《口语文化与书面文化》翻译
中译本p130原文：
Paradoxically, Plato could formulate his phonocentrism, his preference for orality over writing, clearly and effectively only because he could write.
译者译文：
自相矛盾的是，柏拉图之所以能够形成他的语音中心论，之所以能够有效而清楚地表述他喜欢文字而不是口语，首先是因为他能够使用文字。
这个错误属于仔细看过翁对柏拉图的分析的人都能发现的。书中前文已有类似的说法。以下的翻译是用翻译软件+陆谷孙的词典琢磨出来的，我英语水平也不咋地，仅供参考。
Narrative itself has a history. Scholes and Kellogg (1966) surveyed and schematized some of the ways in which narrative in the West has developed from some of its ancient oral origins into the present, with full attention to complex social, psychological, aesthetic, and other factors. Acknowledging the complexities of the full history of narrative, the present account will simply call attention to some salient differences that set off narrative in a totally oral cultural setting from literate narrative, with particular attention to the functioning of memory.
叙事自身有其历史。Scholes 与 Kellogg(1966)调查并描绘了西方的叙事从其古代的口语源头发展到当下的一些方式，并充分关注到复杂的社会、心理、审美等因素。本文承认叙述全部历史的复杂性，只是简单地提醒大家把注意力放在最重要的差异上（这些差异区分出完全口头文化背景下的叙述与书面文化叙述），并特别注意记忆功能。
The retention and recall of knowledge in primary oral culture, described in Chapter 3, calls for noetic structures and procedures of a sort quite unfamiliar to us and often enough scorned by us. One of the places where oral mnemonic structures and procedures manifest themselves most spectacularly is in their effect on narrative plot, which in an oral culture is not quite what we take plot typically to be. Persons from today’s literate and typographic cultures are likely to think of consciously contrived narrative as typically designed in a climactic linear plot often diagramed as the well-known ‘Freytag’s pyramid’ (i.e. an upward slope, followed by a downward slope): an ascending action builds tension, rising to a climactic point, which consists often of a recognition or other incident bringing about a peripeteia or reversal of action, and which is followed by a dénouement or untying – for this standard climactic linear plot has been likened to the tying and untying of a knot. This is the kind of plot Aristotle finds in the drama (Poetics 1451b–1452b) – a significant locale for such plot, since Greek drama, though orally performed, was composed as a written text and in the West was the first verbal genre, and for centuries was the only verbal genre, to be controlled completely by writing.
初级口语文化中知识的保留和回忆（在第三章已有描述），需要一种对我们非常陌生的、经常被我们鄙视的那种无意识结构和程序。口语助记结构和程序表现最引人注意的地方之一是对故事情节的影响。口语文化中的故事情节与我们所认为的典型的情节不完全一样。叙事情节在口头文化中并不像我们认为的那样典型。当代文学与印刷文化中的人们倾向于认为，有意识地人为构思的叙事典型地被设计成高潮线性情节，通常被描绘为著名的“弗雷塔格金字塔”（先是向上的斜坡，然后是向下的斜坡），首先是一个上升的行为塑造紧张感，继而上升到高潮情节，通常包含一个赞赏或者其他行为导致剧情突变或逆转行为。其次是一个结局，困境解开，这个标准的高潮线性情节被比喻成打结和解开这个结。这就是亚里士多德在戏剧中已经发现的情节类型。因为古希腊戏剧（虽然以口语的形式表现）由写好的文本构成——在西方是第一个完全由文字控制的语言体裁，而且几个世纪以来是唯一的，完全由书写所控制语言体裁。
Ancient Greek oral narrative, the epic, was not plotted this way. In his Ars Poetica, Horace writes that the epic poet ‘hastens into the action and precipitates the hearer into the middle of things’ (lines 148–9). Horace has chiefly in mind the epic poet’s disregard for temporal sequence. The poet will report a situation and only much later explain, often in detail, how it came to be. He probably has also in mind Homer’s conciseness and vigor (Brink 1971, pp. 221–2): Homer wants to get immediately to ‘where the action is’. However this may be, literate poets eventually interpreted Horace’s in medias res as making hysteron proteron obligatory in the epic. Thus John Milton explains in the ‘Argument’ to Book I of Paradise Lost that, after proposing ‘in brief the whole subject’ of the poem and touching upon ‘the prime cause’ of Adam’s fall ‘the Poem hasts into the midst of things.’
古希腊通过口语叙述的史诗，并不以这种方式展开情节。贺拉斯的《诗艺》中写道，史诗诗人迅速采取行动，使听者处于事件的中心。贺拉斯脑海中首要想到的是史诗诗人对时间顺序的漠视。诗人会先报告一种状况，一会之后才会详细解释为何会这样。他可能也会想到荷马的简洁与活力：荷马想要立即到达“行动的地方”。无论如何，印刷时代的诗人最终直入本题地解释贺拉斯的此种行为：在史诗中强制性地使用逆序法。John Milton在《失乐园》第一卷的“争论”中这样解释：在提出这首诗的简短的全部主题，并谈到亚当堕落的“主要原因”之后，“这首诗已经进入了事物的中间”。（这句话完全没搞懂啊。）
Milton’s words here show that he had from the start a control of his subject and of the causes powering its action that no oral poet could command. Milton has in mind a highly organized plot, with a beginning, middle and end (Aristotle, Poetics 1450b) in a sequence corresponding temporally to that of the events he was reporting. This plot he deliberately dismembered in order to reassemble its parts in a consciously contrived anachronistic pattern.
Milton的解释显示了，他从一开始就控制着自己的主题和推动其行动的原因，这是任何口头诗人都无法控制的。Milton的脑海中有一个经过高度组织化的情节。情节的开始，中间与结尾在时间上与他所写的事件的顺序相一致。他故意肢解情节，是为了以一种有意为之的不合时宜的模式重新组合情节的各个部分。
Exegesis of oral epic by literates in the past has commonly seen oral epic poets as doing this same thing, imputing to them conscious deviation from an organization which was in fact unavailable without writing. Such exegesis smacks of the same chirographic bias evident in the term ‘oral literature’.
过去有读写能力的人对口语史诗做注释，这些注释通常认为口语史诗诗人也在做一样的事情。事实上，他们有意识地偏离了一种结构，这种结构必须借助文字才能形成。这种注释带有“口语文献”这个术语中明显存在的文字偏见。