0625 2008 周三

Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary 改版

And yet they represented some other sort of mixture of values that we've seen at other times ever since that period.

如果是為了出貨，我會這樣譯：

他們對中國的觀感正反雜陳，其強烈程度是後來的外國人都未之見的。

如果不是為了出貨，我又會怎樣譯？

廢話，我當然不會去譯。我又不是自虐狂！

me: 羅時瑋即將來我處一齊參加1400老漢世界宗教博物館退休 有興趣通話嗎

Chen: 好啊！他何時到？

me: 快到 在捷運車中

Chen: 我的電話是29387632

me: 了解

在台灣發現異鄉
我二三月前第一次到陳文成博士紀念館
印象最深刻的是陳博士一張 "我是中國人" (那時空教育下的讀書人多這樣talk the talk 不見得 walk the talk
等到他們到中國 就發現他們除了台胞之後 無後路...漢寶德 (Han Pao-teh)寫藝人間

So there was admiration, there was violence. There was also difficulty learning the language because the Chinese government was unwilling to let Westerners learn Chinese. Language was seen in other words as a protection of your security, and we know from some records that early Chinese who offered to tutor Westerners in Chinese language could be imprisoned or even executed. So Westerners wanting to learn Chinese in this period had to do so in secrecy if they were in the Chinese world or in one of these Chinese cities near the coast.

是以欽佩至，暴戾亦隨之。又，要學習中文頗費周章，因為中方政府雅不願洋人學漢語。換句話說，語言被認為是種護身符，我們一些檔案知道，早期教洋人漢語的，輕則或入監，甚或遭處決。所以在此期間的洋人，如果身處華人世界或散居沿海某城，要想學習中文就不得不保密行事。

They were forbidden to travel inland, they were forbidden to move inside the gates of China's cities, so the Westerners had to camp outside - outside Guangzhou in the marshy area near the Pearl River, outside Shanghai in the marshy areas along the Huangpu - many of you may have seen. 史景遷先生

他們不得入內地，他們不得進中國諸城城門，所以，洋人不得不駐營城外—在廣州，紮於城外珠江三角洲的沼澤地附近，在上海，在沿黃埔將的沼澤地帶—諸如此等，諸君多人或許親履該地。 It was an uneasy period. And the countries groped towards each other in terms of language by developing a curious hybrid mixture of language, which we now call Pidgin English. I don't know how many people know Pidgin English now, but it was a kind of newly coined language form in which, using Chinese grammatical sentences and a mixture of English and Portuguese and Indian and other words, a simplified trading language was developed that let the two countries communicate. And it had an extraordinary life as a language. It let people very rapidly deal in goods and tariff issues and a few basic legal issues and some problems of the exact nature of the trade items you were dealing with. It let you handle all these things with the vocabulary of only a few hundred words. I'm not saying we should add this to our curriculum in our overburdened schools, but still it is a fascinating linguistic structure. 這是個艱難時世。諸國摸索交往所發展出的雜交混合的語言甚有趣，我們現在稱其為洋涇浜英語。我不知道現在還有多少人通曉洋涇浜英語，它是一種新創的語言形式，句子採用漢語語法，單字混合英語、葡萄牙語、印度及其他語種，換言之，它是一種簡化的貿易用語，得以讓異國人溝通。此語言的一生，頗不尋常呢。它讓人們在作生意上頗為方便：貨物和關稅的問題上，某些基本的法律議題和一些貿易項目的確切性質之問題等，都能十分迅速處理。處理所有這些，所需的詞彙只要幾百字即可。我不是說我們應該在業已不堪負荷的學校課程加入它，但它仍不失為一種迷人的語言結構。