Sells of phrasebooks are falling fast.

外语常用语手册的销量正在迅速下降。

The phrasebook had looked so helpful.

常用语手册曾经似乎很有用。

When Eric Newby, a writer, set out to walk in the Hindu Kush in 1956, he knew he would be visiting places no Englishman had been since 1891.

1956年，作家埃里克·纽比前往了兴都库什山，他知道他将造访的是自1891年以来英国人从未去过的地方。

Nonetheless, he was hopeful of communicating.

尽管如此，他仍对交流抱有希望。

In his bag he carried “Notes on the Bashgali Language”, a phrasebook published in Calcutta in 1902.

他的包里有一本1902年在加尔各答出版的常用语手册《巴什加利语言笔记》。

Opening it one afternoon in the high Himalayas, his hopes faded.

一天下午，他在高耸的喜马拉雅山上打开了这本手册，然后，他的希望破灭了。

Whereas most guidebooks explain how to order a small glass of red wine or a coffee, this offered phrases of more opaque utility.

大多数的旅游指南都会介绍如何点一小杯红酒或咖啡，但这本书中提到的短语却看不出有什么实用性。

“Ini ash ptul p’mich e manchi mrisht waria’m” ran one which, it explained, meant: “I saw a corpse in a field this morning.”

其中一句写道：“Ini ash ptul p’mich e manchi mrisht waria’m”，意思是：“今天早上我在田野里看到一具尸体。”

That was followed by “Tu tott baglo piltia” (“Thy father fell into the river”); “I non angur ai; tu ta duts angur ai” (“I have nine fingers; you have ten”); and “Ia chitt bitto tu jarlom” (“I have an intention to kill you”).

紧随其后的是“Tu tott baglo piltia”(“你父亲掉进了河里”)、“I non angur ai; tu ta duts angur ai”(“我有九根手指，你有十根手指”)和“Ia chitt bitto tu jarlom”(“我打算杀了你”)。

Some struck a more conversational tone, such as “Tu chi se biss gur biti?”

也有些像是用于对话的句子，比如“Tu chi se biss gur biti?”

(“How long have you had a goitre?”).

(“你的甲状腺肿有多久了？”)。

But on the whole the book left him with “a disturbing impression” of Bashgali life.

但总体而言，这本书让他对巴什加利生活产生了“不安的印象”。

Newby’s guide was an eccentric but by no means unique example of a neglected literary genre: the phrasebook.

纽比手中的指南属于一种容易被忽视的文学类型：常用语手册。它不同寻常，但绝不罕见。

These began in antiquity, gathered pace with medieval pilgrimages and flourished in the age of empires and, later, of aeroplanes.

常用语手册出现于古代，随着中世纪的朝圣之旅快速发展，并在帝国时代和后来的航空时代焕发蓬勃生机。

Once they were essential.

它们曾是不可或缺的书籍。

Now the internet and machine translation are rendering them obsolete.

而现在，由于互联网和机器翻译的发展，它们开始逐渐过时。

Figures from Nielsen Book Research, a market-research firm, show that sales in Britain have fallen by 40% in three years.

市场研究公司尼尔森图书研究公司的数据显示，在英国，常用语手册的销量在三年内下降了40%。

The phrasebook is dying.

常用语手册正在消亡。

Few readers will mourn them.

但很少有读者会对它们表示哀悼。

The conversations they mapped out rarely ran so smoothly in life as on the page.

书中安排的对话说起来不像现实生活中那样流畅。

But for historians they are invaluable.

但对于历史学家来说，它们是无价的。

Newby thought his phrasebook was revealing about the Bashgalis; in truth such books reveal much more about their English-speaking authors.

纽比认为他的常用语手册揭示了有关巴什加利人的事实；但事实上，这样的书籍更多地映照了会说英语的作者内心的想法。

To sift through old phrasebooks is to study an unparalleled source on the assumptions made by Britons abroad.

旧时的常用语手册是一些独一无二的材料，能够用于研究旅居海外的英国人对当地产生的猜测。

It is an archaeology of othering.

这是一门关于他者的考古学。

Two things quickly become clear.

两件事很快变得明朗起来。

The first is that travel was seen as a troublesome, even perilous, pursuit.

首先，旅行过去被视为一种麻烦，甚至是危险的行动。

The other is that the now familiar form of the genre - books offering sentences that are practically and predictably useful - took some time to develop.

第二，现在人们熟悉的那种书籍体裁——提供一些实用句子，供日常生活使用，或应对可能情况的书籍——过了一段时间才发展起来。

The 1900 English-Welsh phrasebook “for the use of Travellers and Students” offers “Have you any apples?”

1900年出版的“供旅行者和学生使用的”英语-威尔士语常用语手册中的句子包括：“你有苹果吗？”

and “Where is the butter market?”

和“黄油市场在哪里？”

before adding the more unexpected: “They have cut off his arm.”

更让人意想不到的是：“他们砍掉了他的胳膊。”

The savour of national stereotypes can be tasted on almost every page.

几乎每一页都能感受到作者对威尔士民族的刻板印象。

J.B.Leek’s 1928 English-Italian Conversation Handbook shows that Italy has long been seen as a land of aesthetic indulgence.

J.B.利克在1928年出版的《英语-意大利语对话手册》显示，意大利长期以来被视为一个艺术且放纵的国家。

A section on hair care (“Shave my mustachio/ Kindly twist up my mustachio/ A little pomade on my mustachio”) follows a lengthy section on food.

书中有关于毛发护理的章节(“剃掉我的八字胡/小心地整理我的八字胡/在我的八字胡上抹一点润发油”)，在那之前，是关于食物的长篇大论。

“Give me a bottle...of red wine/ of white wine/ of claret/ of Burgundy...” it runs.

“给我一瓶……红葡萄酒/白葡萄酒/干红葡萄酒/勃艮第葡萄酒……“书中这样写到。

“Give me some Brie cheese/ some Camembert/ some Gruyere...”

“给我一些布里干酪/一些卡蒙贝尔奶酪/一些古老也芝士奶酪......”

The consequences of eating are of abiding interest to British travellers of old.

用餐后的感受一直是旧时英国旅行者感兴趣的问题。

After the food, Leek’s Italian offers the regretful: “I feel qualmish, sick.”

吃完饭后，利克用意大利语表达了失望：“我感到不安、恶心。”

No destination is without its particular intestinal anxiety.

不同旅行的目的地都有其独特的“肠道焦虑”。

“After vomiting his food,” explains one physiologically intriguing entry in an old Korean manual, “his constipation was relieved.”

“在呕吐之后，”很久以前的韩语手册中一条有趣的生理学条目写道，“他的便秘缓解了。”

A 1903 medical phrasebook for Luganda, a Bantu language, offers the unexplained but authoritative: “Keep everything you vomit.”

1903年，一本班图语系卢甘达语的医学术语手册中写到了一句原因不明但看起来十分笃定的话：“把你的呕吐物都留下。”

To judge by these publications, the Briton abroad must have cut a strange figure.

从这些出版物来判断，海外的英国人一定塑造了什么奇怪的形象。

Many position themselves as aids to conversation.

许多常用语手册对自己的定位是“对话的助手”。

The 1909 “Manual of Palestinian Arabic”, for example, explains that its sample sentences “will, it is hoped, be useful to the traveller in his hotel” and “may conceivably be of use in daily life”.

例如，1909年的《巴勒斯坦阿拉伯语手册》表示其例句“或许能帮助旅行者顺利住店”，并“相信其可以在日常生活中使用”。

The book’s phrases include: “We reached the precipice and saw him fall down”; “He died before we found him”; and the gnomic “Gargle twice daily.”

这本书中提到的常用语包括：“我们到了悬崖边，看到他摔了下去”；“他在我们找到他之前就死了”；以及发人深省的“每天刷两次牙”。

Conversation will have hung heavy in the foyers of Jerusalem.

对话会在耶路撒冷的门厅里缓慢进行。

Books from the colonial era are unintentionally telling.

殖民时代的书籍无意中证明了这一点。

History books tend to concentrate on the obvious moments of imperial brutality - on war and rebellion.

历史书籍往往会关注帝国的残暴时刻——战争和叛乱。

Phrasebooks offer the chance to eavesdrop on quieter colonial cruelties in the drawing rooms of empire.

常用语书籍则让我们可以有机会窥见帝国的客厅里更平静的殖民暴行。

“Hold your tongue!”

“闭嘴！

barks one phrase in a 1908 “Hindustani Self-Taught” manual.

1908年的一本《印度斯坦语自学手册》中有一句话叫道。

“Beat that lazy boy” snaps an entry in another guide.

另一本指南书中有一句写道：“打败那个懒汉”。

Many phrasebooks remained in use for a surprisingly long time.

许多常用语书流传了很长时间。

When Elisabeth Kendall, the mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, studied Arabic at Oxford University in the early 1990s, she did so using grammar books that dated back to 1859 (“The cow’s tongue is long” was a typical phrase).

上世纪90年代初，剑桥大学吉顿学院的女教师伊丽莎白·肯德尔在牛津大学学习阿拉伯语时，使用的是可追溯到1859年的语法书(“牛的舌头很长”是一个常用短语)。

She retains a linguist’s affection for their methodology.

作为语言学家，她喜欢这些作者编写书籍的方法。

Some phrases may have lacked practical utility but often illustrated “a grammatical construction in the simplest possible way” - and they were memorable.

有些短语可能缺乏实用价值，但往往“以最简单的方式说明了一种语法结构”，并且令人记忆深刻。

Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, agrees.

哈佛大学心理学教授史蒂文·平克对此表示赞同。

A language, he says, “is not a list of phrases”.

他说，一门语言“不是一系列短语的组合”。

The impracticality of some entries may have been intentional so “speakers would not be locked into canned expressions in stereotyped situations”.

有些词条可能是故意写得很不切实际，这样“在说话时就不会因为刻板印象而拘于格式化的表达”。

The fading genre of the phrasebook is unlikely to be missed.

常用语手册不会静悄悄地消亡。

But something will be lost when it is gone.

但随着它的消失，其它一些东西也会跟着逝去。

Poetry, Robert Frost supposedly said, is what gets lost in translation.

据说罗伯特·弗罗斯特曾说过，诗就是在翻译中丧失掉的东西。

Read these books’ dislocated phrases and poetry can be found in it, too.

这些书中错位的短语间也可以找到诗意。

“Owing to the road being slippery I nearly fell / Ten years ago / Come here,” runs one T.S.Eliotish section in a 1894 Tai-Khamti Grammar.

“由于路滑，我差点摔倒/十年前/来这里，”这是1894年《坎底傣语文法》中T.S.艾略特风格的一小部分内容。

The last words go to entries in an English-Kashmiri manual: “I am now composing a grammar/ I don’t exactly comprehend this…/ It is time to conclude.”

最后这句话出现在一本英语-克什米尔语手册中：“我现在正在编写语法规则/并不能完全理解……/是时候结束了。”

来源：经济学人