每日归档: 2018-11-22

A week after the opening at the Royal Academy of Arts of ‘Oceania’ – an exhibition spanning the histories of the Pacific, which marks 250 years since Captain Cook’s first voyage to the region – I cradled a karetao in a nondescript London building that belongs to the British Museum. The wood was long-smoothed by hands, its markings deeply etched. In its materiality are a few clues as to where it may have come from; its easy curves are inscribed with meaning. I have seen a karetao described in English as both a ‘puppet’ and an ‘articulated marionette figure’, but the former is insufficient and the latter unnecessarily verbose. This linguistic exercise hints at a wider problem of how inadequate language can be at translating cultural nuance.  - 在“大洋洲”皇家艺术学院开幕一周后，我在属于大英博物馆的一座不具名的伦敦建筑中摇篮。大洋洲皇家艺术学院是横跨太平洋历史的展览，标志着库克船长首次航行250年。木头被手抚平了，它的痕迹深深地被腐蚀了。其实质上是关于它可能来自何处的一些线索；它的简单曲线刻有含义。我看到一个用英语描述的卡雷托既是“木偶”又是“有铰链的木偶”，但是前者是不够的，后者不必要地冗长。这种语言学练习暗示了一个更广泛的问题，即语言在翻译文化细微差别方面可能存在多大的不足。