答案:浙大校庆上那句话错在哪里?

昨天发了浙大校庆上的一张图片

探讨上面的英文表达

(声明:本文纯探讨英语学习,无意挑战浙大权威)

汉语原文:

向为人类未知领域探索

为国家和民族作出重大贡献的前辈先贤

致以最崇高的敬意!

英文:

Let's express our highest respect to those predecessors

explored the unknown fields of mankind, and to those predecessors

made significant contribution to the country and people!

究竟哪里有点小问题哪?

有同学昨日在评论里说"highest 之前少了个the, 因此应该给是our the highest"; 不过,马上就有同学指出这里没错!

还有同学说,英文中没有感叹号,感叹号错了!

吓得我差点大小便失禁

能把正确的改错

说明自己写的时候极有可能也会写错

这就有点尴尬了

赶紧捏脸

也有同学说,people表“民族”,应该写成peoples

在此,“民族”在本句中应该指“中华民族”,结合前面的the country, 译成单数people 是可行的。

当然,确实有同学很厉害

比如

有同学指出contribution

改为a significant contribution或significant contributions.

为此,我查阅了牛津高阶英英英汉双解词典

摘录如下

con∙tri∙bu∙tion  / ˌkɔntriˈbju:ʃn; NAmE ˌkɑ:n- /

[C, usually sing.]  an action or a service that helps to cause or increase sth

● 贡献;促成作用:

»He made a very positive contribution to the success of the project.

他对项目的成功贡献良多。

可见,确实应该改成significant contributions.

当然,就语法规则而言,还有个明显的错误,就是英文写作中:一个句子只能有一个谓语动词或并列的一组谓语动词;其他的动词都应该以“非谓语”动词的形式出现或出现在从句中充当谓语动词。

那么,再来看看这句话

Let's express our highest respect to those predecessors

explored the unknown fields of mankind, and to those predecessors

made significant contribution to the country and people!

显然,句子的主干为祈使句,即:Let's express our highest respect to those predecessors ... and to those predecessors ...

剩余部分自然应该是修饰成分,试问:explored the unknown fields of mankind 和made sgnificant contributions to the conuntry and people 作为修饰成分修饰两个predecessors 是否合适?

答案是:不合适,explored 和made 都变成了predecessor的谓语动词形式,但predecessors并非主语。

因此,有同学提出,explored 和made应该改为exploring 和making, 即:

Let's express our highest respect to those predecessors

exploring the unknown fields of mankind, and to those predecessors

making significant contribution to the country and people!

语法上没错,但ving分词修饰名词,多表示正在进行的动作,原文描述的是过去;因此,结合语境,定语从句更为精准,即:

Let's express our highest respect to those predecessors

who explored the unknown fields of mankind, and to those predecessors

who made significant contribution to the country and people!

最后的最后,我想想说:“其实,上面说了这么多,都只是扯淡!” 浙江大学的海内外校友,请勿喷我!

写了这么就,不相信没人给个赞赏

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