Vamos comentar outra parte da literatura inglesa, usando o livro que estou lendo atualmente da saga twilight. Alice e Bella chegam na cidade Volterra para se encontrar com o Edward. Elas estão de carro e assim temos a passagem:
The cars crept one by one toward the city. As we got closer, I could see cars parked by the side of the road with people getting out to walk the test of the way. At first I thought it was just impatience - something I could easily understand. But then we came around a switchback, and I could see the filled parking lot outside the city wall, the crowds of people walking through the gates. No one was being allowed to drive through.
“Alice,” I whispered urgently.
“I know,” she said. Her face was chiseled from ice. (New Moon, Chapter XX, pg. 1)
A sentence que queremos ressaltar é a parte final: “Her face was chiseled from ice.”
O dicionário de Macmillan diz:
chisel 1
chis•el1 / `tʃɪzl / noun [count]
A tool with a flat metal blade used for cutting wood or stone
chisel 2
chis•el2 / `tʃɪzl / verb [transitive]
1 to cut wood or stone with a chisel:
chisel something into/from/in something: An epitaph had been chiseled into the stone.
A statue chiseled from marble
2 INFORMAL to get something from someone by tricking them. Someone who does this is called a chiseler:
He makes his money by chiseling unsuspecting elderly people.
Assim, teríamos como tradução:
“O rosto dela parecia esculpido no gelo.”
Uma nota bastante interessante é que o verbo to be no passado simples, “was”, foi traduzido por “parecia”. Isso ocorre por causa das três palavras finais “chiseled from icy”. Traduzir “was” literalmente resultaria em algo sem sentido e impossível, como se o rosto de Alice FOSSE literalmente esculpido do gelo. Então, com o objetivo de trazer a ideia metafórica, o verbo “was” foi vertido por “parecia”, sendo a sentença apenas uma comparação analítica.