themes to exfoliate该怎么翻译

问题描述

And we all know the weird antipathy such explanations arouse in us, a feeling of not so much boredom as offense, as if something has been blasphemed. This is a lot like the teacher’s feelings at running a Kafka story through the gears of your standard undergrad critical analysis — plot to chart, symbols to decode, themes to exfoliate, etc.

请问句子中的themes to exfoliate该怎么翻译？

老师答疑

刘老师：

And we all know the weird antipathy such explanations arouse in us, a feeling of not so much boredom as offense, as if something has been blasphemed. This is a lot like the teacher’s feelings at running a Kafka story through the gears of your standard undergrad critical analysis — plot to chart, symbols to decode, themes to exfoliate.

破折号后面的这3个短语，是critical analysis（批判性分析）的同位成分。不定式分别作定语，修饰前面的名词。为了理解方便，我们转换成动宾关系：

chart the plot, decode the symbols, exfoliate the themes 意思分别是：“图解情节，破译符号，剥离主题”

单独翻译themes to exfoliate，就是“要剥离的主题”。exfoliate 与theme 搭配，属于引申义，意为“清理，剥离”，含有“去粗取精，去伪存真”之意。

【说明】刚才看到网友留言，问及through the gears of 的含义，其实，这也是一个比喻义。大致意思是：“通过......的协调融合”。

由于没见到原文，我只能按照网友提供的，试译如下：

“我们都知道这样的解释让我们产生莫名其妙的反感，一种与其说是无聊倒不如说是冒犯的感觉，好像是什么东西被亵渎了似的。这很像老师在分析卡夫卡（奥地利小说家）的一篇小说时产生的感受，通过融合了大学水平的批判性分析——图解情节，破译符号，剥离主题。”