权力的游戏 Prologue (1)

     

权力的游戏 Prologue (1)

冰火的资源比较丰富，原著很好找，有声书也有，还有剧，今天开始精读了。

“Do the dead frighten you?” Ser Waymar Royce asked with just the hint of a smile.

Gared did not rise to the bait.

     rise to the bait意思读起来还是好理解的。

   先看看bait,这个词，Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary(CALD)中bait的解释有一条:something that is said or offered to people in order to make them react in a particular way, 也就是说故意说出来让人生气的话。

      Collins COBUILD:If you take the bait, you react to something that someone has said or done exactly as they intended you to do. The expression rise to the bai is also used, mainly in British English.

         也就这说Ser Waymar的话有点激将法的味道，Gared 心知肚明，没有生气。不过一时还想不到好的翻译。必须要把前面the hint of smile的意味翻译出来。

        此外，bait作动词也有‘’故意让某人生气”的意思:

        I suspect he was just baiting me.

        He delighted in baiting his mother.

         Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later.

          drag sb into a conversation/quarrel提到

         drag sb into a situation/matter/war牵扯，牵涉

“My mother told me that dead men sing no songs,” he put in.

        put in:"打断"或者"补充说道"的意思

Gared had spent forty years in the Night’s Watch, man and boy, and he was not accustomed to being made light of.

      man and boy: all the time since you were a boy

     be accustomed to (doing) sth: familiar with sth so that it seems normal or usual.相当于be used to,日常英语中后者更为常用。

      make light of:  to treat as insignificant

     You could taste it; a nervous tension that came perilous close to fear.

        怎么理解came perilous close to fear?

    查阅了好几本字典都没有这种用法，但是perilously词条下用come perilously close to 的例句还比较多:

*Karpov, the champion, came perilously close to losing.

*Wouldn't it come perilously close to desecration?

*She came perilously close to getting herself killed in her attempt to break the world record.(CALD)

*She came perilously close to drowning.(MWALD)

       因此，这里应是马丁笔误，用perilously应该是更普遍的用法，但是各词典都没有把come perilously close to作为一个搭配单列，而是把perilously close to (doing) something作为一个搭配，意为at a point at which you nearly do something dangerous or unpleasant(MED).

* In the middle of the game Kasparov, seemed perilously close to a loss.

* Are you aware that you're getting perilously close to slander?

        come和perilously close to也是常见搭配，应该与come close 有关。

         因此这个短语大意其实就是“几乎”。

     You could taste it; a nervous tension that came perilous close to fear.［＝You could taste it; a nervous tension that almost amount to fear.］

There was an edge to this darkness that made his hackles rise.

     make someone's hackle rise: make someone angry or indignant

       这句中的edge 怎么理解呢？edge 有几个解释可作参考:1.a quality in the way that someone speaks that shows they are becoming angry or upset;2.the quality of being sharp or keen

    所以联系到前文的a nervous tension that perilous close to fear，应该是在黑暗中有一种“冷峻凌厉”的感觉，让人感到感到紧张甚至害怕。

      不一定对，欢迎讨论，有时候觉得翻译其实很难，因为中文水平往往没有自己想的那么好。