大学英语自学教程词典是如何编纂的附翻译

　　大学英语自学教程(上册) unit 12 词典是如何编纂的

大学英语自学教程词典是如何编纂的附翻译

　　12-A. How Dictionaries Are Made

　　It is widely believed that every word has a correct meaning, that we learn these meanings mainly from teachers and grammarians, and that dictionaries and grammars are the supreme authority in matters of meaning and usage. Few people ask by what authority the writers of dictionaries and grammars say what they say. I once got into a dispute with an English woman over the pronunciation of a word and offered to look it up in the dictionary. The English woman said firmly, “What for? I am English. I was born and brought up in England. The way I speak is English.” Such self-assurance about one’s own language is fairly common among the English. In the United States, however, anyone who is willing to quarrel with the dictionary is regarded as either eccentric or mad.

　　Let us see how dictionaries are made and how the editors arrive at definitions. What follows applies only to those dictionary offices where first-hand, original research goes on - not those in which editors simply copy existing dictionaries. The task of writing a dictionary begins with the reading of vast amounts of the literature of the period or subject that the dictionary is to cover. As the editors read, they copy on cards every interesting or rare word, every unusual or peculiar occurrence of a common word, a large number of common words in their ordinary uses, and also the sentences in which each of these words appears.

　　That is to say, the context of each word is collected, along with the word itself. For a really big job of dictionary writing, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, millions of such cards are collected, and the task of editing occupies decades. As the cards are collected, they are alphabetized and sorted. When the sorting is completed, there will be for each word anywhere from two or three to several hundred quotations, each on its card.

　　To define a word, then, the dictionary editor places before him the stack of cards illustrating that word; each of the cards represents an actual use of the word by a writer of some literary or historical importance. He reads the cards carefully, discards some, re-reads the rest, and divides up the stack according to what he thinks are the several senses of the word. Finally, he writes his definitions, following the hard-and-fast rule that each definition must be based on what the quotations in front of him reveal about the meaning of the word. The editor cannot be influenced by what he thinks a given word ought to mean. He must work according to the cards, or not at all.

　　The writing of a dictionary, therefore, is not a task of setting up authoritative statements about the "true meanings" of words, but a task of recording, to the best of one's ability, what various words have meant to authors in the distant or immediate past. If, for example, we had been writing a dictionary in 1890, or even as late as l919, we could have said that the word "broadcast" means "to scatter" (seed, for example), but we could not have stated that from 1921 on, the most common meaning of the word should become “to send out programs by radio or television.” In choosing our words when we Speak or write, we can be guided by the historical record provided us by the dictionary, but we cannot be bound by it, because new situations, new experiences, new inventions, new feelings, are always forcing us to give new uses to old words. Looking under a “hood,” we should ordinarily have found, five hundred years ago, a monk; today, we find a car engine.

　　【课文译文】

　　词典是如何编纂的

　　人们普遍认为每个词都有它正确的含义，这些含义我们主要是从老师和语法学家那里学来的，而且词典和语法在释义和讲解用法方面是绝对的权威。很少有人会问词典和语法书的编者又是根据什么权威来说那些话的。一次我和一位英国妇女就一个词的发音发生了争执，我提出查查词典。这位英国妇女固执地说：“查词典有什么用?我是英国人，我生在英国，长在英国，我说的是地道的英语”。这种对母语的自信在英国人中相当普遍。但在美国，如果有人想跟词典争个对错，那他不是行为古怪，就是精神有问题。

　　让我们来看一下词典是如何编写的，编辑们又是如何给词下定义的。下面的过程不适用于那些简单地照抄现有词典的人而适合于那些词典编辑部的编辑们，他们利用第一手资料，进行最基本的研究。编写字典之初要阅读大量的同时代的文学作品或者词典要包括的学科内容。编辑们在阅读时，会把有趣的和少见的词，常用词的`不常见及特有的用法及许多常用词的一般用法抄在卡片上，同时也抄下含有这些词的原句。

　　这也就是说，每个单词都是与这个词的上下文是一起收集的。词典编辑是一项非常巨大的工作。例如《牛津英语词典》的编辑们就收集了数百万张卡片，编辑工作历经数十年。卡片收集完成后，按字母顺序进行分类。分类完成后，每个词将有数目在两三个到几百个之间的引语(作为例句)，每句引语均写在其卡片上。

　　然后是给词下定义。词典的编辑面对一堆解释该词的卡片，每张卡片代表着某个文学流派作家或历史要人对该词的应用。他认真地阅读这些卡片，删掉一些，重新阅读其他部分，然后按照他认为属于这个词的几个意思把这堆卡片再分类。最后，他按照“严格”的原则即给每个词下定义必须根据他面前的引语所表达的这个词的意思来写出词的定义。编辑不能受他认为某个词应该是什么意思的影响。他必须依据卡片编辑，否则的话就徒劳无益。

　　因此，词典的编写不是一项确定某个词“真正含义”的权威性评述的工作，而是一项记录工作，是尽编辑所能，记录下对于古代或现代作家来说这些词所表达的含义。例如，我们是在1890，或者是1919编写一部词典，我们可以说单词“broadcast”的意思是“播撒”(种子)。但如果我们是1921年或者在这之后编写词典，就不能那样写。这个词最常见的意思变成了“通过广播电视传播节目”。当我们说话或写作选词时，我们可以用词典提供给我们的历史记录作指导，但决不能被束缚住，因为新形势、新经历、新发明、新感觉总是迫使我们创造新词来代替旧词。查一下“hood”这个词，我们会发现，500年前该词条下的意思是“修道士”，而今天，它的意思却是“汽车发动机”。

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