Как видим, усилители very и quite при переводе на русский язык опускаются, так как превосходная степень сама по себе достаточна для выражения наивысшей степени признака или качества, и слово очень оказывается излишним.
Заметим здесь также, что в английском языке вполне возможно употребление наречия very после слова how при прилагательном, причем это сочетание передает значение превосходной степени. По-русски такое употребление исключено (ср.: «как очень…!»).
How very interesting! Как интересно!
He was startled to see how much of a child she was, and
how very beautiful. Его поразило, сколько в ней еще детского и как она красива.
Такими же избыточными с точки зрения русского языка являются наречия quite и so в следующих примерах:
You’d better not eat quite so much. Вы бы лучше не ели так много. (букв.: «… так очень много»)
Dr Saunders did not know why the stranger so very much attracted him. Доктор Сондерс не понимал, почему незнакомец так сильно привлекал его. (букв.: «… так очень сильно»)
И совсем уже исключающими друг друга представляются нам a little и too (слишком) в следующей фразе:
Gray was apt to drink a little too much. Грей пил, пожалуй, многовато. (букв.: «… немного слишком много»)
I. Переведите следующие предложения на русский язык, обращая особое внимание на перевод препозитивных определений.
1. If I were as young as you are, I’d have a walking holiday. 2. Get me a good crime story. 3. That’s the danger moment. 4. Like most shy men he greatly admired airy, vivacious, always-at-ease girls. 5. He had been drinking and wore the arrogant looking-for-a-fight expression that she knew from experience meant trouble. 6. Dr Uxbridge answered the telephone at once in a no-nonsense tone of voice. 7. The hands-off-Ogilvie rule didn’t make sense. 8. I sat down beside her and put on my impulsive little-American-girl act. 9. He told the now attentive crowd about how he was going to proceed. 10. Six restaurants ranged from a dining-room with gold-edged china and matching prices to a grab-it-and-run hot dog counter. 11. What excuse could she give for prowling about the house when all the other girls were getting their beauty naps? 12. And Melanie, with a fierce «love-me-love-my-dog» look on her face, made converse with astounded hostesses. 13. He glanced along the wall to the picture of James Calver: the low forehead and the fanatic bent-on-one-thing eyes. 14. «You’re something of an ideas-man, aren’t you?» «Something of. Why?» 15. She hated to abandon the shop as a Tom-watching centre. 16. She had apologised humbly to him on the morning after their how-do-I-know-I-know-you dialogue. 17. So she remained solitary at Gray-hallock except for the now frequent company of Nancy Bow-shott. 18. She lived in exhaustion, unhappiness and muddle as in a now accustomed medium, flopping in it like a creature in the mud. 19. The but too symbolically stripped look which the room had worn as a result of Lindsay’s depredations had quite gone. 20. He had come to see Emma, with whom he had previously had a slight party-going acquaintance, in order to ask her help and advice about getting his plays put on. 21. Somewhere we came to a hill of already about and busy red ants. 22. Anti-Marketeers in the constituencies will be pressing those MPs who have not already signed to do so. The hope is to secure a majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party as signatories to the withdrawal motion. 23. Joy, a glad-to-be-alive exhilaration, jolted through me like a jigger of nitrogen. 24. I managed a fast, first-rate job of assembling her going-away belongings. 25. Sometimes I shared her wake-up coffee. 26. I hadn’t seen Holly, not really, since our drunken Sunday at Joe Bell’s bar. 27. Fanny’s peevish architect brother was there, of course. 28. Plump rose-red Fanny had somehow so much made one with her rich art-dealer father and the great family collection that it made no sense even to ask whether Hugh had married her for the pictures. 29. All the officer patients in the ward were forced to censor letters written by the enlisted-men patients.