▌假使她從帆布躺椅上站起來，會(huì)見得身段瘦削，也許輪廓的線條太硬，像方頭鋼筆劃成的……

When she rose from the canvas lounge chair, one could see how slight she was. Moreover, the outline of her figure was perhaps too sharp, as if it had been drawn with a squared-nibbed pen.

▌方鴻漸看唐小姐不笑的時(shí)候，臉上還依戀著笑意，像音樂停止后裊裊空中的語音。

Fang Hung-chien noticed that the trace of a smile lingered on Miss T’ang’s face when she was not smiling, like the last few notes that float in the air after the music ceased.

▌她(唐小姐)眼睛并不頂大，可是靈活溫柔，反襯得很多女人的大眼睛只像政治家講的大話，大而無當(dāng)。

Not especially large, her eyes were lively and gentle, making the big eyes of many women seem like the big talk of politicians – big and useless.

▌李先生臉上少了那副黑眼鏡，兩只大白眼睛像剝掉殼的煮熟雞蛋。

Without his dark glasses on his face, Li’s large, white eyes looked like two shelled hard-boiled eggs.

▌孩子不足兩歲，塌鼻子，眼睛兩條斜縫，眉毛高高在上，跟眼睛遠(yuǎn)隔得彼此要害相思病，活像報(bào)上諷刺畫里的中國人的臉。

Her son, not yet two years old, had a snub nose, two slanted slits for eyes, and eyebrows so high up and removed from the eyes that the eyebrows and the eyes must have pined for each other – a living replica of the Chinese face in newspaper caricatures.

▌顧爾謙的興致像水里浮的軟木塞，傾盆大雨都打他不下。

Ku Er-chien’s enthusiasm was like a cork floating on water that even a heavy downpour couldn’t knock over.

▌她冷淡的笑容，像陰寒欲雪天的淡日。

Her faint smile was like an overcast sky on a cold dreary day.

▌幸虧年輕女人的眼淚還不是秋冬的雨點(diǎn)，不致把自己的臉摧毀得衰敗，只像清明時(shí)節(jié)的夢(mèng)雨，浸腫了地面，添了些泥。

Fortunately, a young girl’s tears aren’t yet like the raindrops of autumn or winter. They don’t bring destruction and ruin to the face, but are more like the steady rains of early April, which soak and swell the ground, making it muddier.

▌這一張文憑，仿佛有亞當(dāng)、夏娃下身那片樹葉的公用，可以遮羞包丑。

The diploma, it seemed, would function the same as Adam and Eve’s figleaf. It could hid a person’s shame and wrap up his disgrace.

▌忠厚老實(shí)人的惡毒，像飯里的砂礫或者出骨魚片里未凈的刺，會(huì)給人一種不期待的傷痛。

The viciousness of a kind, simple-hearted soul, like gritty sand in the rice or splinters in a deboned fish, can give a person unexpected pain.

▌事實(shí)上，一個(gè)人的缺點(diǎn)正像猴子的尾巴，猴子蹲在地面的時(shí)候，尾巴是看不見的，直到他向樹上爬，就把后部供大家瞻仰，可是紅臀長尾巴本來就有，并非地位爬高了的新標(biāo)識(shí)。

A person’s shortcomings are just like a monkey’s tail. When it’s squatting on the ground, its tail is hidden from view, but as soon as it climbs a tree, it exposes its backside to everyone. Nevertheless, the long tail and red bottom were there all the time. They aren’t just a mark of having climbed to a higher position.

▌（張先生）喜歡中國話里夾無謂的英文字。他并無中文難達(dá)的新意，需要借英文來講；所以他說話里嵌的英文字，還比不得嘴里嵌的金牙，因?yàn)榻鹧啦粌H裝點(diǎn)，尚可使用，只好比牙縫里嵌的肉屑，表示飯菜好吃，此外全無用處。

Mr. Chang liked to sprinkle his Chinese with meaningless English expressions. It wasn’t that he had new ideas, which were difficult to express in Chinese and required the use of English. The English words inlaid in his speech could not thus be compared with the gold teeth inlaid in one’s mouth, since gold teeth are not only decorative but functional as well. A better comparison would be with the bits of meat stuck between the teeth – they show that one has had a good meal but are otherwise useless.

▌張?zhí)虾Ｔ挶日煞蛑v得好，可是時(shí)時(shí)流露鄉(xiāng)土音，仿佛罩褂太小，遮不了里面的袍子。

Mrs. Chang spoke Shanghainese better than her husband, but her native accent often showed through like an undersized jacket that doesn’t cover up the gown underneath.

▌假使（方鴻漸的呼嚕聲）真灌成片子，那聲氣嘩啦嘩啦，又像風(fēng)濤澎湃，又像狼吞虎咽，中間還夾著一些又尖又細(xì)的聲音，忽高忽低，裊裊不絕。有時(shí)這一條絲高上去、高上去，細(xì)得、細(xì)得像放足的風(fēng)箏線要斷了，不知怎么像過一個(gè)峰尖，又降落安穩(wěn)下來。

If a recording really had been made, it would have been a thunderous racket, like the roaring of waves or the gobbling and gulping of wolves or tigers, accompanied by a thin, sharp thread of sound in the middle that rose and fell abruptly without stop. Sometimes the thread rose higher and higher, getting thinner and thinner like a kite-string about to snap. Then for some reason it would descend and stabilize as if reaching a peak. 

▌鴻漸研究出西洋人丑的跟中國人不同：中國人丑的像造物者偷工減料的結(jié)果，潦草塞責(zé)的丑；西洋人丑像造物者惡意的表現(xiàn)，存心跟臉上五官開玩笑，所以丑的有計(jì)劃，有作用。

Hung-chien had found from close study that Westerners are ugly in a different way from Chinese: Chinese ugliness seems to be the result of the Creator’s having skimped on time and materials. It is a slapdash, perfunctorily put together ugliness. Westerners’ ugliness seems a mark of the Creator’s spite. He has purposely set out the play jokes with the facial features. The ugliness thus has a plan and a motive behind it.

▌夜仿佛紙浸了油，變成半透明體；它給太陽擁抱住了，分不出身來，也許是給太陽陶醉了，所以夕照晚霞隱褪后的夜色也帶著酡紅。

The night, like paper soaked in oil, had become translucent. Locked in the embrace of the sun, the night’s own form was indiscernible. Perhaps it had become intoxicated by the sun, which would explain why the night sky remained flushed long after the gradual fading of the rosy sunset.

▌孫小姐的大手電雪亮地光射丈余，從黑暗的心臟里挖出一條隧道。

Miss Sun’s large flashlight shone with snowy brightness for more than a foot, digging a tunnel through the heart of the darkness.

▌這雨愈下愈老成，水點(diǎn)貫串作絲，河面上像出了痘，無數(shù)麻瘢似的水渦，隨生隨滅，息息不停，到雨線更密，又仿佛光滑的水面上在長毛。

The rain grew bolder as it fell, the drops linking together to form a thread. The surface of the river seemed to have broken out with smallpox, as countless pockmarked eddies continuously came and went. As the rain became denser, it seemed as though hair were growing from the smooth, glossy surface of the water.

▌這是暮秋天氣，山深日短，云霧里露出一線月亮，宛如一只擠著的近視眼睛。少頃，這月亮圓滑得什么都粘不上，輕盈得什么都?jí)翰蛔。瑥呐钏扇缧醯脑贫严聼o牽掛地浮出來，本來還有一邊沒滿，像被打耳光的臉腫著一邊。

It was late autumn, and deep in the mountains the days were short. A ray of moonlight showed through the clouds like a squinting, nearsighted eye. After a moment the moon, too round and smooth for anything to stick to it and too light and nimble to be held down, floated out unencumbered from the mass of tousled, fluff-like clouds. On side was not yet full, like a face swollen up on one side from a slap.