2018年翻译资格考试初级笔译模拟题：文化与空间
英译汉
Space is perceived differently in different cultures. Spatial consciousness in many Western cultures is based on a perception of objects in space, rather than of space itself. Westerners perceive shapes and dimensions, in which space is a realm of light, color, sight, and touch. Benjamin L. Whorf, and his classic work Language, Thought and Reality, offers the following explanation as one reason why Westerners perceive space in this manner. Western thought and language mainly developed from the Roman, Latin-speaking culture, which was a practical, experience-based system. Western culture has generally followed Roman thought patterns in viewing objective “reality” as the foundation for subjective or “inner” experience. It was only when the intellectually crude Roman culture became influenced by the abstract thinking of Greek culture that the Latin language developed a significant vocabulary of abstract, nonspatial terms. But the early Roman-Latin element of spatial consciousness, of concreteness, has been maintained in Western thought and language patterns, even though the Greek capacity for abstract thinking and expression was also inherited.
参考译文
不同的文化对空间有着不同的感觉。西方许多国家对空间的意识是基于对物体在空间的感觉，而不是对空间本身的感觉。西方人对形状和维度的感觉，就是空间是一种光线、 颜色、视觉和触觉的领域。本杰明•沃尔夫在他的经典著作《语言、思维和现实》中，就用下面的解释来说明西方人为什么会以这种方式来感觉空间。西方的思维和语言主要源于以拉 丁语为母语的古罗马文化，而这是一种基于实际和经验的体系。一般来说，西方文化已经采 用古罗马人的思维模式，把客观“实体”视为主观或者内在经验的基础。一直到这种在知性上
不成熟的古罗马文化受到希腊文化抽象思维的影响的时候，拉丁语才发展出一套意义重大的 词汇—抽象的非空间术语。但是空间意识和具体化的古罗马—拉丁成分已经在西方思维和语言模式中保存了下来，尽管也继承了希腊人的抽象思维和表达能力。
