译者应该知道，翻译并不仅仅是把一句话用另一种文字表达出来。Charles W.Ferguson说得好：
A word is a world. It is history in the briefest form. It is a spot on a page but often a story of great events and movement. You can't examine a word and learn it well without learning more than a word.
因此译者应该留心到整个英语民族的思想、文化、学术、宗教、艺术、历史、地理、工艺，这许多方面即使不能完全涉猎、也要多看英文书，多查参考书籍，并留心他们的生活。关于参考书，请看“参考书”那一章。
英国现代诗人Stephen Spender在“Goethe and the English Mind”一文里说过一段极有意义的话，是译者应该记住的：
When two compatriots speak to one another in their common language, both are speaking against the background of a common environment, education and tradition. But when two people who are foreigners to one another speak, each in his own language, then, on the assumption that each understands the other's perfectly, a difficulty arises which is beyond the difference of language itself. There is inevitably
a collision of backgrounds, of tradition, of environment, which each language carries with it. The mere understanding of what words and sentences mean is not enough. To understand, each has to enter into the mental landscape, the history, the stage-setting of the other's mentality.
Spender那段话可以译为：
两个同国的人用共同的语言对谈，他们的背景、环境、教育、传统是一样的。可是两个不同国的人对谈，每人用他自己的语言，假定各人都完全懂得对方的言语，这时，在言语本身不同之外，还有言语上的困难。言语本身天生有不同的背景、传统、环境。仅仅懂得字句的意义是不够的。为了要互相了解，双方都得深悉对方那一方面的见识、阅历、学养才行。
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