再来看另一段译文的表达有什么不同:
译文b:
With tears in his eyes the good man delivered the following little speech to the daughter he could not see :
'Madam.
That a poor and undistinguished household such as ours should have produced,as it were,a phoenix from amidst a flock of crows and pies to bask in the sunshine of Imperial favour and shed its reflected beams on the departed representatives of our ancestral line must be attributable to the concentration in your single person of the quintessences of all that is most admirable in celestial and terrestrial nature and the accumulated merit of many generations of our forebears,and is an honour and a blessing in which my wife and I are proud to be participators.
'Our beloved Emperor, who embodies in his own Sacred Person those life-giving forces which are always invisibly at work in the natural cosmos,has showered down upon his grateful subjects a gracious kindness unprecedented in the annals of recorded history — a kindness which even the expenditure of our life’s blood to the veriest ultimate drop would be wholly inadequate to repay and which only the most unremitting pains and unswerving loyalty in the discharge of those duties to which it has pleased him to call us could adequately express.
'It is our earnest prayer that His Sacred Majesty may continue long to reign over us,a blessing to all his peoples; and that Your Grace should feel no anxiety concerning the welfare of my wife and myself during our now declining years,but should rather cherish and sustain your own precious person, in order to be the better able to serve His Sacred Majesty with care and diligence,seeking by that service to be worthy of the tender regard and loving favour which he has been graciously pleased to bestow upon you.'
首先引起我们注意的,就是译文b在篇幅上明显比译文a长,除了与译文a一样,运用正式称谓(如Our beloved Emperor,His Sacred Majesty)、正式的词(如 quintessences, participators)和短语(如 shed its reflected beams, to the veriest ultimate drop,unremitting pains and unswerving loyalty, to bestow upon)还在第三段用了一个强调 句型(It is our earnest prayer that • • •),在开头部分 to the daughter 后面加了一个解释性的从句he could not see,并以Madam称呼,向异域读者提供了必要的交代,使不清楚中国历史事实——特别是无法想象中国封建社会等级森严的社会现象的读者,通过阅读这段文字有所了解。更值得一提的是,译文b将贾政的话分作二段,且每一段为一句,句型结构呈树枝状展开,从句、修饰性短语环环相扣,通过利用英语的结构优势,充分再现了原文那段夹杂于白话文中的文言文的格调和色彩。