Understanding Dictionaries認(rèn)識詞典

戴維·貝洛斯

Translators use dictionaries all the time. I have a whole set， with the Oxford English Dictionary in two volumes and Roget’s Thesaurus1 in pride of place， alongside monolingual， bilingual， and picture dictionaries of French idioms， Russian proverbs， legal terminologies2， and much else. These books are my constant friends， and they tell me many fascinating things. But the fact that I seek and obtain a lot of help from dictionaries doesn’t mean that without them translation would not exist. The real story is the other way around. Without translators， Western dictionaries would not exist.

Among the very earliest instances of writing are lists of terms for important things in two languages. These bilingual glossaries were drawn up3 by scribes4 to maintain consistency in translating between two languages and to accelerate the acquisition of translating skills by apprentices. These still are the main purposes of the bilingual and multilingual glossaries in use today. French perfume manufacturers maintain proprietary5 databases of the terms of their trade to help translators produce promotional material for export markets， as do lathe6 manufacturers， medical specialists， and legal firms working in international commercial law. These tools assist translators mightily， but they do not lie at the origin of translating itself. They are the fruits of established translation practice， not the original source of translators’ skills.

Sumerian7 bilingual dictionaries consist of roomfuls of clay tablets sorted into categories—occupations， kinship， law， wooden artifacts， reed artifacts， pottery， hides8， copper， other metals， domestic and wild animals， parts of the body， stones， plants， birds and fish， textiles， place-names， and food and drink， each with its matching term in the unrelated language of Sumer’s Akkadian9 conquerors. As they are organized by field， they correspond directly to today’s SPDs10， or “special purpose” dictionaries—Business French， Russian for the Oil and Gas Industries， German Legal Terminology， and so forth. Some of them are multilingual （as are many of today’s SPDs） and give equivalents in Amoritic， Hurritic， Elamite， Ugaritic， and other languages spoken by civilizations with which the Akkadians were in commercial if not always peaceful contact. From ancient Mesopotamia11 to the late Middle Ages in Western Europe， word lists with second-language equivalents went on serving the same purposes—to regularize translation practice and to train the next generation of translators. Characteristically， they mediate between the language of conquerors and the language of the conquered retained as a language of culture. What did not arise in the West at any time until after the invention of the printed book were general or all-purpose word lists giving definitions in the same language.

The Western monolingual dictionary— “the general purpose” dictionary， or GPD12—is a late by-product of the ancient tradition of the translator’s companion， the bilingual word list， but its impact on the way we think about a language has been immense. The first real GPD was launched by the Académie Fran?aise13 in the seventeenth century （volume 1， A–L， appeared in 1694）; the first to be finished from A to Z was Samuel Johnson’s14 dictionary of the English language， which came out in 1755.

These monuments mark the invention of French and of English as languages in a peculiar， modern sense. Once they had been launched， every other language had to have its own GPD—failing which， it would not be a real language. It wasn’t just rivalry that sparked the great race to produce national dictionaries for every “national language.” The need to compile15 self-glossing lists of all the words in a language also expressed a new idea of what kind of a thing a language was， an idea taken directly from what had happened in English and French.

The Chinese tradition is entirely different. Its rich history of word lists is essentially linked to the tradition of writing commentaries on ancient texts， not at all with the business of translating foreign languages， in which traditional Chinese civilization seems to have had as little interest as did the Greeks. Early Chinese dictionaries were organized by semantic field and gave definitions roughly like this： If someone calls me an uncle， I call him a nephew （from the Erh Ya16， third century B.C.E.）. It was not easy to find a word in the Erh Ya， and many of the definitions given were too vague to be useful in the way we would now want a dictionary to be. It was a tool for cultivating knowledge of more ancient texts， so as to maintain refinement in speech and script. The second kind of glossary of classical Chinese arose in the first century C.E.， and it listed characters organized by their basic written shapes， or “graphic radicals17.” These works gave no clues as to how the words should be pronounced， and their purpose was mainly to assist the interpretation of ancient written texts. The third type of early Chinese lexicon was the rhyme dictionary—handbooks for people who needed to know what rhymes with what， because rhyming skills were tested in examinations for the imperial civil service. It was not until the seventeenth century that a device for classifying Chinese characters in a way that made them easily retrievable18 was devised by the scholar Mei Ying-tso19， a few years before Jesuit missionaries20 produced the first Western-style bilingual dictionaries of Chinese （into Latin， then Portuguese， Spanish， and French）. Traditional Chinese dictionaries， lexicons， and glossaries do not list “all the words of the language” in the way that Western dictionaries seek to do; they list written characters and they organize them by semantic field， or by written forms， or by sound. Their profound difference perhaps makes clearer the extent to which Western dictionary making is also a “regional” tradition arising from the particular nature of the script that we have.

What is a dictionary for？ The utility of a bilingual glossary is obvious. But what is the purpose of a monolingual one？ A GPD seems to imply that speakers of the language do not know it very well， as if English， to take the first real example， were to some degree foreign to speakers of English themselves. Why else would they need a dictionary to translate the words of the language for them？ The conceptualization of anything as grand and comprehensive as the Dictionnaire de l’Académie involves treating the written form of a spoken language as a thing that can be learned and studied not by foreigners but by native speakers of that language. It’s a peculiar idea. By definition， what a monolingual dictionary codifies is precisely the ability to speak that users of the dictionary possess.

The second presupposition of general-purpose dictionaries is that a list of all the word forms of a language is possible. We have become so accustomed to GPDs that it takes a moment to realize just what an extraordinary proposition that is. We may grant that dictionaries are always a little bit out-of-date， that even the best among them always miss something we would have liked to see there—but we should stop to take such thoughts a step further. To try to capture “all the words of a language” is as futile as trying to capture all the drops of water in a flowing river. If you managed to do it， it wouldn’t be a flowing river anymore. It would be a fish tank.

The thesaurus was not designed as a resource for translators， but it serves translation in two distinct and equally important ways. The first is eminently practical. Browsing Roget’s lists of quasi-synonyms21 and cognate22 words helps a writer—who may also be a translator at that point—to identify a term to express a more precise shade of meaning than the word that first came to mind. In the second place， however， a thesaurus says on every page that to know a language is to know how to say the same thing in different words. That is precisely what translators seek to do. Roget’s wonderful Thesaurus reminds them that in one language as well as between any two， all words are translations of others.

譯者總會用到詞典。我擁有一整套詞典，其中包括放在顯眼位置的兩卷本《牛津英語詞典》和《羅氏分類詞典》，以及多本單語、雙語和圖解詞典——包括法語成語、俄語諺語、法律術(shù)語詞典等。這些書是我永遠(yuǎn)的朋友，它們使我了解到許多奇妙的事物。但是，我從詞典中尋求并得到許多幫助并不意味著翻譯有賴于它們存在。事實(shí)恰恰相反。沒有譯者，西方詞典就不會問世。

在最早期的寫作實(shí)例中，就有雙語的重要事物術(shù)語表。它們由作者起草，用來保持兩種語言互譯時(shí)的一致性，同時(shí)加快學(xué)徒對翻譯技能的習(xí)得。直到今日，這些依然是雙語和多語詞匯表的主要作用。法國香水制造商保有商品名稱的專門數(shù)據(jù)庫，以便譯者為出口市場制作促銷材料。機(jī)床制造商、醫(yī)學(xué)專家和國際商法律師事務(wù)所等皆是如此。這些工具對譯者幫助巨大，但并不能解釋翻譯本身的起源。它們是既定翻譯實(shí)踐的成果，而非翻譯技巧的源頭。

蘇美爾雙語詞典由不計(jì)其數(shù)的泥板構(gòu)成，分成職業(yè)、親屬、法律、木制品、蘆葦制品、陶瓷、獸皮、銅、其他金屬、家養(yǎng)和野生動(dòng)物、身體部位、石頭、植物、鳥和魚、紡織品、地名和飲食等不同種類。每一類詞匯都有阿卡德語（蘇美爾征服者的語言，與蘇美爾語并不相關(guān)）的對應(yīng)項(xiàng)。由于是按領(lǐng)域分類，它們就相當(dāng)于當(dāng)今的專業(yè)詞典，比如《商務(wù)法語》《石油天然氣工業(yè)俄語》和《德語法律術(shù)語》等。有些還是多語的（與當(dāng)今許多專業(yè)詞典類似），包括阿摩利語、胡里語、埃蘭語、烏加里特語和其他民族語言，這些民族和阿卡德人偶有沖突，但一直保持著貿(mào)易往來。從古老的美索不達(dá)米亞到中世紀(jì)末的西歐，標(biāo)有第二語言對應(yīng)說法的詞匯表一直服務(wù)于同一目標(biāo)，即規(guī)范翻譯實(shí)踐和培養(yǎng)后代譯者，值得注意的是，它們在征服者語言和被征服者語言之間進(jìn)行調(diào)合，后者作為一種文化語言被保留。直到印刷術(shù)發(fā)明后，西方才出現(xiàn)了帶有釋義的一般或通用單語詞匯表。

西方的單語詞典——“通用”詞典（GPD），是雙語詞匯表這一古老的傳統(tǒng)譯者指南的副產(chǎn)品。但是，它對我們認(rèn)識一種語言的方式影響巨大。首部真正的通用詞典由法蘭西學(xué)術(shù)院于17世紀(jì)發(fā)行（1卷. A-L，1694年），而塞繆爾·約翰遜于1755年編纂的英語詞典則是首部完整的（A-Z）通用詞典。

這兩部詞典標(biāo)志著獨(dú)特的、現(xiàn)代意義上的法語和英語正式登場。上述兩部詞典推出后，其他每一種語言都得擁有自己的通用詞典，缺了它，就算不上真正的語言。競相打造“民族語言”詞典的做法不僅僅是緣于競爭。人們需要對一種語言的所有詞匯進(jìn)行自我解釋，這也表達(dá)出一種新思考，即語言是什么，英語和法語詞典的出現(xiàn)直接激發(fā)了這種思考。

中國傳統(tǒng)完全不同。詞匯表歷史悠久，這主要與古代作品的評點(diǎn)傳統(tǒng)有關(guān)，與外來語言翻譯全無關(guān)系。與希臘人一樣，中華傳統(tǒng)文明對外語似乎沒有什么興趣。早期中國詞典按語義編排并釋義，大致如：“謂我舅者，吾謂之甥也?！保ǔ鲎怨?世紀(jì)的《爾雅》）要在《爾雅》中找一個(gè)詞并非易事，而且很多釋義過于模糊，作用無法同現(xiàn)代詞典相比。詞典是幫助我們積累更多古代作品知識的工具，讓我們在講話和寫作時(shí)保持精練表達(dá)。第二種古代中國詞典出現(xiàn)于公元1世紀(jì)。該詞典通過基本書寫形狀或“象形詞根”對詞語加以編排。這類詞典沒有介紹詞語如何發(fā)音，主要目的是幫助闡釋古代文字作品。第三種早期中文詞典是韻書詞典，是方便讀者習(xí)得押韻知識的手冊，因?yàn)橛庙嵤强婆e考試考查的能力之一。直到17世紀(jì)，學(xué)者梅膺祚才發(fā)明了一種便于檢索的漢字分類方式，幾年后，耶穌會傳教士編出了西式漢外雙語詞典，把漢語先后譯成拉丁語、葡萄牙語、西班牙語和法語。傳統(tǒng)的漢語詞典、詞匯表和術(shù)語表并未像西方詞典那樣列出“某種語言的所有詞匯”——它們列出書寫字符，并通過語義、書寫形式或發(fā)音來編排。這種顯著差異或許更清楚地表明，西方詞典的編纂在很大程度上也是一種“地區(qū)性”傳統(tǒng)，這種傳統(tǒng)源自我們獨(dú)特的文字系統(tǒng)。

詞典用處何在？雙語詞典的用處很明顯。那單語詞典呢？通用詞典似乎暗示用該語言的人不能完全理解自己所說的語言。以英語為例，從某種程度上說，英語對英語使用者而言是陌生的。如果不是這樣，那為何需要詞典來為該語言使用者解釋他們所熟悉的語言呢？鴻篇巨著《法蘭西學(xué)院法語詞典》的編纂理念就是面向母語者，幫助他們而不是外語學(xué)習(xí)者習(xí)得口頭語言的書面形式。這是一個(gè)不同尋常的思路。根據(jù)定義，單語詞典所編纂的正是詞典使用者所具備的言說能力。

通用詞典的第二個(gè)預(yù)設(shè)是盡可能列出一種語言的所有詞匯。我們對通用詞典已習(xí)以為常，因此可能花點(diǎn)兒功夫才能意識到這其實(shí)是不可能的。我們會認(rèn)為詞典總有點(diǎn)兒過時(shí)，即便最好的詞典也總會漏掉一些大家想看到的詞——但是，我們應(yīng)該就此放棄奢望。試圖囊括“一種語言的所有詞匯”是徒勞之舉，就好比試圖抓住汩汩河流中的每一滴水。如果你真能做到，那不會再是流動(dòng)的河水，而是一口魚缸。

《羅氏分類詞典》并非為譯者設(shè)計(jì)，但它以兩種獨(dú)特且同樣重要的方式服務(wù)于翻譯。第一是高度實(shí)用性。瀏覽羅氏同義詞和同源詞表可幫助寫作者（同時(shí)也可能是譯者）確定某一術(shù)語——與腦海中首次浮現(xiàn)的詞相比，這一術(shù)語能更精確地表達(dá)內(nèi)含。然而第二，詞典每一頁都表明，掌握一門語言就是會用不同的詞表達(dá)同一意思。這恰恰也是譯者盡力所為?！读_氏分類詞典》是部很棒的詞典，它提醒譯者，無論是在兩種語言之間，還是在同一種語言內(nèi)，所有詞都是其他詞的翻譯。

（譯者單位：南京航空航天大學(xué)外國語學(xué)院）