八月练习宫4(宫东风每日词汇测试8.25——8.31)

Remarks on the House Vote on Health Insurance Reform (1) When is an apology not enough？ What is the difference between a clarification and a correction or an admission of error？ Is a retraction' the same as a recantation？ To recant is to withdraw or disavow a declared belief, as in renouncing a philosophy or abjuring fealty to a religion. (2) The most famous recantation in history was that made by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, when threatened by the Inquisition in 1633 with dire punishment for advocating the theory of Copernicus that the earth was not the center of the universe but that it moved around the sun: “I abjure, curse and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies,” swore the intimidated scientist, legendarily adding under his breath, “eppur si muove”—”but it moves.” That retraction of his recantation is apocryphal, probably the starry-eyed wish of subsequent astronomers.) （1）什么情况下仅仅道歉是不够的？澄清、更正或承认错误之间有何区别？撤销和撤回是否是一码事？撤回是指收回或否认公开宣布的信仰，例如宣布放弃某种人生观，或声明放弃效忠某种宗教。 （2）历史上最著名的撤回声明是意大利天文学家伽利略作出的。1633年，当他因支持哥白尼的地球并非宇宙中心，而是围绕太阳旋转的理论而受到宗教法庭严厉惩罚的威胁时，这位受到威迫的科学家威胁说:“我声明放弃、诅咒并僧恶七述谬见和异端邪说。”但据传他低声地加了一句 “eppur si muove”——“可它的确旋转。”(那个对他的撤回声明的撤销之语倒是不足为信，很可能只是后来那些天文学家不切实际的愿望。) (3) To retract, from the Latin for to draw back, is directed to a specific statement more than a body of work. The most famous retraction this year was made by Newsweek magazine after it apologized for a portion of an article alleging that an internal military investigation had uncovered an instance of desecration of the Koran. (4) At first, the magazine issued an apology—an expression of regret—pointing out that its single anonymous source no longer recalled if the allegation was in a certain report. （3）“撤销”一词源于拉丁语，愈为收回，其对象是一项具体的声明，而不是一件工作。今年最著名的撤回声明是(新闻周刊)杂志在对自己一篇文章的部分表示道歉后作出的，那篇文章声称军方内部的一次调查发现了一桩亵渎《古兰经》的事件。 （4）最初，该杂志发表了致歉声明——表达歉疚之意——指出它的惟一匿名提供情报人士无法回忆起该说法出自哪篇之中。 (5) The White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, said that it was “puzzling” that Newsweek had not retracted the article. Next day, Mark Whitaker, the magazine's managing editor, told The New York Times that “it seemed that people felt like we weren't apologizing. In order for people to understand we had made an error we had to say ‘re-traction’ because that's the word they were looking for.” （5）白宫新闻秘书斯科特·麦克莱伦说，《新闻周刊》没有撤回那篇文章，这“令人费解”。第二天，该刊总编马克·惠特克对《纽约时报》表示:“好像人们觉得我们不是在道歉。为了让大家了解我们确实出了个错误，我们不得不说‘撤回’，因为那是他们一直期待的那个字眼。” (6) The embattled editor was being precise: Retraction is a weighty word, in this case asserting that the report was mistaken and forthrightly attempting to mitigate the great damage done. (7) The current meaning of retract goes well beyond “we’re not sure of this, so we're withdrawing it with our apologies,” which is a mild form of reputation reparation; instead, retract means “we made a mistake and we take back what we published or broadcast so you can see we weren't being malicious.” （6）这位四面楚歌的编辑用词准确:撤回是个有分量的词，在此例中即是断然宣称该报道是错误的，并直截了当地试图减轻业已造成的巨大伤害。 （7）撤销在现今的意思远远超出了“我们对此并不确定，故表示歉意，并收回此文”，这其实是一种形式温和的名誉贻偿，而撤回意为“我们犯了错误，并且收回已经发表或播出的内容，由此你们可以看出我们并无恶意。” (8) Though U.S. libel law differs from state to state, a prominently displayed retraction can be evidence of a lack of “actual malice,” one of the standards established in the Supreme Court's famous 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan. The Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld informs me that “a retraction generally admits publication of inaccurate (i.e., false) information but does not admit malice.” （8）尽管美国诽谤法在各州之间有所不同，但是用显明的方式宣布撤回可以证明当事人并无“实际的恶意”，而这是最高法院审理《纽约时报》诉沙利文案时做出的1964著名判决时确立的之一。耶鲁大学法学教授杰德·鲁本费尔德告诉我说:“撤回通常就是承认发表了不准确(即虚假的)信息，但不承认怀有恶意。” (9) Indeed, a publisher's failure to make a retraction may help a public figure to establish such malice needed to win a defamation case. (Belatedly for a former polemicist, I've been reading “Sack on Defamation,” by Appellate Justice Robert D. Sack, where I found the Galileo footnote.) （9）的确，出版商如果未能宣布撤回，就可能帮助某个公众人物证实此种恶意，以赢得一场诽谤案。(我最近一直在读受理上诉大法官罗伯特·D.萨克所著的《萨克论诽访》一书，其中我发现了关于伽利略的那条脚注，但对一位前辩论家来说，这已经太晚了。) (10) A correction is a retraction without all the nervous groveling. It deals with facts rather than judgments; in journalistic usage, a correction sets right an inaccuracy. In the preceding paragraph, I called Sack a “justice,” but that title is reserved for a member of the Supreme Court. This is a correction—he’s just a judge—but to call my minor rectification a retraction would be silly. (0.K., Sack—sue me.) （10）更正是一种没有任何惶恐不安和低声下气之感的撤回。它只涉及事实，而不涉及判断；在新闻业的惯用法中，更正是对差错予以纠正。在上一段中，我称萨克是“大法官”，但这个称号是专用于最高法院的法官的。此句即为更正——他只是一名法官——但是要把我这个小小的纠正叫做撤回，那就是犯傻了。(好吧，萨克——起诉我好了。) (11) Corrections may be minor, as this example is intended to illustrate, or cumulatively major: The New York Times’s extensive examination of its reporter Jayson Blair's deceptions contained a long list of corrections but no retractions. (12) However, when the emendation (to improve through alteration) or rectification (to conform to standards) involves a matter of editorial judgment rather than inaccuracy, the paper's self-correction box is labeled “editors’ note.” （11）更正可能是无关大碍的，就像刚才的例子意图说明的那样，但积累起来也可能是很严重的：《纽约时报》对旗下记者杰森·布莱尔虚假报道的全面调查包含了一个长长的更正清单，却没有撤回。 （12）然而，当校订(即修改完善)或修正(即与标准保持一致)涉及到的是编辑方面的判断而非差错时，那么报纸的自我更正栏则被标明为“编者按”。 练习指令：请各位同学认真阅读下列文章的每一个词和每一个句子，然后将每句话翻译成中文，并将读懂背熟。本文的全文翻译将在下期与新一起公布。 (1) Mention mind reading, ghosts, premonitions, the bending of spoons through thought or other supposed mysteries of the paranormal, and most scientists will say there are no such things. (2) Polls show that about half of Americans believe in paranormal phenomena. “For some reason, a lot of people want it to be so,” said Dr. Robert L. Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland and the author of “Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud.” “If you can do things with your mind, then the universe is paying attention to you, and that’s important to a lot of people.” (3) The few scientists working on normal research, often on their own dime, feel they are following the rules of science yet being excluded from the playing field. (4) “There’s really strong pressure not to allow these things to be talked about a positive way,” said Dr. Brian D. Josephson, a processor of physics at Cambridge University who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics for a fundamental discovery in superconductivity, and now heads the Mind-Matter Unification Project at Cambridge. (5) One experiment Dr. Josephson finds intriguing is the Global Consciousness Project, which records the output from devices that generate random numbers based on electrical noise. Dr. Roger D. Nelson, the project’s director, said that for unknown reasons the distribution of random numbers changes noticeably during crises, with a noticeable shift on Sept. 11, 2001. (6) The skeptics, however, say the data do not sway them. Dr. Terence M. Nines, a professor of psychology at Pace University in Pleasantville, N.Y., said, for example, that the prayer studies he had seen were poorly designed-a criticism that is often made of mainstream research as well. (A new, larger study reported last month that prayer by strangers provided no benefits to patients undergoing heart surgery.) (7) More generally, Dr. Hives said, the data claiming to demonstrate paranormal events “always stay at the very edge of perceptibility.” As scientists learn more about a phenomenon, they can often refine their experiments to highlight the new effects. Despite years of work, that has not occurred with the paranormal research, Dr. Hives said. (8) Perhaps the biggest reason most scientists dismiss paranormal search is that no one has a good suggestion for how the mind could interact with the physical world. (9) And even Dr. Josephson concedes: “It would have to be something we haven’t identified in physical experiments: I think if we can get some sort of model, then people may start to look at it.”