华乐丝Wallace
学术英文润色
我在教授英语写作时，会不厌其烦地提到精确用词的重要性。前阵子，我读到一本相当早期的英语文法书：The Reader Over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose，1943。有趣的是，这本书尝试为意思相近的英语单词排列顺序，具体的描述在书中的《明确叙述的原则 Principles of Clear Statement》章节。书中为相近字排序的原则为：论及「多少」或「多久」时，绝对要精确无误。该书从侧面上反映了，人们对遣词用字精确度的重视，在过去这七十年中几乎没有太大的改变。
这本书的作者表示此“比例的普遍量度表”没有被收录在任何字典或相关书目中，并将意思为“近似”的单词、短语进行了排序：
Not nearly（几乎没有）、nearly（几近）、almost（几乎）、not quite（不完全）、all but（将近）、just not（唯独没有）、within an ace（差一点）、within a hair’s breadth（毫厘之差）、oh! by the skin of my teeth（就差那么一点）、just（刚好）、only just（差一点不能）、with a bit of a rush（有几分仓促）、comfortably（从容）、easily（轻松）、with plenty to spare（时间充裕）。
身为读者，您也许不赞成这个排列顺序，认为该排序缺乏依据、武断，而且有些词已过时，应该纳入更多当下在用的词。但再仔细琢磨，该排序还挺有趣的。如果您一直搞不清楚nearly和almost哪个在程度上表示更“近似”，以下两位细心的读者做了比较，并得出nearly更接近目标的结论。
Graves和Hodge认为“比例的普遍量度”可以转换成百分比，他们将这个转换结果列出如下：
(100%) Mr. Jordan’s fortune consisted wholly of bar-gold.
(99%) Practically all his fortune consisted of bar-gold.
(95%) His fortune consisted almost entirely of bar-gold.
(90%) Nearly all his fortune consisted of bar-gold.
(80%) By far the greater part of his fortune consisted of bar-gold.
(70%) The greater part of his fortune consisted of bar-gold.
(60%) More than half his fortune consisted of bar-gold.
(55%) Rather more than half his fortune consisted of bar-gold.
(50%) Half his fortune consisted of bar-gold.
(45%) Nearly half his fortune consisted of bar-gold.
(40%) A large part of his fortune consisted of bar-gold.
(35%) Quite a large part of his fortune consisted of bar-gold.
(30%) A considerable part of his fortune consisted of bar-gold.
(25%) Part of his fortune consisted of bar-gold.
(15%) A small part of his fortune consisted of bar-gold.
(10%) Not much of his fortune consisted of bar-gold.
(5%) A very small part of his fortune consisted of bar-gold.
(1%) An inconsiderable part of his fortune consisted of bar-gold.
(0%) None of his fortune consisted of bar-gold.
Graves和Hodge认为这是被普遍接受的量表，但同时也遗憾地表示作者常常为了戏剧效果而将程度提高5%，进而导致量表混乱。这或许是出于对文章内容缺乏信心，许多作者常为了强调的效果而夸大事实。
我们必须承认，虽然这个量表的准确性存在着争议，但至少提供了一个基础的参照点。正如我们对色谱的定义都不太一样，我们如何去量化 the greater part（较大一部分）和 a small part（小部分），想法也未必一致。如果用百分比来说我吃了35%的苹果派，或许我就可以精确给出放纵大吃的公式了吧。
点击标题可阅读
避免在学术文章中使用
带有冒犯意味的词汇或片语
提升学术英文写作
请戳☞
长按二维码关注
继续阅读
阅读原文