Eragon Ch.2 pt.3

This is a continuation of my last two posts. We are looking at sentences from 龍騎士：飛龍聖戰(Eragon). Today we will look at the third sentence of this paragraph.

艾瑞岡跪在被踐踏過的蘆葦草上，用他那熟練的眼神掃視著。足印告訴他那群鹿半個小時前才在這草地上，牠們很快就會停下來休息。他的目標——一隻跛了左前腳的小母鹿，仍跟在鹿群中。他很驚訝她竟然走了那麼久都沒有被一隻狼或熊抓到。


第三句

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他的目標 → His target
一隻小母鹿 → a small doe. 母鹿 (mother deer) is a female deer, or "doe" in English. We add 小 to say a small doe. You CAN add a 的 after 小, but you usually only add 的 when the adjective is bisyllabic. With monosyllabic adjectives, the 的 is optional. The classifier for most mid-sized animals is 隻. So putting it all together it gives us "one small doe" or "a small doe" depending on the context.
跛了左前腳的 → whose front right foot is crippled. 跛 means "lame" or "crippled". Adding the aspectual particle of completion 了 shows us that the crippling has already been completed. 左前 means "front right", in Chinese the word order is usually the opposite of English. 腳 means foot. Wrapping it all up is a 的, which allows us to modify the following noun with all that comes before it.
仍 → still, the same use as in English.
跟 → to follow
在…中 → inside (of)
鹿群 → deer herd

So putting it all together, our literal translation would be, "His target——one crippled front-right footed little doe, still follow inside deer herd." Proper English gives us something like...

"His target——a small doe whose front-right paw was crippled, still following inside the herd."


That was a small sentence, but I'll leave it at that for today. I'll post the last sentence tomorrow. I can see how this might be rather boring, so the next sentences I post will be more interesting and more difficult. :)