开篇祝大家情人节快乐！有伴儿的尽管秀单身的就在家好好学习吧~Story of Your Life 前两篇请戳

 

开篇祝大家情人节快乐！有伴儿的尽管秀单身的就在家好好学习吧~

Story of Your Life 前两篇请戳：英语读书计划 -- Story of Your Life (电影《降临》原著) （1）英语读书计划 -- Story of Your Life（电影《降临》）  （2）

Gary had been watching my reaction. “Ready?” he asked.加里正注意我的反应，“准备好了吗？”他问I took a deep breath. “Ready enough.” Id done plenty of fieldwork before, in the Amazon, but it had always been a 。

bilingual（双语的） procedure: either my informants knew some Portuguese, which I could use, or Id previously gotten an introduction to their language from the local

missionaries（传教士）. This would be my first attempt at conducting a true monolingual discovery procedure. It was straightforward enough in theory, though.

我深深地吸了口气，“好了”我以前在亚马逊干过很多实地调察的工作，但那都是双语的程序：或者被调查的人知道一点我会使用的葡萄牙语，或者先前我从当地的传教士那儿得到过一点他们语言的介绍这次是我第一次进行单语言探索的尝试。

尽管这在理论上十分浅显 I walked up to the looking glass and a heptapod on the other side did the same. The image was so real that my skin crawled. I could see the texture of its gray skin, like

corduroy（灯心绒） ridges（脊状） arranged in whorls（螺旋纹） and loops. There was no smell at all from the looking glass, which somehow made the situation stranger.

我走近观望镜，另一边的一只七抓怪也照做它的景象是那么的真实，使我起了鸡皮疙瘩我看见它灰色质地的皮肤，就好像螺旋状的灯心绒褶皱在镜子这边嗅不到什么气味，使情况微微有点怪I pointed to myself and said slowly, “Human.” Then I pointed to Gary. “Human.” Then I pointed at each heptapod and said, “What are you?”。

我指着自己，慢慢说道：“人”然后我指着加里：“人”然后指向七抓怪，说道：“你是谁？”No reaction. I tried again, and then again.没有反应，我又试了一次，然后是第三次。

One of the heptapods pointed to itself with one limb, the four terminal（终端的）digits（指头） pressed together. That was lucky. In some cultures a person pointed with his chin; if the heptapod hadnt used one of its limbs, I wouldnt have known what gesture to look for. I heard a brief

fluttering（摆动，震动） sound, and saw a puckered（折叠，缩拢）orifice（孔口） at the top of its body vibrate; it was talking. Then it pointed to its companion and fluttered again.

其中一只七爪怪用一条肢指着自己，顶端的四根手指挤在一起真是好运有些文明种族用下巴指东西，假如七爪怪没用肢体，我可不知道它那姿势什么意思我听见它发出的简短的振动声，看见它身体顶端的一个缩拢的孔振动着；它在说话。

然后它又指向同伴，发出重复的振动声I went back to my computer; on its screen were two virtually identical spectrographs representing the fluttering sounds. I marked a sample for playback. I pointed to myself and said “Human” again, and did the same with Gary. Then I pointed to the heptapod, and played back the flutter on the speaker.

我回到电脑前，屏幕上显示出两幅完全一样的代表振动声的声音波谱我让其中一个声音样本往前倒，我指着自己，又说了一次“人”，又指着加里重复了一下然后指向七爪怪，用扬声器播放了播放器中的振动声The heptapod fluttered some more. The second half of the spectrograph for this 。

utterance（说话方式） looked like a repetition: call the previous utterances [flutter1], then this one was [flutter2flutter1].

七爪怪发出的振动声多了一些声谱的后半部好像是刚才的振动声，假如称先前的话为“振动声之一”，那这句话就是“振动声之二振动声之一” I pointed at something that might have been a heptapod chair. “What is that?”。

我指着好像是七爪怪椅子的东西，“那是什么？”The heptapod paused, and then pointed at the “chair” and talked some more. The spectrograph for this differed distinctly from that of the earlier sounds: [flutter3]. Once again, I pointed to the “chair” while playing back [flutter3].

七爪怪停顿了一下，指着“椅子”，说了另外一句话声谱所显示的与先前的两个都不同：振动声之三再一次的，我指着“椅子”，回放了振动声之三The heptapod replied; judging by the spectrograph, it looked like [flutter3flutter2]. Optimistic interpretation: the heptapod was confirming my utterances as correct, which implied 。

compatibility（兼容性） between heptapod and human patterns of discourse（谈话）. Pessimistic interpretation: it had a

nagging（唠叨的） cough.七爪怪回复了，从声谱上看，像是“振动声之三振动声之二”乐观的解释是：七爪怪对我的话表示肯定，这表示了七爪怪与人类说话模式的相容性悲观的解释是，它只是不停的在咳嗽At my computer I

delimited（划界） certain sections of the spectrograph and typed in a tentative（实验性的，暂时的） gloss（注释） for each: “heptapod” for [flutter1], “yes” for [flutter2], and “chair” for [flutter3]. Then I typed “Language: Heptapod A” as a heading for all the utterances.

在电脑前我在各段声谱上画了条分界线，对每个作了暂时的注释振动声之一为“七爪怪”，振动声之二为“是”，振动声之三为“椅子” 然后我写了个总标题“语言：七抓怪语A”Gary watched what I was typing. “Whats the ‘A’ for?”。

加里看着我打下这些话：“A代表什么？”“It just distinguishes this language from any other ones the heptapods might use,” I said. He nodded.

“它只是区别七爪怪可能使用的其它语言”我说道，他点点头“Now lets try something, just for laughs.” I pointed at each heptapod and tried to mimic the sound of [flutter1], “heptapod.” After a long pause, the first heptapod said something and then the second one said something else, neither of whose spectrographs resembled anything said before. I couldnt tell if they were speaking to each other or to me since they had no faces to turn. I tried pronouncing [flutter1] again, but there was no reaction.。

“现在我们试试另一些，肯定很有趣”我指着每个七爪怪，尝试着模仿“振动声之一”——“七爪怪”，经过很长的停顿之后，第一只七爪怪说了句话，第二只也说了几句，没有一句的声谱类似于先前的我吃不准它们是否在交谈，还是在对我说，因为它们没有转向的脸。

我试着再次发出“振动声之一”，可没有反应“Not even close,” I grumbled.“学的一点不像”我抱怨道“Im impressed you can make sounds like that at all,” said Gary.。

“真难以想象你能发出这些声音”加里说“You should hear my moose call. Sends them running.”“你应该听听我学的北美麋叫声，能让它们跑起来”I tried again a few more times, but neither heptapod responded with anything I could recognize. Only when I replayed the recording of the heptapods pronunciation did I get a confirmation; the heptapod replied with [flutter2], “yes.”。

我试了几次，可七爪怪回复的我一点也辨认不出只有当我再次回放了播放器中的七爪怪的发音时，它们才给了我明确的答复，七爪怪用振动声之二回复道，“是”“So were stuck with using recordings?” asked Gary.。

“是不是得继续使用录音？”加里问I nodded. “At least temporarily.”我点点头：“至少暂时是”“So now what?”“那现在怎么办？”“Now we make sure it hasnt actually been saying ‘arent they cute’ or ‘look what theyre doing now.’ Then we see if we can identify any of these words when that other heptapod pronounces them.” I gestured for him to have a seat. “Get comfortable; thisll take a while.”。

“现在我们确认一下他们并不在说‘你们真漂亮’或者‘看他们在说什么’这样的话，然后我们看看我们是否可以辨认出七爪怪在说什么，”我示意他坐下，“你随意这得花些时间”In 1770, Captain Cooks ship Endeavour ran 。

aground（搁浅，地面上） on the coast of Queensland, Australia. While some of his men made repairs, Cook led an exploration party and met the aboriginal people. One of the sailors pointed to the animals that hopped around with their young riding in

pouches（小袋）, and asked an aborigine what they were called. The aborigine replied, “Kanguru.” From then on Cook and his sailors referred to the animals by this word. It wasnt until later that they learned it meant “What did you say?”

1770年，库克船长（注⑶）的“努力”号在澳大利亚皇后岛西海岸登陆，他的一些手下修理船只时，库克带领考察队在陆上遇到了土著居民一名船员指着把幼崽装在肚袋中、四处跳动的动物，问一个土著它们叫什么土著回答道：“坎格鲁。

”从此库克船长和他的船员就以此词称呼这种动物直到许久以后，他们才知道这个词的意思是 “你说什么？”I tell that story in my introductory course every year. Its almost certainly untrue, and I explain that afterwards, but its a classic

anecdote（趣闻，轶事）. Of course, the anecdotes my undergraduates will really want to hear are ones featuring the heptapods; for the rest of my teaching career, thatll be the reason many of them sign up for my courses. So Ill show them the old videotapes of my sessions at the looking glass, and the sessions that the other linguists conducted; the tapes are

instructive（有益的，有教育性的）, and theyll be useful if were ever visited by aliens again, but they dont generate many good anecdotes.

每年我都会在我的课程介绍中讲这个故事几乎可以肯定故事的不真实性，事后我也会解释，不过这确实是个经典的轶事当然，我的大学生们真正想听到的事是那些描述七爪怪的在我余后的教学生涯中，这是他们中许多个上我课的原因。

所以我会给他们看我在观望镜前活动的录像还有其他语言学家进行的活动，这些带子很具有教学性，假如再一次碰到七爪怪，它们将很有帮助但它们不是很好的故事When it comes to language-learning anecdotes, my favorite source is child language acquisition. I remember one afternoon when you are five years old, after you have come home from kindergarten. Youll be coloring with your

crayons（蜡笔） while I grade papers.当要在学习语言中讲述故事时，我最喜爱的是在儿童教学中获得的我记得在你五岁时的一个下午你从幼儿园中回到家你正用蜡笔涂画，而我在批阅论文“Mom,” youll say, using the carefully casual tone reserved for requesting a favor, “can I ask you something?”

“妈，”你会说，小心翼翼的，用专门恳求帮助的语气，“我能问你一些事吗？”“Sure, sweetie. Go ahead.”“当然，甜心说吧”“Can I be, um, honored?”“我能，嗯，受人尊敬吗？”。

Ill look up from the paper Im grading. “What do you mean?”我从试卷上抬起头：“你想说什么？”“At school Sharon said she got to be honored.”

“在学校里莎朗说他会受人尊敬”“Really? Did she tell you what for?”“真的？她说为什么了吗？”“It was when her big sister got married. She said only one person could be, um, honored, and she was it.”。

“那是在她大姐结婚时她说只有一人能收到尊敬，她就会” “Ah, I see. You mean Sharon was maid of honor?”“啊，我知道了你是说莎朗是伴娘？”“Yeah, thats it. Can I be made of honor?”。

“是呀，我能受人尊敬吗？”

漫叔会勤劳地更新这篇获奖作品，喜欢科幻小说的/希望提升英语阅读水平的大小朋友，欢迎每天来看~！也希望大家能转发给有兴趣的盆友哦！明天见~！

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