 丟人廣播 and the original post at our Web site, http://bbs.wenxuecity.com.