实训练 中译英部分 外国人初来乍到,对中国人的第一印象就是千人一面。他们的面孔就像是用同一个模子刻出来的,所有人身上似乎都穿着一色的蓝布衣服,每一双眼睛的“焦点”都像是“一成不变”的,两个中国人就好比一个豆荚中的两颗豌豆,一模一样。但是,无论比尔怎么评价中国人,只要稍微体验,一个最不善于观察的旅行者也会注意到,这种千人一面的印象并非一个保险的假设。任意两个地区,即使是相邻的,口音也不相同,这种差异很有意思,或许也是无法解释的。这种细微的差异日积月累,直到演变为一种新的“方言”,常常有人会郑重其事地告诉我们,在中国存在着大量不同的口头“语言”,尽管书面语是相同的。我们还常常被告之,各地的风俗习惯也同样差异甚大,用一句中国人的俗话来说,就是“十里不同俗”,诸如此类的例子不胜枚举。度量衡的不统一在这里也很普遍,而在西方国家,度量衡的绝对统一则是生活方便的一个重要前提。 英译中部分 Europe gave us our civilization but Asia gave us our religion. What is even more interesting, Asia gave the world the three great monotheistic religions which now dominate mankind. Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism are all of Asiatic origin. It is curious to reflect that when the inquisitioners were burning their Jews, both the executioners and their victims were appealing to deities of Asiatic origin; that when the Crusaders were killing the Mohammedans and vice versa, it was a conflict of two Asiatic creeds which bade them do murder upon each other; and that whenever a Christian missionary gets into a dispute with a follower of Confucius, the two are merely engaged in purely Asiatic exchange of opinions. But Asia did not only give us our religious beliefs. It also gave us the fundamentals upon which we have constructed the entire fabric of civilization. In the pride of our recent technical inventions, we may loudly boast of “our great western progress”(we occasionally do), but that much vaunted progress of the west is merely a continuation of the progress that was begun in the east. It is highly doubtful whether the west would have been able to do anything at all if it had not learned the rudiments of everything it knows in the schools of the east.