Understanding Dictionaries认识词典

戴维·贝洛斯

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 Française13 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.

譯者总会用到词典。我拥有一整套词典，其中包括放在显眼位置的两卷本《牛津英语词典》和《罗氏分类词典》，以及多本单语、双语和图解词典——包括法语成语、俄语谚语、法律术语词典等。这些书是我永远的朋友，它们使我了解到许多奇妙的事物。但是，我从词典中寻求并得到许多帮助并不意味着翻译有赖于它们存在。事实恰恰相反。没有译者，西方词典就不会问世。

在最早期的写作实例中，就有双语的重要事物术语表。它们由作者起草，用来保持两种语言互译时的一致性，同时加快学徒对翻译技能的习得。直到今日，这些依然是双语和多语词汇表的主要作用。法国香水制造商保有商品名称的专门数据库，以便译者为出口市场制作促销材料。机床制造商、医学专家和国际商法律师事务所等皆是如此。这些工具对译者帮助巨大，但并不能解释翻译本身的起源。它们是既定翻译实践的成果，而非翻译技巧的源头。

苏美尔双语词典由不计其数的泥板构成，分成职业、亲属、法律、木制品、芦苇制品、陶瓷、兽皮、铜、其他金属、家养和野生动物、身体部位、石头、植物、鸟和鱼、纺织品、地名和饮食等不同种类。每一类词汇都有阿卡德语（苏美尔征服者的语言，与苏美尔语并不相关）的对应项。由于是按领域分类，它们就相当于当今的专业词典，比如《商务法语》《石油天然气工业俄语》和《德语法律术语》等。有些还是多语的（与当今许多专业词典类似），包括阿摩利语、胡里语、埃兰语、乌加里特语和其他民族语言，这些民族和阿卡德人偶有冲突，但一直保持着贸易往来。从古老的美索不达米亚到中世纪末的西欧，标有第二语言对应说法的词汇表一直服务于同一目标，即规范翻译实践和培养后代译者，值得注意的是，它们在征服者语言和被征服者语言之间进行调合，后者作为一种文化语言被保留。直到印刷术发明后，西方才出现了带有释义的一般或通用单语词汇表。

西方的单语词典——“通用”词典（GPD），是双语词汇表这一古老的传统译者指南的副产品。但是，它对我们认识一种语言的方式影响巨大。首部真正的通用词典由法兰西学术院于17世纪发行（1卷. A-L，1694年），而塞缪尔·约翰逊于1755年编纂的英语词典则是首部完整的（A-Z）通用词典。

这两部词典标志着独特的、现代意义上的法语和英语正式登场。上述两部词典推出后，其他每一种语言都得拥有自己的通用词典，缺了它，就算不上真正的语言。竞相打造“民族语言”詞典的做法不仅仅是缘于竞争。人们需要对一种语言的所有词汇进行自我解释，这也表达出一种新思考，即语言是什么，英语和法语词典的出现直接激发了这种思考。

中国传统完全不同。词汇表历史悠久，这主要与古代作品的评点传统有关，与外来语言翻译全无关系。与希腊人一样，中华传统文明对外语似乎没有什么兴趣。早期中国词典按语义编排并释义，大致如：“谓我舅者，吾谓之甥也。”（出自公元前3世纪的《尔雅》）要在《尔雅》中找一个词并非易事，而且很多释义过于模糊，作用无法同现代词典相比。词典是帮助我们积累更多古代作品知识的工具，让我们在讲话和写作时保持精练表达。第二种古代中国词典出现于公元1世纪。该词典通过基本书写形状或“象形词根”对词语加以编排。这类词典没有介绍词语如何发音，主要目的是帮助阐释古代文字作品。第三种早期中文词典是韵书词典，是方便读者习得押韵知识的手册，因为用韵是科举考试考查的能力之一。直到17世纪，学者梅膺祚才发明了一种便于检索的汉字分类方式，几年后，耶稣会传教士编出了西式汉外双语词典，把汉语先后译成拉丁语、葡萄牙语、西班牙语和法语。传统的汉语词典、词汇表和术语表并未像西方词典那样列出“某种语言的所有词汇”——它们列出书写字符，并通过语义、书写形式或发音来编排。这种显著差异或许更清楚地表明，西方词典的编纂在很大程度上也是一种“地区性”传统，这种传统源自我们独特的文字系统。

词典用处何在？双语词典的用处很明显。那单语词典呢？通用词典似乎暗示用该语言的人不能完全理解自己所说的语言。以英语为例，从某种程度上说，英语对英语使用者而言是陌生的。如果不是这样，那为何需要词典来为该语言使用者解释他们所熟悉的语言呢？鸿篇巨著《法兰西学院法语词典》的编纂理念就是面向母语者，帮助他们而不是外语学习者习得口头语言的书面形式。这是一个不同寻常的思路。根据定义，单语词典所编纂的正是词典使用者所具备的言说能力。

通用词典的第二个预设是尽可能列出一种语言的所有词汇。我们对通用词典已习以为常，因此可能花点儿功夫才能意识到这其实是不可能的。我们会认为词典总有点儿过时，即便最好的词典也总会漏掉一些大家想看到的词——但是，我们应该就此放弃奢望。试图囊括“一种语言的所有词汇”是徒劳之举，就好比试图抓住汩汩河流中的每一滴水。如果你真能做到，那不会再是流动的河水，而是一口鱼缸。

《罗氏分类词典》并非为译者设计，但它以两种独特且同样重要的方式服务于翻译。第一是高度实用性。浏览罗氏同义词和同源词表可帮助写作者（同时也可能是译者）确定某一术语——与脑海中首次浮现的词相比，这一术语能更精确地表达内含。然而第二，词典每一页都表明，掌握一门语言就是会用不同的词表达同一意思。这恰恰也是译者尽力所为。《罗氏分类词典》是部很棒的词典，它提醒译者，无论是在两种语言之间，还是在同一种语言内，所有词都是其他词的翻译。

（译者单位：南京航空航天大学外国语学院）