17. 翻阅大量中外电影理论调典:可译作“He    borrowed through every Chinese and foreign film dictionary he could get his hands on"。翻译“翻阅大量......”时，使用了两个短语“borrow through”和“get one's hands on”，强调没有现成的文献可以支持“物质还原性”理论。
18. 搔首喟叹:英文表达与“说”类似的含义时，该词或词组往往直接跟在“说”的内容前或后,然后加上伴随状态，因此，可译成“he sighed, running his fingers through his haif。

参考译文：
My friend Mr. A, just past forty years old. His claim is to lead the new trend as a theorist of cinema art. Actually, he falls somewhat short of being an“ist". Recently he wrote a series of short essays on the "reduction of matter" in cinema, in which he enumerated ten relationships between the “reduction of matter" and the development of cinema in China. Mr. A drew much attention among the film theory circle as a result of his serial essays. But what was this“reduction of matter"? No explanation was provided. And thus the ten relationships remained as the cloud-covered mountain peak obscured by fog— too mysterious to grasp.
Then，a number of young film enthusiasts, interested in theory and sensitive to the new trends, began to use "reduction of matter" in their conversations and writings. No matter that they had no idea what it meant—with assumed comprehension, they set forth to enlighten others. His colleagues who couldn't follow the new theory were ashamed of their ignorance, and too embarrassed to ask any questions.
So at all the various conferences, and meetings, each took the liberty of quoting and developing interpretations, thereby misleading even more people. Well，what is it to be perplexed，after all? It means you don't understand—it's certainly no credit. And so everyone did his best to keep from displaying his perplexity.
One veteran film critic who couldn't reconcile himself to silence issued articles in which he authoritatively affirmed the "reduction of matter”and the validity of the ten relationships, proving that he was no outdated badge. Not only did he accept the new theory, he could even do anything to track it up. And a senior editor at Film Creation had a terrible time of it. He was assailed by the term of“reduction of matter”every three or four lines in all the stacks of articles that confronted him. He didn't know what to do. He could publish the articles, but he couldn't understand them. Yet if he didn't publish them，he left himself open to the charge of suppressing the new theory. He borrowed through every Chinese and foreign film dictionary he could get his hands on, but he couldn't find the term anywhere. "Lagging behind，lagging behind," he sighed, running his fingers through his hair.