实战口语情景对话 第478期:Shakespeare 莎士比亚

Todd: Eucharia, you are into drama so I thought we would talk about Shakespeare.
托德：尤查里亚，你很喜欢戏剧，所以我想我们可以谈谈莎士比亚。

Eucharia: Cool!
尤查里亚：太好了！

Todd: First of all, who is Shakespeare?
托德：首先，莎士比亚是谁？

Eucharia: Well, Shakespeare is one of the most famous playwrights of the world. He was born in 1564 in Stratford on Avon in England which is a really pretty town and he opened the Globe theatre in London I think at some stage but the main thing why Shakespeare is so famous… he had a really short life. Back in those days to make it to 40 was considered old age but in his relatively short life he produced an enormous body of work. He produced historical plays, tragedies, comedies, poetry, sonnets… So he was an extremely prolific writer and I think the reason that he's so famous even today is because the themes he chose for most of his work were universal. They're themes that touch us whether we speak English, whether we speak Spanish or Russian, whether we're in the 21st century or in the 16th century. They're themes that are eternal and they concern humanity, and have concerned humanity for such a long time.
尤查里亚：莎士比亚是世界上最著名的剧作家之一。他于1564年出生在英国艾冯河畔的美丽小镇斯特拉特福，他曾在伦敦建立了环球剧院，但是莎士比亚如此著名的最主要原因是……他的生命非常短暂。在当时那个年代，活到40岁就已经算长寿了，但是在他相对较短的生命中，他创作了大量的作品。他创作了历史剧、悲剧、喜剧、诗歌、十四行诗等等……所以他是个多产的作家，我认为时至今日他依然这么出名的原因是，他大部分作品中的主题都具有普遍性。无论我们的母语是英语、西班牙还是俄语，无论我们生活在21世纪还是16世纪，这些主题都会打动我们。无论过去多长时间，这些主题都是永恒的，而且充满了人文关怀。

Todd: How much of the English has changed since the original Shakespeare to the Shakespeare we have today, I mean the English we have today?
托德：从莎士比亚原着到今天我们看到的莎士比亚作品，我是说到今天我们使用的英语，英语语言有多少变化？

Eucharia: Well if Shakespeare suddenly appeared in the 21st century he would be almost illiterate because back in those days English had a vocabulary of about 150,000 words, whereas now the vocabulary of English is one of the highest in the world. I think 300,000 now, probably more, so Shakespeare wouldn't be able to make himself understood if he came back today, so in a way the vocabulary he's using is really easy. But of course English has changed from that era from middle English until contemporary, English keeps changing even if you talk to your grandparents, well not just English, all languages change and develop over time so even if you talk to your grandparents they're going to use a slightly different variety of the language you're speaking.
尤查里亚：如果莎士比亚来到21世纪，他可能都不会读写，因为当时的英语大约有15万个词汇，而现在英语的词汇量可以说是世界上词汇量最多的语种之一。我想现在大概有30万个词汇，也可能更多，所以莎士比亚如果来到21世纪，他可能无法清楚表达自己的意思，也可以说从某个角度来说，当时他使用的词汇非常简单。当然从中世纪英语到当代英语，英语语言一直在不断的变化，你和你的祖父母聊天……随着时间的推移，不仅仅是英语，所有语言都在变化、都在向前发展，你和你的祖父母聊天时会发现，他们所说的语言与你使用的语言会有些不同。

Todd: But wait a minute. You're saying that his English is easy? When I read it it doesn't seem easy, it seems pretty tough!
托德：等一下。你说他用的英语语言很简单？可是我在读他的作品时可并不觉得简单，准确地说是非常难懂！

Eucharia: Well that's because his English was used in a different way. So some words and some grammatical structures are no longer in English, they've fallen out of usage except when we read stuff like Shakespeare and then for us it seems almost like a foreign language because we don't have these grammatical structures any more and we don't use English in this way anymore.
尤查里亚：这是因为他是用一种不同的方式来使用的英语语言。有一些单词和一些语法结构已经不在英语中使用了，那些已经不再使用了，我们只会在莎士比亚的作品中看到，我们可能会觉得那像是外语，因为我们现在已经不再使用这些语法结构，也不再使用那种英语语言了。

Todd: Ok thanks.
托德：好的，谢谢。