A friend read Thomas Pynchon's work The Forty ninth Batch of Auction published by Yilin Publishing House, and there was a problem between pages 131 and 132. The problem was this: at the end of page 131, it was translated as follows:

He drove past the Chapf used bookstore and was horrified to find that the bookstore that had been there for a week had become a pile of burnt rubble. There was still a smell of burnt leather. She stopped the car and went into the government surplus goods store next door. The shopkeeper told her that the damned fool Chapf set fire to his shop for insurance money. "Any kind of wind," the respectable figure scolded angrily, "will bring me in too. Anyway, they built this complex here only to keep him alive for five years. But can Chapf wait?"

The first word on page 132 is: book 。

A friend thinks that although the page number is continuous, he feels that the content is not continuous. He suspects that the page is missing or the binding is wrong, so he set up Yilin Publishing House on Weibo. At first I didn't care when I saw this news, but I didn't expect that the editor in charge of this book of Yilin Publishing House replied to my friend and posted the original text, which suddenly interested me. The original is as follows:

A week ago had stood. There was still the smell of burnt leather. She 
stopped and went into the government surplus outlet next door . The 
owner informed her that Zapf ,the damn fool ,has set fire to his own 
store for the insureance .” Any kind of a wind” snarled this worthy 
,”It would have taken me with it.They only put up this complex here to 
last five years anyway,. But could Zapf wait? Books”

The editor explained that the Chinese version was faithfully translated according to the original text, without missing pages. Then give a reason: As a representative writer of postmodern style, this is Pynchon.

This reason can't convince me, because intuitively, in my limited understanding, except that poetry will have this kind of foreword without following words, maybe it is to create images, maybe it is the poet who is hot headed and has to do so. Writers of other genres, regardless of whether he is writing about modern postmodernism, stream of consciousness or magic, will definitely not make sentences like this: but is Gu a handsome guy? teapot. So I think there is only one possibility: the translator has misunderstood the meaning of the original text and translated it wrong. Then I read again "any kind of wind" and got goose bumps all over my body, which is a real physiological reaction.

Let's start with the original "Any kind of wind", which is translated as "any kind of wind". Is this translation wrong? Literally, any, kind, wind, wind, yes, but is there such a poor expression in Chinese? It's not too abrupt to put it in the original text. Look at the previous article: Zapf set fire to his own store for insurance money. There was a gasping direct quotation behind it. I couldn't understand why this sentence came suddenly when I read it for the first time: "Any kind of wind". Then you can understand when you read the original text. The shopkeeper talking was next door to Chapf. Chapf burned his shop for insurance money. Combined with the following "Any kind of wind", it means: "As long as the wind blows" It will involve itself, Chapf, a damned fool.

With this awareness, I firmly believe that the translation of this work may be a response to the work in the rush period after Thomas Pynchon obtained the copyright of the Forty ninth Batch of Auction, and did not pursue the so-called "faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance" carefully. So when the editor explained his friend's doubts, he said: "As a representative writer of postmodern style, this is Pynchon's way of writing~" This reason is too big to explain all unreasonable text problems.

Then I tried to translate by myself: "But could Zapf wait? Books." I recorded my thoughts at that time:

1. I think books are definitely not the original meaning: books (plural form)
2. Books is also definitely not the verb of the former could Zapf wait auxiliary verb could, so there are two points to judge. 1. If it is the verb after could, books should use the prototype book. 2. If it is the verb after could, books should be followed by a question mark. My English is not very good, but I have learned Chinese for a few years. This sentence pattern is: "But can Zhang San wait? Can he listen?"

So the key is the meaning of books. The search engine is so developed that search is enough. I found in Sogou: books, verbs, booking, checking (luggage, etc.), registering, (a policeman) record sb's illegal behavior 。

I suddenly realized that it was possible: "(the police) wrote down someone's illegal act" logically conforms to the meaning of this sentence, but I doubted that the explanation given by Sogou had no source, so I went to Merriam Webster's dictionary to search again. Under the meaning of book as a verb, there are:“ to enter charges against in a police register ”, so I'm sure that the meaning of books is the same. In connection with the original text, the author omits the subject policy and only retains the verb.

I wanted to make a lot of regrets and comments, but when I wrote here, there was only one sentence left: we must learn English well.