第二十届韩素音青年翻译奖赛参赛译文 中译英 《父爱的尺度》 郑庆祝 1 The Yardstick of Father’s Lov e (ex cerpt) In 1924, U.S. President John Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) proposed the Father’s Day a nation-wide festival so as to “establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations". In 1972, President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) officially signed the bill to designate the Father’s Day a festival, which later spread around the world gradually. Today, Chinese townsfolk, who always value parenthood education and emphasize father’s cultivation responsibility, accept the foreign festival imperceptibly. The Chinese style of nuclear family nursing with only a single child is quite similar as that of running a company of unlimited liability; the parents have to assume unlimited responsibility for the future fate of their children. As the saying says, “If the children are not well-bred, it is the father's fault” . The children’s wisdom and stupidity, gain and loss, and merits and faults are related to education from the father. The father shall not only bear the joint responsibility for raising the children and for their moral education, but also be investigated the “leader’s responsibility” by the society and other family members. Benefit of successful education to a single child cannot be anticipated, but the opportunity cost for failure of the education is one hundred percent. Therefore, the father is the good example— the “yardstick” of the children, which is quite hard to grasp. 2 Father is also called “Jia Yan” , which is used to refer to one’s own father modestly. The role of father’s love already has its accura...
