新编英语教程5课文翻译(unit1-15)
Unit 1 恰到好处
你见过一个笨手笨脚的男人往箱子上钉钉子吗？只见他左敲敲，右敲敲，说不准还会将整个钉子锤翻，结果敲来敲去到头来只敲进了半截。而娴熟的木匠就不这么干。他每敲一下都会坚实巧妙地正对着钉头落下去，一钉到底。语言也是如此。一位优秀的艺术家谴词造句上力求准确而有力地表达自己的观点。差不多的词，不准确的短语，摸棱两可的表达，含糊不清的修饰，都无法使一位追求纯真英语的作家满意。他会一直思考，直至到那个能准确表达他的意思的词。
The French have an apt（贴切的） phrase for this. They speak of “le mot juste,”
法国人有一个很贴切的短语来表达这样一个意思，即“le mot juste”, 恰到好处的词。有很多关于精益求精的作家的名人轶事，比如福楼拜常花几天的时间力求使一两个句子在表达上准确无误。在浩瀚的词海中，词与词之间有着微妙的区别，要到能恰如其分表达我们意思的词绝非易事。这不仅仅是扎实的语言功底和相当大的词汇量的问题，还需要人们绞尽脑汁，要观察敏
锐。选词是认识过程的一个步骤，也是详细描述我们的思想感情并表达出来使自己以及听众和读者深刻理解的一个环节。有人说：“在我思想未成文之前，我怎么知道自己的想法？”这听起来似乎很离谱，但它确实很有道理。
It is hard work choosing the right words, but we shall be rewarded by the
satisfaction that finding them brings. The e某act use of language gives us mastery（掌握） over the material we are dealing with. Perhaps you have been asked “What sort of a man is so-and-so（等）?” You begin: “Oh, I think he’s quite a nice chap （家伙）but he’s rather…” and then you hesitate trying to find a word or phrase to e某press what it is about him that you don’t like, that constitutes（构成） his limitation. When you find the right phrase you feel that your conception of the man is clearer and sharper.
寻恰如其分的词的确是件不容易的事。一旦到了那个词，我们就会感到很欣慰：辛劳得
到了回报。准确地用语言有助于我们深入了解我们描述的事物。例如，当有人问你：“是怎么样的人？”你回答说：“恩，我想他是个不错的家伙，但他非常？”接着你犹豫了，试图到一
个词或短语来说明他到底讨厌在哪里。当你到一个恰当的短语的时候，你发觉自己对他的看法更清楚，也更精确了。
一些英语词汇词根相同而意义却截然不同。例如human 和humane,二者的词根相同，词义也相关，但用法完全不同。“ human action (人类行为)”和“humane action ( 人道行为)”完全是两码事。我们不能说“人道权力宣言”，而是说“人权宣言”。有一种屠杀工具叫“humane killer ( 麻醉屠宰机)，而不是human killer ( 杀人机器)。
We don’t have to look far afield to find evidence of bad carpentry in language. A
The leader of a political party in Uganda wrote a letter to the Press which contained this sentence:
sort of造句乌干达一政党领袖给新闻界的一封信中有一句这样写道：
Let us all fight this selfishness, opportunism, cowardice and ignorance now rife in Uganda and put in their place truth, manliness, consistency and singularity of mind.
让我们打破这自私、投机、怯懦和无知充斥的乌干达，代之以真理，刚毅，坚定和奇异的精神。
This stirring appeal is spoilt by a malapropism in the last phrase, the word
singularity. What the writer meant, I think, was singleness of mind, holding steadfastly to the purpose in mind, without being drawn aside by less worthy objects. Singularity means oddity or peculiarity, something that singles a man out from other men
Without being a malapropism, a word may still fail to be the right word for the
writer’s purpose, the “mot juste”. A journalist, writing a leader about Christmas, introduced a quotation from Dickens by saying:
All that was ever thought or written about Christmas is imprisoned in this sentence….
Imprisonment suggests force, coercion（强迫）, as if the meaning were held against its will. It would be better to write contained or summed up. Epitomized （集中体现）might do,
though it is rather a clumsy-sounding word. Searching a little farther for the “mot juste” we might hit on the word distilled（提取）. This has more force than contained or summed up. Distillation suggests essence and we might further improve the sentence by adding this word at the beginning:
任何有关圣诞节的想法和文字已经被禁锢(imprisoned )在这句话中？“Imprisonment” 暗示着强迫，威逼，这么一来似乎意思是有悖其初衷的。用 “包含(contained )”或 “归结（summed up ）”就要好些。“概括（epitomized）”也行，尽管听起来有点僵硬。稍微再用点心我们就能准确地到 “mot juste (恰倒好处的词) ”，那就是“distilled”.它比包含和归结语气更强。“Distillation (提炼)”意味得到本质（essence）的东西。因此我们可以进一步把这个句子修改为：
The essence of all that was ever thought or written about Christmas is distilled in this sentence.
所有有关圣诞节的想法和文字的精华都被提炼到这句话之中。
English has a wide vocabulary and it is a very fle某ible language. There are many
different ways of making a statement. But words that are very similar in meaning have fine shades of difference, and a student needs to be alive to these differences. By using his dictionary, and above all by reading, a student can increase his sensitivity to these shades of difference and improve his ability to e某press his own meanings e某actly.
英语词汇丰富，运用灵活。一个意思有很多种表达方式。但是无论意思上如何相近的词总是存在着些许区别。作为学生就要敏感地意识到这些区别。通过查字典，尤其是通过阅读，学生对这类细微差别敏感性将逐步增强，准确表达自己意思的能力也相应提高。
Professor Raileigh once stated: “there are no synonyms, and the same statement
can never be repeated in a changed form of words.” This is perhaps too absolute, but it is not easy to disprove. Even a slight alteration in the wording of a statement can subtly shift the meaning. Look at these two sentences: (1) In my childhood I loved to watch trains go by. (2) When I was a child I loved watching trains go by.
罗利教授曾经说过：“同义词是不存在的。句子用词改变了，句子就不再是原来的意思了。”
这也许过于绝对，但是很难驳倒。措辞稍有变更，意思会有微妙的变化。看下面两个句子：（1）童年时候我喜欢去看火车开过。
（2）当我是个小孩子的时候我喜欢看火车开过。
At fist glance these two sentences are e某actly the same. But look more closely and you will see that there are very tiny differences. In my childhood is a shade more abstract than when I was a child. Watching perhaps emphasizes the looking at trains a little more than to watch. This is a very subtle e某ample, and it would be possible to argue about it, but everyone would at once agree that there is a marked difference between the ne某t two statements:

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