Of the Component Parts of the Price of Commodities

2017年4月25日，国富论第六章精读。

translation steps：

1.structure;

2.word;

3.take the reference(text book) to access.

简言之，先看原词和词组，再放到原文中检查逻辑结构。

标题译文：浅析商品价格的组成部分/构成成分。

①   component parts=components  “组成部分”或“构成成分”意味着对商品价格的全覆盖（100%），若翻译成“要素”，则意味着只包含商品价格中的重要元素（而非全部），与正文原意不符。

②   在语气上，on强于about强于of，体现斯密作为学者的谦逊态度。

正文译文：

In that early and rude state of society which precedes both the accumulation of stock and the appropriation of land, the proportion between the quantities of labour necessary for acquiring different objects seems to be the only circumstance which can afford any rule for exchanging them for one another. If among a nation of hunters, for example, it usually costs twice the labour to kill a beaver which it does to kill a deer, one beaver should naturally exchange for or be worth two deer. It is natural that what is usually the produce of two days’ or two hours’ labour, should be worth double of what is usually the produce of one day’s or one hour’s labour.

在先于资本积累和土地私有的早期、原始的社会阶段，获取不同物品所必需的劳动的量，看起来是能够提供物品相互交换的一切规则的唯一条件。例如，如果在一国的猎人中，猎杀一只海狸所花费的劳动通常是猎杀一只鹿（所花费劳动）的两倍，一只海狸，就理所当然地交换两只鹿，或者说值两只鹿。自然的，两天或两小时劳动通常的生产物所值应当二倍于一天或一小时劳动通常的生产物所值。

points:

①   rude=crude, means never touched or changed, not savage or barbaric.如，一块玉在雕琢之前也是玉，只不过是它最原本的状态。而“野蛮”、“未开化”是一种定性的词语，带有主观色彩，是在用偏见的话去描述一个客观事实。在阅读尤其是翻译时要遵循的原则：不多不少不替代。

②   in that early and rude state of society: 注意state of society,指不同的社会状态，或者不同的社会阶段。在不同的social state，商品价格的component parts也不同。state=situation

③   seems to be: 作者在文章开篇提出论点所用方法为assumption（或者说，是一种understatement）,而非直接提出statement，所用技巧为“hedging”，它是一种语言保护手段，体现作者谦逊、文明的态度，同时表达效果更好（修辞手法为contrast）。

Though in settling them some regard is had commonly, not only to his labour and skill, but to the trust which is reposed in him, yet they never bear any regular proportion to the capital of which he oversees the management; and the owner of this capital, though he is thus discharged of almost all labour, still expects that his profits should bear a regular proportion to his capital.

尽管确立他的工资有一些通常的考虑，不仅是（考虑）他的劳动和技能，也有（考虑）安置在他身上的信任，但是这些（劳动、技能及信任）决没有他所监督的资本运行的任何特定比例；这些资本的所有者，尽管他因此而无需参与任何劳动，但他仍然期望它的利润应占他的资本的一定比例。

point:

the capital (of which he oversees) the management=he oversees the management of the capital

If the society were annually to employ all the labour which it can annually purchase, as the quantity of labour would increase greatly every year, so the produce of every succeeding year would be of vastly greater value than that of the foregoing. But there is no country in which the whole annual produce is employed in maintaining the industrious. The idle everywhere consume a great part of it; and according to the different proportions in which it is annually divided between those two different orders of people, its ordinary or average value must either annually increase, or diminish, or continue the same from one year to another.

如果社会每年雇佣所有的它年度能购买的劳动，就像劳动的量每年会极大增长，同样地，下一年的产出所值也会比上一年（的产物）高很多。但没有任何一个国家的全部年产物都用于养活劳动者。在所有地方，闲人都消费很大一部分（的产物）；按照（一国的年产物）每年在这两类人中分配的不同比例，一国年产物的普通或平均价值一定是或者逐年增加，或者逐年减少，或者是从一年到另一年中保持不变。

points:

①   if引导条件状语从句

②   as…so: as引导方式状语从句，翻译为“就像……一样”，其中也有表原因的含义，so是副词，相当于in the same way/ similarly，“同样地”。