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Otherwise one will bind the conversation, one will not let it flow freely here and there. There would have been no conversation the other evening if we had been able to settle at once the meaning of "the King's English." We would never have gone to Australia , or leaped back in time to the Norman Conquest.
否則，談話便會受到妨礙，不能如流水般無拘無束地進行。那天晚上，如果我們當場弄清了"標準英語"的意義，也就不可能再有那一場交談論辯，我們也就不可能一會兒跳到澳大利亞去，一會兒扯回到諾曼底征服者時代了。
And there would have been nothing to think about the next morning. Perhaps above all, one would not have been engaged by interest in the musketeer who raised the subject, wondering more about her. The bother about teaching chimpanzees how to talk is that they will probably try to talk sense and so ruin all conversation.
而且，我們也就沒有什么可以留到第二天去思考了。尤為重要的是，如果那個問題當場得到解決的話，人們就不會對于那位引出話題的"火槍手"那樣發生興趣，想多了解她的情況了。教黑猩猩說話之所以很困難，其原因就在于它們往往可能盡想著要講出些正經八百的話來，因而使得談話失去意趣。
(from The Washington Post, May 6, 1979)
摘自1979年5月6日《華盛頓郵報》
