赏析版2011年7-12月经济学人文章(英汉双语对照)汇(17)

这也是辞典的撰写者和编撰者们开始挑选年度词汇的时候。首先我承认既不热衷于"今日一词"，也不热衷于"年度词汇"。在此，请允许我向Johnson专栏的朋友，美国方言学会的新词权威本·齐默致以礼貌而歉疚的脱帽礼。我个人对此不感兴趣，仅仅因为选出的词很少触动到我。与许多没有流行起来的新词不同，有一个新词或者一个单词的新意流行起来，辞典编撰者们认可了其他人已经知道的：今年有许多人说―占领‖；在英国，―受挤压的中产阶级‖是2011年最热门的政治标语。作为辞典出版社，梅里亚姆-韦伯斯特公司挑选了一个许多人在其网站上查阅的词汇，于是―务实‖一词取代了―占领‖。不过，―占领‖一词依然是赢得美国方言学会承办的―年度词汇奥斯卡‖的热门词选。

But WOTY season does give us a bit of time to talk about what a "word" is. Many people have objected to "squeezed middle" on the grounds that it is a tedious bit of political pandering. But others complain that it "isn't a word", but two words. Two words can be an ordinary phrase, as in "tall tree". Or they can become a compound, with a meaning above and beyond the compositional meaning of the two units. Last month

about the WOTY business—I know many of you are wordniks, even if I'm not—I'll do a good turn and recommend this fascinating discussion about wordness.

不过，―年度词汇‖季给予我们一些时间来讨论什么是―词‖。许多人反对―受挤压的中产阶级‖入围，因为这一词有种政治迎合在里，略显沉闷。而另外一些人抱怨说这根本就―不是一个词‖，这是两个词。两个词可以是一个普通的词组，比如―高高的树‖。或者两个词能够组成一个复合词，意思将超出两个词汇的字面意义。上月，Geoff Pullum在语言日志上写道，年度词汇―应该是一个词‖，而―受挤压的中产阶级‖不过是个合成词组。本·齐默回复时反驳了这一观点。所以，为了不扫―年度词汇‖评选之兴——我知道你们都是单词迷，尽管我不是——我将送个顺水人情，推荐这次关于词汇的有趣讨论。

译者：migmig

[2011.12.26] Rejoice for Utopia is nigh! 庆之，乌托邦已近

Dec 26th 2011, 17:51 by J.D. | NEW YORK

ONE hundred years ago an American immigrant invented science fiction.

100年以前一位美国移民发明了科幻小说。

Okay, that‘s not true. Not even close. People have been building fantastic narratives out of scientific gobbledygook since the days of the Greeks. Lucian of Samosata imagined a trip to the moon over 17 centuries before Jules Verne took a whack at it. And decades before 1911 Verne and H.G. Wells wrote the stories that established the contours of the genre: fantastic voyages in space and time, alien encounters, technology run amok, and so forth. The term ―science fiction‖ wouldn‘t even be invented until 1929.

好吧，这是假话。和事实相去甚远。自从古希腊开始人们就已经在利用晦涩扭曲的科学用语编造一些奇幻有趣的故事了。萨莫萨塔的琉善曾幻想过一趟前往月球的旅行，这比儒勒·凡尔纳尝试这一主题早了整整17个世纪。而且凡尔纳和威尔斯早在1911年之前几十年就已经写下了很多小说，给这一小说体裁打下了基础：例如在时间空间内的奇异旅行，和外星人接触，科技失控等等。―科幻‖一词则是直到1929年才发明出来的。

But the genre as a coherent field of literary endeavour—as the thing that takes up a whole wall at your