这两天试着做书里的练习，发现口译跟笔译确实十分的不同。做着练习，心里时常有深深的挫折感：理解别人的话，再用另外一种语言讲出来原来是如此之难！我开始怀疑自己的中文表达能力有问题。我一直都认为，一个口齿伶俐的人绝对不是他的嘴巴与常人有何特别之处，而是他的头脑，或者说他的头脑和嘴巴之间所建立起来的快速反应机制与常人有所不同。现在，我说话混乱就意味着我的头脑混乱。这是一个多么让我感到沮丧的发现！

我还到网上搜索了一下，除了发现那些口译”前辈”（其中有大四的在校学生）以外，似乎考一个口译证书成了不少人的”业余爱好”。另外，我还看到一个前辈指点，说要成为一名优秀的口译或者同传，所要做的工作如果量化一下就是：书至少看500本，听至少10000个小时，跟读、复述至少1000小时等等。我估算了一下，加起来没有十年的时光，口译这把剑估计也不够灵光。

我现在其实不知道口译的道路开始之后能走多远。不管怎们样，我希望这是一次挑战自我的机会–至少通过自己艰苦的努力让英语上一个大台阶。这样，就算无奈地回到辛苦的笔译之路，也是提高了N个层次之后的我。

另外，据我现在的揣测，要挣”大钱”，真正的道路不是口译或者同传，而仍然是笔译，或者说是”笔头”。口译或者同传毕竟是”体力活”，年纪大了就干不动了；而要是写出一本或者译出一本好的、有价值的书，可以一直卖到自己垂垂老矣。唉，哲学一点地说：这可能是个轮回吧。

要问较好的书面和口语表达哪个更难做到，等于问"学外语什么最重要？"。不同的人对这个问题有不同的回答：有的说发音最重要，有得说单词、语法、句法、文法或者口语最重要。其实自己哪个方面存在弱项哪个就"最"重要。好比"健康"，一个人各个指标均在正常范围内才能称之为"健康"，否则哪怕血液中铁的含量低于标准，此人也不属健康之列。所以，如果承认自己的单词、语法、句法、文法或者口语中有一项"不好"，等于说自己的"英语不好"，而不是其中某一项"不好"。说某人"单词、句子还好，但语法较差"或者说他"笔译做的还行，但口译不太好"，就等于说此人根本就是"英语不好"。我认识到自己存在很多弱点，因此下定决心从笔译转型到口译，哪怕口译学不成也要争取提高自己整体的英语语言能力，不能再骗别人和自己"笔译尚可，但口译不佳"。

嘿嘿，当然了，我目前还是在靠笔译吃饭，面对客户是绝对不能承认自己"英语不好"的。但是，自己要明白，"骗"别人的话自己不要相信！

关于东北口音。我一耳朵就能听出来东北口音，哪怕只有一点点。我老家在黑龙江的大兴安岭，那里的普通话口音比较重，但字音尚准。口音重的东北话的讲话方式和口气让其他地方的人感觉东北人比较"冲"、"横"、"没有礼貌"，尽管操东北口音普通话的人根本没有这个意思。我也存在这个问题，而且现在开始担心会不会把自己的"东北方式"带到自己的英语里面去。这是一个我需要注意的问题。

Some people like new challenges or they have to face them in their normal course of life. For me, new challenges are a hate-and-love thing. New challenges bring new opportunities, which is a reason why I have come to Beijing. But, new challenges might also mean that I can fail in trying to rise up to them. Oh, I got it! What I’ve writing about is: I am afraid of failures!

Come on, boy! Do not be afraid of that! You will have nothing to lose. And if any, they would be only opportunities that must open your mind to something you’re not familiar with. After all, you have written translation jobs to fall back on!

And I did do some interpretations on several occasions, one of which was before an army of foreign ambassadors and their families at the Great Hall of the People and another of which was for an IMF official at a meeting with NDRC officers! Haha, at least, I’ve been there regardless of how I’ve done there as interpreter. I remember I was not at all afraid of speaking in front of all those people and the only thing I hated was that I felt so incapable and helpless because I was as a matter of fact unprepared for that job! Opportunities were there, but I missed them.

So, what I’m going to do is get prepared and seize opportunities when they come along my way.

这么多年了，也有了一点也许不太成熟的看法。现在，我把它写出来，与有兴趣的读者诸君分享。

虽然外语难学，但好在外语还是可以精通的。原因在于，尽管两种语言的在文字、语法等等方面是不同的，但是作为语言存在基础的各种概念和社会制度等等方面是相通的或者至少在不同的时间和空间之间是相通的。如果这些不通，学习外语估计就是死路了。

人的本性到哪里都是一样的，所做的事情都差不多，不管他说什么语言。比如，人类的情感。只要是人，就有爱恨情仇。表达这些东西的语言不同，但本质是一样的。哪里的人都会喜爱、憎恨、热爱、眼红、嫉妒、不满。哪里都有浪费、贪污、腐败、权钱交易等等等等。

比如，中国各种考试都有思想政治课一项，我们被迫去学自己也不相信的这个思想、那个理论。这些东西国外有否？虽然我没调查过，可能没发言权。但是，我坚信哪个国家都有这种东西。我的理由是，任何一个国家至少都需要一种表面上的东西当作自己的脸皮，来把这个国家的国民"团结"在一起。这个东西在各个国家之间是相通的，都有！至于考不考试，那我就不得而知了。但是我知道一个东西：据说外国人归化为美国公民时是要"考试"的。嘿嘿，申请人怎么着也得学习学习美国版的人权、自由、民主和历史才能通过考试吧？

还比如浪费。据说外国人的生活方式要比我会节省，而且比我们愿意节省。很多有脸皮的国人对此汗颜不已。要我说，浪费也得讲个浪费的本钱。比如说我。让我一个月浪费出去一头大象也不太可能，因为我一个月也挣不来一头大象，何谈浪费出去一头大象？另外，他们其实比我们早几十年或者上百年就已经浪费过、污染过、压迫过、保守过、落后过，只不过现在他们比我们貌似节约、清洁、宽容、开放、先进了一些而已。

所以呢，同志们，如果有人再说富有的西方人比我们会节省、愿意节省，你不必感到"汗颜"，因为他们浪费的一点就够你吃一阵子的了。中国人把这叫"拔一根毫毛比你腰粗"。不信？拿你做个例子，假设你一年用掉六根牙刷，而一个比你穷的人一年用一根牙刷，那你浪费的程度比人家大五倍。

我不用调查就知道，富人生活方式的本质就是浪费；我也知道，富国浪费一个月够穷国吃半年。

还比如懒惰。人说话、写字是会懒惰的。比如，英语里的名词分可数和不可数，动词分及物和不及物。我想，他们累不累啊？分这么细干嘛？后来我发现，他们确实也是嫌麻烦的，因为英语里的名词大多数都是可数和不可数双重身份；动词也都是及物和不及物两种风格，只有极少数才"钉是钉铆是铆"，根本不用为这个问题太觉烦恼！

我觉得说话都是通的。中文里，我想吃巧克力糖时，会对某人说："我来个巧克力"。这么说自然没什么问题。英语里说，只要不会让人搞不清楚我到底想要一块巧克力糖还是一杯热巧克力时，我就说"I’d like a chocolate"也一定不会有问题！Chocolate表示一种物质时，是不可数的；具体到某种食品肯定就是可数啦，要不然人多了怎么"分"巧克力呢？

还比如，各位可能都知道，北京街头的英文的道路标志等错误极多。很久之前的一天在电视看见一位貌似专家的人说：北京的这个桥、那个桥的英文标志名称不应该是bridge，而应该是overpass、flyover等等。虽然我没仔细研究过这个几个词，但是我就是不信他说的话。我心里想，英语会认真到如此近乎"发傻"的程度吗？从路的一边跨过马路到另一边的东西不就是个"bridge"的样子吗？ Bridge怎么会是错的？讲英语的人不会那么"勤劳"的！我的字典也证明，那种东西是可以叫做bridge的！

再举两个例子，我们说赚" 大钱"，写"大写字母"。刚过英语四级的人可能会琢磨，"大钱"就是big money，"大写字母"就是big letter呗！可他不一定不敢确定！在此，我很高兴的告诉他，老外也不比我勤劳、认真到哪里去！英语里的big money、big letter就是我们的"大钱"和"大写字母"。

但是，我想自己还是有一些资源可以多加利用的：网络资源和书籍。我相信，只要有心，必要的语言环境还是能够模拟而成的。而且，随着我在语言上的进步，会有更多的机会，无论是工作方面的，还是其他方面的。

我现在做的事情是阅读字典。其中的我的目标是：虽然不奢望读一遍字典会解决单词这个基础的问题，但我希望学会该学的那些单词。也许一遍技能记住的就是我该学的，而那些一遍记不住的，可以在后面的训练中得到解决。

具体安排是这样的：

再用两个月时间，结束词典阅读。

之后，找一本不错的口译书（我早已经买了一本老前辈写的书了，只是还没资格去研究），跟着一步一步的去练习，先得到一些感性的认识。

这之后的工作，待定。

* Let me now preach a little about the European culture to those with little knowledge of it. Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian elements characterize the culture, just as Confucius and Buddhism have deeply influenced the Chinese culture, though maybe to a lesser extent.

* I now know that, after reading, the term “Bible” means different things to different people. For Judaism, it is the Old Testament as known to Christians. Judaism only accepts the Old Testament as the true Bible and rejects Jesus Christ as the Son of God. But, for different denominations of Christians, it is a collection of different books or different versions or translations of them divided into the Old and New Testaments. (20050920)

* “You know what you’re doing?” I have found myself facing a totally different world of cultures, histories and arts. There is too long a list of strange people, events, places, wars, styles of buildings and culture-charged passages I want to understand, appreciate and remember. I’ve decided that I must be a man knowing almost every facet of the cultures behind the English language. Without this knowledge, no major process can be made in my preparing to become a competent interpreter. When I opened the book that introduces me into the wonderful world of European culture, I might be as happy, pleasantly surprised as a famous man when he for the first time came across the ancient Greek mythology.

* Renaissance is a “rebirth of classical learning and knowldge through the rediscovery of ancient texts and also a rebirth of European culture in general”. ( Wikipedia.org) The term Renaissance (文艺复兴) seems to me a happy, historical period in the West during which a large number of artists (Leonardo da Vinci, etc.), buildings of different styles (Gothic, etc.), paintings, sculptures, music and others combined to create a great age that built up a great force leading to the Industrial Revolution. In my mind’s eye, the Renaissance was the turning point when the West started to overtake China. I was very sad to find in my reading no Chinese thinkers, philosophers, scientists or artisans that were matches on their Western counterparts when the West was doing their “Renaissance”. Renaissance refers to the period between 15th and the mid 17th century in Europe and roughly corresponds to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and early Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) in China. The Chinese people were busy trying to fossilate their long-accustomed feudalism glory and refused to be jolted by a rude awakening from their pipe dream of prosperity and fool’s paradise-like pride. China was actually rotting inside with its outside appearance buoyed up only by its accumulation of the past, including tradition, wealth, knowledge, ideology, and burden of thousands of years, instead of innovations, inventions, and discoveries that might grow out of the past.

Now, I’d like to give you some more information you might need to make you updated on the idea of Renaissance. This term is now often replaced by “Early Modern”. Renaisssance, like the Bible, means different cultural movements that started “at different places at different times”. In addition, the period did not seem so happy to all the contemporary people, especially the poor, who even felt their Renaissance life worsened, compared to the dark days of the Middle Ages. ( Wikipedia.org) (20050925)

* I believe I have chosen the right way to grow to be an interpreter or a simultaneous interpreter. First, establish a strong foundation on which I can build an empire of whatsoever knowledge and skills I need. Second, build this empire with whatsoever I can find and need.

* Here is what I want to tell myself: Set a goal and work towards it, and you will achieve it. Set another and approach it in the same way, and you will achieve it, too. WORK, DO NOT WAIT FOR TIME. (20051112)

*Good homework is what I need now. I know this might sound a little strange or disappointing after having spent so much time working and studying for a goal I’ve always failed to define. Yes, this is in fact what I’ve always wanted to do—good homework that is purely a phase I must go through before anything else. Two or three years are not long. Just look back at how many years I’ve been in Harbin (2 years and 9 months) and in Beijing (3 years and 7 months). And consider all my failed New Year resolutions or attempts to finish the Collins, a wonderful source of information on the English language.

I also bought dozens of Chinese classics, all in paperback. These perfumed books are churned out by a Jilin province-based publisher and feature, unfortunately, proofreading and editing under par. I’ve always understood the importance of a good publisher in producing quality books. This is easy to figure out: Sony’s cameras are better than Aigo’s, and they are all cameras though under different names. Nonetheless, I’m reading one of them, a collection of Bai Juyi’s poetry, and have finished a collection of Su Dongpo’s works. The books still have their own values and serve as a source of literary information.

I placed an order of another Longman dictionary to Joyo.com. The book offers a great source of information that is encyclopedic up to a point, which is different from the Collins. And I want to finish it, too. (20060617)

*I know what my problem is. I don’t have the means by which to communicate in the language with native speakers: I don’t know what to say when I’m supposed to say something. For example, I don’t know how to decline an invitation to lunch at lunchtime, and have no small talk and always get right down to business in phone conversations. I even deliberately avoid conversations with a British man also working for the newspaper. My philosophy here seems to be a pursuit of perfectionism: if I don’t know how I can sound sociable in these situations where pleseantries are exchanged, I don’t even bother about them.

It is a painful realization that I have inadequate communications skills when I speak English. In the Chinese context I’d be even thought of as talking too much sometime.

Reading can help me again. Now I’m planning to read a dictionary of spoken English. That might be a good start.

Which one is more difficult for a foreign learner to learn to speak and write? I believe it is Chinese. Someone has jokingly commented that one needs three months to learn good English, three years to master French and at least thirty years to be proficient in German. As I see it, he has to double his efforts he has put in tackling German to speak and write good Chinese, and those foreigners who manage to speak and write good Chinese must be geniuses.

Does this sound a little too exaggerated? I believe not.

For one thing, most of native Chinese speakers (e.g. me) find it hard to write things in decent Chinese because they have long been isolated from the traditionally accepted and correct way of writing and do not know what rules to follow in their writing. When it comes to foreigners learning Chinese, they have to first find decently and elegantly worded Chinese texts and use them as models. In everyday life in China, they may find that good Chinese writings are in short supply. It seems to me that the correct, smooth and natural tradition of wording Chinese texts was broken somewhere (during the Great Cultural Revolution?) so that its modern speakers are at a loss to know how to write their language.

For example, earlier dated writings, more often than not, sound too old-fashioned, especially those written before 1949, and even before 1978. You can easily come across badly written news reports, government documents, corporate files, etc. Experts, or rather those of at least writing good Chinese, are hard to come by these days, I have to say.

For another, as far as I know, no complete and generally agreed Chinese grammar system has been established out of the language and the current system, if it is one, is believed to be a poor relation of its Western counterparts.

Because I think translation is a stupid thing to do. I would like to reserve the difficult job for someone else to do. Tie him or her to my way of wild thinking in Chinese. Make s/he crazy, curse, and feel themselves to be idiots to be translators. And even worse, make them doubtful about their abilities of using the two languages involved and about the reason for their being.

* Communist bureaucrats and their ghost writers write bullshit (20030717 )

What you do is somewhat good—reform and openning up. But what you are talking and writing bores any sensible and reasoned people stiff and sometimes I feel like vomitting because of what you say or write, meaning to “educate” me. First, the well-known “Three Represents”. OK. You represent me. That is good though I have never voted you for one single time. But do you have to regurgitate the Represents every time you do something that you should do by law and by duty? For example, tax collectors collect taxes (and just to line your good regurgitating comrades’s pockets), corrupted investigators investigate rotten “people’s public servants” (the most powerful and richest “servants” in relation to their “masters” in the world), or police officers police the red light district and keep it morally good and hygienically clean for a while. Shut up! Keep quiet! I do not want to hear your idiotic tongues wag.

One more thing. You should hire more sober-minded ghost writers, at least to make yourselve believe what you’re bullshitting. Your present ones are awfully retarded and I bet they’re delirious sometimes at night and give me for translation what they’re dreaming about in their constantly disturbed nightmares.

To come here was a tough decision. I doubted my decision of giving up my long accustomed life back home. I was awed by the uncertainties of future in Beijing and the disbeliefs of my competence racked me. Nonetheless, I came here on November 10, 2002.

Life here could be real tough. Without enough money to pay for things I need, I would have to live with a poorer standard of living than at home, for example, sharing with my roommate a cold room in a one-story house without an indoor toilet in the winter.

Beijing is different from Harbin. It’s a national city, if not an international one while Harbin is just a regional city. I could hear Chinese people down the street in Beijing speaking almost every language and dialect known in China. Sometimes, I would sit in a corner on a bus and be amazed, wondering if I was really in China because a Chinese man who pressed his cellphone against his ear talked a total foreign tongue, neither English nor others I could identify, it’s an unknown Chinese dialect no other people than himself on the bus can understand.

Being in a national city means I have more opportunities than in a provincial city. The bad news is that I may have more than I can chew.

It’s the second week I’d been in Beijing that I decided the adjustment to a new invironment was enough–I needed a job desperately. I sent numerous resumes through 51job.com, chinahr.com and zhaopin.com and printed dozens of copies of my application letter and resume and sent them out to my potential employers by post.

I still remember three of those job interviews.

The first one appeared to be a success for the immediate offer of the job. My job would involve translation in the fields of communications and set-top-boxes, something attached to the top of a TV set to receive paid programs.

I balked at the second interview. I crossed from the western to the eastern part of Beijing after changing several buses. When I got there, it turned out to be a PR (Public Relations) company that had something to do with The Oracle. The first interviewer was a formidable young man wearing a dark business suit. He told me that his was a medium-sized PR company hiring dozens of people and the successful candidate would deal with translations of PR materials.

After he left the room, a woman came back to test my spoken English. I told her that I might have come to a wrong place to look for a job because I didn’t think I was good with people, which were an essential part of a PR position, otherwise PR would make no sense. I did not bother to take the following written test designated for each applicant. I came out of the impressive, imposing building, sighing. A company full of sexy women and big men is not my place. I’m happier with a much smaller company with a relaxing working atmosphere or a larger one without the dressing-yourself-up routine. Let me just think. Actually, I am not sure I like a large company because I’ve never been in one and don’t have an idea of it.

The third company, a translation firm, was extremely small and amazingly young. It’s not only that it just got started, but its boss was also a burgeoning one. I am sure we were born almost the same year and we should be friends, not employees and bosses. After a short spoken test and a long written test, he decided to hire me. But I’d decided I would not accept a job offer from a company with a few girls looking like university kids under a young, novice boss. I left the young company, envying the young man’s position of being am employer. I’m also young, what am I?

Things did not happen as expected. Jiang, the man who’d made his immediate offer of the translating position, seemed to be reconsidering his “rash” decision. He made a follow-up phone call right after I left his office in a corner office building, telling me to do a test of translation. Later on, I did another test. I failed all of them. The translation of contracts regarding Set-Top-Boxes was more than I could chew.

There are at least two kinds of open positions in Beijing when I look for a job–one that I’m worthy of and the other that I’m not.

Time is racing ahead. I can’t stop it. Neither can anyone else. Nostalgia.

When I listen to songs such as Le Jour s’est Lev, one of the three incomprehensible French songs I got in exchange for three songs by Luo Dayou with a Frenchman, it never fails to reminds me of those days at Brightsun in Harbin, when I just began to learn of the Internet as a new guy at the company with the brand-new status of being an employee after years of being an English student.

Wei-ai-chi-kuang by Liu Ruoying brings me back to those days when I was beginning to learn love, yet another brand-new topic to a freewheeling, awkward, and stupid boy.

And shengxia-de-guoshi by Mo Wenwei comes to me as a reflection of those lovely summer days in Harbin.

Now, new songs, which now I’m not aware of, will serve, when I listen to them again in the future, as nostalgic ones associated with my beginning days in Beijing. Even Delta ForceⅠwill come to me as my first ever computer game I have played for years, when mom is Beijing to see me and US and Britain are invading Iraq.

Time, you don’t stop continuing and we don’t stop aging and dying.