在“最佳注释”网站上给出的所有评论中,有49种注释的评分在70分以上,Bruce的使徒行传注释,以85.5分高居榜首。许多人评论说,Bruce的注释对使徒行传所涉及的历史解释特别详细,大概与他是位历史学家有关。

我曾经抱怨过Bruce之难,因为他老人家是位英国绅士,说的语言和我的美国东北腔大为不同。另外,他的长句很多,平均句长接近30个单词,而且其中穿插着拉丁文(“ lapis Venetus”)和无数的古代人名地名书名( Secundus , Apamea ,CIL3.6687,BJ 2.117)。比如其中的两句:

Apparently officers under his command were charged with supervising the census in various parts of the province: the funerary inscription of one Q. Aemilius Secundus (CIL 3.6687, the “lapis Venetus”) tells how he supervised it in Apamea on the Orontes, and in Judaea it was probably supervised by Coponius, whom Augustus sent to Judaea as its first prefect (BJ 2.117).

或者:

Even so, Luke’s Theudas has been identified with Josephus’s Theudas by some who find Luke guilty of a double blunder: (a) making Gamaliel refer to a rising which took place well after his present speech purports to have been delivered (for the situation of Acts 5 antedates by some years that of Acts 12, during Herod Agrippa’s reign over Judaea, A.D. 41–44, and Josephus’s Theudas arose shortly after Herod Agrippa’s death); (b) making an event of A.D. 44 take place before the rising under Judas of Galilee, which is firmly dated in A.D. 6/7.

为了让大家对神学翻译工作有一个了解,下面是我的典型工作日。

工作时段:

2019/5/29 9:02 9:57 00:55:29
2019/5/29 10:15 11:46 01:30:26
2019/5/29 14:11 15:01 00:49:53
2019/5/29 15:05 15:20 00:14:20

总耗时:210分钟。若有人感兴趣,可以用手机设定一个计时器,实际翻译这两句话,姑且不用计较翻译的好坏,看看一位认真做事的译者需要花费多长时间吧。(我的数据是9分20秒和9分5秒,因为 “ lapis Venetus” 需要查询google,wikipedia等文献,其他的人名也需要核对,尽量保持与别的出版物一致)。

翻译句子数量:101句。原文字数:2426。(平均句长:24个词)

译文有效字数:3198。译文总字数:3479 (译文中有些脚注涉及具体参考文献,是直接拷贝英文,不需要翻译的。根据客户的判断,也可能是不会付费的)。

译文/原文比 = 3479/2426 = 1.434

这个数据有个比较奇怪的地方。5年之前,我为同一个客户翻译注释书,译文/原文比是1.7~1.8,现在似乎水平提高了不少,文字精炼了许多。当我翻译的文字接近“深文理和合本”的时候,我大概就被按照译文计费的神学翻译界逆向淘汰了。