倒时差睡不着，便读了读刚出炉的《经济学人》。顺便写个笔记，聊聊 2019 年 2 月 16 日这期的《经济学人》，看看有哪些巧妙的标题和精彩表达。

在 Briefing 版块呼应封面文章的是“Life, liberty and the pursuit of property”：

Life, liberty and the pursuit of property 来自美国的《独立宣言》，原文是：

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

作者把“the pursuit of happiness”改成了“the pursuit of property”，不仅使 property 和 liberty 押尾韵，还有些欲抑先扬的调皮。这种修辞手法叫“突降”（anti-climax）：

语义从重大、深刻突然转入平淡、荒唐。听众或读者得到和预期迥然不同甚至悖逆相反的结果，因而哑然失笑。

范家材《英文修辞》

突降是常用的幽默手法，比如The duties of a soldier are to protect his country and peel potatoes。我们可以用这招编段子。

《独立宣言》的梗在这期的中国板块也出现了。这期《茶馆》专栏有一篇文章讨论中国人怎么就不开心，标题就叫 The Pursuit of Happiness：

这篇文章的第一段讲了《独立宣言》的中文翻译问题，和标题很般配：

It took125 years for America’s Declaration of Independence to reach a wide Chinese audience, and when it did, somelofty phrases got lost. The earliest known Chinese translation of the declaration, published in 1901 by young nationalists burning to overthrow the Qing empire, is an impatient, combative text. The document’s name, noted the scholar who rediscovered it, Frank Li of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, became the “American War Proclamation of Independence”. The rights it deemed inalienable—“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”—turned into something bleaker: “life, liberty and all interests”.

《经济学人》评《流浪地球》的这篇标题叫 Lights! Camera! Win-win outcomes! 来自电影拍摄中常听到的“Lights, camera, action”——灯光、摄像、开拍！

读了好几篇外媒对影片的介绍，还是《经济学人》的文笔出众。人狠话不多，用词精准，节奏自带大片儿画面：

Earth mustbe moved away from the expanding sun, whichthreatens to engulf it. As it is propelled across the solar system by gargantuan thrusters it gets trapped in Jupiter’s gravitational pull. The apocalypse looms. There is only one hope for the human race: China.

第二段第一句：“The Wandering Earth”, China’s first blockbusting sci-fi film, has achieved gravity-defying success with this absurd plot.

这里的"gravity-defying sucess"用得很准确、应景儿。gravity-defying 本来表示“反重力”，和电影内容相关，在这里用来形容 sucess 表示非比寻常的巨大成功。

另外 defy 这个词值得好好学习。本意表示“挑战”“蔑视”，不过用法很灵活，来看几个例句感受一下：

• Thisdefiesall logic.这根本不合逻辑。

• His behaviourdefiesexplanation. 他的行为是说不过去的。

• These problemsdefysolution. 这些问题是解决不了的。

• This worddefiestranslation. 这个单词是无法翻译的。

Light-bulb moment 这个表达很有画面——“灵光一现”，不过文章和“好主意”没太大关系，讲得是南非国电公司 Eskom 的危机和南非总统面临的困难。

由于南非前总统祖玛的胡作非为、贪赃枉法，现任总统得一个劲儿地给他擦屁股。文中有这样一句写前总统的话，我们可以收藏，留着用来写贪官：

Mr Zuma hollowed out institutions, appointed crooks and liars to senior jobs and ensured that the watchdogs who are supposed to stop corruption were muzzled.

New dog, old tricks 来自习语 Old dogs can`t learn new tricks，在这里可以理解为“换汤不换药”。本周还有个类似的标题：Old prejudice in new tweets，讲得是上周美国政治的推特风波。

这期的商业板块有一篇写到了中国的黄金首饰，标题叫 The bijoux of Beigao，这个我觉得有点儿过了，弄个法语词和 Beigao 押韵，没什么特别之处。估计作者也很精通法语吧，一下子就想到了 bijoux。

bijoux 是法语中的 jewels，“珠宝”的意思。文中还出现了一些和黄金首饰有关的词，可以一网打尽：bullion（金/银条），ingot（锭），adornment（饰品），charm（手镯/项链上的小挂件/饰物），goldsmith（金匠）。样式很俗气可以用 tacky。

莆田商人进军黄金市场，他们的黄金首饰销售额占全国三分之一，绝大多数从业者都来自莆田荔城区下的北高镇。《经济学人》是这样介绍莆田的：

Though the region is known for two other profitable industries—counterfeit trainers and private hospitals—the latter has been losing investors to gold, says the trade association. (trainers 在这里是“运动鞋”，是英式说法，美国人更常用 sneakers）

对城镇的描写很精彩，捕捉了很多细节，用词也很讲究，可以注意下一下我加粗的几个地方：

On the city’s main street, 20 gold shops, including local chains like Goldwharf and Luk Luk Luck, vie with ubiquitous shopfronts advertising low-cost Oppo and Vivo smartphones, up from a handful a couple of years ago. Taiwanese television starlets grace jewellery billboards. For Chinese new year this month, a holiday week in which gold sales quintuple, music plays and lantern-shaped disco balls whirl.

In part of Beigao, a nondescript town of around 100,000 people in the Putian municipal area, nine in ten people work in the gold business, says Mr Lin. The place churns with construction activity. Rows of half-finished houses have a magic-beanstalk feel to them, sprouting columns, balustrades and flowery stucco. Mr Zhang’s home has eight floors. Over a lunch of puffer fish, gold-industry bosses recall days when the sweet potatoes, a staple crop, were too few to go around.

这期就写到这里，还有很多精彩的地方就不一一列出了。如果你也读这期的《经济学人》，欢迎你也把遇到的巧妙的标题、好玩的表达分享出来。

我们下期再见。

读英文原版书刊，

学立刻就能用的地道英文

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