不知你有没有注意，很多情况下英汉对照读物，英语和汉语并不是一对一翻译的；另外，很多英文技术术语并不翻译成汉语。这是为什么呢？

　　The increased use of computers and the Internet have meant that more and more new words have entered the Chinese language and have grown in popularity. It’s time to discuss some basic principles of translation of these words and names.

　　Many proper nouns, and some names, can be translated into Chinese fairly freely. This is the most practical and common way to translate technical terms, of course. Here are some examples: 软件(software)，网络蚂蚁(Netant)，网际快车(Flashget)，互联网(Internet)，网吧(Internet Cafe)，电子邮件(email)，网迷(cyber mania)，网虫(Internet buff)，网民(Netizen). From these we can see the practicality: it’s obviously a good way, in most cases, because we can understand them almost at first glance. Or, at lease, we can get some of the sense of what they refer to.

　　For some terms or names, especially those of websites and software, we have to resort to transliteration, meaning translating into Chinese by using basic sound units, similar to the sound in English, rather than sense units. This can include: 雅虎(Yahoo!)，英特尔(Intel)，瑞星(Rising)，黑客/骇客 (hacker)，奔腾(Pentium)，赛扬(Celeron)，惠普(HP). These all seem to work very well since the transliterations may have a bit of related meaning. Some transliterations are not quite so good, and need further thought or discussion. 咕咕or古狗(Google) is one such example.

　　The majority of software names and some short forms are okay in the original English, with a few exceptions. “Windows” is fairly typical example. We have a good translation for it, with “视窗” or “视窗操作系统”, but no one seems to use the Chinese version (汉语译文). In the case of word processing systems, we have Microsoft Word and WPS. But few people choose to refer to them as “微软文字处理系统” and “金山文字处理系统”. They just use Word or WPS. In fact, some Chinese software already has an English name and don’t bother with a Chinese version. Foxmail, email software, has no Chinese name, although it was developed in China and is mainly used in China. In the case of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook Express, and WPS, we only use the English without bothering to translate them into Chinese. Google, eBay, and Hotmail are all familiar names. We don’t know how to translate them into Chinese even though we use them into Chinese even though we use them frequently. The reason why we don’t translate them may be one of the following. First, it’s a bit difficult putting them in concise (简明的；简洁的) and accurate (精确的；准确的) Chinese. Second, the names don’t have much meaning in and of themselves or they’re just shortened forms.

　　Of course, there’s always one more, hopeful and possible reason: we’re all just getting a lot more comfortable moving rapidly back and forth between the two languages. Let’s hope so. Happy computing!

　　(文/刘耀辉； 英语辅导报高二版 04~05学年度第18期；版权归英语辅导报社所有，独家网络合作伙伴新浪教育，未经许可，不得以任何形式进行转载。)