英文写作终极指南 简洁才是王道.pdf

www.TopS 大家网 1 / 3 英文写作终极指南：简洁才是王道！ What is good writing? 什么样的文章是好文章？ It depends on what country youre from. We all know whats considered “good writing” in our own country. We grow up immersed in the cadences and sentence structure of the language we were born into, so we think, “Thats probably what every country considers good writing; they just use different words.” If only! I once asked a student from Cairo, “What kind of language is Arabic?” She said, “Its all adjectives.” 这取决于你来自何处。我们都知道在自己的国家好文章是什么样的。我们从小到大，已经熟知我们母语 的抑扬顿挫和句子结构，于是我们认为，其他国家所谓的好文章也应该是这样，只不过用的语言不同。 要是这样就好了！我有次问一个来自开罗的学生：“阿拉伯语是什么样的语言？”她回答说：“都是形容 词。” Well, of course its not all adjectives, but I knew what she meant: its decorative, its ornate, its intentionally pleasing. But all those adjectives and all that decoration would be the ruin of any journalist trying to write good English. No proverbs, please. 当然，不可能都是形容词，我知道她的意思：阿拉伯语是一种注重雕饰和阅读快感的语言。但是太多形 容词和太多雕饰都不利于英文的新闻写作。千万别使用那么多谚语。 Spanish also comes with a heavy load of beautiful baggage that will smother any journalist writing in English. 西班牙语也一样，有太多不利于英文写作的修饰语。 English is not as musical as Spanish, or Italian, or French, or as ornamental as Arabic, or as vibrant as some of your native languages. But Im hopelessly in love with English because its plain and its strong. It has a huge vocabulary of words that have precise shades of meaning; theres no subject, however technical or complex, that cant be made clear to any reader in good English - if its used right. Unfortunately, there are many ways of using it wrong. Those are the damaging habits I want to warn you about today. 英语不像西班牙语、意大利语或者法语那样富有音律美，也不像阿拉伯语那样华丽，可能也不像你们的 母语那样生动鲜活，但我就是无可救药地热爱英语，因为它平实有力，拥有海量意义鲜明的词汇。描述 一样事物，不管多高科技多复杂，在标准英语中读者都看懂 - 如果描述准确。不幸的是很多人都不能正 确使用英语。以下就是我希望大家避免的