好的英語文章雙語
在當今時代,英語閱讀其作為最基本的語言能力之一,已成為獲取知識和科學技術新資訊的一條必不可缺的重要途徑。下面是小編帶來的,歡迎閱讀!
1
美式拼寫一統天下 英國人都寫美語了
British English may have come first, but around the world, the American way of spelling is now far more popular.
或許先有英式英語的,但美式拼寫方法現在流行得多。
A recent examination of these two variants of the English language show that publications now largely use the American version, swapping words like ‘centre’ for ‘center’ after the 1880s.
最近一項研究審視了這兩大英語語言的變種,發現出版期刊如今大幅使用美式英語,自19世紀80年代後,就把centre這樣的詞語替換成center。
According to the data, this shift was further strengthened around the time of World War I – and as the language evolved, even the British have ditched the spelling of some words for their trans-Atlanticcounterparts.
從資料看,這一變化在一戰期間又進一步加劇,隨著語言的演變,甚至英國人自己也摒棄有些單詞的拼寫方式,換成大西洋彼岸的美式拼寫。
Among many words, including ‘grey’ and ‘flavour,’ British English can be seen dwindling around 1880, when American English began to cross into wider use.
眾多詞彙裡包括"grey"和“flavour”。大約在1890年間,英式英語開始衰退,而美式英語的運用卻越來越廣泛。
Since then, English-language publications have preferred ‘gray’ and ‘flavor,’ and despite fluctuations in use over the years, they’ve remained more popular than the preceding versions since overtaking them.
自此以後,英語出版物也開始偏向用"gray"和“flavor”。儘管多年來就如何拼寫有過反覆,自從美式英語趕超英式英語之後,"gray"和“flavor“比起之前的拼寫方式而言,還是更受歡迎。
During World War I, the world also began to favor ‘defense’ over the British English version, ‘defence.’
一戰期間,世界也開始喜歡用“defense”,而非英式版本的“defence”。
For many years, British English maintained its hold on ‘honour,’ grappling with the American version for years as the two flip-flopped in popularity around the world. In the 1970s, however, American English gained a clear lead as ‘honor’ increasingly became the more spelling of choice.
多年來,英式英語保持著“honour”的拼法,和美式英語相持不下,隨著這兩種英語的地位互換,受歡迎程度也起了變化。然而,在20世紀70年代,美式英語取得領先,“honor”的拼法逐漸成為拼寫主流。
2
所有英文小說都逃不過這6種套路?!
If you're ever reading a book or watching a movie and get the distinct feeling you've come across the story before – or even better, can predict exactly what's going to happen next –there could be a good reason for that.
如果你在讀書或者看電影時清晰地感覺到這個故事似曾相識——或者更厲害的,你能準確預測出後面會發生些什麼——嗯,這種感覺可不是毫無依據的。
Computer scientists have sifted through the language of more than 1,700 works of fiction and discovered that English literature consists of just six kinds of emotional arcs that make up nearly all of the most well-known stories.
電腦科學家們在測查了1700多部小說後,發現英語文學中只包含六種情感弧線,而幾乎所有的名著都是由它們構成的。
While literary theorists have for centuries characterised and counted the basic plots and structures that writers use in stories, it's unlikely there's ever been such a rigorous scientific analysis of English fiction like this before.
儘管若干世紀以來,文學理論家們一直在研究作家寫故事時應用的基本情節和結構,分析它們的特徵,歷數其種類,但好像此前從來沒有針對英語小說做過如此嚴謹的科學分析。
Researchers from the Computational Story Laboratory at the University of Vermont mined the complete text of some 1,737 fiction works available on Project Gutenberg, an online collection of more than 50,000 digital books in the public domain. By analysing the sentiment of language used in chunks of text 10,000 words long in each of these texts, the researchers were able to register the emotional ups and downs for the stories as a whole. Negative words like "poverty", "dead", and "punishment" dragged the sentiment down, while positive terms like "love", "peace", and "friend" brought it up.
佛蒙特大學“計算機故事實驗室”的研究員們從古登堡計劃Project Gutenberg是一個線上書庫,內含5萬多本公版電子書上找到了大約1737部全文小說,他們將這些文字分成文字塊,每個文字塊包含1萬個單詞,然後分析其中的語言情感,最終得出故事整體的情感起伏。“貧窮”、“死亡”、“懲罰”等消極詞彙會使情感變得低落,而“愛情”、“和平”、“友誼”之類積極詞彙會使情感變得高昂。
Doing this for over 1,700 books and charting the dynamics of each text, the team discovered that all stories basically boil down to one of a set number of emotional patterns. "We find a set of six coretrajectories which form the building blocks of complex narratives," the authors write in their study.
研究團隊在按照這種方法將1700多本書逐本分析、並畫出每本書的動態曲線圖之後,他們發現所有的故事最後基本上都會歸結到幾種情感模式中的一種。研究報告中寫道:“我們發現有6種核心的情感軌跡,它們是構成複雜敘事大廈的磚瓦。”
According to the researchers, those six core emotional arcs are:
根據研?a href='//' target='_blank'>咳嗽鋇乃搗ǎ??種核心情感弧線包括:
· "Rags to riches" An ongoing emotional rise, eg. Alice's Adventures Under Ground
“白手起家型”持續的情感上漲,如《愛麗絲地下奇遇記》
· "Tragedy, or riches to rags" An ongoing emotional fall, eg. Romeo and Juliet
“悲劇型”或者“家道中落型”持續的情感下落,如《羅密歐與朱麗葉》
· "Man in a hole" A fall followed by a rise
“穴人型”先下落後上漲
· "Icarus" A rise followed by a fall
“伊卡洛斯型”先上漲後下落
· "Cinderella" Rise–fall–rise
“灰姑娘型”上漲-下落-上漲
· "Oedipus" Fall–rise–fall
“俄狄浦斯型”下落-上漲-下落
Interestingly, based on download statistics from Project Gutenberg, the researchers say the most popular stories are ones that use more complex emotional arcs, with the Cinderella and Oedipus arcs registering the most downloads. Also popular are works that combine these core arcs together in new ways within one story, such as two sequential "Man in a hole" arcs stuck together, or the "Cinderella" arc coupled with a tragic ending.
有趣的是,研究人員說:根據從古登堡計劃下載的資料來看,最受歡迎的故事往往應用了較為複雜的情感弧線,“灰姑娘型”和“俄狄浦斯型”囊括了大多數下載作品。另外,還有一些很受歡迎的作品是以一種新的方式將幾種情感弧線結合在一個故事裡,比如說連續出現兩個“穴人型”,或者在“灰姑娘型”後面加上一個悲劇結尾。