发布时间 : 星期一 文章Pub Talk and the King's English 英汉对照更新完毕开始阅读
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 conversation. 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 to 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 anecdotes, 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 the 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 feelings. 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 commonplace to thoughts of Jupiter, without any focus and with no need for one, that suddenly the alchemy of
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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 pressing 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 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, 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 her 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 in 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 and 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。闲聊依旧热火朝天地进行着。
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9. 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. They 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 the 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 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 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 Hereward 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
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“Strange News of the Intercepting of Certain Letters” in 1593, and in 1602, Dekker wrote of someone, “thou 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,” 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 could 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 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 Elizabethans blew 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 longer 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 classes. 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 should 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。
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