評論
打印
But if so, he has walked into one of lexicography's biggest booby traps: the belief that the obvious is easy to define.
如果真是這樣，那他就步入了詞典編纂學的一個最大的陷阱，即認為顯而易見的事物容易下定義。
Whereas the opposite is true. Anyone can give a fair description of the strange, the new, or the unique.
實際情況卻恰恰相反，對于那些新奇或獨特的事物，倒是人人都能給以恰當的描述，
It's the commonplace, the habitual, that challenges definition, for its very commonness compels us to define it in uncommon terms.
而真正難于下定義的倒是那些普通而常見的事物，正因其普通才迫使我們不得不用不普通的詞語去給它們下定義。
Dr. Johnson was ridiculed on just this score when his dictionary appeared in 1755.
約翰遜博士在他的詞典于1755年問世時，也正是由于這一原因才受到人們嘲笑的。
For two hundred years his definition of a network as "any thing reticulated or decussated,at equal distances, with interstices between the inter sections” has been good for a laugh.
兩百年來，他給network(網絡)一詞下的定義"任何以同等距離呈網狀或交叉成X狀，并在交叉線之間留有空隙的物體"一直是人們的笑料。
But in the merriment one thing is always overlooked: no one has yet come up with a better definition!
但在笑聲中，有一件事卻總是被忽略了：至今也沒有任何人提出比這更好的定義來!
Subsequent dictionaries defined it as a mesh and then defined a mesh as a network. That's simple, all right.
后來的詞典把network(網絡)解釋為mesh(網狀結構)，然后又把mesh解釋為network。這種處理方法倒的確是夠簡單的!
Anyone who attempts sincerely to state what the were door means in the United States of America today can't take refuge in a log cabin.
在今日的美利堅合眾國，任何真誠地想要說明"門''這個詞的含義的人都不可能躲避到小木屋里去。
There has been an enormous proliferation of closing and demarking devices and structure in the past twenty years,
近二十年來，用于關閉和打開的裝置和結構花樣百出，種類劇增。
and anyone who tries to thread his way through the many meanings now included under door may have to sacrifice brevity to accuracy and even have to employ words that a limited vocabulary may find obscure.
因此，任何人若是想弄清"門"這一詞現在所包含的許多種意義，那他就可能不得不犧牲簡潔以求準確，甚至還可能不得不使用一些在詞匯量有限的人看來可能是晦澀難懂的詞語。
Is the entrance to a tent a door, for instance? And What of the thing that seals the exit of an air plane?
舉例來說，帳篷的入口算不算是門?還有那把飛機的出人口封閉起來的東西叫什么?那
Is this a door? Or what of those sheets and jets of air that are now being used, in place of old-fashioned oak and hinges, to screen entrances and exists? Are they doors?
算不算是門?還有那些現在已經開始用來代替老式的橡木折葉門遮蔽出入口的布簾或噴氣簾呢?它們算是門嗎?
And what of that accordion-like things that set off various sections of many modern apartments?
還有許多現代化公寓里用來將屋子的各個部分隔開的那種像手風琴似的東西又是什么?
The fine print in the lease takes it for granted that they are doors and that spaces demarked by them are rooms-and the rent is computed on the number of rooms.
租房契約書上的條款不容分說地把它們算作是門，由它們隔成的空間便是房間--房租便是按房間數來計算的。
