Johnson约翰逊 Get over it时“过”境迁When it comes to language, some users are more peevish than others一些人的语言洁癖超乎常人Jun 4th 2016 | From the print edition2016年6月4日 | 来自印刷版 WHO doesn’t have their own little language peeve? “Literally” should be reserved for literal situations; there are plenty of ways to intensify a statement rather than saying, “We literally walked a million miles.” “To beg the question” is an old term from logic that means “to assume one’s own conclusion in an argument”; today, most people use it to mean “to prompt the question”. Two clauses connected by a comma, the “comma splice”, is jarring in good writing; people should avoid it.谁没点自己的语言洁癖呢？“literally”（如字面意思地——译注）应该用于使用字面意思的场合，有很多方式能表示强调，而不用说“我们如字面意思般地走了一百万英里”，“to beg the question”是一个来自逻辑学的固有词组，意思是“想当然”。两个从句用逗号作连接就构成“逗号粘连”错误，这样的句子是不和谐的，应该避免。clause： n. [法] 条款，从句comma splice： 逗号粘连；逗号叠加，逗号结合jarring： adj. 不和谐的；刺耳的；辗轧的n. 辗轧声；冲突；震动v. 震惊；冲突；发刺耳声（jar的现在分词） But some people take peeves to another level entirely. They choose words or phrases that have a widely understood, long-standing second meaning, and treat the second, perhaps metaphorical or new meaning, with a shocked seriousness that should be reserved for the apocalypse.期待您的翻译，您可以将翻译留言到文章底部，第二天会有答案解析哦。 metaphorical： adj. 隐喻性的; Someone has recently created a new Twitter account, @over_morethan, dedicated to the idea that “over” may not be used with numbers: one thing may physically only sit over another thing, in this view. But to write, as The Economist has recently, of “over two-thirds”, “over 150 fellows of the Royal Society” or “over a year” is to take a pure preposition and debase it with metaphorical usage. The purists would say that these should be “more than two- thirds”, “more than 150 fellows” and “more than a year”.最近有人申请了一个推特账户，@over_morethan。它只围绕一个话题：“over”不可以与数字连用，并认为它仅仅能指一个物体放在另一个物体的上面。如最近《经济学人》那样，在“大于2/3”、“超过150位英国皇家学会成员”或者“一年以上”中使用“over”，在其看来是把一个纯粹的介词贬低使用为了引申义。纯粹主义者会说这些地方应该用“more than”。 And it wasn’t just @over_morethan. Using “over” with numbers was even banned by the Associated Press (AP) stylebook, which many American newspapers use as their own, and which thus gives it a kind of sanctified status. According to one account, there was an audible gasp at the meeting of the American Copy Editors’ Society when AP announced that it was abandoning the “rule”. Never mind that, as Jonathan Owen, an editor, pointed out, languages from Swedish to ancient Greek can use their “over” preposition in exactly the same way, or that “over” has been used like this for centuries in English. Some people are quite simply attached to this pseudo-rule—no “over” with numbers—and they have treated AP’s more-than-justifiable abandonment as a lowering of intellectual standards.不仅@over_morethan反对，，，并奉为圭臬。一个账号称，，有人发出了倒吸一口凉气的声音。不用管他们，正如编辑乔纳森·欧文（Jonathan Owen）所指出，从瑞典语到古希腊语，介词“over”都可以这样用。甚至在英语中，这种用法也出现了几个世纪了。有的人非常执着于over不能与数字连用的这条伪规则，，然而在他们看来，这是一种降低智识的行为。Then take Bryan Henderson, a man who has “corrected” tens of thousands of Wikipedia articles, removing “comprised of”. His rationale was that a “whole comprises the parts”, so the phrase “comprised of” is meaningless gobbledygook probably inspired by confusion with “composed of”. If it is meaningless, a lot of native speakers seem to disagree: the phrase turns up almost 4,000 hits on The Economist’s website and 63m results on Google. Odd that a meaningless phrase can be used so meaningfully by so many people.此外还有布莱恩·亨德森（Bryan Henderson）的例子，，删除了其中的“comprised of”。他的理由是“整体包含了部分”，所以“comprised of”这个词组是毫无意义的冗余，它的出现可能是与“comprised of”混淆了。如果它确实毫无意义，那么很多英语母语者看起来都不答应，因为这个词组在《经济学人》官网上有将近4000次使用，谷歌上也能搜索出6300万条结果。很奇怪一个毫无意义的词组居然可以被这么多人如此有意义地使用。The case for making language rules based on how speakers actually use their language—rather than a dreamed-up ideal for how it should be used—is straightforward. Language is an arbitrary system of signs agreed on by a community. If English-speakers agree that the sound “dog” should go with a barking four-legged mammal, then that ends the discussion about what a “dog” is. 情况其实很简单，制定一种语言的规则是以它的使用者的真实运用为标准，而不是不切实际地人为规定它该怎么用。语言是由一个群体内普遍认同的符号组成的不断变化的系统。如果说英语的人都同意“dog”是一种四条腿的哺乳动物，那么就不会再有人争论“dog”究竟是什么。 arbitrary：adj. 随意的，任性的，随心所欲的; 主观的，武断的; 霸道的，专制的，专横的，独断独行的 Most English-speakers have no problem with “over” plus a number. The anonymous Twitter pundit has clearly enjoyed herself (it turned out to be a woman, even though in Johnson’s experience it is men who complain most about grammar), correcting the New York Times, Time magazine, Newsweek, along with AP, for using “over” with a number. It does not seem to have occurred to her to wonder why such a variety of publications—which agree on barely anything else—should agree that “over” can be used with a number. And they can hardly be accused of confusing their readers. The same could be said for the thousands of Wikipedia editors that Mr. Henderson has corrected—nearly all highly educated native-speakers keen on sharing knowledge. They know their readers will understand; who says they cannot use their language properly?大部分说英语的人都觉得“over”可以加一个数字使用。那位匿名的推特专家（经查证，她是一位女性。尽管在约翰逊（Johnson）的经验中，、《时代杂志》、。她似乎不曾想过，为什么这么多在其他事物上向来观点不和的出版物竟然在“over”加数字的用法上完全统一。而且并不能说这些出版物此举迷惑了读者。同样，，这些编撰者基本都是热心于分享知识的、受教育水平高、以英语为母语的人。他们知道他们的读者能够看懂。又有谁能说他们不能正确地使用自己的语言呢？ anonymous：adj. 无名的; 假名的; 匿名的; 没有特色的;Language change happens slowly. “Over” with a number seems to have ancient roots; “comprised of” began rising in English books more than (or is that “over”) a century ago; and nobody is confused by either. Of Johnson’s own peeves, it seems that careful writers still mostly use “literally” literally—something worth fighting for. But “to beg the question” meaning “to prompt the question” is fully mainstream. It is all well and good to oppose a change that has not yet taken hold, or one that still confuses people. But when the language has truly moved on, so should its guardians.语言的变化是缓慢发生的。“over”加数字的用法似乎由来已久，“comprised of”在英文书上出现也超过了一个世纪了，谁都能看懂这两种用法。至于约翰逊的语言洁癖，认真的作家看起来一般都能正确使用“literally”，这一点倒是值得提倡。但是用“to beg the question”来表示“提出问题”已经是一种主流。反对一种尚在形成之中的变化，或者如果这种变化会产生歧义，那么这种反对就没有问题。但是当语言的已经时过境迁时，它的守护者也该与时俱进才对。MOUNTAINAS 往期精彩经济学人|尼日利亚的犯罪和腐败|2016.5.15|总第561期
奇葩的节日-胡子节(英文材料摘自《经济学人》11.14刊)
Try to translate But some people take peeves to another level entirely. They choose words or phrases that have a widely understood, long-standing second meaning, and treat the second, perhaps metaphorical or new meaning, with a shocked seriousness that should be reserved for the apocalypse.Put Chinese below长按二维码加入我们声明1、英文材料来自网络，如有侵权请联系删除；2、中文翻译仅供学习交流，未经我社许可或授权，严禁商业用途；3、阅读原版文章请前往《经济学人》官网订阅。
