新航道

  很多雅思考生為了提高雅思閱讀分數，做了很多題目，但成效不大，這時可以想想是不是備考書籍選擇不當造成，建議考生們多多看劍橋雅思真題。上海新航道雅思小編第一時間給大家帶來了雅思劍5Test2閱讀譯文Passage3-The Birth of Scientific English。希望可以幫助廣大雅思考生輕松備考雅思。

  雅思劍5Test2閱讀譯文Passage3-The Birth of Scientific English

  科技英語的誕生

  World science is dominated today by a small number of languages, including Japanese, German and French, but it is English which is probably the most popular global language of science. This is not just because of the importance of English-speaking countries such as the USA in scientific research; the scientists of many non-English-speaking countries find that they need to write their research papers in English to reach a wide international audience. Given the prominence of scientific English today, it may seem surprising that no one really knew how to write science in English before the 17th century. Before that, Latin was regarded as the lingua franca1 for European intellectuals.

  雖然當今世界科學為包括日語，德語和法語在內的少數幾門語言所統治，但是英語可能才是科學界最普及的世界語言。這不僅僅是由于美國這樣的英語國家在科學研究中所起的重要作用，而且還是因為許多非英語國家的科學家發現為了擁有廣大的國際讀者群，他們需要用英語寫研究論文。今天，科技英語的地位已經顯得非常重要。因此，你可能很難想到在17世紀之前竟沒有人很淸楚在科學寫作中如何使用英語，(事實上)在17世紀之前，被人們視為歐洲知識分子通用語言的是拉丁文。

  The European Renaissance (c. 14th-16th century) is sometimes called the ‘revival of learning’, a time of renewed interest in the ‘lost knowledge’ of classical times. At the same time, however, scholars also began to test and extend this knowledge. The emergent nation states of Europe developed competitive interests in world exploration and the development of trade. Such expansion, which was to take the English language west to America and east to India, was supported by scientific developments such as the discovery of magnetism and hence the invention of the compass improvements in cartography and — perhaps the most important scientific revolution of them all — the new theories of astronomy and the movement of the Earth in relation to the planets and stars, developed by Copernicus (1473-1543).

  約在14到16世紀間出現的歐洲“文藝復興”有時被稱作是“知識復興”，在這一時期，人們對失落的古希臘羅馬時期的知識重新萌發了興趣。然而，與此同時，學者們也開始檢驗和擴展這種知識。歐洲新興國家競相進行世界探險、發展貿易，這些活動的增加，使英語向西傳到了美洲，向東傳到了印度。這些活動獲得了科學進步的支持，如磁場的發現以及由此而發明的指南針，地圖制作技術的改進，和其中或許最為重要的科學變革——由哥白尼(1473-1543)創立起來的地球與其他行星和恒星相對運動的理論和天文學的新理論。

  England was one of the first countries where scientists adopted and publicised Copernican ideas with enthusiasm. Some of these scholars, including two with interests in language — John Wallis and John Wilkins — helped found the Royal Society in 1660 in order to promote empirical scientific research.

  英格蘭是率先有科學家熱情地接受并宣傳哥白尼的思想的國家之一。這些學者當中，有兩位對語言感興趣，他們分別是John Wallis和John Wilkins。1660年，這兩位學者幫助組建了英國皇家學會，來推廣實證性的科學研究。

  Across Europe similar academies and societies arose, creating new national traditions of science. In the initial stages of the scientific revolution, most publications in the national languages were popular works, encyclopaedias, educational textbooks and translations. Original science was not done in English until the second half of the 17th century. For example, Newton published his mathematical treatise, known as the Principia, in Latin, but published his later work on the properties of light — Opticks — in English.

  整個歐洲大陸上都陸續出現了類似的研究院和協會，從而創立起了新的民族科學傳統。在科學革命的初始階段，大多以本國語言出版的出版物都是大眾讀物、百科全書、教科書和譯著。直到17世紀下半葉，英語才成為原創科學所使用的語言。例如，牛頓發表自己的數學論文《自然哲學的數學原理》時用的是拉丁文，但后來發表他有關光的特性的論文《光學》時，用的卻是英文。

  There were several reasons why original science continued to be written in Latin. The first was simply a matter of audience. Latin was suitable for an international audience of scholars, whereas English reached a socially wider, but more local, audience. Hence, popular science was written in English.

  原創科學一直使用拉丁文寫作有多個原因。首先就是讀者的問題。拉丁文適合廣大國際學者閱讀，而英語雖然可以被社會上更多的人所理解，但這些讀者更多的是英國國內的讀者。因此，大眾科學是用英語寫就的。

  A second reason for writing in Latin may, perversely, have been a concern for secrecy. Open publication had dangers in putting into the public domain preliminary ideas which had not yet been fully exploited by their ‘author’. This growing concern about intellectual property rights was a feature of the period — it reflected both the humanist notion of the individual, rational scientist who invents and discovers through private intellectual labour, and the growing connection between original science and commercial exploitation. There was something of a social distinction between ‘scholars and gentlemen’ who understood Latin, and men of trade who lacked a classical education. And in the mid-17th century it was common practice for mathematicians to keep their discoveries and proofs secret, by writing them in cipher, in obscure languages, or in private messages deposited in a sealed box with the Royal Society. Some scientists might have felt more comfortable with Latin precisely because its audience, though international, was socially restricted. Doctors clung the most keenly to Latin as an ‘insider language’.

  第二個用拉丁文寫作的原因或許顯得荒謬，那就是想要保守秘密。公開出版著作可能會導致還未被原作者研究透徹的初步理念進人公眾領域。對知識產權的日益關注是那個時代的特征，這既反映出一種人文關懷，即對富于理性的科學家個人通過自己的腦力勞動進行發明和發現的關懷，又體現出原創科學與商業化利用間日益緊密的聯系。那些懂拉丁文的學者、紳士與沒有受過什么正規教育的商人是有社會差異的。17世紀中期的時候，數學家將自己的發現和例證用密碼、晦澀的語言來描述，或寫成個人的便條，封存在英國皇家學會的小盒子里，以保守秘密，這在當時是司空見慣的事情。有些科學家更愿用拉丁文的原因可能就是因為盡管拉丁文的讀者是世界性的，卻是非常有限的，社會上沒有多少人懂，醫生則對拉丁文萬分鐘愛，將其視為“內部人的語言”。

  A third reason why the writing of original science in English was delayed may have been to do with the linguistic inadequacy of English in the early modern period. English was not well equipped to deal with scientific argument. First it lacked the necessary technical vocabulary. Second, it lacked the grammatical resources required to represent the world in an objective and impersonal way, and to discuss the relations, such as cause and effect, that might hold between complex and hypothetical entities.

  原創科學遲遲未用英文書寫的第三個原因可能與近代早期英語語言還不發達有關。英語還不能很好的用于科學說理。首先，英語缺乏必要的技術詞匯;其次，英語沒有必要的語法，無法客觀公正地表現世界，也無法討論各種關系，如復雜而又是假設性的各實體間可能存在的因果關系。

  Fortunately, several members of the Royal Society possessed an interest in Language and became engaged in various linguistic projects. Although a proposal in 1664 to establish a committee for improving the English language came to little, the society’s members did a great deal to foster the publication of science in English and to encourage the development of a suitable writing style. Many members of the Royal Society also published monographs in English. One of the first was by Robert Hooke, the society’s first curator of experiments, who described his experiments with microscopes in Micrographia (1665). This work is largely narrative in style, based on a transcript of oral demonstrations and lectures.

  幸運的是，有幾名英國皇家學會的成員對語言感興趣，并開始從事各種語言學方面的研究工作。盡管1664年關于建立改善英語委員會的提議沒有什么結果，但是英國皇家學會的成員卻做了大量的工作，促進用英語出版科學著作，鼓勵恰當寫作風格的形成。許多英國皇家學會的成員也用英文發表了學術專著，首批成員包括學會首任實驗管理員羅伯特·胡克，他1665年出版了《顯微圖集》，書中描述了他的顯微鏡實驗。這本著作以口頭講解示范和講座的文字記錄稿為藍本，大體上是記敘文風格。

  In 1665 a new scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions, was inaugurated. Perhaps the first international English-language scientific journal, it encouraged a new genre of scientific writing, that of short, focused accounts of particular experiments.

  1665年，一份新的科學雜志《哲學匯刊》創刊。這或許算得上是首份英文國際科學期刊。該期刊鼓勵新的科學寫作風格：簡潔、重點地描述某一特定實驗。

  The 17th century was thus a formative period in the establishment of scientific English. In the following century much of this momentum was lost as German established itself as the leading European language of science. It is estimated that by the end of the 18th century 401 German scientific journals had been established as opposed to 96 in France and 50 in England. However, in the 19th century scientific English again enjoyed substantial lexical growth as the industrial revolution created the need for new technical vocabulary, and new, specialized, professional societies were instituted to promote and publish in the new disciplines.

  因此，17世紀算是科技英語形成的發展階段。在接下來的一個世紀中，科技英語的這種發展勢頭卻消失了，因為德語成為了歐洲科學領域的主導語言。據估計，到了18世紀末，德語科學雜志有401份，與之相對，法語科學雜志有96份，英語科學雜志有50份，盡管如此，到了19世紀，伴隨著工業革命對新技術詞匯的需要，科技英語在詞匯上重新有了大幅度的增長。同時，新的專業學會也紛紛建立起來，促進新學科的發展和著作的出版。

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