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Don't read the dictionary after dark
-------- 天黑以后莫看词典
I thought that browsing through the building blocks of English, from A to Z, would be a nice way to nod off. How wrong I was.
--------------------- 我原以为从头到尾地随便浏览浏览词典里的词——这些英语的积木块——是一件用来打会儿盹的好办法。可我大错特错了。
Henrietta Clancy
Tuesday 10 July 2007 07.04 EDT
I'm reading the dictionary at the moment. It's the New Shorter Oxford Dictionary, Thumb Index Edition, and after a week's worth of bedtime reading I'm not even close to reaching B. And I've had very little sleep. Initially I picked up the first volume in an attempt to cure insomnia, as if it might have the soothing effects of counting cartoon sheep. Quite the opposite, in fact.!
------------------- 此刻偶正在阅读这本词典——新版缩略牛津词典书边标目本。读了一星期以后，我甚至还没有看到接近B部的地方，但我却因此少睡了很多觉。起初我选了第一卷，试图以此种阅读来治愈偶的失眠症，以为它能够减轻数卡通羊的痛苦似的。实际上恰恰相反！
Originally, I was under the illusion that reading the dictionary would simply provide me with a few more words with which to express myself. What I had not accounted for was the mixture of fear and curiosity that it would inject into my previously ready-for-bed head. The fact that the dictionary is full of real things makes it terrifyingly absorbing. African wildlife, Indian shrubs, mythological creatures; strange medical growths; the dictionary has them all. None of these are really sleep inducing subjects. If they don't keep you awake, they'll give you nightmares.
------------------------- 最初偶以为读词典只是能够给我增添一些勇于表达的词汇。万没想到它竟然给偶那准备睡大觉的头脑带来的是混合着恐惧和好奇的赶脚。这本词典里面充满了种种真材实料，使它非常之吸引人。非洲的野生动物，神话中虚构的生物，医学上各种奇奇怪怪的赘生物——这本词典里面全都有。所有这些都不是诱导睡眠的东东。如果说他们的作用不是使你头脑保持清醒，那么它们恐怕就只能给你带来梦魇了。
How can anyone sleep soundly in the knowledge that they may accidentally eat some abrin, "poisonous protein present in the jequirity bean", be attacked by an aardwolf, "a Southern African quadruped related to the hyenas", and end up inside an abomasums【译者小注1】, "the fourth stomach of a ruminant", finally emitting adipocere, "the greyish-white fatty substance generated in dead bodies subjected to moisture"? And that even if they manage to escape death and wind up with a minor injury, there is something called accipiter out there, "a bandage for the nose resembling a hawk's claw". This is disturbing stuff.
------------------------------ 你可能会无意中吃进abrin（相思豆毒素）——存在于相思子中的有毒蛋白质；你可能会遭到土狼（aardwolf）袭击，它是南部非洲的一种鬣狗(hyena)类的四足动物，最后你来到反刍动物（ruminant）的胃的第四部分——刍胃（abomasum），最后你还会释放出尸蜡（adipocere）——尸体在潮湿环境下产生的灰白色脂肪类物质。试问了解了所有这些可怕事实以后，你还怎么可能酣然入眠呢？【译者表示深度怀疑：知道这些就睡不着觉啦？那作尸体解剖、杀猪宰羊的人还就不吃饭了？】好吧，就算你侥幸逃脱死亡，只是受了点轻伤，那么还有个accipiter（用于包扎鼻部的鹰爪形的绷带）在等着你呢。这些可都是扰人的东东吧。
----------------【译者小注1：此处作者似乎犯了一个小错误：an abomasums, 前面用了an，后面又加复数标记-s，是不对的。另外，复数形式也不正确。查词典，abomasum的复数是abomasa/abomasi. 金山词霸里面的《现代英汉综合大词典》给出的复数形式abomasus也是错误的，而且错得有点奇怪：-us/-um同是拉丁语单数词尾】。--------------------
Reading the dictionary is a very time consuming undertaking, especially for one who has never quite mastered the skill of speed reading. Not that it is the kind of material that naturally lends itself to speed reading; each newly acquired snippet of dictionary information seems to send you off on a tangent. One word that makes me sit up and reach for a pen and paper is abalone, "an edible gastropod mollusc of the genus Haliotis, having an ear-shaped shell lined with mother-of-pearl". What is this curious sounding mollusc? I can eat it? Where, and with what, and when? Suddenly I'm hungry.
---------------------------- 阅读词典可是一件极耗时间的事儿，尤其是对那些没有很好地掌握速读技巧的人来说。词典貌似适于速读的材料，其实不然。从词典上获得的每一点新信息都会使你的思路走偏。有个词引起了偶的注意，以至于笔之于纸，这个词是abalone（鲍鱼）：“一种腹足类（gastropod）软体动物（mollusc），鲍鱼属，有耳朵形的贝壳，里面充满了珍珠母”。这种听起来很稀奇的软体动物是个什么东东？它可以吃？何时、何地、和什么东东配着吃？突然间偶赶脚饿了。
On I plod, leaving the mollusc behind, until a column or so later I am confronted by the fact that my daily struggle with indecision is a recognised medical disorder; aboulia. I am an abouliac. (Hypochondriacs will have a field day in the dictionary; there are diseases galore to be found and adopted.) Comforted by my diagnosis and moving swiftly on onto the word abracadabra, "a cabbalistic word, supposed when written triangularly to be a charm against fevers. The next thing I know I've reached for the scrap paper again and am attempting to write the word in a triangle, in an effort to ward off said fevers. This really is nothing like as easy as it sounds; I urge everyone to have a go and report back.
--------------------------- 我继续苦读，把哪种软体动物先放一边。看完一栏以后，我不得不面对这样一个事实：我每天不得不与其作斗争的优柔寡断习惯原来是一种医学上的失调：aboulia（意志力丧失）。妈呀，原来我是一个“意志力丧失者”。（如此这般，疑病症患者hypochondriac在这本词典里似乎是要大大地占有自己的地盘了。有很多种疾病等待被发现和接受）。这个诊断结论让我比较爽【译者：为什么？不懂:( 】，我很快地往下读到abracadabra这个词：一个神秘论词语，写成三角形时被认为是有魔力的咒语，可以对抗各种热病。我又一次伸手去取便条纸，想把这个词写成三角形的形状，把上面所说的那些热病给挡开。这事儿绝不是听起来那么容易。我劝各位都亲自试一试并报告结果。
Its strangely addictive, the old dictionary, and despite my weary eyes I keep finding myself in a just-one-more-word type of conundrum. After all, it is imperative that I have a nice, shiny, sugared kind of word to send me off into dreamland. Along comes acephali, and as "imaginary men or animals without heads" are not the sort of things I want infiltrating my slumber. I must read on. Adders and addlax follow, and brain sufficiently addled I can only conclude that the dictionary is not bedtime reading.
------------------------------ 真奇怪，这本老词典还真让人上瘾！尽管眼睛已经疲劳了，我却发现自己老是处于一种“再看一个词”的谜样的状态中。归根到底，这是因为我想要找到一个美好的、阳光的、甜蜜的词来把我送人梦乡。接着来了acephali这个词儿，它的意思是“想象中的无头人或动物”，显然它不是我要的渗入我的梦中的词儿。妈呀，偶还得继续读下去。接下来的词是“蝰蛇”和“addlax”【译者注：这个词使劲查也没有查到，有可能是非英语词，或者是排印错误。有一个Adalat，硝苯吡啶，心痛定，药品商标名】，哎呦，我的脑子已经困糊涂了，只好得出结论：词典可不是好的睡前读物。
A great source of knowledge it may well be, but for god's sake keep it for the daylight hours.
------------------- 这本词典作为知识来源那是相当好，但是——看在老天的份上——还是把他放到白天去读吧！
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发表于 2015-12-22 18:53:31
