[考博英語]2017考博英語閱讀題源經濟學人文章每日精析（十六）_考博_旭晨教育

2017 考博英語 閱讀題源經濟學人文章每日精析（十六）

考博英語閱讀大部分博士研究生招生院校都使用《經濟學人》雜志文章作為題源，旭晨教育考博頻道為考博生們將其中的文章進行深度分析，希望能提高大家的考博英語閱讀水平，讀懂長難句。

Johnson

約翰遜

Lexicography unbound

釋放自由的字典編纂

Dictionaries have found their ideal format

字典找到了理想版式

Oct 29th 2016 | From the print edition

2016年10月29日|來自印刷版

THERE is something comforting in a dictionary: right angles, a pleasing heft, reassuringly rigid covers. A new one is tight, a bright sheaf of discoveries yet to be made; an old one is a musty but trusted cosy friend. A good dictionary is the classic school-leaving gift from ambitious parents to their children. A great dictionary might even be passed on through several generations.

在一部字典里，確實有些令人歡喜的地方：四四方方的角、合適的重量、高品質的硬面書皮。一部新的字典裝訂牢固，充滿了許多令人驚喜的待挖掘之處;一部老字典帶著發霉的味道，卻成了我們值得信賴的親密朋友。望子成龍的父母會把一部好的字典作為孩子的畢業禮物。一部好的字典甚至可以傳承幾代人。

Lexicography ：字典編纂

heft ：重量

pass on： 傳遞 ，繼續

But maybe the most reassuring thing about a dictionary is its finite nature. A small dictionary contains all the words you need to know, and a really big one seems to contain all the words in existence. Having one nearby seems to say that the language has boundaries, and reasonable ones at that.

但是也許最令人激動的是一部字典自身的有限性。一本小型字典涵蓋了你需要知道的所有單詞，同時一本大的字典則似乎飽含了所有存在的的詞匯。身邊備著本字典似乎意味著：語言是有界限的，并且這些界限來得很合理。

at that： 而且

It might surprise dictionary-owners to know that most lexicographers do not think of their subject in this way at all. The decision to impose a page-count on a dictionary is in fact a painful one. Definitions can almost never cover the full complexity of a word, even in huge dictionaries. And even more painful is leaving words out simply for reasons of space.

然而對字典所有者來說，令人驚訝的是：大部分詞典編纂者絲毫不這么認為。給字典設置頁數限制著實痛苦。因為即使是一本很厚的字典，單詞的定義也無法完全囊括該詞的復雜性。更讓人痛苦的是有一些詞不記入字典，僅僅是因為篇幅問題。

Many readers think that something is a “real word” if it’s “in the dictionary” (raising the question of which of the hundreds of English dictionaries they mean). But lexicographers don’t like to regard themselves as letting the trusty words in and keeping the bad guys out. Erin McKean, who left traditional lexicography to found an online dictionary, Wordnik, explained why she chose a format that could allow virtually limitless entries: “I don’t want to be a traffic cop!”

許多讀者認為如果這個詞出現在字典中，它才真正算是一個真正的詞(人們的問題會在數以百計的字典中找到答案)。但是編纂者并不想成為一個只讓可靠的詞納入詞典，忽略不好詞匯的人。艾琳 麥基恩辭掉了傳統的字典編纂工作，創立了網上詞典——Wordnik。艾琳還解釋了她選擇這種形式，是因為它實際上對詞目，詞條無限制，說道：“我可不想做一個詞語交警!”

Lexicographers prefer to think they are a different kind of cop: the kind in the title of John Simpson’s “The Word Detective”, published in October, a memoir of his time as editor-in-chief of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Mr Simpson’s lexicography career began in the 1970s, scouring books for example usages and writing them down on notecards. (The original OED was published in alphabetically consecutive volumes between 1884 and 1928; Mr Simpson worked on the supplement of new words and meanings.) In 1982 a new boss shocked the then-editor with a plan to computerise the dictionary’s ways: both the lexicographic work itself, with digital research files, and its outcome, an OED on compact disc. But that wasn’t the final shape either: by the end of Mr Simpson’s tenure in 2013, the OED’s flagship product was a website with entries richly linked to one another and updated at regular intervals.

字典編纂者傾向于認為他們是一種特殊的警察，就是約翰 辛普森所說的“ 文字偵探”， 這本書于10月出版，記錄了他當牛津英文詞典總編輯的歲月。約翰的詞典編纂生涯始于19世紀70年代，他過去常常從書中找出慣例用法，然后記錄到筆記卡上。(傳統上的牛津詞典在1884到1928年間出版了按字母順序的連續卷，約翰增補了一些新的單詞和新的意思。)1982年，新上任的領導準備用計算機處理的方法來編纂詞典，這讓那時的編輯很是吃驚：編纂與數字研究文檔結合起來的結果就是把詞典做成便于攜帶的光盤，但這還不是最終的版本。2013年，辛普森任期結束的時候，《牛津詞典》的旗艦產品是一個詞條豐富，和其他網站鏈接，定期更新的網站。

cop： 警察

alphabetically ：按字母順序的

A dictionary is really a database; it has fields for headword, pronunciation, etymology, definition, and in the case of historical dictionaries like the OED, citations of past usages. Its natural home is one that allows the reader to consult it in any way that makes sense. Look up a single word. Or look up all the citations by a single author. Or those which share a root: only such a tool can tell you that the OED knows of 1,011 words ending in –ology, against 508 with –ography.

一部詞典真的就是一所語料庫;它包括詞目，發音，語源，定義以及在那種老字號的字典中會引用過去的用法，比如《牛津詞典》。能夠讓字典擁有者以任何角度查詢都能夠解釋得通，是字典的自然屬性。你可以查閱一個單詞，可以查閱某位作者的引用，或者看哪些詞共享一個詞根：例如《牛津詞典》可以告訴你1011個以-ology結尾的單詞，而以ography結尾的單詞僅有508個。

database ：資料庫

etymology ：語源

consult ：查詢

When a new word like “grok” appears or the word like “marriage” expands, as it has recently, readers need not wait for years for a new print dictionary. Once the new word or meaning seems here to stay, it can be added in an instant. The OED is conservative: a rule of thumb is to wait until a word has hung on for at least ten years. But the principle is to catch all of the language in use, and not merely to admit the good words, whatever those are.

當一個新詞的出現，比如：“grok”神交這個詞，或者像“婚姻”這個詞的擴展意，立刻就可以得到它的意思，讀者們不用等多年后，再次新出版的詞典中獲取。一旦一個新詞或者一個新意有人提出，它就會立即被加入詞條。牛津詞典比較保守：它堅守一條很重要法則就是這個詞至少使用10年以上才會被納入詞典。但是字典的原則是捕捉所有在用語言，而不僅僅是只吸收好的詞語。

Ten years is still a long time. Lexicographers, aware that people still look to them for guidance on what is a “real” word and what isn’t, whether or not they like this role, can still be conservative. Those who long for a conservative dictionary should seek one, but this is not the only way of doing things. “Green’s Dictionary of Slang” first appeared as a chunky three-volume work of historical lexicography in 2010, with over 100,000 entries. But Jonathon Green did not hang up his hat when the books hit the shelves; he went on to add an online edition that was to be continually updated.

10年依舊很漫長。因為人們依賴于編纂者們在詞語上的引導，即哪些可以納入詞典成為一個有名分的詞，無論字典編纂者們是否喜歡擔當這樣的角色，編纂者依舊堅持保守的原則。那些偏好保守字典的人可以用保守型字典，但這不能要求所有人都用保守型字典。《格林俚語詞典》在2010年首次出版是被作為一本厚重的3卷歷史詞典，該字典收錄了超過100，000個詞目。但是，當詞典上架后，喬納森 格林也沒有停止工作。他繼續在網站上增補，編輯，不斷更新。

hang one's up hat 停止工作

At the free-for-all end are the online and completely crowdsourced dictionaries from Wiktionary to Urban Dictionary. Whatever one may think of the latter—which includes terms of rank racist and misogynist abuse as well as a broad fare of drug- and sex-related terms—it is useful, allowing oldies to find out what their kids are talking about. That may be an inversion of the old dictionary, the graduation present—but discovery, in whatever format, is after all what dictionaries are for.

公開、免費的另一面是流傳于網絡的、采取完全眾包形式的字典，例如《維基詞典》到《城市詞典》。期待您的翻譯。這很有可能顛倒了過去可當作畢業禮物的字典形象，然而，無論以什么形式，這些新式字典所追求的依舊是所有字典所堅持的。

crowdscourced ：眾包