2009 年原创专栏《品<经济学人>，习上乘写作》（第三辑）

《经济学人》读书笔记专栏第三辑所选的文章来自《经济学人》2008年9月11日的Obituary专栏。"Obituary"译作中文为“讣告”。但个人认为这种翻译是不完全对等的。（见：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obituary 和 http://baike.baidu.com/view/40562.htm ）《经济学人》的obituary我觉得应理解为名人生平。《经济学人》对名人的定义很具有“经济学人”特点，在它看来，名人可以不是大家熟知的人，但一定得是在某一领域有影响力的人物。因此这些人物包括本文所写的英国自行车爱好者、新加坡的政治异见人士、西非小国加蓬的总统、美国和南非的人权斗士、俄罗斯记者、英国魔术师、波兰和奥地利的政治家、失忆者、吸烟者等等等等。不得不承认一个真正成熟的国际媒体应具有开阔的视野和世界主义（cosmopolitanism），它不仅关注政要名人，同样聚焦普通公民。而这我觉得也是衡量一个社会文明和发达的重要标准之一。

我选择这篇文章主要是因为《经济学人》这个栏目的文章写得很生动，以描写为主，最具可读性和文采。《经济学人》破天荒地为这个栏目单独出书（http://www.economistshop.com/asp/bookdetail.asp?book=3172&fromhome=yes ），由此可见这个栏目的分量。

下面是《经济学人》自己关于这个专栏的介绍：“The obituaries that appear in The Economist are remarkable because of the unpredictable selection of people to be written about, the surprising lives they lead -but also for the style in which the obituary is written. ”

建议在读本文时，不必在乎众多生词，一口气读下来方能充分享受文章。

Ian Hibell

Sep 11th 2008

From The Economist print edition

Ian Hibell, a long-distance cyclist, died on August 23rd, aged 74

1 IN A man’s life there comes a time when he must get out of Brixham. He must leave theboats bobbing（头韵）in the harbour, the Devon cream teas, the holiday camp and the steam railway; he must bid farewell to the nine-to-five job at Standard Telephones and Cables, up the A379 in Paignton, and hit the more open road.

2 Some might get no farther than Bristol. But Ian Hibell went so far in one direction that his eyebrows crusted with frost and his hands froze; and so far in another that he lay down in the hot sand 40 36846 40 14939 0 0 4370 0 0:00:08 0:00:03 0:00:05 4370to die of dehydration (as he expected) under a thorn tree; and so far in another that the safest place to be, out of range of the mosquitoes, was to burrow(=dig) like an alligator（一种鳄） into black, viscous mud.

3 In the course of his 40-year travelling life he went the equivalent of ten times round the equator, covering 6,000 miles or so a year. He became the first man to cycle the Darien Gap in Panama, and the first to cycle from the top to the bottom of the American continent. He went from Norway to the Cape of Good Hope and from Bangkok to Vladivostok, wheeling or walking（头韵） every inch of the way. Every so often he would come back, showing up at STC (from which he had taken, in the beginning, only a two-year leave of absence) with vague murmurings of an apology. But pretty soon the panniers would be packed, the brakes checked, the tyres pumped, and he would be off again.

4 His cycle, loaded with 60-80lb of clothes, tent, stove, biscuits, sardines and water, was sometimes a complication. In the Sahara it sank to its hubs in fine, talc-like sand. In the Amazonian jungle he could not squeeze it between the trees. Crossing the great Atrato swamp, where the track became a causeway over slimy logs and then a mat of floating grass, the bike would sometimes sink into nothingness. He became expert at feeling for it in the morass with his feet. Every tricky traverse in mountain, stream or forest needed doing twice over: once to find a way for himself, then to collect the steed, often carrying it shoulder-high through sharp palmetto, or water, or rocks.

5 Yet Mr Hibell’s love for his bikes was unconditional.（自然过渡） He took them, muddy as they were, into hotels with him, and clung fiercely on to them whenever tribesmen robbed him of the rest of his things. His favourite had a Freddie Grubb frame of Reynolds 531 tubing on a 42-inch wheelbase, reinforced to take the extra weight of goatskins holding water; Campagnolo Nuevo Record gears front and rear; Robregal double-butted 14-16-gauge spokes; and Christophe pedal-straps. It was so lightweight, as touring bikes go, that a group of boys in Newfoundland mocked that it would soon break on their roads. Instead, it did 100,000 miles.

6 Bikes rarely let him down.（自然过渡，前后照应） Escaping once from spear-throwing Turkana in northern Kenya, he felt the chain come off, but managed to coast downhill to safety. He crossed China from north to south—in 2006, at 72—with just three brake-block changes, one jammed rear-brake cable and a change of tape on the handlebars. In his book, “Into the Remote Places” (1984), he described his bike as a companion, a crutch and a friend.【 Setting off in the morning light with “the quiet hum of the wheels, the creak of strap against load, the clink of something in the pannier”, was “delicious”. And more than that. Mr Hibell was a short, sinewy(=thin but strong) man, not particularly swift on his feet. But on a good smooth downhill run, the wind in his face, the landscape pelting past, he felt “oneness with everything”, like “a god almost”. 】

A teapot in the desert

7 Human company was less uplifting. His travelling companions usually proved selfish, violent and unreliable, unappreciative of Mr Hibell’s rather proper and methodical approach to putting up a tent or planning a route, leaving (sometimes with essential kit) to strike off by themselves.But there were exceptions. One was the beautiful Laura with whom, after years of shyness towards women, he found love as they skidded down rocky tracks in Peru. Others were the strangers whose kindness he encountered everywhere. Peasants in China shared their dumplings with him; Indians in Amazonia guided him through the jungle; and in a wilderness of sand a pair of Tuareg boys produced from their robes a bag of dates（产于北非西亚的海枣，）and a small blue teapot, which restored him.

8 In a career of hazards, from soldier ants to real soldiers to sleet that cut his face like steel, only motorists did him real damage. The drivers came too close, and passengers sometimes pelted him with bottles (in Nigeria), or with shovelfuls of gravel (in Brazil). In China in 2006 a van drove over his arm and hand. He recovered, but wondered whether his luck would last（头韵）. It ran out on the road between Salonika and Athens this August, where he was knocked out of the way by a car that appeared to be chasing another.

9 At bad moments on his trips he had sometimes distracted himself by thinking of Devonian scenes: green fields, thatched cottages and daffodils. He would return to a nice house, a bit of garden, the job. But that thought could never hold him long. Although his body might long for the end of cycling—a flat seat, a straight back, unclenched hands—his mind was terrified of stopping. And in his mind, he never did.

读书笔记：

第一段：

（1）boats bobbing体现（在此，用“体现”没用“运用”是考虑到作者的动机：若作者有意使用首字母相同的单词，则为“运用”；反之，只是“自然形成”而已）了头韵修辞。据自百度百科，头韵在英语里叫alliteration，又叫initial rhyme，或head rhyme，是从拉丁语短语 ad literam (根据字母)转化而来的，指两个单词或两个单词以上的首字母相同，形成悦耳的读音。本文后面还有两处头韵，已经标出。

请再下面选自《经济学人》的几例：

PETS, prostitutes and prospective political protesters should consider themselves forewarne.

The Economist considers itself the enemy of privilege, pomposity and predictability.

“AS PART of their daily lives, children across Europe and the world continue to be spanked, slapped, hit,smacked, shaken, kicked, pinched, punched, caned, flogged, belted, beaten and battered in the name of discipline, mainly by adults whom they depend on.” （这句话中，一个“打”用了这么多词，构成三组头韵。可略见英国人喜欢玩文字游戏。）

Asia’s two big beasts are shivering. India’s economy is weaker, but China’s leaders have more to fear.（这个头韵有一点玩笑意味；也可能英国人真的怕了。）

Man and mail can now travel directly between Taiwan and China.

Wherever people have been—and some places where they have not—they have left waste behind. Litter lines the world’s roads; dumps dot the landscape; slurry and sewage slosh into rivers and streams.（这几个头韵绝了！都是名词加动词，仿佛这些词天生就应该这么组合。）

The “Red Flag Canal Spirit” has ever since been held up as a shining example of self-reliance, socialistsolidarity and selfless devotion.

China’s water woes will only worsen, especially for farmers.

最绝的是一篇关于体罚的文章的题目：Spare the rod, say some，不仅用了头韵，而且点出了全文中心。

这里要特别强调的一点是头韵修辞不宜多用，不能滥用。如果用得恰当，能起到某种（因具体语境而异）特别的效果；如果用不好，不仅可能出洋相，更可能不知不觉做了头韵的奴隶--过分在乎首字母，而将想表达的意思的准确性忽略。此乃头韵之大忌。

最后，再引申一下与头韵相对的尾韵（Rhyme）。比如，我问室友是骑车还是步行上课时说的"Bike or walk"即属尾韵。

第二段：

这段（其实，这篇文章大部分内容都是）的描写很精彩。而描写可能是中国人英文最犯难的地方。我们可以讲很溜的英语、用高级生僻的词汇、写不错的议论文，但若让我们写记叙性、描述性的文章，我们十有八九会害怕。曾经在与年轻的比利时考古工作者、荷兰的工学毕业生和德国的年轻人聊天时，很惊讶于这些从未专门接受过大学英语教育的英语非母语者可以轻松地讲笑话和故事或是旅游见闻。他们用词简单却表义清楚，不死抠语法却表达地道，常常能够让你自己在头脑中绘成一幅图，轻松理解他们并对他们印象深刻。作为学习了近10年英语的科班生，我自叹不如。我觉得这主要在于英语教学目的的不同：我们过分强调词汇和语法；欧洲人（非英语国家），尤其是西欧人和北欧人则看重自然交际。当然，这里面还有他们的“近水楼台先得月”的文化和思维优势。讲这么多，其实也无非是想说明，在学习语法和词汇的同时，我们一定不能忘记要多读精彩的英文、多咀嚼一些地道用词和表达、多揣摩他们的思维和文风。唯有这样，我们才可能真正掌握并轻松驾驭英文。

写到这里我想起了一位毕业于美国哥伦比亚大学，曾在Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, and World Vision工作过，现在在以色列从事人道主义救援的朋友Tyler B. Evans写在自己个人网页上的一段分享自己的理想的话。现摘一段：

“Indeed, my life has taught me many lessons and has given me explosive passion - and I will put every microliter of this irrepressible energy I have into anything that will help the 70% of the world that doesn’t matter. This, then, is my greatest talent – to connect with the suffering pervading the globe. Since this realization, I have sat 4 ft. away from 800 lb. Silverback gorillas, swam with Great White sharks, skied the French Alps, been deluged with the sweat of Sumo wrestlers and blood of Muay Thai boxers, watched the sun rise over the Taj Mahal and set beyond Angkor Wat, rafted the Nile, conquered Mt. Kilimanjaro,masticated herbal stimulants amongst Ethiopian hyena men, imbibed herbal extracts with the Dalai Lama amidst the Himalayas, sang Christmas carols with the Palestinian president in Bethlehem, slept amongst the Berbers in the Sahara desert, and hiked the Inca trail to Machu Picchu – to name a few. Yet more importantly, I have worked in a health-care capacity in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, South & East Asia, and Eastern Europe. Surely, my greatest passion of all…”

着色部分短短的几行运用了12个动词或动词词组，把自己“环游世界，寻找自己”的经历活灵活现地展示了出来。我们读来印象深刻。这也是说明动词在写作中主导地位的明证。同时也生动地说明了语言是多么可以塑造自己和影响别人的。

第三段：

最后一句运用了排比的修辞。大家可参考Barack Obama的演讲，里面有大量漂亮的排比句，而且都句句清楚，没有废话和陈词滥调。

第四段：

这段也是描写为主，描写细致入微。

第五段：

最后两句体现了英文中长短句交错的写法。一些中国学生为了展示自己英语实力不俗，喜欢用超长的句子，通篇鲜有几个短句。这是误区。其实好的、地道的英文一定是长短相间、错落有致、充满节奏感的。长句尤适用描述；短句适于概括。下面的例子选自《经济学人》，供大家体会：

(1) Readers everywhere get the same editorial matter. The advertisement differ.

(2) People feel that they have a natural right to throw away as much stuff as they like, just as those lucky native Americans chucked the shells from their plentiful oyster piles over their shoulders. They shouldn’t.

第六段：

（1）第二行的"coast"一词意为“（汽车或自行车）（尤指不用动力向山坡下）滑行，惯性滑行”。英语语言词汇实在丰富。“任重道远”啊。

（2）仔细体会【】框住的部分。这种描写生动至极。一个人爱自行车，能有多爱？绝不是"He is a big cyclist"或"He likes cycling a lot."可以表达的。语言美就美在这里，它能穿透你，打动你，震撼你。

第七段：

第一句话自然过渡，前后照应。最妙的是，自行车居然比人还要uplifting。可见Ian对自行车的爱，堪比情人。

第八段：

shovelful这个字值得一提。英文里有很多这种以"-ful"结尾表容量的。比如说：handful, spoonful, armful, bagful, jarful, etc. 学会这些表达，第一表义时更准确，第二，用词也更地道。在这里推荐一个网站：http://www.allwords.com/ 只要是我们想总结有某部分（如词首、词尾）相同的词，就可以用这个网站，非常user-friendly.

回复【2009】阅读更多写于2009年的原创专栏。

分享：点击右上角的三个小圆点，可以分享到微信朋友圈

加关注: justintheeconomist（或点击上面题目下方的蓝字）

关于该微专栏（序言、账号运作模式、历史消息）：回复数字1

阅读此微专栏的另一种方法：回复数字 100

强烈推荐另一微信公众号“英语学习笔记” : ericzenglish.

谢谢~