研究生英语11 13 14课文翻译.doc

13 Nine Years for A and B为了A和B条目花费了九年的时光By Christopher Ricks克里斯多夫瑞克斯Dr. Johnson was the greatest man who made a dictionary. James A.H. Murray was the man who made the greatest dictionary: From 1879 to 1915, when he died, he devoted his life to the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary.约翰逊博士是编辑词典最伟大的人。那么詹姆斯默里就是编辑最好的词典的那个人：从1879至1915年，直到他去世，他把自己的一生都贡献给了牛津英语词典的编辑事业。Dr. Johnson had earned the right, as we have not, to call the lexicographer “ a harmless drudge.” For Johnson knew not only that a great deal more than drudgery is involved, but also that the amount of drudgery in the making of a dictionary is simply unimaginable. Even the dictionary maker fortunately cant make it real to himself in advance.约翰逊博士赢得了那个，我们没有的，称作“无害的苦差事”的词典编纂者的头衔。因为约翰逊知道不仅编辑词典要比相关的杂事多得多，而且编辑一部词典的单调工作简直难以想像。实际上，幸好词典的编辑者无法事先预料单调的程度。So the lexicopgraphereven a profoundly thoughtful and experienced one like James Murraywill grasp at the notion that the letter A is typical (apparently it has lots of classically derived words, and these dont have great many senses), but that the whole idea of a typical letter is a will-o-the-wisp. Or again, the lexicographer estimates the amount of time and effort involved in chasing up rare words or scientific terms and then finds that the hardest words are the ones that might seem easiest. The longest entry in the Oxford English Dictionary is for that simple slippery little word set, and Murray was plunged into black despair by “the terrible word Black and its derivatives.”所以词典的编纂者甚至像詹姆斯默里这样深思熟虑，富有经验的人都会有一种想法，那就是字母A很典型（显然它有许多源自希腊语和拉丁语的派生词汇，而且这些词的词的意思并不多），但有关典型字母的整个想法与实际情况不符。此外，词典编纂者估计了查找生词或科学术语所要花费的时间和精力，随即却发现，最难的词汇却是那些看似最简单的词汇。在牛津英语词典中，最长的条目却是那个简单却不稳定的小词set，而且默里因“那个让人烦恼的词汇Black及其派生词”陷入了绝望之中。The dictionary maker runs against time. He has to, because unless he gets a move on he will fall further and further behind, while the dictionary is taking longer to record linguistic events than they take to happen. For another thing, a gigantic enterprise like the O.E.D. needs to be published in parts, to keep up the spirits of all concerned. But people wont buy it unless there is some chance of their still being alive when it finally reaches its destined Z. What goes for subscribers goes, too, for the publishers, who do hope for some return on, or at least of, their money. So there have to be schedules and anxiety and resentment and nagging, in this race against time, time whose pace never falters.词典的编辑者必须与时间赛跑。他必须如此，因为他如果不按期完成，他就会愈落愈多，同时词典要用更长的时间记录语言所发生的事件。另一方面，像牛津英语词典这样的宏大的事业，为了鼓舞所有人员的士气，需要分册分批的出版。但是人们在有生之年看不到整部词典出版发行，他们就不会购买它。订阅者希望有所回报，出版商也这么想，至少希望在他们的钱上有所回报。在与时间的赛跑中，这样就必须有一时间表并伴随着焦虑，不满和不断地催促，因为时间不等人。“The Triple Nightmare: Space, Time and Money”that is the title of a central chapter in this touching, honest, courteous and anecdotally vivid life of James Murray by his granddaughter K.M. Elisabeth Murray. Murray believed that providence had provided him with this great opportunity. His religious faith, his patriotism, his will power, his exceptionally wide range of scholarly gifts, his coordinating powers all converged upon this responsibility entrusted to him.三重恶梦：空间，时间与金钱那是詹姆斯默里的孙女K.M.伊丽莎白莎默里所著的詹姆斯默里一书中主要章节的题目，书中介绍了詹姆斯默里那感人，真诚，谦恭的生动生活的轶闻趣事。默里相信，是上天为他提供了这一绝好的机会。他的宗教信仰，他的爱国之心，他的意志力，他的极其广博的学养，他的协调能力都聚集到了他所受托的这项责任上。Would he have acknowledged that one of the things providence did for him was mercifully to withhold a full sense of the task that was never to end for him? The unique importance of “the Big Dictionary” he never underestimated, but he did repeatedly underestimate its final magnitude: over 16,000 pagesand each page is large, packed and preciseof which Murray personally edited nearly half. If a providential whisper had told Murray at that momnet a hundred years ago (when a the age of 40 he agreed to edit the dictionary) that nine years after the work had started only the letters A and B would have been published, and that he would die at the age of 78 without having quite reached the end of his endeavor, would he ever have set out on such a life work?是否他会承认上天对他来说很仁慈，隐瞒了他永远也无法完成这项工作的实情呢？他从未低估“大词典”独一无二的重要性，但他却多次低估了词典的最终的规模：它超过了16，000页而且每页都是大开页，内容丰富并简明扼要其中默里编辑了几乎一半的内容。假如上苍在一百年前的那个时刻悄悄地告诉了他（他同意编辑那词典时才40岁）九年的工作之后，仅能出版字母A条目和B条目，而且在他78岁去世时离他的理想还相距甚远时，他还会同样付出他的一生吗？But the answer, of course, is yes.当然，回答是肯定的。James Murray was born in Scotland in 1837, the son of a village tailor. He went to a parish school, but he loved knowledge and he loved to impart it. He became a schoolmaster; he learned language after language and was alive to geology, archeology and phonetics, as well as to local politics. He had to leave Scotland because of the illness of his first wife, and he became a bank clerk in London. By sheer energy of scholarship, and without benefit of any university education, he made himself indispensable to the other remarkable philologists of his day. He returned to school-teaching and lived a 72-hour day for the rest of his life. For the invitation to edit what became the O.E.D was one that he could not refuse. At frist he combined it with his school work; later he moved to Oxford and dedicated himself to building the best sort of monumentbest in that is was not a monument to himself, and best in that it was not a monument to something dead but rather to something living: the English language.詹姆斯默里于1837年生于苏格兰，是一位乡村裁缝的儿子。他就读于一所教区学校，他热爱知识，而且更乐于传授知识。后来他当上了校长，他掌握了多种语言并对地质学，考古学和语音学以及地方政治产生了浓厚的兴趣。为了给他第一任妻子看病，他不得不离开苏格兰，在伦敦作了一名银行职员。凭借对知识的热情，在没有接受过任何大学教育的情况下，使自己成为了当时其他著名语言学家不能小视的人物。他又返回学校任教，在他以后的生活中他把一天当作三天用。他无法拒绝来自牛津英语词典请他参与编辑工作的邀请。起初他一边做编辑，一边教学，后来他搬到了牛津，全身心地投身于那不朽的伟业之中所谓的不朽不是对他自己而言，也不是什么纪念碑的东西，而是有生命力的英语语言。Unusual in its etymological exactitude, in its strength and delicacy of definition and of subdivision as each word lives and branches, it was more than unusualit was uniquein the range, precision and organization of its illustrative quotations. A great band of instructed volunteers culled these quotations; subeditors winnowed them; and Murray in his “Scriptorium” shaped them and did every other kind of work that could make the dictionary as good as humanly possible. He beavered and he badgered. He had to chase wild geese: he asked Robert Louis Stevenson what brean meant in a book of his, and found out that it was a misprint for ocean. He was puzzled by a plural noun alliterates in an essay by James Russell Lowell, and found that it, too, was a misprint, this time for the apt word illiterates.这本词典的非同寻常在于词源的准确，对每个词的原义和引申义的有力而精确的定义和细分，更加非同寻常的是，在引证资料的范围，精确度以及组织方面都是独一无二的。一大群受过培训的志愿者初选了这些资料，经过副主编的筛选；默里在他的“编辑室”里将资料确定下来，并想方设法使这本词典尽善尽美。他勤奋而认真。有时还得做些徒劳的事：他问罗伯特路易斯史蒂文森词典中brean 一词为何意，可后来发现它不过是印错了ocean 一词。他被詹姆斯罗素罗威尔随笔中的一个复数名词 alliterates 困扰着，之后发现也就是把illiterates 一词给印错了。He took pride in what he was doing, and he was not proud of himself. He didnt want a biography: “I am a nobodyif you have anything to say about the Dictionary, there it is at your willbut treat me as a solar myth, or an echo, or an irrational quantity, or ignore me altogether.” But he is unignorable, an Eminent Victorian such as we now realize is not to be sneered at. The uneventful dignity of his life makes for a biography which it would be odd to be thrilled by and which it would be insensitive not to be stirred by. “The work is greater than I, or any worker,” he said when he was contemplating resignation because of the ceaseless pressure on him to skimp the work. Only a great man would speak so, or would continue with such simple sincerity and self-abnegation: “and while I will never desert it, I will never stand in the way of its better or more speedy achievement, if that seems attainable.”他对自已并不感到骄傲，而对所从事的事业充满了自豪感。他不想别人给他作传：“我是个无名小卒如果你有话要说，那么就说说那部词典吧，别把我当成什么太阳神，或者一种回声，或一组无解的数字，或者就干脆忽略了我。”但他是不可能被忽略的，正如我们现在所认识到的，他是一位维多利亚时代杰出的人物，不可能被轻视。他平凡，有尊严的一生，写成传记如果说会震撼人心可能让人质疑，如果说读者毫无触动，也未免麻木不仁了。 由于无休止的压力开始影响了工作，他谨慎地提出了辞呈，他说：“这项工作比我和任何工作人员都重要”。只有伟大的人才会这样说，而且是那么一贯的朴实真诚和富有自我牺牲精神地说道：“虽然我从未想过放弃这项事业，但如果有人能更好更快的使它完成，我决不会防碍它。”Though it was a painful and arduous life, it was not a grim one. No life can be grim in which a man so thoroughly, and with such justified satisfaction, knows himself in that he knows what he can work at. Murray, like his friends and colleagues, felt within the present a profou