高英课文中英对照

1、.Pub Talk and the King s English(酒吧闲谈与标准英语)Henry Fairlie (亨利费尔利)1. Conversation is the most sociable of all human activities. And it is an activity only of humans. However intricate the way in which animals communicate with each other, they do not indulge in anything that deserves the name of conver

2、sation. 人类的一切活动中，闲谈是最具交际性的，也是人类特有的。而动物之间的信息交流，无论其方式何等复杂，也是称不上交际的。2. The charm of conversation is that it does not really start from anywhere, and no one has any idea where it will go as it meanders or leaps and sparkles or just glows. The enemy of good conversation is the person who has “something t

3、o say.” Conversation is not for making a point. Argument may often be a part of it, but the purpose of the argument is not to convince. There is no winning in conversation. In fact, the best conversationalists are those who are prepared to lose. Suddenly they see the moment for one of their best ane

4、cdotes, but in a flash the conversation has moved on and the opportunity is lost. They are ready to let it go. 闲谈的引人入胜之处就在于它没有一个事先设定好的主题。它时而迂回前进，时而奔腾起伏，时而火花四射，时而热情洋溢，话题最终会扯到什么地方去谁也拿不准。感觉“有话想说”的人是一个“完美闲谈”的最大敌人。闲谈不是为了争论，尽管争论常常是闲聊的一部分，不过其目的并不是为了说服对方。闲谈之中是不存在什么输赢胜负的。事实上，真正的闲聊高手往往是随时准备让步的。他们也许会偶然间觉得该把自己最

5、得意的奇闻轶事选出一件插进来讲一讲，但一转眼大家已谈到别处去了，插话的机会随之丧失，它们也就听之任之了。3. Perhaps it is because of my upbringing in English pubs that I think bar conversation has a charm of its own. Bar friends are not deeply involved in each other s lives. They are companions, not intimates. The fact that their marriages may be on t

6、he rock, or that their love affairs have broken or even that they got out of bed on the wrong side is simply not a concern. They are like the musketeers of Dumas who, although they lived side by side with each other, did not delve into each other s lives or the recesses of their thoughts and feeling

7、s. 或许是从小混迹于英国小酒吧的缘故吧，我觉得酒馆里的闲聊是别有韵味的。酒馆里的朋友们对彼此的生活毫不了解，他们只是临时的伙伴，相互之间并无深交。这些人之中，也许有人的婚姻面临破裂，有人恋爱受挫，有人碰到别的什么不顺心的事儿，但这些都无关紧要。他们就像大仲马笔下的三个火枪手一样，虽然朝夕相处，却从来不过问彼此的私事，也不去打探别人内心的秘密。4. It was on such an occasion the other evening, as the conversation moved desultorily here and there, from the most commonplac

8、e to thoughts of Jupiter, without any focus and with no need for one, that suddenly the alchemy of conversation took place, and all at once there was a focus. I do not remember what made one of our companions say it she clearly had not come into the bar to say it, it was not something that was press

9、ing on her mind but her remark fell quite naturally into the talk. 有一天晚上的情形正是如此。当时人们正在漫无边际地东拉西扯，从最普通的家常琐事聊得有关木星的科学趣闻。完全没有一个特定的主题。可突然间中心话题奇迹般地出现了，大伙的话题都集中到了一处。我不记得其中一个伙伴的那句话是什么情况下说出来的 不过，显然她并没有特意地准备什么，那也算不上是什么非说不可的要紧话 那只不过是随着大伙儿的话题十分自然地脱口而出的。 “Someone told me the other day that the phrase, the King s

10、 English, was a term of criticism, that it means language which one should not properly use” “就在前几天，有人告诉我说标准英语这个词是带贬义色彩的批评用语，指的是人们应该尽量避免使用的英语。” The glow of the conversation burst into flames. There were affirmations and protests and denials, and of course the promise, made in all such conversation,

11、that we would look it up on the morning. That would settle it; but conversation does not need to be settled; it could still go ignorantly on. 此语一出，谈话氛围立即热烈起来。有人表示赞成，也有人怒斥，还有人则不以为然。最后，当然少不了像处理所有这种场合下的意见分歧一样，大家约好次日一早去查证一下。问题就这样解决了。不过，闲聊并不需要解决什么问题，大家仍旧可以糊里糊涂地继续闲扯下去。 It was an Australian who had given h

12、er such a definition of “the king s English,” which produced some rather tart remarks about what one could expect from the descendants of convicts. We had traveled in five minutes to Australia. Of course, there would be resistance to the King s English in such a society. There is always resistance i

13、n the lower classes to any attempt by an upper class to lay down rules for “English as it should be spoken.” 告诉她“标准英语”应做这种解释的原来是个澳大利亚人。知道这个后，有些人便说起刻薄话来了，说什么囚犯的后代这样说倒也不足为奇。就这样，不到5分钟，大家便扯到了澳大利亚。在那个地方，“标准英语”自然是不受欢迎的。因为下层人民总是会抵制上流社会给“规范英语”制定的条条框框。 Look at the language barrier between the Saxon churls an

14、d their Norman conquerors. The conversation had swung from Australian convicts of the 19th century to the English peasants of the 12th century. Who was right, who was wrong, did not matter. The conversation was on wings. 想想撒克逊农民与征服他们的诺曼统治者之间的语言隔阂吧。于是闲聊的主题又从19世纪的澳大利亚囚犯转移到了12世纪的应该农民身上。谁对谁错，并没有关系。闲聊依旧热

15、火朝天地进行着。 Someone took one of the best known of examples, which is still always worth the reconsidering. When we talk of meat on our tables we use French words; when we speak of the animals from which the meat comes we use Anglo Saxon words. It is a pig in its sty; it is pork (porc) on the table. The

16、y are cattle in the fields, but we sit down to beef (boeuf). Chickens become poultry (poulet), and a calf becomes veal (veau ). Even if our menus were not written in French out of snobbery, the English we used in them would still be Norman English. What all this tells us is of a deep class rift in t

17、he culture of English after the Norman Conquest. 有人举了一个众所周知但仍值得深思的例子。在谈到饭桌上的肉食时我们用法语词，而谈到提供这些肉食的牲畜是则用盎格鲁-撒克逊词。猪圈里的活猪叫pig，饭桌上吃的猪肉便成了pork（来自法语pore）；地里放养的牛叫cattle，而桌上吃的牛肉则叫beef（来自法语boeuf）；小鸡叫chicken，用作肉食则变成poultry（来自法语poulet）；calf（小牛）加工成肉则变成veal（来自法语vcau）。即便我们的菜单没有为了装洋耍派头而写成法语，我们所用的英语仍然是诺曼式的英语。这一切向我们昭示

18、了被诺曼人征服之后的英国文化上所存在的深刻的阶级裂痕。10. The Saxon peasants who tilled the land and reared the animals could not afford the meat, which went to Norman tables. The peasants were allowed to eat the rabbits that scampered over their field and, since that meat was cheap, the Norman lords of course turned up their

19、 noses at it. So rabbit is still rabbit on our tables, and not changed into some rendering of lapin. 撒克逊农民种地养殖牲畜，自己出产的肉自己却吃不上，全部送到了诺曼人的餐桌上。农民们只能吃在地里乱窜的兔子。因为兔子的肉便宜，诺曼贵族自然不屑去吃它。因此，活兔子和兔子肉共用rabbit这个词表示，而没有换成由法语lapin转化而来的某个词。11. As we listen today to the arguments about bilingual education, we ought to

20、think ourselves back into the shoes of the Saxon peasant. The new ruling class had built a cultural barrier against him by building their French against his own language. There must have been a great deal of cultural humiliation felt by the English when they revolted under Saxon leaders like Herewar

21、d the Wake. “The king s English”-if the term had existed then-had become French. And here in America now, 900 years later, we are still the heirs to it. 如今，当我们听着有关双语教育问题的争论时，我们应该设身处地替当时的撒克逊农民想一想，新的统治阶级用法语来对抗撒克逊农民自己的语言，从而在农民周围筑起一道文化壁垒。当英国人在像觉醒者赫里沃德这样的撒克逊领袖领导下起来造反时，他们一定深深地感受到了文化上的屈辱。“标准英语”-如果那时候有这个名词的

22、话-已经变成法语了。而九百年后我们在美国这个地方仍然继承了这种影响。12. So the next morning, the conversation over, one looked it up. The phrase came into use some time in the 16th century. “Queen s English” is found in Nashe s “Strange News of the Intercepting of Certain Letters” in 1593, and in 1602, Dekker wrote of someone, “thou

23、 clipst the King s English.” Is the phrase in Shakespeare? That would be the confirmation that it was in general use. He uses it once, when Mistress Quickly in “The Merry Wives of Windsor” says of her master coming home in a rage, “here will be an old abusing of God s patience and the King s English

24、,” and it rings true. 那晚闲聊过后的第二天一大早便有人去查阅了资料。这个名词在16世纪已有人使用过了。纳什作于1593年的截获信函奇闻中就有过“标准英语”（Queen s English）的提法。1602年德克写到某人时有句话说：“你把标准英语（King s English）简化了”。莎士比亚作品中是否也出现过这一提法呢？如出现过，那就证明这个词在当时既已通用。他用过一次，在温莎的风流娘们中，女仆Quickly在讲到她家老爷回来后将会有的盛怒情形时说，“ 少不了一通臭骂，骂得昏天暗地，“标准英语”不知要给他糟蹋成个什么样子啦。”后来的事实果然被她说中了。13. One c

25、ould have expected that it would be about then that the phrase would be coined. After five centuries of growth, of tussling with the French of the Normans and the Angevins and the Plantagenets and at last absorbing it, the conquered in the end conquering the conqueror, English had come royally into

26、its own. 我们有理由认为这个词就是那个时候产生的。经过前后五百年的发展和与诺曼人、安茹王朝及金雀花王朝的法语的竞争，英语最终同化了法语。被统治者成了统治着，英语取得了国语的地位。14. There was a King s (or Queen s)English to be proud of. The Elizabethansblew on it as on a dandelion clock, and its seeds multiplied, and floated to the ends of the earth. “The King s English” was no long

27、er a form of what would now be regarded as racial discrimination. 这样便有了一种英国人值得引以为傲的“标准英语”。伊丽莎白时代的人没费吹灰之力便使其影响日盛，遍及全球。“标准英语”再也不带有今天所谓的种族歧视的性质了。15. Yet there had been something in the remark of the Australian. The phrase has always been used a little pejoratively and even facetiously by the lower clas

28、ses. One feels that even Mistress Quickly-a servant-is saying that Dr.Caius-her master-will lose his control and speak with the vigor of ordinary folk. If the King s English is “English as it should be spoken,” the claim is often mocked by the underlings, when they say with a jeer “English as it sho

29、uld be spoke.” The rebellion against a cultural dominance is still there. 不过，那个澳大利亚人的解释也有一定道理。下层阶级在使用这一名词时总带着一点轻蔑、讥讽的味道。我们会发现，就连Quickly这样一个婢女也会说她的主子凯厄斯大夫管不住自己的舌头，而讲起平民百姓们所讲的那种粗话。如果说“标准英语”就是所谓“规范英语”，这种看法常常会受到下层人民的嘲笑讥讽，他们有时故意开玩笑地把它称做“规反英语”。下层人民对于文华上的专制还是颇有抵制心理的。16. There is always s great danger, as C

30、arlyle put it, that “words will harden into things for us.” Words are not themselves a reality, but only representations of it, and the King s English, like the Anglo-French of the Normans, is a class representation of reality. Perhaps it is worth trying to speak it, but it should not be laid down a

31、s an edict, and made immune to change from below. 正如卡莱尔所说，“对我们来说，词语会变成具体的事物”是一种始终存在的危险。词语本身并不是现实，它不过是现实的一种反应形式而已。标准英语和诺曼人的盎格鲁法语的性质一样，也只是一个阶段用来表达现实的一种形式。让人们学着去讲也许不错，但既不应该把它作为法令，也不应该使它完全不接受来自下层的改变。17. I have an unending love affair with dictionaries-Auden once said that all a writer needs is a pen, pl

32、enty of paper and “the best dictionaries he can afford”-but I agree with the person who said that dictionaries are instruments of common sense. The King s English is a model-a rich and instructive one-but it ought not to be an ultimatum. 我一向对词典有着始终不渝的酷爱-奥登曾经说过，一支笔、够用的纸张“他所能弄到的最好的词典”就是一个作家的全部所需-但其实上我

33、更赞同另一种说法，即把词典看成是一种常识工具。标准英语是一种范本-一种丰富而又指导作用的范本-但并不是一种绝对的权威。18. So we may return to my beginning. Even with the most educated and the most literate, the King s English slips and slides in conversation. There is no worse conversation than the one who punctuates his words as he speaks as if he were wri

34、ting, or even who tries to use words as if he were composing a piece of prose for print. When E. M. Forster writes of “the sinister corridor of our age,” we sit up at the vividness of the phrase, the force and even terror in the image. But if E. M. Forster sat in our living room and said, “We are al

35、l following each other down the sinister corridor of our age,” we would be justified in asking him to leave. 由此我们可以回到我先前的话题上。即便是那些学问再高、文学修养再好的人，他们所讲的标准英语在闲聊中也常常会离谱走调。要是有谁闲聊时也像做文章一样句逗分明，或像写一篇要发表的散文般咬文嚼字的话，那他说的话就一定极为倒人胃口。看到E.M.福斯特笔下写出“如今这个时代阴森恐怖的长廊”时，我们可以深刻体会到语言的生动、比喻的张力。但假若福斯特坐在我们的会客室里说“我们大家正一个接一个地步入

36、这个时代阴森恐怖的长廊”时，我们肯定会让他离开。19. Great authors are constantly being asked by foolish people to talk as they write. Other people may celebrate the lofty conversations in which the great minds are supposed to have indulged in the great salons of 18th century Paris, but one suspects that the great minds wer

37、e gossiping and judging the quality of the food and the wine. Henault, then the great president of the First Chamber of the Paris Parlement, complained bitterly of the “terrible sauces” at the salons of Mme. Deffand, and went on to observe that the only difference between her cook and the supreme ch

38、ef, Brinvilliers, lay in their intentions. 常常会有一些愚人要求大文豪们在交谈时也像写文章一样字字珠玑，也有人对18世纪巴黎的文艺沙龙里那些文人雅士的高谈阔论极表称羡。可是，说不定那些文人雅士们在那里也只不过是闲谈，谈论酒食的好坏哩。当时的巴黎大法院第一厅厅长亨奥尔特在德芳侯爵夫人家的沙龙作客时就曾大叫到“调料糟糕透了”，接着还大发议论说侯爵夫人家的厨子和总厨师长布兰维利耶之间的唯一差别不过就是用心不一而已。20. The one place not to have dictionaries is in a sitting room or at a d

39、ining table. Look the thing up the next morning, but not in the middle of the conversation. Otherwise one will bind the conversation; one will not let it flow freely here and there. There would have been no conversation the other evening if we had been able to settle at once the meaning of “the King

40、 s English.” We would never have gong to Australia, or leaped back in time to the Norman Conquest. 会客室和餐桌上是无须摆放词典的。闲聊过程中遇到弄不明白而需要查实的问题可留待第二天在说，不要话说到一半却一边查起字典来了。否则，谈话变会受到妨碍，不能如流水般无拘无束地进行了。那晚，如果我们当场弄清了“标准英语”的意义，也就不可能再有那场交谈辩论，我们也就不可能一会儿跳到澳大利亚去，一会儿又扯回到诺曼征服时代了。21. And there would have been nothing to thi

41、nk about the next morning.Perhaps above all, one would not have been engaged by interest in the musketeer who raised the subject, wondering more about her. The bother about teaching chimpanzees how to talk is that they will probably try to talk sense and so ruin all conversation.（from The Washington

42、 Post, May 6, 1979）而且，我们也就没有什么可以留到第二天去思考了。尤为重要的是，如果那个问题能做当场解决的话，人们就不会对于那位引出话题的“ 火枪手”发生兴趣了，也不会想多了解她的情况了。教黑猩猩说话之所以很困难，原因就在于它们往往可能尽是想着要讲出正经八百的话来，因而会使对话失去意趣。摘自1979年5月6日华盛顿邮报Marrakech马拉喀什见闻 George Orwell乔治，奥威尔- 1 As the corpse went past the flies left the restaurant table in a cloud and rushed after it,

43、but they came back a few minutes later.一具尸体抬过，成群的苍蝇从饭馆的餐桌上嗡嗡而起追逐过去，但几分钟过后又飞了回来。2 The little crowd of mourners - all men and boys, no women-threaded their way across the market place between the piles of pomegranates and the taxis and the camels, walling a short chant over and over again. What really

44、 appeals to the flies is that the corpses here are never put into coffins, they are merely wrapped in a piece of rag and carried on a rough wooden bier on the shoulders of four friends. When the friends get to the burying-ground they hack an oblong hole a foot or two deep, dump the body in it and fl

45、ing over it a little of the dried-up, lumpy earth, which is like broken brick. No gravestone, no name, no identifying mark of any kind. The burying-ground is merely a huge waste of hummocky earth, like a derelict building-lot. After a month or two no one can even be certain where his own relatives a

46、re buried. 一支人数不多的送葬队伍其中老少尽皆男性，没有一个女的沿着集贸市场，从一堆堆石榴摊子以及出租汽车和骆驼中间挤道而行，一边走着一边悲痛地重复着一支短促的哀歌。苍蝇之所以群起追逐是因为在这个地方死人的尸首从不装进棺木，只是用一块破布裹着放在一个草草做成的木头架子上，有四个朋友抬着送葬。朋友们到了安葬场后，便在地上挖出一个一二英尺深的长方形坑，将尸首往坑里一倒。再扔一些像碎砖头一样的干土块。不立墓碑，不留姓名，什么识别标志都没有。坟场只不过是一片土丘林立的荒野，恰似一片已废弃不用的建筑场地。一两个月过后，就谁也说不准自己的亲人葬于何处了。3 When you walk throu

47、gh a town like this - two hundred thousand inhabitants of whom at least twenty thousand own literally nothing except the rags they stand up in- when you see how the people live, and still more how easily they die, it is always difficult to believe that you arewalking among human beings. All colonial

48、 empires are in reality founded upon this fact. The people have brown faces-besides, there are so many of them! Are they really the same flesh as your self? Do they even have names? Or are they merely a kind of undifferentiated brown stuff, about as individual as bees or coral insects? They rise out

49、 of the earth，they sweat and starve for a few years, and then they sink back into the nameless mounds of the graveyard and nobody notices that they are gone. And even the graves themselves soon fade back into the soil. Sometimes, out for a walk as you break your way through the prickly pear, you not

50、ice that it is rather bumpy underfoot, and only a certain regularity in the bumps tells you that you are walking over skeletons.当你穿行在这样的城镇其居民20万中至少有2万是除开一身聊以蔽体的破衣烂衫之外完全一无所有当你看到那些人是如何生活，又如何轻易地死去时，你永远难以相信自己是行走在人类之中。实际上，这是所有的殖民帝国赖以建立的基础。这里的人都有一张褐色的脸，而且，人数如此之多！他们真的和你一样同属人类吗？难道他们也会有名有姓吗？也许他们只是像彼此之间难以区分的蜜

51、蜂或珊瑚虫一样的东西。他们从泥土里长出来，受苦受累，忍饥挨饿过上几年，然后又被埋在那一个个无名的小坟丘里。谁也不会注意到他们的离去。就是那些小坟丘本身也过不了很久便会变成平地。有时当你外出散步，穿过仙人掌丛时，你会感觉到地上有些绊脚的东西，只有这些有规则的突起的土包才会告诉你，你正踩在死人骷髅上。4 I was feeding one of the gazelles in the public gardens.我正在公园里给其中一只瞪羚喂食。5 Gazelles are almost the only animals that look good to eat when they are st

52、ill alive, in fact, one can hardly look at their hindquarters without thinking of a mint sauce. The gazelle I was feeding seemed to know that this thought was in my mind, for though it took the piece of bread I was holding out it obviously did not like me. It nibbled nibbled rapidly at the bread, th

53、en lowered its head and tried to butt me, then took another nibble and then butted again. Probably its idea was that if it could drive me away the bread would somehow remain hanging in mid-air.动物中也恐怕只有瞪羚还活着时就让人觉得是美味佳肴。事实上，人们只要看到它们那两条后腿就会联想到薄荷酱。我现在喂着的这只瞪羚好象已经看透了我的心思。它虽然叼走了我拿在手上的一块面包，但显然不喜欢我这个人。它一面啃食着

54、面包，一面头一低向我顶过来，再啃一下面包又顶过来一次。它大概还因为把我赶开之后那块面包仍会悬在空中。6 An Arab navvy working on the path nearby lowered his heavy hoe and sidled slowly towards us. He looked from the gazelle to the bread and from the bread to the gazelle, with a sort of quiet amazement, as though he had never seen anything quite like

55、this before. Finally he said shyly in French: 1 could eat some of that bread.一个正在附近小道上干活的阿拉伯挖土工放下笨重的锄头，羞怯地侧着身子慢慢朝我们走过来。他把目光从瞪羚身上移向面包，又从面包转回到瞪羚身上，带着一点惊讶的神色，似乎以前从未见过这种情景。终于，他怯生生的用法语说道：“那面包让我吃一点吧。”7 I tore off a piece and he stowed it gratefully in some secret place under his rags. This man is an emplo

56、yee of the municipality.我撕下一块面包，他感激地把面包放进破衣裳贴身的地方。这人是市政当局的雇工。8 When you go through the Jewish Quarters you gather some idea of what the medieval ghettoes were probably like. Under their Moorish Moorishrulers the Jews were only allowed to own land in certain restricted areas, and after centuries of t

57、his kind of treatment they have ceased to bother about overcrowding. Many of the streets are a good deal less than six feet wide, the houses are completely windowless, and sore-eyed children cluster everywhere in unbelievable numbers, like clouds of flies. Down the centre of the street there is gene

58、rally running a little river of urine.当你走过这儿的犹太人聚居区时，你就会知道中世纪犹太人区大概是个什么样子。在摩尔人的统治下，犹太人只能在划定的一些地区内保有土地。受这样的待遇经过了好几个世纪后，他们已经不再为拥挤不堪而烦扰了。这儿很多街道的宽度远远不足六英尺，房屋根本没有窗户，眼睛红肿的孩子随处可见，多的像一群群苍蝇，数也数不清。街上往往是尿流成河。9 In the bazaar huge families of Jews, all dressed in the long black robe and little black skull-cap, a

59、re working in dark fly-infested booths that look like caves. A carpenter sits crosslegged at a prehistoric lathe, turning chairlegs at lightning speed. He works the lathe with a bow in his right hand and guides the chisel with his left foot, and thanks to a lifetime of sitting in this position his left leg is warped out of shape. At his side his grandson, aged six, is already st