TED学院 | 用新词改变世界 | 自由微信

TED学院 | 用新词改变世界

小芳老师 2020-09-18

提示：点击↑上方"小芳老师"免费关注

TED简介：2016 | “英语像是一块伟大的海绵，融合了许多种语言，但它也有缺憾。希腊语中有一个词叫lachesism，意思是渴望灾难，比如你在海平面上看到雷雨，为暴风雨的到来而欢呼雀跃。波兰语中有一个词叫jouska，它代表着你脑海中不断出现且无法停止的假象对话。”John Koenig花7年时间编撰了一本字典，名为《晦涩情感词语字典》

演讲者：John Koenig

片长：07：33

https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?width=500&height=375&auto=0&vid=h0386rkv7pr

中英对照翻译

Today I want to talk about the meaning of words, how we define them and how they, almost as revenge,define us.

今天我想和大家谈谈单词的含义，我们是如何定义它们的，反过来它们又是如何，像复仇一般的定义了我们。英语语言就像是一块华丽的吸水海绵，

The English language is a magnificent sponge. I love the English language. I'm glad that I speak it. But for all that, it has a lot of holes. In Greek, there's a word, "lachesism" which is the hunger for disaster. You know, when you see a thunderstorm on the horizon and you just find yourself rooting for the storm.

我喜爱英语，很高兴我会说英语，但是，它依然有很多缺陷。在希腊语中有一个词，“Lachesism"，意思是对灾难的渴求，就像是当你看到远方地平线的雷雨，发现自己已对风暴做好了一切准备。

In Mandarin, they have a word "yù yī" -- I'm not pronouncing that correctly -- which means the longing to feel intensely again the way you did when you were a kid. In Polish, they have a word "jouska" which is the kind of hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head. And finally, in German, of course in German, they have a word called "zielschmerz" which is the dread of getting what you want.

在中文里，有一个词叫“yù yī ” —— 不好意思，我发音不准—— 意思是希望再次强烈体会到当你还是个孩子时的感觉。在波兰语里，他们有一个词叫“Jouska", 形容一种假想的对话，在自己的脑海里被迫上演。最后，在德语里，当然，是德语。他们有一个词叫做“Zielschmerz”，意思是害怕得到你想要的。

Finally fulfilling a lifelong dream. I'm German myself, so I know exactly what that feels like.

虽然最后实现了你毕生的梦想。我自己是个德国人，所以很了解那是什么感觉。

Now, I'm not sure if I would use any of these words as I go about my day, but I'm really glad they exist. But the only reason they exist is because I made them up.

在我的日常生活里，不确定我会不会用这些词，但是我对这些单词的存在感到高兴。仅仅因为，我编造了它们。

I am the author of "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows," which I've been writing for the last seven years. And the whole mission of the project is to find holes in the language of emotion and try to fill them so that we have a way of talking about all those human peccadilloes and quirks of the human condition that we all feel but may not think to talk about because we don't have the words to do it.

我是《自造词典》的创始人，(The Dictionary of ObscureSorrows) 这是我在过去七年里所编写的东西。整个计划的目标，是为了找到语言情感里的漏洞，去填补它们，如此我们就有了一种全新的方式去讨论人类情感里的种种小缺失，那种我们常常能感受，却无法去形容的概念，因为我们没有适合的词去表达。

And about halfway through this project, I defined "sonder," the idea that we all think of ourselves as the main character and everyone else is just extras. But in reality, we're all the main character, and you yourself are an extra in someone else's story.

在我的计划进行了一半的时候，我创造了一个词“Sonder”，这个点子是关于我们把自己想象成世间的主角，其他人都是临时演员。但是在现实中，你认为自己是主角，可是你在其他人的故事中却只是个配角罢了。

And so as soon as I published that, I got a lot of response from people saying, "Thank you for giving voice to something I had felt all my life but there was no word for that." So it made them feel less alone. That's the power of words, to make us feel less alone.

当我发表了这一想法时，很多人来告诉我，“谢谢你，你为我一生都感觉到却一直没能找到合适的词去表达的感觉下了定义。” 这使得他们不再那么孤单。这就是文字的魅力，让我们不再孤独。

And it was not long after that that I started to notice sonder being used earnestly in conversations online,and not long after I actually noticed it, I caught it next to me in an actual conversation in person. There is no stranger feeling than making up a word and then seeing it take on a mind of its own. I don't have a word for that yet, but I will.

在那不久以后，我开始注意到Sonder这个词，很多人真的已经开始在网络交谈中使用了，就在我注意到这个没多久，我就发现这个词已经用在我身边人与人直接的交谈中了。没有什么感觉比自己造了一个单词，然后发现它被所有人所接受更奇怪了。现在还没有能形容这种感觉的词，但我会造一个出来的。

I'm working on it.

我已经在想了。

I started to think about what makes words real, because a lot of people ask me, the most common thing I got from people is, "Well, are these words made up? I don't really understand." And I didn't really know what to tell them because once sonder started to take off, who am I to say what words are real and what aren't.

我开始想，到底是什么让一个单词具象化，因为很多人问过我，我也最常听到的提问是，“好吧，这些单词是造出来的？我真的不明白。” 我也真的不知道该怎么解释，因为一旦sonder开始流行起来，我又该跟谁说哪些单词是真实的，哪些不是？

And so I sort of felt like Steve Jobs, who described his epiphany as when he realized that most of us, as we go through the day, we just try to avoid bouncing against the walls too much and just sort of get on with things.But once you realize that people -- that this world was built by people no smarter than you, then you can reach out and touch those walls and even put your hand through them and realize that you have the power to change it.

我有点感觉像是乔布斯在描述他的顿悟，当他意识到，我们中的很多人在生活中，都在为了避免给自己制造太多的麻烦，只是希望一切都顺利。但是一旦你了解到那些人—— 了解到这个世界是由并不比你聪明多少的人所建立的，那么你就会试着去跨越这些高墙，甚至会用手去推翻它们，你就会意识到，原来你也有改变世界的力量。

And when people ask me, "Are these words real?" I had a variety of answers that I tried out. Some of them made sense. Some of them didn't. But one of them I tried out was, "Well, a word is real if you want it to be real." The way that this path is real because people wanted it to be there.

当人们问我，“这些单词是真的吗？” 我曾经准备了很多答案。有些可以理解，有些却行不通。但是我的一个答案是，“单词唯有你想要它是真的时候，它才会变成真的。” 这条路之所以会存在，是因为人们都想要它存在。

It happens on college campuses all the time. It's called a "desire path."

这种路在大学校园里随处可见，我叫它“渴望之路“。

But then I decided, what people are really asking when they're asking if a word is real, they're really asking,"Well, how many brains will this give me access to?" Because I think that's a lot of how we look at language.A word is essentially a key that gets us into certain people's heads. And if it gets us into one brain, it's not really worth it, not really worth knowing. Two brains, eh, it depends on who it is. A million brains, OK, now we're talking. And so a real word is one that gets you access to as many brains as you can. That's what makes it worth knowing.

但是之后，当他们问这个单词是否是真的，他们其实是在问，“好吧，通过这个单词我又能读懂几个人的内心呢？” 因为我觉得这就是我们怎么看待语言的。单词的本质就是一把钥匙，一把开启人们内心的钥匙。如果这把钥匙只能走进你一个人心里，这真的不值得，也没什么必要存在。如果能读懂两个人，嗯，这要看另一个是谁。如果能走进千千万万的内心，很好，这就是我们现在对话的意义。所以一个真实存在的单词，能帮助你了解很多人。这就是一个单词的意义。

Incidentally, the realest word of all by this measure is this.[O.K.]

顺便一提，用这种方式获得的最真实的一个词是：【O. K.】

That's it. The realest word we have. That is the closest thing we have to a master key. That's the most commonly understood word in the world, no matter where you are. The problem with that is, no one seems to know what those two letters stand for.

就是这个。这是我们最真实的单词。这就是我们最熟悉的单词。同时也是这个世界上被最多人所熟知的词，无论你来自哪里，问题是，没人知道为什么要用这两个字母。

Which is kind of weird, right? I mean, it could be a misspelling of "all correct," I guess, or "old kinderhook."No one really seems to know, but the fact that it doesn't matter says something about how we add meaning to words. The meaning is not in the words themselves. We're the ones that pour ourselves into it.

这是不是有点不可思议？我猜它可能是 “All Correct”（都对）的错误拼写，或者是“Old Kinderhook”的错误拼写。似乎没人知道为什么，但是这都无所谓了，这说明了我们是如何给词语赋予含义的。单词的含义不在于单词本身，而是在于那些赋予单词意义的人们。

And I think, when we're all searching for meaning in our lives, and searching for the meaning of life, I think words have something to do with that. And I think if you're looking for the meaning of something, the dictionary is a decent place to start. It brings a sense of order to a very chaotic universe. Our view of things is so limited that we have to come up with patterns and shorthands and try to figure out a way to interpret itand be able to get on with our day. We need words to contain us, to define ourselves.

而且我觉得，我们都在寻找我们生命中的意义，寻找生活的意义时，我觉得单词和我们寻找的东西息息相关。我觉得你在寻找某些东西的含义时，字典是一个开始寻找的好地方。字典为混沌的宇宙带去了一丝秩序。我们对事物的了解十分有限，以至于我们不得不想出一些规律或者速记的方法，去尝试寻找该词的解释，让我们的生活得以继续。我们需要单词来蕴含自己，来定义我们自己。

I think a lot of us feel boxed in by how we use these words. We forget that words are made up. It's not just my words. All words are made up, but not all of them mean something. We're all just sort of trapped in our own lexicons that don't necessarily correlate with people who aren't already like us, and so I think I feel us drifting apart a little more every year, the more seriously we take words.

我觉得我们中的很多人都感觉，被我们所用的词汇所束缚了，我们忘了所有的单词都是编造出来的，不光光是我用的词，所有的词都是编造出来的，但不是所有的词都有含义。我们只是有点被困在自己的字典里，而我们的字典和其他人的字典并不全都一样，所以我觉得每一年我们都在变得疏远，我们对用词也越来越认真。

Because remember, words are not real. They don't have meaning. We do.

但是请记住，单词不是真的。它们本身没有任何意义，是我们赋予了它们含义。

And I'd like to leave you with a reading from one of my favorite philosophers, Bill Watterson, who created "Calvin and Hobbes." He said, "Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it is still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble."

最后我想跟各位分享一段我最喜欢的一位哲学家，比尔·沃特森在《凯文的幻虎世界》中说的，“创造一个能反应你的价值，并充实你的灵魂的生活，是一件了不起的成就。去创造你自己生活的意义不容易，但仍值得你去尝试，并且我觉得你会因自找麻烦变得更快乐。“

Thank you.(Applause)

谢谢。（掌声）