文学翻译其实比一般技术性资料翻译起来较难，文学翻译关键是要表达原文的表达意境，文学翻译注重修饰，强调美学效果。比如下面这句英文“Until a bright moon lighted the road home，often after midnight.”这句话是我以前翻译的《简·奥斯汀传》里的写景描写，如果用科技英语的语气，就成了“直到一轮明月照亮归家之路，经常是在半夜之后”。科技英语强调的是精确，无需修饰，不被文学的性影响。文学翻译强调美学色彩，所以这句话（同样的一句话，两种不同的翻译）就成了“直到明月照亮归途，这时已过夜半时分了”。文学翻译要选有美学色彩的词汇，而不是选择一系列精确无误的词汇。试看西奥多·萨沃里的文学选词特点，会有深刻的体会。西奥多·萨沃里在《翻译艺术》中说：In this（the choosing of words）his（the translator’s）task is much harder than that of the original author.If the latter seeks a word with which to express a thought or describe an experience，he has available many words in his own language and can without much difficulty or delay choose the one that suits him best and pleases him most.The translator of the word thus chosen has to decode on the nearest equivalent，taking into consideration the probable thoughts of the author，the probable feelings of the author’s readers and of his own readers，and of the period in history in which the author lived.
It follows then that at every pause the translator makes a choice；and from what has been said in our first chapter about the correspondence of words it follows that his choice is not between a number of equivalents，possibly all more or less inexact.Such a choice depends in large part on the personality of the translator，and that it is essentially an aesthetic choice can not be denied.
可以看到，文学翻译强调美学效果，而不强调选词的准确对等，相反，它强调一定程度的不对等。文学语言华丽，修饰性强，可以满足人们对美的观感，但科技词汇朴实无华，以准确为美的最高标准。因此，文学翻译不仅具备很强的中外文文学背景，还要有很强的语言表达功底。九重歌武汉翻译公司分享。