人生在世，难免会有各种情绪。人的情绪可以用多种方式表达，包括语言文字。科学研究发现，一种语言里的情绪，翻译成另一种语言以后，往往会有一些偏差。
Emotions are hard to translate
by Kate Baggaley
In the English language, "love" is a pretty important word. It describes one of our most powerful feelings, so it's no surprise that plenty of other languages have words for this emotion too. And these words all seem to capture the same emotion.
emotion /ɪˈməʊʃ(ə)n/ n. 情绪、情感
capture /ˈkæptʃə(r)/ v. 准确表达
But when it comes to language, feelings are a tricky business. A massive new study of thousands of languages around the world has revealed that the words we use to describe our feelings often don't sync up.
tricky /ˈtrɪki/ adj. 棘手的、难办的
business /ˈbɪznɪs/ n. 事情
massive /ˈmæsɪv/ adj. 庞大的
reveal /rɪˈviːl/ v. 揭示
sync /sɪŋk/ up 同步
"We might have a word like 'love' in English and look it up in a translation dictionary in any language and find a comparable word," says Joshua Conrad Jackson, a doctoral（博士的） student in psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lead author of the new paper, which was published online December 19 in the journal Science. "But whether those two words actually refer to the same underlying concept, that's an open question and that's what we were testing."
look up 查阅
translation /trænzˈleɪʃ(ə)n/ n. 翻译（由translate加后缀-ion变成名词）
comparable /ˈkɒmp(ə)rəb(ə)l/ adj. 可比较的、类似的（由compare加后缀-able变成形容词）
psychology /saɪˈkɒlədʒi/ n. 心理学
paper /ˈpeɪpə(r)/ n. 论文
publish /ˈpʌblɪʃ/ v. 发表
journal /ˈdʒɜːn(ə)l/ n. 期刊
refer /rɪˈfɜː(r)/ to 指
underlying /ˌʌndəˈlaɪɪŋ/ adj. 基础的、表面之下的
concept /ˈkɒnsept/ n. 概念
open question 待解决的问题
Jackson and his colleagues analyzed a database of 2,474 languages from 20 different language families, which are languages that share a common ancestor or parent tongue. To investigate whether words that represent an emotion have different shades of meaning around the globe, they used a phenomenon called colexification（一词多义） that happens when the same word is used to describe multiple ideas. In English, for example, the word "funny" can mean "humorous" or "odd."
analyze /ˈæn(ə)laɪz/ v. 分析
database /ˈdeɪtəbeɪs/ n. 数据库
ancestor /ˈænsestə(r)/ n. 祖先
tongue /tʌŋ/ n. 语言
investigate /ɪnˈvestɪɡeɪt/ v. 调查研究
represent /ˌreprɪˈzent/ v. 代表
shade /ʃeɪd/ n. 具有细微差别的类似事物
the globe /ɡləʊb/ 全世界
phenomenon /fəˈnɒmɪnən/ n. 现象
multiple /ˈmʌltɪp(ə)l/ adj. 多个的
humorous /ˈhjuːmərəs/ adj. 幽默的（由humor加后缀-ous变成形容词）
odd /ɒd/ adj. 怪异的
Often, words that become colexified（多义化） describe concepts that the speaker views as related; in many languages, Jackson says, the same word can be used to describe leather, skin, and bark.
view /vjuː/ v. 看待、看作
related /rɪˈleɪtɪd/ adj. 有关联的
leather /ˈleðə(r)/ n. 皮革
bark /bɑːk/ n. 树皮
Across the languages Jackson and his colleagues studied, they identified around 66,000 cases of colexification. They used these instances to draw up maps of the concepts that people link to emotions and how they vary between languages.
identify /aɪˈdentɪfaɪ/ v. 识别、辨认出
instance /ˈɪnstəns/ n. 实例
draw up 起草
It turned out that people understood emotion words very differently around the world. For example, in Indo-European languages, anxiety was closely tied to anger. But among Austroasiatic languages (a group of languages spoken in areas of Southeast Asia and India), anxiety was more related to grief and regret.
turn out 结果是
Indo-European 印欧语系的
anxiety /æŋˈzaɪəti/ n. 焦虑
grief /ɡriːf/ n. 悲痛
regret /rɪˈɡret/ n. 后悔
And however differently we think about emotion across cultures, there were a few patterns that held true around the world. Emotions that feel positive – like love – rarely shared meanings with unpleasant feelings like anger. People also drew a distinction between highly-charged emotions like anger – which come with a racing heart and rising blood pressure – and less heady feelings such as contentment or sadness.
however /ˌhaʊˈevə(r)/ adv. 不管多么
pattern /ˈpæt(ə)n/ n. 模式
positive /ˈpɒzətɪv/ adj. 正面的、积极的
distinction /dɪˈstɪŋkʃ(ə)n/ n. 区别、差别
highly-charged 令人情绪激动的
race /reɪs/ v. 快速移动、（心脏）急速跳动
pressure /ˈpreʃə(r)/ n. 压力
heady /ˈhedi/ adj. 上头的、令人兴奋的
contentment /kənˈtentmənt/ n. 知足、满足（由content加后缀-ment变成名词）
sadness /ˈsædnəs/ n. 悲伤、难过（由sad加后缀-ness变成名词）
The research implies neither that emotion is universal nor that it is a social construct, Jackson says. "Our findings suggest that both are true – that there are some universal building blocks of emotion, but that the way we build on those depends on where we were raised, who we're learning from, and the culture that we identify with," he says.
imply /ɪmˈplaɪ/ v. 暗示、意味着
universal /ˌjuːnɪˈvɜːs(ə)l/ adj. 普遍适用的
construct /ˈkɒnstrʌkt/ n. 观念、构想
suggest /səˈdʒest/ v. 表明
building block 建筑砖块、构成元素
depend /dɪˈpend/ on 依赖于、取决于
raise /reɪz/ v. 抚养、养大
identify with 认同
（如果您发现某些行的最后一个单词被分成两半了，请把您使用的浏览器升级到最新版本就能正常显示了。）
网友评论