著名的有關良好寫作的6條規則

If you want to improve your writing in 30 minutes, read George Orwell’s essay Politics and the English Language. “Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way,” he begins. After analysing some contemporary specimens of terrible prose, he provides his famous six rules for good writing, starting with: “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.”

如果你想在30分鐘裏提高你的寫作，請讀一讀喬治•奧威爾(George Orwell)的雜文《政治與英語》(Politics and the English Language)。“大多數用心思考這個問題的人都承認，英語的現狀不佳，”這篇文章是這樣開頭的。在分析了幾個當時的糟糕行文案例後，他提出了著名的有關良好寫作的6條規則，其中第一條是：“永遠不要用書刊中常見的那些暗喻、明喻以及其他各種修辭手法。”

Orwell’s essay appeared 70 years ago this month in Horizon magazine, but his advice hasn’t dated. What has changed, and for the better, is language. The kind of plain speech he favoured has now gone mainstream. Political language in particular — Orwell’s great concern — is much clearer today. To find the kind of bad writing that serves to hide truths, you have to look elsewhere.

奧威爾的這篇雜文於70年前的4月發表在《地平線》(Horizon)雜誌上，但他給出的建議還沒有過時。改變且是朝着好的方向改變了的，是英語語言本身。他所青睞的那種平實的語言現在成爲了主流。尤其是，奧威爾最關注的政治語言，今天已經變得清晰得多。要想找到那種目的是掩蓋真相的糟糕寫作，你得上別的領域看一看。

His essay lists various useless, ugly or pretentious words and phrases that were common in political language then: “take up the cudgel for”, “mailed fist”, “clarion”, “hotbed”, “petit bourgeois”. Today hardly anyone uses these words, and they haven’t simply been replaced by new clichés. Rather, just as Orwell hoped, written language has become more like speech.

他的雜文列舉出了當時的政治語言中常見的各種毫無意義、缺乏美感或者裝腔作勢的字眼：“take up the cudgel for”（毅然支持）, “mailed fist”(武力), “clarion”(號角), “hotbed”（溫牀）, “petit bourgeois”（小資產階級）。今天幾乎已沒有人再使用這些字眼，人們也並不是用新的陳詞濫調簡單地替換了它們。相反，正如奧威爾所希望的，書面語言已經變得更像口頭語言。

That’s partly thanks to email and social media. Everyone’s a writer nowadays. Most people on Facebook, Twitter or blogs try to sound like Orwell: they use everyday words, and speak in the subjective “I” rather than as some fake-omniscient expert. Some of this clear writing is stupid, and some is clever. What it doesn’t do is use fancy language to make stupidity sound clever.

這在一定程度上要歸因於電子郵件和社交媒體。現在每個人都是寫作者。Facebook、Twitter或者博客上的大多數人都試着像奧威爾那樣寫作：他們使用日常語言，以第一人稱口吻發表看法，而不是借看似淵博的專家之口。這些表達清楚的文字，有的愚蠢，有的聰明。但這些文字不會做的是，用浮誇的語言讓愚蠢的觀點聽起來聰明。

The casual style has spread across professional writing too. In Orwell’s day, writers often paraded their learning. He cites a sentence from Professor Harold Laski, which starts, “I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a 17th-century Shelley had not become . . . ”

隨意的文字風格也擴展到了專業性寫作領域。在奧威爾的時代，作家往往喜歡掉書袋。奧威爾引用了哈羅德•拉斯基(Harold Laski)教授寫的一句話：“事實上，我不確定這樣說是否不正確：一度看上去不是不像17世紀的雪萊(Shelley)的彌爾頓(Milton)，並沒有變成……”

But nobody trying to reach readers today writes like that. Modern-day populism discourages pompous displays of learning. The idea that educated people know best has become, for better and worse, a political taboo. Technological change has also helped make pomposity unfashionable. Laski’s editor had no idea which articles people read and which they didn’t. But now we know not just what people click on, but how far down the article they read. On the downside, that encourages “clickbait”. On the upside, it encourages writers to be clear.

但現在已經沒有想要打動讀者的人會這樣寫文章了。現代民粹主義不鼓勵賣弄學識。“受過教育的人懂得最多”在政治上已經是一種犯忌的想法了——不管這是好事是壞事。技術變革也促使賣弄變得不合時宜。當年拉斯基教授的編輯不知道人們讀哪些文章、不讀哪些文章。但現在，我們不僅知道人們點擊哪篇文章，還知道這篇文章他們讀到了哪裏停下。壞處是，這助長了“騙點擊”的行爲。好處是，這鼓勵作者行文清晰。

The party hacks of Orwell’s time who used deceptive language to hide truths have almost died out. Today most political writing is against parties, and aims to sound conversational. Here’s a typical modern political tweet, by Telegraph journalist Ben Wright, responding to a pro-Brexit comment by British Conservative politician Michael Gove: “UK will join ‘Bosnia, Serbia, Albania and Ukraine’ in a European free trade zone, said Gove. Wow! Where do I sign?”

奧威爾時代的那種利用欺騙性語言掩蓋真相的政黨寫手，如今幾乎已經絕跡。今天的大多數政治文字都是反對政黨的，並且盡力寫得像對話一樣隨意。以下是一條典型的當代政治推文(tweet)，是英國《每日電訊報》(The Telegraph)記者本•賴特(Ben Wright)對英國保守黨政治人士邁克爾•戈夫(Michael Gove)支持英國退歐評論的迴應：“戈夫說，英國將跟‘波斯尼亞、塞爾維亞、阿爾巴尼亞和烏克蘭’一道，加入一個歐洲自由貿易區。哇！太好了！我要在哪裏簽字？”

Orwell would have approved even of Wright’s casual grammar. “Correct grammar and syntax”, he writes, “are of no importance so long as one makes one’s meaning clear.”

奧威爾甚至會認可賴特這種隨意的語法。“只要一個人能把他的意思表達清楚，”他寫道，“正確的語法和句法無關緊要。”

There’s now an incipient shift to clarity even in academia, long a domain of lifeless language. A friend doing a PhD in English literature once explained to me that she had to use literary-theory jargon “because otherwise people think you don’t know it”.

學術界長期以來被枯燥語言所佔領，然而現在就連這個領域也開始向清晰的文風轉變。我的一位攻讀英國文學博士學位的朋友曾經向我解釋，她不得不使用文學理論術語，“否則其他人會認爲你根本不懂”。

Some academics are still determined to be unintelligible. The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman is a brilliant thinker but he writes sentences like this: “While solids have clear spatial dimensions but neutralise the impact, and thus downgrade the significance, of time (effectively resist its flow or render it irrelevant), fluids do not keep to any shape for long and are constantly ready (and prone) to change it; and so for them it is the flow of time that counts . . . ” Et cetera. The problem here is not the individual words but Bauman’s tin-eared attempt to bolt five sentences together into one.

一些學者依然打定主意要使用晦澀難懂的語言。社會學家齊格蒙特•鮑曼(Zygmunt Bauman)是一位睿智的思想者，但他寫出來的句子是這樣的：“固體有明確的空間尺寸，但它消滅時間的影響，因此降低時間的重要性（有效地抵禦時間流逝或使其無關緊要），而流體則不會長時間保持任何形狀，隨時準備着（並易於）改變形狀；因此對它們來說重要的是時間的流逝……”等等。這裏的問題不在於單個字眼，而是鮑曼不管不顧地試圖把5句話才能說完的事情塞進1句話裏說。

But the internet is changing academic language, because it is giving more academics the scope to become public intellectuals. The Washington Post’s blog The Monkey Cage, for instance, lets political scientists speak to a large public. That encourages plain language.

但互聯網正在改變學術語言，因爲互聯網賦予更多學者成爲公共知識分子的機會。比如，《華盛頓郵報》(Washington Post)的博客“猴子籠”(The Monkey Cage)，讓政治學家能夠面向廣大的公衆羣體表達觀點。這鼓勵平實的語言。

Some havens of bad English survive. One is business jargon, wonderfully charted by my colleague Lucy Kellaway. Business people use words such as “go-forward scenario” and “flexponsive” because they are trying to sound cutting-edge.

依然還有一些領域爲糟糕英語提供容身之處。其中一個是商業術語，我的同事露西•凱拉韋(Lucy Kellaway)對此進行了精彩記述。商界人士使用“前進情景”(go-forward scenario)和“靈活迴應”(flexponsive)這樣的詞，原因是他們想要顯得前衛。

But impenetrable language thrives best in zones where people have an incentive to bore the public away. In finance, ordinary Joes paid no attention to “CDOs” and “securitisation” until it was too late.

但令人費解的語言最盛行的地方，是人們有動力讓公衆因爲感到無聊而走開的領域。在金融領域，普通人不關心“債務抵押債券”(CDO)和“證券化”(securitisation)，直到爲時已晚。

Another zone of impenetrable language is Brussels. After a morning at the European Commission, anyone fond of the English language will feel tempted by Brexit. A multinational community of law graduates, steeped in French bureaucratic jargon, and happiest away from the public gaze, will write “vade mecum” when they mean handbook, and “modalities” for arrangements. When you try to reach them, they will reply that they are “on mission” instead of travelling.

另一個令人費解的語言的重災區是布魯塞爾。在歐盟委員會(European Commission)待上一個上午以後，任何喜愛英語的人都會對英國退歐動心。一羣來自各個國家的法學院畢業生，熟悉法語官僚行話，又樂得不受公衆關注，他們會把手冊寫成“vade mecum”，把安排寫成“modalities”。當你試圖聯繫他們的時候，他們不說自己在出差，而用“執行任務”(on mission)這個說法。

Most people today know how to communicate. If they sound unintelligible, it’s probably because they want to.

今天大多數人都知道如何與人交流。如果他們的話聽起來晦澀難懂，那他們很可能是故意的。