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《英汉翻译理论与实践1》课程讲稿
Translation of Argumentative Writing
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Politics and the English Language
[1]In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions, and not a \dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White Papers and the speeches of Undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, home-made turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance towards turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.
[2] In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.
[3] The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ―keeping out of politics‖. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.
[4] But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins 12 always
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《英汉翻译理论与实践1》课程讲稿
at one's elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against.
[5] I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions. So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of fly-blown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un-formation out of existence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable.
政治与英语
[1] 在我们这个时代，说政治文章的写作是拙劣的写作，一般是正确的。若有不适用的地方，多半是因为那位作者是某种意义上的叛逆，发表的是他个人的意见，而不是 “党派调门”。不论什么色彩，凡是正统的，似乎都要求你采用一种没有生气的、鹦鹉学舌的文风。当然，小册子、社论、宣言、政府白皮书、各部次官的讲话中可以找到的政治套话，在党与党之间或有差别，但是他们在一点上都是一样的，那就是你从里面几乎永远找不出一句新鲜的、生动的、自创的话。你看着一个神态疲惫的政客在讲台上机械地重复着听熟了的话——什么 bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder ——你常常会有一种奇怪的感觉，你看到的不是一个活人，而是一个假人。这种感觉有时会突然变得强烈起来 -- 特别是当你看到灯光反射在演讲者的眼镜片上，使眼镜片成了空白的圆片，它后面似乎没有眼睛存在的时候。这并不是纯属幻觉。使用这种词汇的演讲者已在某种程度上把自己变成了一台机器。他的喉部固然仍旧发出应有的声音，可是他的脑子却没动，而如果由他自己选词造句的话，他就会动动脑子。如果他发表的讲话是他一遍又一遍讲惯了的话，他很可能根本不知道自己在说些什么，就像我们在教堂里应唱圣歌时口中念念有词一样。而这样意识降低的状态，对于政治上的驯服一致，如果不是不可或缺的话，说什么也是有利的。
[2] 在我们这个时代，政治讲话的写作多半是为不可辩解的事情进行辩解。像维持英国在印度的统治、俄国的清洗和流放、在日本投掷原子弹这样的事情，确实是可以辩解的，不过只能用大多数人所不能接受的蛮横的论据，而这又不合那些政党所标榜的宗旨。因此政治语言就不免主要由委婉含蓄的隐语、偷换概念的诡辩和纯属掩饰的含糊其词所组成。赤手空拳没有设防的村庄遭到空中轰炸、村民给驱到荒野、牲畜被机枪扫射、茅屋被燃烧焚毁：这叫做 pacificaton。千百万的农民被剥夺农田，身无长物，跋涉于途：这叫做 transfer of population 或 rectification of frontiers 。未经审判即遭长期监禁，或者后脑崩上一枪，或者被遣送到北极圈伐木营中去患坏血病致死：这叫做： elimination of unreliable elements 。如果你要称谓某种事物而又不愿在读者心目中引起它们的图像，这种用词是必要的。
[3] 这种虚饰的文风本身就是一种委婉其词的隐语。一大堆拉丁字根的词汇像雪花一样落在事实上，模糊了界线轮廓，掩盖了一切细节。不诚实乃是语言明白的大敌。在一个人的真正意图和公开宣称的意图之间有距离时，他就会象出于本能一样求助于大话和空话，就像墨鱼放墨汁。在我们这个时代，“不问政治”这种事情是没有的。所有的问题都是政治问题，而政治本身又集谎话、遁词、蠢事、仇恨、精神分裂症之大成。总气候一坏，语言就受害。[4]
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