动词的颜色和力量
On Writing Well 这本书已经和大家推荐过许多次了, 不过我相信会去看的人一定还是不多的 －"能写清楚就不错了, 不指望写的well". 这本书本身的写作风格和语言都是范文之作, 举的例子和一些心得也对我们的英文写作&赏析有很大的帮助.
好的文章不可能是一蹴而就的，好的文章都是改出来的。我们不可能读完这本书一下子就醍醐灌顶,妙笔生花.但是至少我们会对英文语言和写作有更深的认识.
Use active verbs unless there is no comfortable way to get around using a passive verb. The difference between an active verb style and a passive-verb style—in clarity and vigor—is the difference between life and death for a writer.
“Joe saw him” is strong. “He was seen by Joe” is weak. The first is short and precise; it leaves no doubt about who did what. The second is necessarily longer and it has an insipid quality: something was done by somebody to someone else. It’s also ambiguous. How often was he seen by Joe? Once? Every day? Once a week? A style that consists of passive constructions will sap the reader’s energy. Nobody ever quite knows what is being perpetrated by whom and on whom.
I use “perpetrated” because it’s the kind of word that passive-voice writers are fond of. They prefer long words of Latin origin to short Anglo-Saxon words—which compounds their trouble and makes their sentences still more glutinous. Short is better than long. Of the 701 words in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, a marvel of economy in itself, 505 are words of one syllable and 122 are words of two syllables.
作者William Zinsser 有一篇对哥伦比亚新闻学院国际学生的一次讲话,叫 “Writing English as a Second Language” 最后他说:
“Repeat after me:
Short is better than long.
Simple is good. (Louder)
Long Latin nouns are the enemy.
Anglo-Saxon active verbs are your best friend.
One thought per sentence."
Verbs are the most important of all your tools. They push the sentence forward and give it momentum. Active verbs push hard; passive verbs tug fitfully. Active verbs also enable us to visualize an activity because they require a pronoun (“he”), or a noun (“the boy”), or a person (“Mrs. Scott”) to put them in motion. Many verbs also carry in their imagery or in their sound a suggestion of what they mean: glitter, dazzle, twirl, beguile, scatter, swagger, poke, pamper,vex. Probably no other language has such a vast supply of verbs so bright with color. Don’t choose one that is dull or merely serviceable. Make active verbs activate your sentences, and avoid the kind that need an appended preposition to complete their work.Don’t set up a business that you can start or launch. Don’t say that the president of the company stepped down. Did he resign? Did he retire? Did he get fired? Be precise. Use precise verbs.
If you want to see how active verbs give vitality to the written word, don’t just go back to Hemingway or Thurber or Thoreau. I commend the King James Bible and William Shakespeare.
George Orwell在 Politics and the English Language中,以 “翻译” 圣经传道书中的一段话(Ecclesiastes 9:11)来展示英文“糟糕英文”.
King James Bible:
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
我又转念，见日光之下，快跑的未必能赢，力战的未必得胜，智慧的未必得粮食，明哲的未必得资财，灵巧的未必得喜悦，所临到众人的，是在乎当时的机会.
Modern English of the worst sort:
Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
第二种英文尽管被Orwell称之为“最差劲的那种”，但其实是我们经常会读到的“学术性”文章－高大上的GRE之流. 学术研究之类的讲究客观和事实, 但是这不意味着所有的写作就应该如此。好的写作是让人读起来觉得有人情味,在和作者讲话一样。 这样的例子可以翻一翻Amazon上的买家评论, Goodreads上的“读后感” -- 前提是有基本的判断能力。
这篇文章中的动词使用就是一个很好的例子：
A style that consists of passive constructions will sap the reader’s energy.
Active verbs push hard; passive verbs tug fitfully.
随手翻一下这期的《经济学人》
Its committees on campuses vet the appointment of teaching staff.
Hardliners have long been waiting for an excuse to pounce.
有没有体会到 "Many verbs also carry in their imagery or in their sound a suggestion of what they mean"?
关于动词，再补充一些来自《中式英语之鉴》的内容 — 中文部分是我的评论 -- 顺便说，这本书里也引用了On Writign Well。此书的第一页就引用了The Elements of Style中的:
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
什么动词是没用的、多余的? 我们来看一个句子:
We must make an improvement in our work.
Here the verb (“make”) is a weak, colorless, all-purpose word having no very specific meaning of its own, while the real action is expressed in the noun (“improvement”). Since the verb is not contributing anything to the sense, it can be edited out: “We must improve our work.”
同样，我们再看几个句子:
It is impossible for us to accomplish the transformation of the whole society overnight.
It is impossible for us to transform the whole society overnight.
they should conduct a careful examination of …
they should examine…
to bring about a change in this state of affairs
to change his state of affairs
除此之外还有一些「overworked introductory verb phrase」, 说起来有些复杂，有兴趣的自己去读吧。
…whenever you come across one of these suspect phrases in a draft translation, you are called upon to make a judgment. In context, is it justified? Is it necessary for the sense of the passage? Or has it been put into the English version simply because it was present in the Chinese?
多读，多写，多改(除了找别人改，自己也要改自己的，改别人的），在这个过程中培养出语感 — 也就是判断力, 对文字的敏感度。
Machines have been devised to perform certain types of translation, but they cannot distinguish between meaningful and meaningless uses of the same phrase. That is the difference between you and a machine.
引用李笑来老师的一段话作为结束:
“经验需要积累，而积累只能通过实践。所谓“下笔如有神”一看就是不会写文章的人才可能相信的痴心妄想。好的文章从来都不是一蹴而就的，好的文章从来都是改车来的。所谓的“灵感”也更可能在实践中闪现，而不大可能凭空而出。作者写字就好像司机开车一样。司机要积累到一定驾驶里程，才可能遇到所有可能遇到的安全问题，于是终究有一天经验足够到有可能回避一切危险。作者也一样，写字多到一定程度才可能知道文字的种种属性 －－不大可能通过某一本写作教程久理解所有文字的属性。不仅要多写，还要为了写好而做更多的功课，这是良性循环的起点。”