内容保密 不宜外传；“操”的动词用法

各类法律文书里常能见到Private & Confidential，今天看到有人译作“私人机密” 。这大约是词霸附身了，转念一想，如此说话有点冤枉词霸，毕竟词霸没有只给一项解释，而是给了很多很多，是做翻译的朋友习惯性只选第一项而已啊。

根据Webster的解释，在这个上下文里Private的意思是not intended to be known publicly: secret 。 后面这个secret可是说得明白，跟“私人”不“私人”一点关系都没有。Private & Confidential放在一道，翻译哪能处理？两个字：“保密”或者“机密”；四个字：“保密信息/资料”或者“机密信息/资料”：长一点的：“内容保密，切勿/不宜外传”，凡此等等，多了去了，稍有汉语知识加稍微愿意多花点时间的，不会想不到。

“私人机密”这样的话只要是中国人读起来就会觉得怪，我告诉自己，要学会把土生土长的中国人不会说中国话看成一道别致的风景。

哦，对了，上面这句话大多数时候都是在文件封面或者正文第一页上的。

文件里头看到一句话：“某某能操流利英语”。“操”这里表示“用某种语言、方言说话”。我觉得“某某操流利英语”就足够表达作者意思了，尽管从语法和搭配角度，“能操某种语言”似乎没啥问题，但总觉得不舒服。

Google上用“能操流利的普通话”检索，完全匹配结果的大多来自招工要求，来源网站多为小站，查得数量也少，不仅无法认定“能操”是个常用搭配，还隐隐地证明了“能操”用法很少。如果我写招聘要求，直接写“操流利普通话” 就好了，因为招聘的每一项要求前都有个隐含的“能”或者“会”字，无需另外加个“操”，叠床架屋。

今日两例，一例明白，一例存疑，“操”只能凭感觉，“操”出道道者，请pm，绝对Priviate & Confidential！

“爿”

TT来问这个字怎么写，我会写，但打不出来，因为受方言影响，把它的拼音记成了ban，《现汉》用拼音当然查不到，用部首检字法也没查到。

TT用五笔试，没打出来，只能找到"奘"、"�"之类用"爿"字做部首的。这样就有办法了，用"�"和"部首"作为关键字去google上查，"爿"一下子就有了。再用这个字本身去google里找，关于这个字具体的解释、发音、甚至五笔输入法键位都出来了：http://www.chinabaike.com/dir/zidian/P/539554.html。发音是pán， 五笔输入法键位是nhd(e)。

顺藤摸瓜成功！

这个词普通话是送气音，吴方言里是不送气音，此间差异的历史，就得咨询专家了。

Commission v Committee

一直搞不明白这两个词的区别，去了某老外的类似"咬文嚼字"的论坛，得到了如下回复，共享给大家：

A committee is a group of people who meet and deliberate according to fixed rules in order to make a decision or produce a document as a group.

A commission is a group of people who are entrusted (that is the etymology) by a government to carry out a task. Sometimes the task is a specific one (like ascertaining a particular fact or resolving a particular problem) and sometimes the task is more long-term (like the SEC, that is, Securities and Exchange Commission).

A commission is usually distinct from other kinds of agency in two ways: it has no single, permanent administrator, and it has no independent or constitutional authority of its own―it operates under the authority of another part of the government.

Of course, a commission can be a committee (like the 9/11 Commission), but very few committees are commissions, and some commissions are not committees.

更进一步的补充：

The defining difference is that a committee is part of a larger organization. A commission is an independent group. E.g., The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation was formed by the Senate as a sub-group of the Senate. By comparison, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is an independent agency of the government.

又一位朋友的回帖：

A committee could be self appointed in an organization. Any citizen's group in a neighborhood can form a committee. A commission is more of an organization that is created by a higher authority, like a king in days of yore.

Obligated vs Obliged

Think twice before you determine which word you would like adopt in your writing, legal drafting for particular. If you are a non native English speaker as I am, your chances of not getting confused are about as good as me getting laid by Miss Shanghai. I did a research on the usage of the two similar, in the senses of spelling, pronunciation and meaning, words and did not find myself anywhere and then posted the question at an English language web Blog, pain in the English, where it made a wave and attracted discussions and, to my surprise, controversies among the readers, most of whom are native.

Fortunately, another language lover, Casey, a native, eyed this post and wrote in detail at her blog, Bellatra write well. The topic was as well received as it was at Pain in the English. I think I've got some idea about the two confusing words, still without the right sense of playing with them delicately though.

Click here to see what Casey tells us.

And, other (not always necessarily different) voices to be heard at Obligated Vs Obliged:

"I feel obliged to disagree, but by no means obligated, as I clearly have a free choice to abstain."
Appealing to the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary:

http://www.britannica.com/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=Obligated

An obligation is a legal, moral or financial commitment. To me, this implies that you have no choice in the matter: Once obligated, you can't back out without serious repercussions.

http://www.britannica.com/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=Obliged

To be obliged can mean required, but it can also mean to have an informal moral sense that you should do something. (The definition says "doing a favor.") To me, saying that "I'm obliged to do something" means that I could live with the consequences of not doing it. In other words, I have free choice to do it or not, and I choose to do it.

“缘分”和“话痨”

WORD ONE

An English Language Learner's Word of the Day November 21

kismet

Pronounced: click here

Function: noun [noncount]

Meaning:

: a power that is believed to control what happens in the future : fate

Example:

<When we first met each other, we knew it must have been kismet (that brought us together).>

――"缘分"？

WORD TWO

Word of the Day for Thursday, November 22, 2007

deipnosophist \dyp-NOS-uh-fist\, noun:

Someone who is skilled in table talk.

At the age of six his future as a deipnosophist seemed certain. Guzzling filched apples he loved to prattle. Hogging the pie he invariably piped up and rattled on.

-- Ellis Sharp, "The Bloating of Nellcock"

Deipnosophist comes from the title of a work written by the Greek Athenaeus in about 228 AD, Deipnosophistai, in which a number of wise men sit at a dinner table and discuss a wide range of topics. It is derived from deipnon, "dinner" + sophistas, "a clever or wise man."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for deipnosophist

――"饭泡粥"（"话痨"）？

Adieu, "with regard/respect to" !

Fed up with the abused "with regard/respect to" in legal contexts, I have been trying to find some substitutions for this long and cumbersome word.

I found one, an interesting word, i.e. apropos.

It might be used as an adverb, an adjective or a preposition, with illustrations as follows:

Adv. Your letter came apropos as usual. [timely]
Adj. It is an apropos time to have this matter discussed. [proper]
Your remark is not apropos to our discussion. [relevant]
Apple is not apropos for this season. [seasonable]
Prep. Apropos of the preceding statement, ...[about, with regard to]

Please note that when used as an adjective, it is followed by to or for and as an preposition by "of".

Last but not the leaset, the word is pronounced in two different ways, with the stress on the very first syllable as preferred by British speakers or on the very last like how the French say it. However, in whichever case, the ending "s" is silent. That's the rule of pronunciation for all French words and most of the English words with French ancestors.

This marks a beginning that the disgusting long phrase "with regard/respect to" is fading out of the legal documents that I will deal with.

Adieu, "with regard/respect to." It's the apropos time!

“节骨眼”

juncture (noun)

1 : joint, connection *2 : a point of time; especially : one made critical by a concurrence of circumstances

Example sentence:

"At this juncture in the editing process," said Philip, "it is important that all facts have been double-checked and sources verified."

Did you know?
"Juncture" has many relatives in English ? and some of them are easy to spot, whereas others are not so obvious. "Juncture" derives from the Latin verb "jungere" ("to join"), which gave us not only "join" and "junction" but also "conjugal" ("relating to marriage") and "junta" ("a group of persons controlling a government"). "Jungere" also has distant etymological connections to "joust," "jugular," "juxtapose," "yoga" and "yoke." The use of "juncture" in English dates back to the 14th century. Originally, the word meant "a place where two or more things are joined," but by the 17th century it could also be used of an important point in time or of a stage in a process or activity.

source: http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/juncture

Turnover vs Revenue

客户来电话说上次管理协议的翻译有问题，"turnover"和"revenue"的概念搞错了。客户是跟老外谈的，老外也闹不明白。绕了很大一圈到我这里（稿件不是我翻的，我和另外一个律师这次做的是校对和润色的活），由我来检查是否出错。我想了想，这种东西要出错的概率很低的。但是无论如何，还是看一遍。

为了确保万无一失，我用word里面的查找功能，把所有的turnover都找出来，再对照中文稿挨个查。稿件中：Net Turnover译为"净营业额"，Gross Turnover为"总营业额"，而revenue就以"Gross Revenue"的形式出现过一次，对应的中文是"总收入"。实在不明白客户对此有什么不明白的。

再和老外沟通，老外说，客户的意思是：Turnover应该是"利润"，Revenue应该是"营业额"。

我只能说，那么大一个公司找这样的人出来谈合同，真的很需要勇气。