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美国学者：用第二语言英语写作-William Zinsser
原作者：William Zinsser
发表时间：浏览量：5990评论数：27挑错数：0
William Knowlton Zinsser (born October 7, 1922) is an American writer, editor, literary critic, and teacher.
对哥伦比亚新闻学院的国际新生的一次讲话，于2009年8月 11日
American Scholar: Writing English as a Second Language - William
美国学者：用第二语言英语写作-William
talk to the incoming international
at the Columbia
Graduate School of Journalism,
August 11, 2009
international
students：国际留学生
致哥伦比亚新闻学研究生院的国际新生们的一段话，于2009年8月11日
years ago one of your deans at the journalism school,
Elizabeth Fishman, asked me if I would be interested in tutoring
international students who might need some extra help with their
writing. She
knew I had done a lot of traveling in Asia and Africa and other parts
of the world where many of you come from.
tutor：辅导
五年前，新闻学院的一位教务长伊丽莎白费舍曼（Elizabeth
Fishman），询问我是否有兴趣辅导国际留学生，那些在写作方面可能需要些额外帮助的学生。她知道我游历过亚洲，非洲以及世界上其他地区的很多地方，而你们又大多来自那里。
knew I would enjoy that,
and I have—I’ve been doing it ever since. I’m the doctor
that students get sent to see if they have a writing problem that
their professor thinks I can fix. As a bonus, I’ve made many
friends—from Uganda, Uzbekhistan, India, Ethiopia, Thailand, Iraq,
Nigeria, Poland, China, Colombia and many other countries. Several
young Asian women, when they went back home, sent me invitations to
their weddings. I never made it to Bhutan or Korea, but I did see the
wedding pictures. Such beautiful brides!
我清楚自己喜欢辅导国际留学生，况且，我一直就是这么做的。我就像个医生，教授们觉得我能够修改他们学生的书写错误，就让他们到我这儿。算是种奖励吧，我交到了很多朋友，乌干达，乌兹别克斯坦，印度，埃塞俄比亚，泰国，尼日利亚，波兰，中国，哥伦比亚以及其他不少国家的朋友。几位年轻的亚洲女学生，在她们回国之后，给我寄来了婚礼邀请。我还没去过不丹和韩国，却看到了那里的婚礼照片。多美的新娘啊！
can’t imagine how hard it must be to learn to write comfortably in
a second—or third or fourth—language. I
don’t think _I _could do it, and I admire your grace
in taking on that difficult task. Much of the anxiety
that I see in foreign students could be avoided if certain principles
of writing good English—which nobody ever told them—were
explained in advance. So I asked if I could talk to all of you during
orientation week and tell you some of the things my students
have found helpful.
grace：毅力，美德（上帝选中的，说法有争议）
anxiety：焦躁，焦虑
orientation
week：迎新周
我想象不出，用第二语言或者第三，第四语言轻松的书写，该有多难。我想我做不到，我佩服你们坚持下来的毅力。倘若有人提前就向他们说明写出良好英文的某些准则，我看到的大多数焦躁，他们都能避免，然而从来没有人告诉过他们。因此，我就问道，能不能在”迎新周（orientation
week）“上发言，说点学生们觉得有用的内容？
that’s why we’re here today.
这就是为什么今天我们在一起。
start with a question: What is good writing?
我有个问题，什么是好的写作？
depends on what country you’re from. We all know what’s
considered “good writing” in our own country. We
grow up immersed
in the cadences
and sentence structure of the language we were born into, so
we think, “That’s probably what every country considers good
they just use different words.” If only! I once asked a
student from Cairo, “What kind of language is Arabic?” I
was trying to put myself into her mental process of switching from
Arabic to English. She said, “It’s all adjectives.”
immersed：沉浸在
cadence：语调，节奏
恐怕这要看你来自哪一个国家。我们都清楚自己国家中认为好的写作。沉浸在母语的语调和词句结构中长大，我们就会想，“那也许就是所有国家都认为好的写作，只是每个国家用的词语不一样”。那要是真的该有多好啊！就此，我问过一位来自开罗的的学生，“阿拉伯语是什么样的语言？”我试图切入到她从阿拉伯语转换到英语的思考过程。她说“都是形容词”。
of course it’s not&all&adjectives,
but I knew what she meant: it’s decorative, it’s ornate,
it’s intentionally pleasing. Another Egyptian student, when I asked
him about Arabic, said, “It’s all proverbs.
We talk in proverbs. People say things like ‘What you are seeking
is also seeking you.’” He
also told me that Arabic is full of courtesy
and deference,
some of which is rooted
in fear of the government.
“You never know who’s listening,” he said, so it doesn’t hurt
to be polite. That’s
when I realized that when foreign students come to me with a
linguistic problem it may also be a cultural or a political problem.
ornate：华丽，绚丽
proverbs：箴言
courtesy：礼节，礼貌
deference：尊重，谦恭
好吧，当然不会都是形容词，但我明白了她的意思：修饰，华丽，刻意的取悦。另外一位埃及学生，当被我问到同样的问题，他说，“都是箴言。我们用箴言交流。‘你追寻的东西也会追寻你’，人们都这么说话”。他还告诉我，阿拉伯语中充满了礼节和谦恭，某些原因是出于对政府的恐惧。“你永远不知道谁会听到”，他接着说道，“所以说话时谦恭就不会受到伤害”。就在那时，我突然意识到，外国留学生问过我的某些语言问题，其中可能也包含着文化上或者政治上的某种问题。
I think it’s lovely that such a decorative language as Arabic
exists. I wish _I_could walk around New York and hear people talking
in proverbs. But all those
adjectives and all that decoration would be the
ruin of any journalist
trying to write good English. No proverbs, please.
我现在觉得，存在着像阿拉伯语这样的充满修饰用语的语言，真的很可爱。我要是能在纽约转转，还听到人们用箴言交谈，多好。可是，所有那些形容词和所有那样的修饰，对于任何一位想要写出良好英文的记者来说，是毁灭性的。不要使用箴言，拜托了。
also comes with a heavy load of beautiful
that will smother
any journalist writing in English. The
Spanish language is a national treasure, justly
prized by Spanish-speaking people. But what makes it a
national treasure is its long sentences and melodious long nouns that
express a general idea. Those
nouns are rich in feeling, but they have no action in them—no
people doing something we can picture.
My Spanish-speaking students must be given the bad news that those
long sentences will have to be cruelly chopped up into short
sentences with short nouns and short active verbs that drive
the story forward. What’s considered “good writing” in
Spanish is not “good writing” in English.
baggage：遗产，糟粕
smother：扼杀，压抑
justly：值得，有理由
idea：总体观点，总体意见
西班牙语同样拥有着大量优美的语言遗产，而它们却会扼杀任何用英文写作的记者。西班牙语是国家的瑰宝，值得被说西班牙语的人们所钟爱。正是那些长句，和用来表达总体观点的悦耳的长名词把它变成了国家的瑰宝。那些名词给人们带来了丰富的感受，却没有关联任何动作，我们想象不出任何没有主题的句子。我不得不把这个坏消息带给说西班牙语的学生，那些长句只能被粗鲁的用推动情节发展的短名词和短主动词截成短句。西班牙语中认为的”优美的写作“并不等同于英语中”优美的写作“。
what is good English—the language we’re here today to wrestle
It’s not as musical as Spanish, or Italian, or French, or as
ornamental as Arabic, or as vibrant as some of your
native languages. But I’m hopelessly in love with English because
it’s plain and it’s strong. It
has a huge vocabulary of words that have precise shades
there’s no
subject, however
technical or complex,
that can’t be made clear to any reader in good English—if it’s
used right. Unfortunately, there are many ways of using it
wrong. Those are the damaging
habits I want to warn you about today.
with：尽力搞明白
musical：悦耳
ornamental：装饰性，观赏性
vibrant：生动，生机勃勃
shades：韵味
habits：恶习，坏习惯
那么，什么是良好的英文，也就是我们今天在这里要尽力搞明白的。它不像西班牙语或是意大利语，或是法语那样悦耳，也不像阿拉伯语那样极具“观赏性”，更不会像某些母语那样生动。可我就是不可救药的喜欢上了英语，因为它的直白强烈。它带着一个海量的词汇表，能够清晰的表达出某个含义的多种韵味；任何主题，无论多专业多复杂，用良好的英语表述出来，读者们读起来都会觉着清晰，倘若使用正确的话。不幸的是，错误的使用方式很多。那些恶习，就是我今天要提醒你们的地方。
a little history. The English language is derived from two main
sources. One is Latin, the florid language of ancient Rome.
The other is Anglo-Saxon, the plain languages of England and northern
Europe. The words derived from
Latin are the enemy—they
will strangle
and suffocate
everything you write.
The Anglo-Saxon words will set you free.
florid：绚丽
strangle：阻挠
suffocate：扼制
首先，介绍些相关的历史。现代英语有两个主要来源。一个是拉丁语，绚丽的古罗马语言。另外一个是盎格鲁萨克逊，朴素的英格兰和欧洲北部语言。那些出自拉丁语的词语就像仇敌，试图阻挠和扼制你写的任何主题，而盎格鲁萨克逊词语则会释放你的灵感。
do those Latin words do their strangling and suffocating? In general
they are long, pompous
nouns that end in -ion—like
implementation and maximization and communication (five syllables
long!)—or that end in -ent—like
development and fulfillment. Those nouns express
a vague concept or an abstract idea, not a specific action that we
can picture—somebody doing something. Here’s a typical sentence:
“Prior to the implementation of the financial enhancement.” That
means “Before we fixed our money problems.”
express：传递，传达
pompous：浮华
那些拉丁词语又是如何阻挠和扼制写作的？总体上，是那些冗长浮华的名词，比如以ion结尾的，像“implementation”和“maxmization”和“communiciation”（竟然有五个音节）---还有像“development”，“fufillment”这样以ent结尾的名词。那些名词传递了一个模糊的概念，或者某种抽象的观点，并非是我们想象得出的某个具体举动，好比“somebody
doing something【某人做了某事】”。这有个典型例句“Prior
to the implementation of the financial enhancement“。它的实际意思是“Before
we fixed our money problems.【在我们解决钱的问题之前。】”。
it or not, this is the language that people in authority in
America routinely use—officials in government and business and
education and social work and health
care. They think those long Latin words make them sound
important. It no longer rains in A your
TV weatherman will tell that you we’re experiencing a precipitation
probability situation.
in authority：手握大权
信不信由你们，这就是在美国手握大权者惯用的语言，那些政府，商业，教育，社务和康护官员们的用语。他们认为那些长拉丁词语，让人们听起来觉得他们很重要。比如：最近美国好长时间没下雨了，电视中的天气预报员播送道，我们一直处于可能降雨的状况。
sure all of you, newly arrived in America, have already been driven
crazy trying to figure out the instructions for ordering a cell phone
or connecting your computer, or applying for a bank loan or a health
insurance policy, and you assume that those of us who were born here
can understand this stuff. I assure you that we don’t understand it
either. I often receive some totally unintelligible letter
from the telephone company or the
cable company or the bank. I
try to piece
it out like a
hieroglyphic,
and I ask my wife, “Can you make any sense of this?” She says, “I
have no idea what it means.”
unintelligible：不知所措
hieroglyphic：象形文字
我确信你们所有人，刚到美国的新人们，早就被搞清楚订购一部电话或是联通你的电脑，或是申请一份银行贷款或是一份健康保险的各种说明逼疯了，恐怕你们还认定出生在这里的我们很清楚这些杂事。我向你们保证，我们也不明白。我就经常从电信公司和有线电视公司以及银行收到一些完全不知所措的信函。我只好尽力把它们拼成些“象形文字”，而且我还问了我老婆，“你觉得这是啥意思？”她说，“我就更不懂啦。”。
long Latin usages have so infected everyday language in
America that you might well think, “If
that’s how people write who are running the country, that’s how
I’m supposed to write.” It’s not. Let me read you three
typical letters I recently received in the mail. (I keep letters like
this and save them in a folder that I call “Bullshit File.”)
infected：感染，渗透
那些冗长的拉丁文用法对美国日常用语的渗透竟然到了如此地步，你们能够想象到了吧。难道是那些管理这个国家的官员怎样描述，我就应该怎样写？岂能这样。
让我读三封最近在邮箱里收到的此类信件。（我把它们都保留下来了，并存放在一个我称之为“狗屎文件”的文件夹中。）
first one is from the president of a private club in New York. It
says, “Dear member: The board of
governors has spent the past year considering proactiveefforts
that will continue
to professionalize the club and to introduce
efficiencies that we will be implementing throughout 2009.”
That means they’re going to try to make the club run better.
efforts：措施，举措
introduce：实施，强化
continue：继续，逐步
第一封，来自纽约一家私人俱乐部的总裁。里边写道，“Dear
member: The board of governors has spent the past year considering
proactiveefforts
that will continue to professionalize the club and to introduce
efficiencies that we will be implementing throughout
2009.【亲爱的会员：管理委员会花了过去一年的时间来考虑各种积极举措，以继续专业化俱乐部的运营和引入我们将在2009年一年中执行的效率管理。】”意思是，他们打算尽力把俱乐部运营的更好。
a letter to alumni from the head of the New England boarding school I
attended when I was a boy. “As I walk around the Academy,” she
writes, “and see so many gifted students interacting with
accomplished, dedicated adults” [that
means boys and girls talking to teachers]
consider the opportunities for learning that such interpersonal
exchanges will yield…” Interpersonal exchanges!
Pure garbage. Her
letter is meant to assure us alumni that the school is in
good hands.
I’m not assured. One thing I know is that she shouldn’t be
allowed near the English department, and I’m not sure she should
even be running the school. Remember: how
you write is how you define yourself to people who meet
you only through your writing.
If your writing is pretentious,
that’s how you’ll be perceived. The reader has no choice.
good hands：掌控在好人手里
pretentious：做作，造作
这一封是致校友的信件，来自一家新英格兰住宿学校的主管，我小时候在那里呆过。“As
I walk around the Academy,【当我漫步在校园，】”她写道，“and
see so many gifted students interacting with accomplished, dedicated
adults【并看到这么多极具天赋的学生与功成名就还献身于教育的老师们交谈】”（作者转述：意思是与老师们交谈的男生和女生）“and
consider the opportunities for learning that such interpersonal
exchanges will
yield…【不由得憧憬着只有这种人与人间的交流才能产生的学习机会。。。】”人与人之间的交流！纯粹的垃圾。她的来信是让我们确信学校是由德行俱佳的人们掌控着。我怀疑这一点。我唯一想说的是，应该让她离英语系远一点，我甚至怀疑这样的人竟然管理着这所学校。牢记一点：对于那些仅仅通过你的著作而获知你的人来说，你如何描写就是你如何向他们定义自己。倘若你的著作中充满了造作，那也将是别人对你的判断。读者别无选择。
one more—a letter from the man who
my investment counsel. He says, “As we previously communicated, we
completed a systems conversion in late September. Data conversions
involve extra processing and reconciliation steps [translation:
it took longer than we thought it would to make our office operate
We apologize if you were inconvenienced as we completed the
verification process [we
hope we’ve got it right now].
“Further enhancements will be introduced in the next calendar
quarter” [we’re
still working on it].
Notice those horrible long Latin
words:&communicated,conversion,&reconciliation,&enhancements,&verification.
There’s not a living person in any one of them.
这还有一封信件，来自于一位我过去的经纪人，现在他是我的投资顾问。他说道，“As
we previously communicated, we completed a systems conversion in late
September. Data conversions involve extra processing and
reconciliation steps
【正如我们上次谈过的，我们在9月末完成了一次系统转换。数据转换需要额外的处理和整合步骤】（作者转述：该操作比我们预想的时间要长，但它有助于我们办公运营）。“We
apologize if you were inconvenienced as we completed the verification
在我们完成验证处理的过程中，如果给你带来不便，我们表示道歉】（作者转述：我们希望尽快弄好）”。“Further
enhancements will be introduced in the next calendar quarter
【未来的完善将于下一个日历季度开始】（作者转述：我们还要继续完善）”。看到没有，那些可恶又冗长的拉丁词语：communiciated，conversion，reconcilliation，enhancements，verification。里边没一个活生生的人。
I think you get the point about bad nouns. (Don’t worry—in a
minute I’ll tell you about good nouns.) I
bring this up today because most of you will soon be assigned to a
in one of New York’s neighborhoods. Our
city has been greatly enriched in recent years by immigrants from
every corner of the world, but their arrival has also brought a
multitude of complex urban problems. You’ll
be interviewing
the men and women who are trying to solve those problems—school
principals, social workers, health-care workers, hospital
officials, criminal justice officials, union officials, church
officials, police officers, judges, clerks in city and state
agencies—and when you ask them a
question, they will answer you in nouns: Latin
noun clusters that are
the working vocabulary of their field. They’ll talk about
“facilitation intervention” and “affordable housing” and
“minimum-density zoning,” and you will dutifully copy those
phrases down and write a sentence that says: “A major immigrant
concern is the affordable housing situation.” But I can’t picture
the affordable housing situation. Who exactly are those immigrants?
Where do they live? What kind of housing is affordable? To whom? As
readers, we want to be able to picture specific people like
ourselves, in a specific part of the city, doing things we might also
do. We want a sentence that says something like “New
Dominican families on Tremont Avenue in the Bronx can’t pay the
rent that landlords ask.” I we’ve all had
trouble paying the landlord.
beat：片警
principls：校务人员（资深）
好啦，我想你们明白了那些可恶的名词了吧。（别急，接下来我会说到良好的名词）。今天，我翻出这些内容，是因为你们中的大多数很快就会像在纽约某个居住区的片警一样负责一些简单的写作任务。近年来，来自世界各个角落的移民极大的丰富了这个城市，可是，他们的到来也引发了大量复杂的市政问题。当尽力解决那些问题的人们，校务人员，社会服务人员，康护人员，医疗官员，刑事司法官员，工会官员，教会官员，警官，法官，以及市立机构和州立机构的职员，来到你们面前，你们好像是在面试他们。在你问完一个问题，他们就会用名词回答你。成串的拉丁名词是他们这些职能的工作词汇。他们会谈起“facilitation
intervention【有益介入】”和“affordable
housing【可承受住宿】”以及”minimum-density
zoning【密度最小化区划】“，你们将把这些用语照单全收，并写出这样的句子，“A
major immigrant concern is the affordable housing
situation【移民的一项主要顾虑是可承受住宿的状况】”但我想象不出“可承受住宿的状况”。这些移民到底是谁？他们住在哪里？什么样的住宿是可承受的？对谁来说？作为读者，我们希望能够想象出像我们自己这样的某些人，在城市的某个地区，做着我们可以想象出的事情。我们预期着“新迁入布朗克斯地区蒙特大道的多米尼加住户支付不起房东要求的房租。”，像这样的某种说法。这我想得出来，因为我们在支付房租上都有过麻烦。
if those are the bad nouns, what are the good nouns? The good nouns
are the thousands of short, simple, infinitely
old Anglo-Saxon nouns
that express the fundamentals of everyday
life:&house,&home,&child,&chair,&bread,&milk,&sea,&sky,earth,&field,&grass,&road&…
that are in our bones, words
that resonate
with the oldest truths.
you use those words, you make contact—consciously and also
_sub_consciously—with the deepest emotions and memories of your
Don’t try to find a noun that you think sounds more impressive
or “literary.”
Short Anglo-Saxon nouns are your second- best tools as a journalist
writing in English.
resonate：共鸣
impressive：响亮
literary：文艺，文学
那么，如果那些就是可恶的名词，良好的名词又是什么？良好的名词是成千上万的简短直白，极其古老的盎格鲁萨克逊名词，那些被用来描述日常生活中的根本问题：住房，家庭，儿童，椅子，面包，牛奶，大海，天空，土地，田地，草，道路。。。，与我们骨肉相连，共鸣于古老真理的词语。当你使用了那些词语，你就有意无意的触动了读者们最深处的情感与记忆。你们不必费力去寻找自己认为更响亮或者“更文艺”的名词。作为一名用英语写作的记者，简短的盎格鲁萨克逊名词是你们第二个最好的工具。
are your&best&tools?
Your best tools are short, plain Anglo-Saxon&verbs.
I mean&active&verbs,
not&passive&verbs.
If you could write an article using only active verbs, your article
would automatically have clarity and warmth and vigor.
什么是你们的最好的工具？那就是简短直白的盎格鲁萨克逊动词。我指的是主动动词，不是被动动词。倘若你只使用主动动词写出一篇文章，那它必然是自然而然的清晰，温暖，而且充满活力。
go back to school for a minute and make sure you remember the
difference between an active verb and a passive verb. An active verb
one specific action: JOHN SAW THE BOYS. The event only happened once,
and we always know who did what: it was John who activated the
A passive-voice sentence would say: THE BOYS WERE SEEN BY JOHN. It’s
longer. It’s weaker: it takes three words (WERE SEEN BY instead of
SAW), and it’s not as exact. How often were the boys seen by John?
Every day? Once a week? Active
verbs give momentum
to a sentence and push it forward.
If I had put that last sentence in the passive—“momentum is given
to a sentence by active verbs and the sentence is pushed forward by
them”—there
is no momentum, no push.
让我们稍事回到课堂，检查一下你们是否还记得主动动词与被动动词之间的差异。一个主动动词表明了某个特定动作：JOHN
SAW THE BOYS【约翰看见了男孩们】。这个事件只发生了一次，并且我们都很清楚谁做了什么：“it
was John who activated the verb SAW【是约翰发出了动词看见这个动作】。被动语气的句子这样说：THE
BOYS WERE SEEN BY JOHN【男孩们被约翰看见】。这句稍微长一点，表达也弱一些：它用了三个单词（WERE
SEEN BY instead of
SAW【由谁看见而非看见】），而且也不够确切。男孩们被约翰看见，多久一次？每天？一周一次？可见，主动动词给句子注入了劲道，随之推动了行文。上个句子，倘若我用了被动---“momentum
is given to a sentence by active verbs and the sentence is pushed
forward by them 【劲道由主动动词注入了句子，行文也随之被推动】”。劲道没了，更别说行文了。
momentum：动量，劲道
of my favorite writers is Henry David Thoreau, who wrote one of the
great American books,&Walden,
in 1854, about the two years he spent living—and thinking—in the
woods near Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau’s
writing moves with simple strength because he uses&one
active verb after another&to
push his meaning along.
every point in his sentences you know what you need to know.
Here’s a famous sentence from&Walden:
went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front
only the essential facts of nature, and see if I could not learn what
it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not
我最喜欢的作家之一是亨利戴维梭罗（Henry
Thoreau），他于1854年完成了美国历史上最为伟大的著作之一，瓦尔登湖《Walden》。该著作描述了在他隐居于马萨诸塞州康科德镇附近的树林中为期两年的生活与思考。梭罗的著作以简洁有力的方式行文，因为他用一个接着一个的主动动词来推动情节。在他的语句中的每一个地方，你明白自己需要了解什么。以下是摘自《瓦尔登湖》的名句。
at all those wonderful short, active
verbs:&went,&wished,&front,&see,&learn,die,&discover.
We understand exactly what Thoreau is saying. We also know a lot
about&him—about
his curiosity and his vitality. How alive Thoreau is in that
sentence! It’s an autobiography in 44 words—39 of which are words
about that: only five words in that long, elegant sentence have more
than one syllable. Short is always better than long.
瞧瞧所有这些漂亮简短的主动动词：went，wished，front，see，learn，die，discover。我们清晰的理解他在说什么。而且我们也知道了他的为人---他的求知欲，活力。在句中，梭罗是多么的鲜活！那就是一部44个单词的自传，其中39个还是单音节的。想想这一点：在这个长而简练的句子中，只有五个单词多于一个音节。简短大多胜于冗长。
let me turn that sentence into the passive:
decision was made to go to the woods because of a desire for a
deliberate existence and for exposure to only the essential facts of
life, and for possible instruction in its educational elements, and
because of a concern that at the time of my death the absence of a
meaningful prior experience would be apprehended.
现在让我把它转换成被动语气：
the life has been taken out of the sentence. But
what’s the biggest thing I’ve taken out of that sentence?
taken&Thoreau&out
of that sentence. He’s nowhere to be seen.
I’ve done it just by turning all the active verbs into passive
verbs. Every
time I replaced one of Thoreau’s active verbs with a passive verb I
also had to add a noun to make the passive verb work.
“I went to the woods because” became “A decision was made.” I
had to add the noun&decision.
“To see if I could learn what it had to teach—two terrific
verbs, we’ve all learned and we’ve all been
taught—became “for possible instruction.” Can
how dead those Latin nouns are that end in i-o-n?
Decision. Instruction. They
have no people in them doing something.
terrfic：醒目
句子中的所有活力都被剥离了。可是，被我从句中剥离出去的部分又有什么大不了的？那是我把活生生的梭罗从句中剥离出去了，再也难觅梭罗的身影。我只是把所有的主动动词替换成了被动动词，就成这样了。每一次我把梭罗用到的某个主动动词换成另一个被动动词，我还不得不添加一个名词，确保它与被动动词搭配起来与原意相符。“I
went to the woods because【我前往了树林，因为】”变成了“A
decision was made.【决定已经做出了】”
我不得不添上了名词”decision【决定】”。“To
see if I could learn what it had to
teach”---两个醒目的动词，learn【学习】和teach【教授】；我们都学习过也都被老师教过---变成了“For
instruction.【为了可能的教导】“。你听听那些以ion结尾的拉丁名词多么的死气沉沉？Decision。Instruction。句子里根本就没有鲜活的人。
fall in love with active verbs. They are your best friends.
那么，与主动动词坠入爱河吧。他们是你最好的伙伴。
have four principles of writing good English. They are Clarity,
Simplicity, Brevity, and Humanity.
humanity：品格（个人品味与写作风格）
对于写出良好的英文，我有四条准则，分别是清晰，直白，简洁和品格。
Clarity. If it’s not clear you might as well not write it. You
might as well stay in bed.
第一条，清晰。如果故事内容都不清晰，你可能也不会写它，甚至还不如啥也不干。
Simplicity. Simple is good. Most students from other countries don’t
know that. When I read them a sentence that I admire, a simple
sentence with short words, they think I’m joking. “Oh, Mr.
Zinsser, you’re so funny,” a bright young woman from Nigeria told
me. “If I wrote sentences like that, people would think I’m
stupid.” Stupid like Thoreau, I want to say. Or stupid like E. B.
White. Or like the King James Bible. Listen to this passage from the
book of Ecclesiastes:
returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet
riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill, but
time and chance happeneth to them all. [Look at all those wonderful
plain nouns: race, battle, bread, riches, favor, time, chance.]
第二条，直白。直白就是好的。大多数来自其他国家的学生并不了解这一点。在我把自己赞赏的句子读给他们的时候，只有几个短单词的简单句子，他们觉得我是在开玩笑。“哦，Zinsser先生，你真搞笑”，一位年轻聪明的尼日利亚女学生这么告诉我。“假如我写出那样的句子，人们会以为我是个蠢货。”
和梭罗一样蠢？我本来想说，或者像E.B.White一样蠢？还是像钦定版圣经（the
King James Bible）一样蠢？听听传道书（Ecclesiastes）中的这一段：
stupid like Abraham Lincoln, whom I consider our greatest American
writer. Here’s Lincoln addressing
the nation in his Second Inaugural Address as president, in 1865, at
the end of the long, terrible, exhausting Civil War:
malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right
as God gives us to see the right [eleven straight one-syllable
words],& &let us strive on [active verb] to finish the work
we are in, to bind up [active verb] the nation’s wounds, to care
[active verb] for him who shall have borne the battle and for his
widow and his orphan [specific nouns],—to do all which may achieve
and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all
还是像亚伯拉罕林肯（Abraham
Lincoln）一样蠢，那个我认为的我们最伟大的美国作家。这里是林肯，于1865年在第二次总统就职演说中，在那漫长而可怕的让人筋疲力竭的美国内战结束之际，致全民的一段讲话。
another American President, Barack Obama, also a wonderful writer,
modeled his own style on Lincoln’s.
In his memoir,&Dreams
from My Father.
a beautifully written book, Obama recalls how, as a boy,
night, lying in bed, I would let the slogans drift away, to be
replaced with a series of images, romantic images, of a past I had
never known.
were of the civil rights movement, mostly, the grainy black-and-white
footage that appears every February during Black History Month. . . .
A pair of college students . . . placing their orders at a lunch
counter teetering on the edge of riot. . . . A county jail bursting
with children, their hands clasped together, singing freedom songs.
images became a form of prayer for me [beautiful phrase], bolstering
my spirits, channeling my emotions in a way that words never could.
They told me [active verb] . . . that I wasn’t alone in my
particular struggles, and that communities . . . had to be created,
fought for, tended like gardens [specific detail]. They expanded or
contracted [active verbs] with the dreams of men. . . . In the
sit-ins, the marches, the jailhouse songs [specific detail], I saw
[active verb] the African-American community becoming more than just
the place where you’d been born or the house where you’d been
raised [simple nouns: place, house]. . . . Because this community I
imagined was still in the making, built on the promise that the
larger American community, black, white, and brown, could somehow
redefine itself—I believed [active verb] that it might, over time,
admit the uniqueness of my own life.
memoir：自传文集
这里还有另外一位美国总统，巴拉克奥巴马（Barack
Obama），同样是一位出色的作家，他在林肯风格的基础上铸造出了自己的风格。在他的自传文集《来自父亲的梦想》（Dreams
from My Father）中，文笔优美的一本书，奥巴马回忆起小男孩时候，如何。。。，
remember: Simple is good. Writing
is not something you have to embroider
with fancy stitches to make yourself look smart.
因此记住，直白就挺好。写作并非像你们想的，必须用闪亮的修饰好让自己看起来机灵一些。
number 3. Brevity. Short is always better than long. Short sentences
are better than long sentences. Short words are better than long
words. Don’t say_currently_ if you can say&now.
Don’t say&assistance&if
you can say&help.
Don’t say_numerous_ if you can say&many.
Don’t say&facilitate&if
you can say&ease.
Don’t call someone an&individual&[five
syllables!];
that’s a person, or a man or a woman. Don’t implement or
prioritize. Don’t say anything in writing that you wouldn’t
comfortably say in conversation. Writing
is talking to someone else on paper or on a screen.
准则三。简洁。简短通常胜于冗长。短句胜于长句。简短的词语胜于冗长的词语。能说“now【现在】”就不要说“currently【目前】”。能说“help【帮助】”就不要说“assitance【援助】”。能说“many【很多】”就不要说“numerous【还是很多】”。能说“ease【简化】”就不要说“facilitate【有助于】”。不要称呼某个人为”individual【个体】“，那是一个人，是个男人或者女人。不要使用“implement【实施】”或者“priortize【排序】”。不要在写作中说出连你都觉得在谈话中不舒服的用语。写作实际上是与另外一个人在书面上或者屏幕上的交流。
brings me to my fourth principle: Humanity. Be yourself. Never
try in your writing to be someone you’re not. Your product,
finally, is you. Don’t lose that
person by putting on airs, trying to sound superior.
这一点启发了我的第四条准则：品格。保持自己的品格。在你们的写作中，千万不要试图扮成另外一个人。你的作品，最终就是你自己。千万不要因夸大其词，好像听上去高人一等，而迷失了作品中的自己。
are many modern journalists I admire for their strong, simple style,
whom I could recommend to you as models. Two who come to mind are Gay
Talese and Joan Didion. Here’s a passage by Talese, from his book
of collected magazine pieces,&The
Gay Talese Reader,
about the great Yankee baseball star, Joe DiMaggio, who
at one point was married to Marilyn Monroe:
DiMaggio lives with his widowed sister, Marie, in a tan stone house
on a quiet residential street near Fisherman’s Wharf. He bought the
house almost thirty years ago for his parents, and after their death
he lived there with Marilyn Monroe. . . . There are some baseball
trophies and plaques in a small room off DiMaggio’s bedroom, and on
his dresser are photographs of Marilyn Monroe, and in the living room
downstairs is a small painting of her that DiMaggio likes very much
[___how nice that sentence is—how simple and direct___]: It reveals
only her face and shoulders, and she is wearing a very wide-brimmed
sun hat, and there is a soft sweet smile on her lips, an innocent
curiosity about her that is the way he saw her and the way he wanted
her to be seen by others.
不少现代记者以强烈直白的写作风格而著称，我钦佩他们。在此，我打算把它们作为典范推荐给你们。嘴边的两个是Gay
Talese和Joan
Didion。这里是Talese的一段文字，来自于他的期刊文章合集，《致Gay
Talese的读者们》，都是关于伟大的Yankee棒球队明星Joe
DiMaggio，也就是与Marilyn
Monroe（玛丽莲梦露）有过一段婚姻的那位。
all those one-syllable words: “the
way he saw her and the way he wanted her to be seen.”
The sentence is absolutely clean—there’s not one word in it
that’s not necessary and not one extra word. Get rid of every
element in your writing that’s not doing useful work. It’s
all clutter.]_
瞧瞧所有那些单音节词：“the
way he saw her and the way he wanted her to be
seen.【他看她的神态和他希望的别人看她的神态】”说的再清楚不过了，每个单词都用的恰如其分，更没有多余的词。在写作中，去除掉那些没用的词藻。那都是些麻烦。
here’s Joan Didion, who grew up in California and wrote brilliant
magazine pieces about its trashy lifestyle in the 1960s. No
anthropologist caught it better.
This passage is from her collection of early magazine
pieces,&Slouching
Toward Bethlehem.
are always little girls around rock groups—the same little girls
who used to hang around saxophone players, girls who lived on the
celebrity and power and sex a band projects when it plays—and there
are three of them out here this afternoon in Sausalito where the
Grateful Dead rehearse. They are all pretty and two of them still
have baby fat and one of them dances by herself with her eyes closed
[perfect simple image]. . . .
said that if I was going to meet some runaways I better pick up some
hamburgers and Cokes on the way, so I did, and we are eating them in
the Park together, me, Debbie who is fifteen, and Jeff who is
sixteen. Debbie and Jeff ran away twelve days ago, walked out of
school with $100 between them [active verbs: ran away, walked out of
school]. . . .
is buffing her fingernails with the belt to her suède jacket. She is
annoyed because she chipped a nail and because I do not have any
polish remover in the car. I promise to get her to a friend’s
apartment so that she can redo her manicure, but something has been
bothering me and as I fiddle with the ignition I finally ask it. I
ask them to think back to when they were children, to tell me what
they had wanted to be when they were grown up, how they had seen the
future then.
throws a Coca-Cola bottle out the car window. “I can’t remember I
ever thought about it,” he says.
remember I wanted to be a veterinarian once,” Debbie says. “But
now I’m more or less working in the vein of being an artist or a
model or a cosmetologist. Or something.”
这还有Joan
Didion，在加利福尼亚长大并发表了大量脍炙人口的文章，大多关于美国“1960后”垃圾般的生活方式。即便是人类学家，也不曾有过更好的描述。以下的片段来自于她早期的期刊文章合集，《Slouching
Toward Bethlehem》。
the first paragraph of an article of mine that originally ran
New Yorker.
(It’s now in my book&Mitchell
came to China for the first time on the afternoon of June 2, 1981,
when the American bassist and French-horn player Willie Ruff
introduced himself and his partner, the pianist Dwike Mitchell, to
several hundred students and professors who were crowded into a large
room at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. The students and the
professors were all expectant, without quite knowing what to expect.
They only knew that they were about to hear the first American jazz
concert ever presented to the Chinese. Probably they were not
surprised to find that the two musicians were black, though black
Americans are a rarity in the People’s Republic. What they
undoubtedly& &didn’t expect was that Ruff would talk to
them in Chinese, and when he began they murmured with delight.
plain declarative sentences that get the story started at full
speed—WHAP! You’re right in that room at the Shanghai
Conservatory on that June afternoon in 1981.
这里是我的一篇文章的第一段，全文起初发表在了《纽约人》。（现收录到我的《Mitchell
& Ruff》书中。）
五句直白的陈述全速拉开了故事的序幕---怦（开始了）！好象你就坐在上海音乐学院的那个房间里，于1961年6月的某个下午。
given you these examples because writing is learned by imitation. We
all need models. B Picasso needed a model. Make
a point of reading writers who are doing the kind of writing you want
to do. (Many of them write for_The New Yorker_.) Study their
articles clinically. Try to figure out how they put their words and
sentences together. That’s how I learned to write, not from a
writing course.
我把这些例子讲给你们，是因为写作都是通过模仿学会的。我们都需要典范。Bach【巴赫】需要典范；Picasso【毕加索】需要典范。借此提醒你们阅读与你们的写作主题相似的名家著作。（他们中的大多数为《纽约人》撰稿。）仔细琢磨他们的文章，尽力去领悟他们是如何把词语和句子组织起来的。这也是我如何学会写作的，远非一门写作课。
final thoughts. Some of you, hearing me talk to you so urgently about
the need to write plain English, perhaps found yourself thinking:
“That’s so yesterday. Journalism has gone digital, and I’ve
come to Columbia to learn the new electronic media. I no longer need
to write well.”&I&think
you need to write even more clearly and simply for the&new&media
than for the&old&media.
You’ll be making and editing videos and photographs and audio
recordings to accompany your articles. Somebody—that’s you—will
still have to&write&all
those video scripts and audio scripts, and your writing will need to
be lean and tight and coherent: plain
nouns and verbs pushing your story forward so that the rest of us
know what’s happening.
This principle applies—and will apply—to
nobody wants to consult a Web site that isn’t instantly clear.
brevity, and sequential
will be crucial to your success.
最后两点。你们中的一些，听到我这样迫切的要求你们用直白的英文写作，心里也许会想：“那早就过时了，新闻行业已经数字化了，况且我们来到哥伦比亚大学，是为了学习新颖的数字化媒体的，我没必要再写那么好。”比起为传统媒体写作，为新媒体写作，我反而觉得你们需要写的更为清晰直白。你们甚至需要制作和编辑文章附带着的视频，图片和录音。一些人---估计还是你们，还不得不写上视频脚本和音频脚本，并且文字必须简练，紧凑，保持连贯性：恐怕只有以直白的名词和动词展开故事情节，我们之外的其他人才会在大多数时候看明白发生了什么。这条准则依然有效，甚至适用于每一类数字化媒体；没人愿意求助于一家网站，却很快发现网站上啥也没说清楚。清晰，简洁，条理是你们成功的必要条件。
emphasize this
because the biggest problem that paralyzes students is not how to
it’s how to organize what they are writing. They
out on a story,
and they gather a million notes and a million quotes, and when they
they have no idea what the story is&about—what
is its proper narrative shape?
Their first paragraph contains facts that sh
facts are on page five that should be in the first paragraph. The
stories exist&nowhere&in
the people could be in Brooklyn or
我强调它（清晰，简洁，条理）是因为麻痹学生们的最大问题不是该如何书写；而是如何组织要写的话题。他们接手了一个故事，外出调查做了，数不清的笔记和注释也收集到了，当他们返回来的时候，却怎么也理不清故事的脉络。究竟该用什么样的叙事手法？他们在第一段包含了应该出现在第五页的事实；而第五页上的事实本该出现在第一段。这样的故事，无法让人知道发生在何时何地，人物既在布鲁克林又在波哥大。
epidemic I’m most worried about isn’t swine flu. It’s the death
of logical thinking. The cause, I assume, is that most people now get
their information from random images on a screen—pop-ups, windows,
and sidebars—or from scraps
on a digital phone. But
writing is&linear&and&sequential;
Sentence B must follow Sentence A, and Sentence C must follow
Sentence B, and eventually you get to Sentence Z. The hard part of
writing isn’ it’s the thinking. You can solve most
of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask:
What does the reader need to know next?”
我最担心的流行病不是猪流感，而是逻辑思维的消亡。原因，我认为是，现在的大多数人们从屏幕上---弹出窗口，窗口，边栏---随机出现的图片中，或者从数字电话通讯时的只言片语中，获取信息。可是，叙述故事情节需要简明和条理；语句B必须出现在语句A之后，语句C必须出现在语句B，这样自然就到了语句Z（终点）。写作中难的地方并不是书写，而是思考。倘若你们在每个语句之后停一停，问问自己：“读者接下来需要知道些什么”，你们就能够自己解决写作中的大多数问题。
maxim that my students find helpful is:&One
thought per sentence.
Readers only process one thought at a time. So
give them time to digest the first set of facts you want them to
Then give them the next piece of information they need to know, which
further explains the first fact. Be
grateful for the period.
Writing is so hard that all of us, once launched, tend to ramble.
Instead of a period we use a comma, followed by a transitional
word (and,&while),
and soon we have strayed into a wilderness that seems to have no road
back out. Let the humble period be your savior.
no sentence too short to be acceptable in the eyes of God.
这有一条格言，我的学生发现很有用，那就是：每一句表达一个意思。读者们一次只需理解一个意思，那也就给了他们一些时间去消化你希望他们了解的第一批信息，继而告诉他们接下来需要知道的信息，这些信息是对前一批信息的进一步说明。在此，万分感谢句号。写作是如此之难，以至于我们所有写作的人一旦故事开头，思路就开始漫无目标的游走。假如我们用了逗号，而不是句号，后边又紧跟着迁移动词（and,while），很快就发现自己迷失在了看上去没有回头路的“荒野”。就让谦卑的句号成为你们的救世主吧。在上帝眼中，句子不会因为太短而不被接纳。
you start your journey here at Columbia this week, you may tell
yourself that you’re doing “communications,” or “new media,”
or “digital media” or some other fashionable new form. But
ultimately you’re in the storytelling business. We all are. It’s
the oldest of narrative forms, going back to the caveman and the
crib, endlessly
What happened?&Then&what
happened? Please
remember, in moments of despair, whatever journalistic assignment
you’ve been given,
all you have to do is tell a story, using the
simple tools
of the English language and never losing your own
从这周起，随着你们在这里，哥伦比亚新闻学院，开始自己的旅程，你们也许会告诉自己，我们是在从事着”传播“，或者”新媒体“，或者”数字媒体“或者其他时髦的新形式写作。但你们终究会发现处于讲故事的行业。我们都是如此。还是那种最为古老的叙事形式，一直可以追溯到穴居人和摇篮里的小孩，永无止境的乐趣。发生了什么？又发生了什么？请记住，无论你收到什么样的写作任务，即便是万般无奈的时分，你们需要做的所有事情，就是用简单的英语讲一个故事，并且永远不要放弃自己的品格。
is better than long.
is good. (Louder)
Latin nouns are the enemy.
Anglo-Saxon
active verbs are your best friend.
thought per sentence._
luck to you all.
跟我重复：
简短胜于冗长。
直白总是好的（大声点）。
长拉丁名词是仇敌。
盎格鲁萨克逊主动动词是你们最好的朋友。
每一句包含一个意思。
祝你们好运。
相关译文来自无觅插件
没怎么看错误什么的，但是语言不太流畅，还有很大精简空间。有些原文的理解有点片面。
linear and sequential翻译成“简明和条理”是比较明显的专业术语误译，linear线性这个词不用通俗化成其他词语，简明和线性不是一回事。
没怎么看错误什么的，但是语言不太流畅，还有很大精简空间。有些原文的理解有点片面。
&理解有点片面&，我不理解了？具体点。
linear and sequential翻译成“简明和条理”是比较明显的专业术语误译，linear线性这个词不用通俗化成其他词语，简明和线性不是一回事。
“linear and sequential”你怎么理解？
那个“围栏”是有点问题。
第二个就是牲口圈的意思。从上下文来看，既然远古，有可能就是围栏。
a child's bed with
a cattle stall or pen
a fodder rack or manger
a small crude cottage or room
nz a weekend cottage: term is South Island usage only
any small confined space
EvergreenHomeland
@欢喜喜喜 \&理解有点片面\&，我不理解了？具体点。
linear and sequential就是一例嘛。我的理解是线性和依序展开，就是语句和内容的衔接有其内在逻辑顺序的意思。
@EvergreenHomeland linear and sequential就是一例嘛。我的理解是线性和依序展开，就是语句和内容的衔接有其内在逻辑顺序的意思。
从原文来看，作者是有特指的。翻译中的选词，是我的理解。
这是我问过的帖子，/showthread.php?t=2753589
TripDontSlip在你帖子里的回复，就是我刚才描述的这两个词在本文中的文义。而且在后面讲述A、b、c、z句的接续上，可以看出这是一个挈领。当然，每个人对原文的理解不一样，我只是觉得这两个词不放在背景里也应该突出线性的基本意思，这对于以写作为主题的文章而言线性写作是一个比较重要的点。个人意见
我的理解是
&linear&是指故事中每一个意思，或者事件，事实。应该简明，不能是“曲线式的”，曲线就意味着不简明，这个是原文作者一直强调的。
“sequential”是指如何把不同的意思，事件，或者事实衔接起来，应为具备条理性。作者并没有展开说明这一点。
TripDontSlip在你帖子里的回复，就是我刚才描述的这两个词在本文中的文义。而且在后面讲述A、b、c、z句的接续上，可以看出这是一个挈领。当然，每个...
对于原文作者要表达什么具体意思，我觉得不是很清楚。译文是我的理解：如上。
linear不是曲线性，说的是线性，写作线性是一个即成的概念。不讨论了，再讨论要掉书袋了。
linear不是曲线性，说的是线性，写作线性是一个即成的概念。不讨论了，再讨论要掉书袋了。
“linear” 本意是直线式的，既有“直”的意思，又有“平稳增加”的意思。
EvergreenHomeland
“linear” 本意是直线式的，既有“直”的意思，又有“平稳增加”的意思。
建议您查一下线性写作或者线性语言这个概念。别的我不再回复了。
@EvergreenHomeland 建议您查一下线性写作或者线性语言这个概念。别的我不再回复了。
你给找个清楚的说明？
linear不是曲线性，说的是线性，写作线性是一个即成的概念。不讨论了，再讨论要掉书袋了。
你说的线性语言或者写作，是这样的内容，http://romanceuniversity.org//its-all-a-matter-of-time-exploring-linear-vs-non-linear-story-structure/
这个你的解释对了
链接讨论的是非线性结构，不太一样。算了。这个太抠细节了
亲，我觉得我上面说的，已经说的很详实了啊。。。。之前你给我那个帖子，回帖的也说的很细了唉。。。。
亲，我觉得我上面说的，已经说的很详实了啊。。。。之前你给我那个帖子，回帖的也说的很细了唉。。。。
线性的问题，俺以后慢慢自己搞明白。
“掉书袋”又懂文学的，“但是语言不太流畅，还有很大精简空间”这又是哪里？
EvergreenHomeland
线性的问题，俺以后慢慢自己搞明白。
“掉书袋”又懂文学的，“但是语言不太流畅，还有很大精简空间”这又是哪里？
看来你是觉得offended了啊，那抱歉了。当我没说。
@EvergreenHomeland 看来你是觉得offended了啊，那抱歉了。当我没说。
开个玩笑。
既然你懂文学和写作，那就听你讲讲？翻译如果不懂写作的话，有时候是很困难的。
要不给你一篇文章，你来翻译，http://source.yeeyan.org/view/（The 5 Essential Story Ingredients | ）
我不是来拍砖的，真没那功夫。读者校译、挑错都是开放的，每个人都有自己的知识结构盲点，没有什么难堪的，身为译者都有被审校纠正和批评的经历。来译言，分享信息是付出，接受批评是所得。如果言辞激烈些，见谅，没有下次了。
我不是来拍砖的，真没那功夫。读者校译、挑错都是开放的，每个人都有自己的知识结构盲点，没有什么难堪的，身为译者都有被审校纠正和批评的经...
根本就不是难堪不难堪的问题，而是你得讲出东西来，有道理，大家才能相互学习，理解别人不同的思路。
否则，如果只是轻描淡写的说几句，我不知道你想表达什么内容。
这个是错了。
“找不到出口”是个明显的错误。谢谢指出。
心理学与社会心理学 收集并翻译相关优秀资料。 目标： 1. 通过翻译优秀原文，传递心理学和社会心理学的基本概念和方法，理论体系，以及实际应用。
2.通过翻译，提高外语的理解和写作。 具体方法： 1. 武“译”为主，即尽量保持原有文章及段落的层次和逻辑结构，在措辞和语序上，以语句内微调为主。
2.结对翻译，提高译文的整体质量。 3. 收集翻译中的各种疑难杂症。 讲心理学的故事，用心理学讲故事。心理学是心智的起点
软件工程师兼文字爱好者
“文”译，还是“武”译，是个问题。
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