Lesson One
1. And it is an activity only of humans.
And conversation is an activity found only among human beings. 2. Conversation is not for making a point.
Conversation is not for persuading others to accept our ideas or points of views. 3. In fact, the best conversationalists are those who are prepared to lose.
In fact , people who are good at conversation will not argue to win or force others to accept his ideas. 4. Bar friends are not deeply involved in each other’s lives.
People who meet each other for a drink in the bar of a pub are not close friends for they are not deeply absorbed in each other’s private lives.
5. ....it could still go ignorantly on ...
The conversation could go on without anybody knowing who was right or wrong. 6. There are cattle in the fields ,but we sit down to beef.
These animals are called cattle when they are alive and feed in the fields , but when we sit down at the table to eat, we call their meet beef.
7. The new ruling class had built a cultural barrier against him by building their French against his own
language.
The new ruling class by using French instead of English made it hard for the English to accept or absorb the culture of the rulers.
8. English had come royally into its own.
English received proper recognition and was used by the King once more.
9. The phrase has always been used a little pejoratively and even facetiously by the lower classes.
The phrase , the King’s English ,has always been used disrespectfully and jokingly by the lower classes.(The working people often mock the proper and formal language of the educated people.) 10. The rebellion against a cultural dominance is still there.
As the early Saxon peasants , the working people still have a spirit of opposition to the cultural authority of the ruling class.
11. There is always a great danger that “ words will harden into things for us. “
There is always a great danger , as Carlyle put it , that we might forget that words are only symbols and take them for things they are supposed to represent.
a. However intricate the ways in which animals communicate with each other, they do not indulge in anything
that deserves the name of conversation.
不管动物之间的交流方式多么复杂，它们不能参与到称得上是交谈的任何活动中。
b. Argument may often be a part of it, but the purpose of the argument is not to convince. There is no winning
in conversation.
争论会经常出现于交谈中，但争论的目的不是为了说服。交谈中没有胜负之说。
c. Perhaps it is because of my upbringing in English pubs that I think bar conversation has a charm of its own. 或许我从小就混迹于英国酒吧缘故，我认为酒吧里的闲聊别有韵味。
d. I do not remember what made one of our companions say it ---she clearly had not come into the bar to say it ,
it was not something that was pressing on her mind---but her remark fell quite naturally into the talk. 我不记得是什么使得我的一个同伴说起它来的---她显然不是来酒吧说这个的，这不是她事先想好的话题----但她的话相当自然地插入到了交谈中。
e. There is always resistance in the lower classes to any attempt by an upper class to lay down rules for
“English as it should be spoken .”
下层社会总会抵制上层社会企图给“标准英语”制定得规则。
f. Words are not themselves a reality ,but only representations of it ,and the King’s English ,like the
Anglo-French of the Normans , is a class representation of reality.
词语本身并不是现实。正如诺曼底人讲的英格鲁--法语一样，标准英语是一个阶层用来表达现实的形式。 g. Perhaps it is worth trying to speak it, but it should not be laid down as an edict , and made immune to change
from below. 或许试着去说它还是值得的，但是它不能被制定成法令，从而拒绝来自下层的变化。
h. There is no worse conversationalist than the one who punctuates his words as he speaks as if he were writing ,
or even who tries to use words as if he were composing a piece of prose for print. 如果一个人说出的话就像写出来的文字，或者试图使用那些创作书面散文的文字，那么没有比这样的交谈者更糟糕的了。
i. When E.M. Forster writes of “ the sinister corridor of our age,” we sit up at the vividness of the phrase , the
force and even terror in the image. 当E.M.福斯特写到“我们这个时代的险恶长廊”时，其用语之生动及由其所产生的生动有力，甚至可怖的形象苦令我们拍案叫绝。
j. There would have been no conversation the other evening if we had been able to settle at once the meeting of
“ the King’s English.” 那天晚上如果我们立刻解决了“标准英语”的含义，就不会有第二天晚上的谈话了。 Lesson Two
1. The burying-ground is merely a huge waste of hummocky earth, like a derelict building-lot.
The buring-ground is nothing more than a huge piece of wasteland full of mounds of earth looking like a deserted and abandoned piece of land on which a building was going to be put up. 2. All colonial empires are in reality founded upon that fact.
All the imperialists build up their empires by treating the people in the colonies like animals (by not treating the people in the colonies as human beings).
3. They rise out of the earth, they sweat and starve for a few years, and then they sink back into the nameless mounds of the graveyard.
They are born. Then for a few years they work, toil and starve. Finally they die and are buried in graves without a name.
4. A carpenter sits cross-legged at a prehistoric lathe, turning chair-legs at lightning speed.
Sitting with his legs crossed and using a very old-fashioned lathe, a carpenter quickly gives a round shape to the chair-legs he is making.
5. Instantly, from the dark holes all round, there was a frenzied rush of Jews .
Immediately from their dark hole-like cells everywhere a great number of Jews rushed out wildly excited. 6. every one of them looks on a cigarette as a more or less impossible luxury
Every one of these poor Jews looked on the cigarette as a piece of luxury which they could not possibly afford. 7. Still, a white skin is always fairly conspicuous.
However, a white-skinned European is always quite noticeable.
8. In a tropical landscape one's eye takes in everything except the human beings.
If you take a look at the natural scenery in a tropical region, you see everything but the human beings.
9. No one would think of running cheap trips to the Distressed Areas.
No one would think of organizing cheap trips for the tourists to visit the poor slum areas
10. for nine-tenths of the people the reality of life is an endless, backbreaking struggle to wring a little food out of an eroded soil.
Life is very hard for ninety percent of the people．With hard backbreaking toil they can produce a little food on the poor soil．
11. She accepted her status as an old woman, that is to say as a beast of burden.
She took it for granted that as an old woman she was the lowest in the community，that。she was only fit for doing heavy work like an animal．
12. People with brown skins are next door to invisible. People with brown skins are almost invisible．
13. Their splendid bodies were hidden in reach-me-down khaki uniforms.
The Senegales soldiers were wearing ready—made khaki uniforms which hid their beautiful well—built bodies． 14. How long before they turn their guns in the other direction? How much longer before they turn their guns around and attack us?。
15. Every white man there had this thought stowed somewhere or other in his mind. Every white man there had this thought hidden somewhere or other in his mind．
? When you walk through a town like this - two hundred thousand inhabitants of whom at least twenty
thousand own literally nothing except the rags they stand up in - when you see how the people live, and still more how easily they die, it is always difficult to believe that you are walking among human beings. 当你穿行于这样的城镇中—20万居民中至少有2万人除了一身勉强蔽体的破衣烂衫外，一无所有——当你看到这些人是如何生活，又如何轻易死亡时，你总是很难相信自己是行走在人类之中。
? When you go through the Jewish quarters you gather some idea of what the medieval ghettoes were probably
like.
当你穿过犹太人聚居区时，你就会了解中世纪的贫民区大概是个什么样子。
? Many of the streets are a good deal less than six feet wide, the houses are completely windowless, and
sore-eyed children cluster everywhere i unbelievable numbers, like clouds of flies.
很多街道远远不足6英尺宽，房屋根本没有窗户，眼睛肿痛的孩子成群结队 ，随处可见，像成群的苍蝇，数也数不清。
? Even a blind man somewhere at the back of one of the booths heard a rumour of cigarettes and came
crawling out, groping in the air with his hand.