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| 2010/07/16 15:28:33瀏覽1418｜回應0｜推薦2 | |
英語口音十分重要, 字母中 h 與 n 變常有多人唸錯, 尤其是 n , 讀成 “ 恩” 的人比比皆是,你語法有誤可能還能讓人瞭解, 但發音錯誤卻常讓聽者滿頭霧水,所以任為一個字都不可拖泥帶水, 尤其在念咬舌音 “th” 時,更要做得紮實, 否則如 “think”與 “sink”, “mouth” 與 “mouse” 不分, 則後果便很嚴重; 另外像母音的區分, 如 bad 與 bed ; taste 與 test均頗為要緊. 底下有一張個人整理的發音練習表,可以多加練習: cancel cancer kill cure bill beer pale pair Bell bear rail rare Listen whistle castle Bury leisure boss bus Commerce commercial debt level Middle mechanism calamity have bad bed Apple April parameter alternative sheriff Mature salary celery won one twelve Hypothesis reservoir rendezvous ennui Repertoire metabolism rice lice Dad dead Apple April Bad bed Sad say said Live leave Food foot 當然, 以上所列的字讀者必須確實的唸準, 其他類似的字自可舉一反三了. 雖然市面上有些補習學校拼命在提倡所謂的自然發音法, 本人認為效果有限, 尤其遇到無法由拼字直接發音的例子,麻煩就大了. 像 bury, ennui, debt, Sean, sheriff, rendezvous 等字,均不易用所謂的自然發音法唸對,多聽或使用音標符號可能是較正確的方法. 另外,市面上也有一些頗為怪異的英文單字記憶法, 比如用中字的諧音去標注該字, 個人非常不贊成,我覺得這種捷徑絕對會弄巧成拙,其實用聲音去記字是最有效的方法, ,你認為怎樣會把一首歌唱好? 當然是不斷的練習啦. 不花時問就想一僦可幾,對學好一種語言來說是不太可能的. 至於多益(TOEIC)考試何以是 Speaking and Writing 以及 Reading and Listening 主要係因 Speaking and Writing 為產出能力; Reading and Listening 則為接受能力, 現在我們來談 READING。 我們不妨由希拉蕊(Hillary Rodham Clinton)的回憶錄「活出歷史」(Living History) 中的一段來嘗試分析看看:(中譯本由時報文化出版) “ I clearly expected to work for a living, and I did not feel limited in my choices. I was lucky to have parents who never tried to mold me into any category or career. They simply encouraged me to excel and be happy. In fact, I don’t remember a friend’s parent or a teacher ever telling me or my friends that “girls can’t do this” or “girls shouldn’t do that.” Sometimes, though, the message got through in other ways.” (p.20) 這段恰巧是時報文化中譯本漏譯的一段（第27頁) , 第一句主旨句是說她很清楚地希望工作維生, 她也覺得父母對她的選擇並無限制 . 接下來的支援句指出她很慶幸父母從不想把她塑造成某種類別的人, 或要她從事何業 , 事實上, 她從不記得有任何朋友的父母或師長 ,曾告訴她或她朋友 ,「女孩不可以做這個 」 或「女孩不應該做那個 」儘管有時候這種訊息會經由其他的管道傳遞. 檢視這段文字, 倒是挺合前述所闡述對「段落」的要求. 這本書的文筆,絕對是可圈可點,像寫她的小學老師 “My sixth-grade teacher, Elisabeth King, drilled us in grammar, but she also encouraged us to think and write creatively, and challenged us to try new forms of expression. (P.15;中譯p.22) 中譯把 challenged us 譯成「 逼」 似乎有點不妥 ,因為我們如果查英英字典(如 Macmillan) , 解釋為 “ something that needs a lot of skill, energy, and determination to deal with or achieve, especially something you have never done before and will enjoy doing.” 是否比較接近「 大膽努力地嘗試新的表達方式 」? 希拉蕊在為自己辯駁時, 筆觸是異常犀利的, 她寫道 “ I wondered, too, about the sources of some bizarre stories that had appeared in the press, one citing an anonymous Secret Service employee who claimed that I had thrown a lamp at my husband. Under other circumstances, it would have been laughable that a major periodical chose to run such a ridiculous story based on nothing more than a malicious rumor.” (p166 中譯p.175) 她用 bizarre stories(滑稽離奇) , malicious rumor(惡毒流言) 來形容她對媒體報導不實的不滿. 尤其最後一句, 指出毫無根據所寫出的荒謬故事真令人笑掉大牙. 希拉蕊用十分感性的筆調,懷念也肯定她在衛理求學的歲月,她寫出非常棒的文字 “What I valued most about Wesley were the lifelong friends I made and the opportunity that a woman’s college offered us to stretch our wings and minds in the ongoing journey toward self-definition and identity.”(p.28; 中譯p.35) 希拉蕊寫柯林頓顯得非常細膩與貼心, “I was starting to realize that this young man from Arkansas was much more complex than first impressions might suggest. To this day, he can astonish me with the connection he weaves between ideas and words and how he makes it all sound like music. I still love the way he thinks and the way he looks. One of the first things I noticed about Bill was the shape of his hands. His wrists are narrow and his fingers tapered and deft, like those of a pianist or a surgeon. When we first met as students, I like watching him turn the pages of a book. Now his hands are showing the signs of age after thousands of handshakes and golf swings and miles of signatures. They are, like their owner, weathered but still expressive, attractive and resilent.”(p.54; 中譯p.59) 既然希拉蕊寫柯林頓時 ,表示他 「把思想轉為文字的 能力讓她震驚 」 ( astonish me with the connection he weaves between ideas and words) ,那我們就馬上來欣賞柯林頓（William Jefferson Clinton）的回憶錄「我的人生」(My Life) 的寫作文筆. 在他那本書最前頁的提詞, 柯林頓寫道: To my mother, who gave me a love of life. (給我母親, 她給了我生活之愛） To Hillary, who gave me a life of love. (給希拉蕊, 她給了我愛的生活） To Chelsea, who gave joy and meaning to it all. (給雀兒喜, 她帶給我們生活 喜悅與意義.) And to the memory of my grandfather, (為了紀念我祖父, Who taught me to look up to people others look down on, (他教我去尊重那些其他人輕視的人） Because we’re not so different after all. (因為我們也好不到那裡.) 接下來的前言（prologue), 寫得精簡又有力, 他由一本只教人時間管理的陳年舊書,提到自己年青時的志向, 雖然那張列有志向的小紙張早巳難尋, “I’m sure I have that old list somewhere buried in my papers, though I can’t find it.” 他究竟會被認為是好人 還是壞人呢? 他說只有神可以評斷, 但他認為 , 雖然沒有死忠支持者所想的那麼好, 也不至於像嚴苛挑評者所說的那麼壞. “I know that I am not as good as my strongest supporters believe or as I hope to become, nor as bad as my harshest critics assert.” 接下來這幾句寫得十分動人 ,“I have been graced beyond measure by my family life with Hillary and Chelsea. Like all family lives, ours is not perfect, but it has been wonderful, Its flaws, as all the world knows, are mostly mine, and its continuing promises is grounded in their love. No person I know ever had more or better friends. Indeed, a strong case can be made that I rose to the presidency on the shoulder of my personal friends, the now legendary FOBs.” 最後一段寫得更是鏗鏘有力, 令人覺得不可不讀 . “My life in politics was a joy. I loved campaigns and I loved governing. I always tried to keep things moving in the right direction, to give more people a chance to live their dreams, to lift people’s spirits, and to bring them together. That’s the way I kept score. As for the great book, who knows? It sure is a good story. 這本書偉不偉大, 誰能下結論? 但這絕對是一 個 非常好看的故事 . 柯林頓之所以未在前文中把書獻給父親, 實係他跟本沒見過自己的父親. 那段描述頗令人鼻酸: “ They bought a new house in the suburb of Forest Parkbut couldn’t move in for a couple of months, and since Mother was pregnant with me, they decided she should go home to Hope until they could get into a new house. On May 17, 1946, after moving their furniture into their new home, my father was driving from Chicago to Hope to fetch his wife. Late at night on Highway 60 outside of Sikeston, Missouri, he lost control of his car, a 1942 Buick, when the right front tire blew out on a wet road. He was thrown clear of the car but landed in or crawled into, a drainage ditch dug to reclaim swampland. The ditch held three feet of water. When he was found, after a two-hour search, his hand was grasping a branch above the waterline. He had tried but failed to pull himself out. He drowned, only twenty-eight years old, married two years and eight months, only seven months of which he had spent with Mother. (p.4; 中譯P.9) 個人以為, 踏上寫作之路的第一步, 脫不開模仿, 接著就是關起門來奮筆疾書了, 把握英文的用字遣詞, 嚴守文法的規範, 下筆定然順遂, 文未必只是載道, 也可寄情, 雖然文章千古事,得失卻寸心知, 有時覺得, ,寫作恐怕沒有特別的訣竅,養成每天不斷寫的好習慣, 可能是步向成功的不二法門. |
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