奥威尔政治与英语语言.doc

大多数为英语而烦心的人都会承认，英语的处境不佳，并且我们不能通过有意识的行动而使这种情形有所改观。我们的文明颓废不堪，语言也不能幸免，她不可避免的成为整体衰落的一份子。随之而来，任何反对滥用语言的努力都是感情上的复古主义者，就像那些倾向于蜡烛而非电灯，或是偏爱马车而非飞机的努力一样。言外之意，这里隐藏着一种并不十分明晰的信念，即语言是自然衍生的结果，并不是我们为自身之便而创造的工具。 现在可以明白了，一种语言的衰落归根结底都会有政治和经济上的原因：而不能简单的归因于一两个蹩脚作家的不良影响。但这种影响也可以是原因之一，而且能增强最初的原因并且在一种增强了的形式中产生同样的效果，如此无限循环，越搞越糟。一个人可以由于感到失败而溺于饮酒，而后由于饮酒从而导致更大的失败；几乎同样的事情就发生在英语语言自身之上。她由于我们愚笨的想法而变得粗陋不堪、难以精确，而杂乱懒散的语言又使我们更容易产生愚笨的想法。问题的关键在于，此二者互为因果、相互激荡。现代英语，尤其是书面语，充斥着由于因袭而来的不良表达，而某人如果愿意为此多费心神，则可以完全避免。如果一个人可以丢掉这些不良表达，他将可以更清晰准确的思考，而清晰准确的思考，则是迈向政治重生的必要的第一步：由此，对抗不良的英语表达并非妄动之举，也并非唯有职业作家才关注的内容。过会儿我再来论谈这点，希望届时我所表达的内容将更为清晰。眼下，这里有五个英语表达的样本，他们采用的都是目前习惯性的写法。 这五段短文并没有经过挑选，因为他们着实糟糕——而要是挑选的话，我将会找出更烂的文章来——但是他们阐明了我们目前遇到的种种想法。这些文章略低于平均水平，但作为有代表性的例子却已足够。我将其一一编号，以便必要时的引用：（译者按：为展现作者所批评的问题，原文未翻译） 1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate. Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression) 2. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate, or put at a loss for bewilder . Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossa) 3. On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of