2015年--河海大学研究生英语一-Unit-13---Nine-Years-for-A-and-B.doc

Unit 13 Nine Years for A and BDr. 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. Dr. Johnson had earned the right, as we have not, to call the lexicographer词典编撰者 “a harmless drudge埋头做单调乏味的工作的人，如奴隶般做苦工的人”. For Johnson knew not only that a great deal more than drudgery 单调乏味的工作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 real to himself in advance.伟大的约翰森博士编纂了一部词典。詹姆斯-A-H-莫里则编撰了最伟大的词典：从1879年到1915年，直到他死的那天，他倾其一生的精力来创作牛津英语词典。约翰森博士有我们所不具备的资格，称词典编撰者为“无害的苦力者”。约翰森博士知道编撰过程不仅极其单调乏味，而且其程度简直是难以想像的。幸运的是，莫里在编撰词典之前并不知晓。So the lexicographereven a profoundly thoughtful and experienced one like James Murraywill grasp at the notion 观念、想法、意见that the letter A is typical, so that he can really calculate, now that he has done A, how long are the vistas 展望、预测ahead. And then, all too soon, he is having to admit, not only that A isnt typical (apparently it has lots of classically derived words, and these dont have a great many senses) , but that the whole idea of typical letter is a will-o-the-wisp使人上当者；幻影. 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 滑的little word set, and Murray was plunged into black despair by “the terrible word Black and its derivatives衍生词”.所以，即便是像詹姆斯莫里这样考虑周全且富有经验的词典编撰者也会急切地接受字母A是典型字母这一观念。这样，他就可以预测，现在他编完了A，完成整个编撰还需多久。不就之后，他不得不承认，不仅字母A不是典型的（显然，它有许多经典的却没有多大重要意义的衍生词），而且整个有关典型字母的想法就是错误的。字典编撰者重新估算了收录生僻词和科学术语的时间和精力，发现最难的词其实是最常见的词。牛津英语词典中最长的词条是简单狡猾的小词“set”。“可怕的词black和它的衍生词”让莫里陷入了深深的绝望。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 巨大的、庞大的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 （报纸、杂志的）预订者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 愤慨、怀恨and nagging（对人）喋喋不休；（对某人）吵着要, in this race against time, time whose pace never falters动摇、支吾、蹒跚地走；to lose power；stop working smoothly.字典编撰者在和时间赛跑。他必须如此，因为如果他不赶紧的话，他将越来越落后。因为语言事件被收录到词典中所需要的时间，超过事件本身发生的时间。另一个原因，为了使其内容能够包罗万象，词典巨著牛津英语词典需要分册出版。但是人们不会买，除非它们可以一直用到最终编完Z的时候。对订购者和出版商来说，共同的期望是有所回报，至少能收回成本。在和时间的赛跑中，难免会赶进度，焦虑、嫌怨、挑剔，而时间的步伐并没有放缓。“The Triple Nightmare: Space, Time and Money”that is the tile of a central chapter in this touching, honest, courteous and anecdotally 轶事（多）的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 使动作协调，使调和powers all converged 集中、会聚upon this responsibility entrusted to him.“三重噩梦空间、时间、金钱”这是由詹姆斯莫里的孙女K. M. 伊丽莎白莫里执笔，叙述他感人的、诚实的、亲切的、生动的生活轶事一书的中心章节的标题。莫里相信是上天的眷顾，给了他一个这么大的机会。上帝托付给他的这个使命，需要汇集他的宗教信仰，爱国主义，意志力，惊人的多领域学术天赋和协调能力。Would he have acknowledged that one of the things providence （神的）眷顾、天意、天佑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 16000 pagesand each page is large, packed and preciseof which Murray personally edited nearly half. If a providential 依照天意的whisper had told Murray at that moment a hundred years ago (when at 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?他是否已经意识到，仁慈地对他隐瞒了终其一生都无法完成这项任务，是上天对他的眷顾？他从来没有低估 “大词典” 独特的重要性，但是他再三地低估了它最终的总量：超过16000页每一页都很大，满页的精确注释莫里自己就编撰了其中的一半。如果在100年前（当莫里40岁时同意编撰词典）时，依照天意的声音告诉他，开始工作的九年时间里仅仅可以出版A和B，并且他会在78岁时死去，而未能达到他最终的努力目标，他还会着手这项终身事业么？But the answer, of course, is yes.但是答案，当然是肯定的。James Murray was born in Scotland in 1837, the son of a village tailor. He went to a parish 教区school, but he left at 14 and he educated himself with pertinacity坚忍不拔；顽固、固执. He loved knowledge and he loved to impart 告知（情报）、传授（知识）it. He became a schoolmaster; he learned language after language and was alive to geology 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 不可缺少的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 first he combined it with his school work; later he moved to Oxford and dedicated himself to building the best sort of monument to something dead but rather to something living: the English language.詹姆斯莫里于1837年出生在英格兰一个乡村裁缝的家庭里。他上过教区学校，14岁辍学后就坚忍不拔地自学。他热爱知识，并且乐于传授。他当过老师，学过很多门语言，并且通晓地质学、考古学、语音学，以及当地政治。由于第一任妻子生病，他不得不离开英格兰，在伦敦当一个银行职员。没有受过任何大学教育，凭着纯粹的学识能力，他使自己成为对他那个年代其他杰出的哲学家所必不可少的人。他重返学校教书，余生过着每天72小时的日子。他无法拒绝受邀编撰牛津英语词典。编撰伊始，他还兼着学校的工作，后来他搬到了牛津大学，全身心地投入到最好的不是纪念死物而是活的：英语语言的建造中。Unusual in its etymological 语源的、语源学的、exactitude正确（性）, 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 选出、精选these quotations; subeditors winnowed 吹掉（谷物的）谷皮；筛选出（好的）、选出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 （海狸似地）拼命工作( beaver的过去式和过去分词 );忙于（某事），勤奋工作;and he badgered纠缠、（獾似地）贪睡？（此处有待推敲）. 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. 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 嘲笑、讥笑、鄙视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 沉思、深思熟虑、打算resignation because of the ceaseless pressure on him to skimp 少给、克扣；对吝啬；马马虎虎地做the work. Only a great man would speak so, or would continue with such simple sincerity and self-abnegation自我牺牲；克己；自制:” 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.”不同寻常之处在于它语源的精确性，定义的精确优美和力度，还有据每个词有效存在和分支的分类。它的范围、精确性、组成以及注释性的引用不只是不同寻常，甚至是独一无二的。一大批受过培训的志愿者从这些引用中挑选，副主编在从中精选。莫里在他的“书房”里将资料形成，并做了其他所有相关工作来使他的词典尽可能的人性化。他勤恳工作，刻苦钻研。他不得不做徒劳无功的事：他向罗伯特路易斯史蒂芬森询问，他书里的brean是什么意思，发现那是ocean的误印。他对詹姆斯拉塞尔洛威尔论文中复数形式的alliterates感到困惑，后来发现也是印刷错误，这次是相似的词illiterates。对于他的工作，他很骄傲，但是他一点也不自傲。他不想有传记：“我是个无名之辈如果你想评价这部词典，那是你的权力但是把我当成太阳神，或者一个回声，或者不合理数量，或者完全地忽视我。”但是他不容忽视，我们现在都知道维多利亚时期的杰出人物是不容嘲笑的。在他的传记中描述了他平凡而尊贵的一生，如果你对此激动万分就会显得奇怪，若不为所动，又未免不敏感了。这项工作重要于我或者任何一个工作人员。他说当他深思熟虑是否辞职，因为无休止的压力会让他对待工作敷衍马虎。只有伟人才会这么说，或者以如此简单的真诚和自制力继续工作。“我不会放弃它的同时，也不会站在更好更快到达的路上，如果那看起来是可得到的。”Though it was a painful and arduous （工作等）费力的，困难的；需要努力的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 profound community which was dependent not only upon a community with the past (from which it inherited its whole language of thinking, feeling and pledging), but also upon a community with the future, that future which will inherit. It is their children, and the children of their children, for whom they work, and they never stop saying so. And it is one of the children of one of Murrays children who has now written this life of the man who said when he appealed for volunteers:” If you desire no credit and feel no interest in helping my work I can do without you, weep not for me, weep for yourselves and your children.”他这一生是痛苦困难的，但不是残酷的。一个人的生活不可能如此彻底的严酷，带着这样的合理的满意，从知道他可以做什么中知道他自己。莫里，和他的朋友同事一样，觉得如今文化底蕴深厚的社会，不仅依赖于旧时的社会（它从中继承了整个思维、感情和诉求的语言），也依赖于将来的继承现在的社会。他们一直这样说，他们是为他们的孩子，他们孩子的孩子而工作。正是莫里的孩子的孩子写下了他一生的故事。当他召集志愿者的时候，他说：“如果你不相信我，对帮助我这没有你也能完成的工作不感兴趣，不是为我哭泣，而是为你们以及你们的孩子哭泣。”