Unit 10 The Transaction课文翻译综合教程三.doc

Unit 10 The TransactionWilliam Zinsser1 About ten years ago a school in Connecticut held “a day devoted to the arts,” and I was asked if I would come and talk about writing as a vocation. When I arrived I found that a second speaker had been invited Dr. Brock (as Ill call him), a surgeon who had recently begun to write and had sold some stories to national magazines. He was going to talk about writing as an avocation. That made us a panel, and we sat down to face a crowd of student newspaper editors, English teachers and parents, all eager to learn the secrets of our glamorous work.2 Dr. Brock was dressed in a bright red jacket, looking vaguely bohemian, as authors are supposed to look, and the first question went to him. What was it like to be a writer?3 He said it was tremendous fun. Coming home from an arduous day at the hospital, he would go straight to his yellow pad and write his tensions away. The words just flowed. It was easy.4 I then said that writing wasnt easy and it wasnt fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed.5 Next Dr. Brock was asked if it was important to rewrite. “Absolutely not,” he said. “Let it all hang out, and whatever form the sentences take will reflect the writer at his most natural.”6 I then said that rewriting is the essence of writing. I pointed out that professional writers rewrite their sentences repeatedly and then rewrite what they have rewritten. I mentioned that E. B. White and James Thurber rewrote their pieces eight or nine times.7 “What do you do on days when it isnt going well?” Dr. Brock was asked. He said he just stopped writing and put the work aside for a day when it would go better.8 I then said that the professional writer must establish a daily schedule and stick to it. I said that writing is a craft, not an art, and that the man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling himself. He is also going broke.9 “What if youre feeling depressed or unhappy?” a student asked. “Wont that affect your writing?”10 Probably it will, Dr. Brock replied. Go fishing. Take a walk. 11 Probably it wont, I said. If your job is to write every day, you learn to do it like any other job.12 A student asked if we found it useful to circulate in the literary world. Dr. Brock said that he was greatly enjoying his new life as a man of letters, and he told several stories of being taken to lunch by his publisher and his agent at chic Manhattan restaurants where writers and editors gather. I said that professional writers are solitary drudges who seldom see other writers.13 “Do you put symbolism in your writing?” a student asked me.14 “Not if I can help it,” I replied. I have an unbroken record of missing the deeper meaning in any story, play or movie, and as for dance and mime, I have never had even a remote notion of what is being conveyed.15 “I love symbols!” Dr. Brock exclaimed, and he described with gusto the joys of weaving them through his work.16 So the morning went, and it was a revelation to all of us. At the end Dr. Brock told me he was enormously interested in my answers it had never occurred to him that writing could be hard. I told him I was just as interested in his answers it had never occurred to me that writing could be easy. (Maybe I should take up surgery on the side.)17 As for the students, anyone might think we left them bewildered. But in fact we probably gave them a broader glimpse of the writing process than if only one of us had talked. For of course there isnt any “right” way to do such intensely personal work. There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps people to say what they want to say is the right method for them.18 Some people write by day, others by night. Some people need silence, others turn on the radio. Some write by hand, some by typewriter or word processor, some by talking into a tape recorder. Some people write their first draft in one long burst and then revise; others cant write the second paragraph until they have fiddled endlessly with the first.19 But all of them are vulnerable and all of them are tense. They are driven by a compulsion to put some part of themselves on paper, and yet they dont just write what comes naturally. They sit down to commit an act of literature, and the self who emerges on paper is a far stiffer person than the one who sat down. The problem is to find the real man or woman behind all the tension.20 For ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is. I often find myself reading with interest about a topic I never thought would interest me some unusual scientific quest, for instance. What holds me is the enthusiasm of the writer for his field. How was he drawn into it? What emotional baggage did he bring along? How did it change his life? Its not necessary to want to spend a year alone at Walden Pond to become deeply involved with a writer who did.21 This is the personal transaction thats at the heart of good nonfiction writing. Out of it come two of the most important qualities that this book will go in search of: humanity and warmth. Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and its not a question of gimmicks to “personalize” the author. Its a question of using the English language in a way that will achieve the greatest strength and the least clutter.22 Can such principles be taught? Maybe not. But most of them can be learned.汇通威廉津瑟1.大约十年前，康涅狄格州有所学校举办了一次“艺术日”活动，他们问我是否愿意去谈谈职业写作是怎么回事。到那儿以后我发现他们请了另外一名演讲者布罗克医生(我这么称呼他)。他是外科医生，最近才开始写作，已经在全国性的杂志上发表了一些作品。他要谈的是作为业余爱好的写作。这样，我们俩就构成了一个座谈组合，面对一群自办报纸的学生编辑、英语教师和学生家长，他们全都热切地想要知道关于我们那令人向往的工作的秘密。2.布罗克医生穿着一件鲜红的上衣，看上去略微有点豪放不羁，一副作家该有的派头。第一个问题是提给他的。当作家是什么感觉？3.他说其乐无穷。从医院忙了一天回家后，他会直接打开他的黄色笔记本，写着写着就轻松了。词句自然地流淌出来。写作很容易。4.然后我说写作不容易，而且不好玩。这是件艰苦而又孤独的事，词句很少自然流出。5.接着有人问布罗克医生修改是否重要。“绝对没必要，”他回答道，“想到什么就写什么，无论句子呈现出怎样的形态，它们反映的都是作家最自然的一面。”6.然后我说修改是写作的本质所在。我指出，职业作家常常反复修改他们写出来的句子，改过的句子还要再度修改。我还提到，怀特和瑟博两位作家的每篇作品都要反复修改八九遍之多。7.“写作不顺利的日子里你做些什么？”有人问布罗克医生。他说他就暂时放手，把作品搁上一天，然后感觉就会回来。8.接着，我说职业作家应该定好每天的日程表严格执行。我说写作是技艺，而不是艺术，说自己因缺乏灵感而无法施展技艺的人是在自欺欺人，而且也会破产的。9.“要是你情绪低落或不开心呢？”一个学生问道。“那不会影响你的写作吗？”10.很可能会，布罗克医生回答。那就去钓鱼。或去散步。11.很可能不会，我说。如果你的职业就是每天写作，你就会学着像从事其他职业一样来对待它。12.一个学生问我俩觉得在文学圈子里与别人打交道有没有帮助。布罗克医生说他非常喜欢自己作为文人的新生活，他讲了几次被出版商和经纪人带到时尚的曼哈顿餐馆用午餐的经历，那里是作家和编辑们聚集的地方。而我说职业作家都是孤独的苦行者，很少和其他作家碰面。13.“你在作品里使用象征手法吗？”有个学生问我。14.“能不用就不用，”我回答。我拥有一项没有人打破的纪录，那就是每本小说、剧作或电影的深层含义我都领会不到，至于舞蹈和哑剧，我更是一点都不知道它们在表现什么。15.“我热爱象征!”布罗克医生叫道，随后兴致勃勃地描绘了将象征融入作品的乐趣。16.那个上午就是这样过去的，我们都受到很大启迪。结束时布罗克医生对我说，他对我的回答很感兴趣他从没想过写作会是艰苦的。我告诉他，我对他的回答也同样感兴趣我也从没想过写作会是轻而易举的事。(