模糊语言中英译文

模糊语言中英译文

　　21-A. The Language of Uncertainty

　　Uncertainty spreads through our lives so thoroughly that it dominates our language. Our everyday speech is made up in large part of word like probably, many, soon, great, little. What do these words mean? "Atomic war," declared a recent editorial in the London Times, "is likely to destroy forever the nation that wages it. How exactly are we to understand the word likely? Lacking any standard for estimating the probability, we are left with the judgment of the editorial writer.

　　Such verbal imprecision is not necessarily to be criticized. Indeed, it has a value just because it allows us to express judgments when a precise quantitative statement is out of the question.

　　The language of uncertainty has three main categories: (1)words such as probably, possibly, surely, which denote a single subjective probability and are potentially quantifiable; (2)words like many, of-ten, goon, which are also quantifiable but denote not so much a condition of uncertainty as a quantity imprecisely known; (3)words like fat, rich, drunk, which can not be reduced to any accepted number because they are given different values by different people.

　　We have been trying to pin down by experiments what people mean by these expressions in specific contexts, and how the meanings change with age. For instance, a subject is told "There are many trees in the park” and is asked to say what number the word many mean to him. Or a child is invited to take "some" sweets from a bowl and we then count how many he has taken. We compare the number he takes when he is alone with the number when one or more other children are present and are to take some sweets after him, or with the number he takes when told to give "some” sweets to another child.

　　First, we find that the number depends, of course, on the items involved. To most people some friends means about five, while .some trees means about twenty. However, unrelated areas sometimes show parallel values. For instance, the language of probability seems to mean about the same thing in predictions about the weather and about politics: the expression is certain to (rain, or be elected) signifies to the average person about a 70 per cent chance; is likely to, about a 60 per cent chance; probably will, about 55 per cent.

　　Secondly, the size of the population of items influences the value assigned to an expression. Thus, if we. tell a subject to take "a few" or "a lot of" glass bald from a box, he will take more if the box contains a large number of glass balls than if it has a small number. Hut not prolix>rtionately more: if we increase the number of glass balls eight times, the subject takes only half as large a percentage of the total.

　　Thirdly, there is a marked change with age. Among children between six and fourteen years old, the older the child, the fewer glass balls he will take. But the difference between a lot and a few widens with age. This age effect is so consistent that it might be used as a test of intelligence. In place of a long test we could merely ask the subject to give numerical values to expressions such as nearly always and very rarely in a given context, and then measure his intelligence by the ratio of the number for nearly always to the one for very rarely. We have found that this ration increases systematically from about 2 to 1 for a child of seven to about 20 to 1 for a person twenty-five years old,

　　【课文译文】

　　模糊语言

　　生活中的模糊现象到处都有，连我们的语言中也不乏模糊的表述。日常语言里很大部分是由诸如“可能”、“许多”、“不久”、“大”、“小”之类的词语组成。这些词究竟意味着什么呢?英国伦敦的《泰晤士报》近期发表一篇社论，称“原子战争有可能永久性地毁灭发动战争的国家。”我们怎样才能确切地理解“有可能”这个词语呢?对“可能”的估计并没有一个标准，那我们只能听凭社论作者个人的判断了。

　　这类用词不精确的现象我们并不一定要予以责备。甚至，它还有一定的价值，因为它容许我们在无法作出一个精确的数量表述时来表达判断。

　　模糊语言可分为三类：1.表示单一主观意义上可能性的，可能定量的词语，诸如“很可能”、“可能”、“肯定”等词。2.诸如“许多”、“时常”、“不久”等词语，这类词语也可以定量，但所表达的意义与其说是某种不能肯定的状况，不如说是一个知之不确的数量。3.诸如“胖”、“富”、“醉”这类词语，不能精确到人们都认同的数量，只因不同的人有不同的评判标准。

　　我们一直在试图通过实验说明，在各种特定的语言环境下人们使用上述词语表达了什么样的意义，这些意义怎样随年龄的不同而变化。比如：告诉一个被测试者“某公园里有许多树”，然后问他“许多”一词在他看来应该指多少。或者，让一个小孩子从碗中取“一些”糖块，我们可以数一数他取了多少。我们比较一下只有他自己在场时取的数量和他当着一个或多个小朋友的面所取的数量，或者让他拿“一些”给别的小朋友时所取的数量。

　　第一，我们发现，拿的数量取决于所提供的糖块的总量。对大多数人来说，“一些朋友”大约指五个朋友，而“一些树”指20多棵树。但类别不相关的事物有时则呈现出对等的数值。例如：关于天气和政治这两个不同范畴的预测，模糊语言的表述有着几乎相同的意思。如“一定会(下雨，当选等)”表示有75%的可能，“很可能”约有60%的可能，而“可能会”则约有55%的可能。

　　第二，试验物品总量的大小影响到对某一词语的赋值。如让一个被测试者从一个盒子里拿“一些”或“许多”玻璃球，如果盒子里装的多，他就拿的多；装的少就拿的少。但所取数量的多少不是按比例增加的：将玻璃球增加七倍，被测试者也只是从总数中取很小一部分出来 。

　　第三，随着年龄不同变化明显。在6～14的少儿组里，年龄越大，玻璃球反而拿得越少。但“许多”和“一些”两词的意义差别随年龄增长而扩大。这种年龄差异是很稳定的，因此可以用来作智力测验。我们可以不用作长期测试，只需让被测试者在特定的语言环境下对“差不多一直”和“几乎没有”两词语赋值，然后就可以根据代表“差不多一直”的数值与代表“几乎没有”的数值的比值来测量他的智力。我们已发现，比值是随着年龄的增大而逐渐增大的；7岁儿童的这一比值为2：1，而25岁成人的比值为20：1。