地道的英語 zt

一位著名的博客Agnescts從語文的角度，對遵理學校的廣告口號(slogan)Teach with heart提出了一些看法，認為Teach with heart不算很地道的英語，因為在網上搜尋發現，寫Teach with heart的人不多，字典也沒有這種寫法，並提出「用心教學」更道地的說法計有Teach wholeheartedly、We are dedicated teachers、 We are devoted to teaching等。

Agnescts的原文如下：


Agnescts的原文如下：

用心教學Teach with heart?!

網誌分類：港式英文 |
網誌日期：2010-07-03 18:07

最近有間私營學校，為其企業起了一個頗響亮的口號：We teach with heart，中譯意思就是「我們用心教學」。

口號固然起得好，意思簡單、清晰、易明，即使英文程度再低的人士也明白。

但若果我們再把中文意思「我們用心教學」翻譯成地道英文，我們卻決不會寫成We teach with heart。

地道的英文(Idiomatic English)表達方式有很多，例如teach wholeheartedly, We are dedicated teachers, We are devoted to teaching等等。

如果大家嘗試把 “teach with heart”這些字放在網上搜尋器內搜尋，你會發覺搜尋結果只有1640個，而在Google search裡，只有9個。又如果大家嘗試翻查heart這個字的用法，根據Longman Online English Dictionary的翻查結果，只有with all your heart 的結果，而不是 “with heart”：

15. with all your heart

with all your strength, energy, or emotion:

He hates Los Angeles with all his heart.

We sang the hymn with all our hearts.

在Oxford English Dictionary裡面，也有同樣的結果：只有with all your heart / with one’s whole heart，就是解作衷心，全心全意地，真心真意地的意思。

可能有些人會認為這是片面之詞，既然有些人寫得出，它就應該是地道英文。如果你真的這樣想就真的片面了，因為在搜尋得出的結果裡，有很多英文網頁也是由非英文為母語的人寫成，即是說：teach with heart這句並不是英語為母語的人寫的，而是如你和我這種以英語為第二語言(English as a second language)的人寫成，如泰國人、香港人、美國華僑等人寫的。

所以，我在這裡要說明的，就是teach with heart並不是一句地道英文的句子，看上去的感覺像是中譯英得出的Chinglish產物，要是寫得地道一點，可以寫成We are dedicated to teaching，We are devoted teachers / We are devoted to teaching，又或者We teach wholeheartedly，但絕不是We teach with heart。

要是上文有言不成理的地方，望請賜教，謝謝。http://hk.myblog.yahoo.com/agnesc-uk/article?mid=1781&prev=1832&next=1706

不久，June Leung在Agnescts的blog留了言。Agnescts贊成June的看法。

我將June Leung的留言抄在以下的方框。由於留言不長，沒有很多闡釋，但characterless那幾句也頗有創意。雖然，中學生寫應試文章不一定要這樣寫，因為掌握得不好會被扣分，不過，這種思考的創意 (用實際的行文論述Teach with heart這句口號並無不妥) 可以借鏡。

我想大家用點心看的，其實是下文Richard Eng的八百多字長文。這篇文章的論述十分清楚，又提供了幾個例子。在充滿競爭的社會行走江湖多年的老師，出手自是不凡。(我並無替遵理書院賣廣告之意，任何補習學校都遠比我這個名不經傳的部落格有名。報讀或不報讀遵理、英皇、現代等補習學校，都由你自己決定，我亦全不知情。我是以事論事，就文論文。Richard Eng這篇長文看來確有用心撰寫，優於不少坊間範文。)

若Agnescts、June或Richard不喜我轉載，可留言給我，我會刪除原文，只能下鏈結。

June Leung的response:

It\'s a matter of opinion.

When it comes to slogans in adverts, people want to see something gimmicky1, not just idiomatic. Just look at the slogan used by Mcdonalds, I\'m loving it. Obviously, verbs like love, hate, like are not often used in the continuous aspect. Simple present tense will do! (亦可寫作Simple present will do!或The simple present tense will do!) But see... I love it, the more idiomatic version, sounds so characterless ! ( I use characterless intentionally. I am fully aware that the word doesn\'t really exist--- you can\'t find it in dictionaries anyway but it doesn\'t mean that it is not comprehensible.)

1 something + adj的結構。Gimmicky是adj。Gimmick是noun。

Moreover, rap is a type of music in which the words are spoken in a rapid, rhythmic way. The four single-syllable words are more easily pronounced and rhymed with (押韻).

As a slogan, it has to be something inspiring, creative, innovative, easily comprehensible1 and most important of all, short, simple and easy to remember. The last thing we want to see in an ad is something boring, albeit (盡管) grammatical and idiomatic.

The true beauty of slogans is being unique, not merely idiomatic.
Richard Eng的response:
Dear Agnes,

With reference to your claim, I have the following points that you need to consider as well.

Teach with heart is a slogan, and a slogan is like the title of an article in a newspaper, which need not be grammatically correct. The main point is to pass the underlying message to readers clearly. A slogan or a title is to produce an effect that the writer wants.

Just take a look at the leading English newspaper in Hong Kong --- the SCMP, and you will definitely find scores of ungrammatical titles which may sadden you. One of them is like this: Connecticut race a window on state of money politics in US (SCMP 3 August 2010, A9). Maybe you will argue that the SCMP is a local newspaper written by local Chinese. But I can tell you, that article was first published in The New York Times, as quoted in the Post.

Let me reiterate (重申) here: a slogan should bring out the effect that the writer wants, probably at the expense of trivial grammatical doctrines. It will even be better if the slogan is easily read and remembered. That is, a slogan should be a mnemonic device(令人容易記憶的設計) that strikes the right chord of the reader (扣上/觸動讀者的心弦，留意，the reader指整體的讀者，在這情況下，用單數比用眾數普遍，亦可以不用the而寫readers，但仍是the reader最普遍) on the one hand, and makes them readily remember your organisation or products on the other. Just think about Adidas, a well-recognised sports brand. It created a slogan readily recalled by the world: Impossible is nothing. Should you stick to established practice and argue by grammatical rules that it should be Being impossible is nothing or Impossibility is nothing, you are definitely not possessing1 any sense of humour or creativity. Also, the latter two are not as concise as the former one.

1 Possess是stative verb (靜態動詞)，本來一般不用continuous tense，但你可以體會Should you…, you are definitely not possessing any sense of humour的意思，不是說對方從來都沒有幽默感，只是說都方如果如何如何就真是沒有幽默感了。

When it comes to grammar and creativity, the slogan I\'m loving it of McDonald\'s is another one. If one insists that there can\'t be a state of am loving in English, and it should be written as I love it instead (which is mundanely boring(平淡得悶人)), one can hardly understand why the slogans of both Adidas and McDonald\'s can be recalled so readily by people who have seen their ads. In this regard, their ads are considered successful. No one has ever shown their repugnance to them.

Great writers sometimes write what we today think is ungrammatical English to achieve a certain effect. In Shakespeare\'s King Richard the Third, he used an ungrammatical phrase methinks instead of I think. What posterity comments on his works, however, is still more praise than criticism. This methinks has also integrated into2 English-speaking societies today, as a way to produce a humorous effect!

2 A has integrated into B和A has integrated itself into B都是A融入B。A is integrated into B是A被融入B。





Even folk song and pop song writers deliberately write ungrammatical English to fit words into notes(令文字合音), so that the songs are good for listening. For example, in Streets of London by Ralph McTell, a line reads And say for you that the sun DON\'T shine. In Lost in love by Air Supply, a line reads And it DON\'T count for much. Can you then say they are not native English speakers?

Bending the grammatical rules for the sake of easy recall is not necessarily confined to English. 融化前人句子,在詩中更為常見,蘇軾也曾將李白的<<秋浦歌>>「白髮三千丈,緣愁似個長,不知明鏡裡,何處得秋霜。」化成僅七字：「鬢霜饒我三千丈」，「鬢霜」兩字並無前人用過，而且不易理解3，但卻普遍被認為是清新，不落俗套。可見在創作的世界裡以新鮮為貴，人人皆這樣說的倒反沒意思。

3 不過，我倒覺得「鬢霜」沒有甚麽不好懂之處。


All in all (大體而言), while (雖然…但) your claim is obviously not malicious in nature I believe, I have to point out that (我必須指出) in the advertising world, gimmicks prevail. The slogan teach with heart fits well into the content and rhyme of the lyrics of the rapping song we use in one of our advertisements this year. Your suggestions, albeit good, may be too long or too difficult as a slogan or words used in a song. Simply put, they don\'t fit the notes.

4 All in all, while … I have to point out that …的具型在寫議論文時可用。



The value of a slogan is the creativity in it, which is why advertisers rack their brains (絞盡腦汁) to create catchy (容易記住的) slogans simply for the sake of bringing the underlying message across to their target customers. This is what we are doing. If every time we have to search over the Net for lines or slogans which have a high hit rate or are widely used and accepted by the people at large before we use them, even you won\'t call this creative, won\'t you?



Richard Eng

其實，以上論題可以是一篇議論文或Group Discussion的題目。

以下的video可以一看。這位老兄指出，因為love是stative verb，stative verb述說的是狀態，所以You cannot use the stative verbs with the present continuous tense。這類stative verb不應用進行式。

Stative verbs（靜態／狀態動詞）還有admire、believe、despise、impress、own、seem、want、mean、keep等。例如believe，你「信」就是「信」，不會「正在信」。 又例如own a flat，你「擁有一個單位」就是「擁有一個單位」，不會「正在擁有一個單位」。

不過，這位老兄只說對了一半。Stative verbs, though not usually used in continuous tense, can give delicately different meanings if so used. 例如，Macdonald’s 的slogan指的是吃着時很喜愛之意(I am enjoying it (loving it) right now. It gives me the sense that I am biting into a nice juicy hamburger.)。


留言(1) | 引用(0) | 話題(英文)

[1] Is Eng\'s really good English?

Frankly, the way Eng starts his letter sounds very wrong to my ears.

1. With reference to sounds extremely formal and doesn\'t fit into the register of the remainder of the passage.

2. Is claim the right word to use here? It gives the impression that Eng thinks from the outset that what the blogger said was not right.

3. Would you use as well in the very first paragraph of your letter? When there is nothing to compare whatever he was talking about with?

In the first paragraph, the use of the word like as an alternative of, for example, such as is clearly intended to sound informal, but in the same sentence he uses the structure need not be with need as an auxilliary verb, which, again, is very formal and simply contradicts the impression the first part of the sentence is trying to convey.

And then Eng claims that teach with heart is not very different from titles used in SCMP. That simply is an misunderstanding and a misstatement. In SCMP, articles (ie the, a, an) are deliberately omitted in titles for conciseness purposes. But that is almost about it. SCMP\'s editors for most of the time only simplify the titles, not coin unusual words or write ungrammatically.

There are many other problems with the letter, both in terms of its substance and Eng\'s use of lanuguage. In any case I really cannot accept the idea of studying Eng\'s writing as though it is something worth modelling on.