英文书面比较句的写法（七）

托福作文题目中有这样一道题：

It has been said, “Not everything that is learned is contained in books.” Compare and contrast knowledge gained from experience with knowledge gained from books. In your opinion, which source is more important? Why?

这道题并不像看起来那么简单。如若没有人提醒，很多人考生会在作文中去比较“书本”与“经验”——不知不觉作文就写得越来越乱。为什么呢？因为“书本”与“经验”并不属于同一范畴（重点5），很难进行有意义的比较。

其实，题目中要求的是比较 (A)“从书本中获得的知识”与 (B) “从经验中获得的知识”——都是“知识”，于是属于同一范畴，于是可以做这样的比较：

1) 从书本中获得的知识要比从经验中获得的知识更广博。

或者

2) 从经验中获得的知识要比从书本中获得的知识更深入。

这两句话应该怎么翻译呢？“文绉绉”的书面形式应该写成什么样呢？读者不妨先尝试一下。我们先讲点别的东西，一会儿回头再讲这个句子。

有的时候我们需要比较的不是A和B，而是属于A的一个事物与属于B的一个事物。也就是说，我们要比较的是“A’s X”和“B’s X”。比较句是两个句子构成的，于是，最终的比较句大抵上应该含有以下结构：

A’s X… than/as B’s X…

“文绉绉”的书面语讲究“避免重复”，甚至会“避免重复结构”。“A’s X”和“B’s X”就是结构上的重复。而英文中的所属格有两种表示方式，“A’s X”和“X of A”、“B’s X”和“X of B”。于是，书面比较句的第一个句子使用“A’s X”和“X of A”中的任何一个，而第二个句子中往往使用“X of B”的形式：

A’s X… than/as X of B…

可是，“X”还是重复了，那怎么办呢？换成代词“that”。

“他的眼睛比我的眼睛大”，口语中直接说“His eyes are bigger than mine.”就完事儿了；“文绉绉”一点的书面语要写成：

His eyes are bigger than those of mine.
（注意，要用“those”而不是“that”，因为“我”不是独眼龙。）

重点10：比较句中的第二个所属格往往表示为“that/those of …”的形式。

以下是几个托福阅读文章中的句子：

• Baskets produced by other Native Americans were less varied in design than those of the Pomo people.
• Lavoisier’s interpretation was more reasonable and straightforward than that of the phlogiston theorists.
• This amount of change that has occurred in fossil bone, even in bone as old as that of dinosaurs, is often remarkably small.

事实上，除了“than/as”之外，还有很多比较结构，都可以使用这种“所属格代词结构替换”：

• same as:The values of the news media are the same as those of the elite, and they badly want to be viewed by the elites as acceptable.
• similar to: Their composition is thought to be similar to that of Earth’s iron core, and indeed they might have once made up the core of a large planetoid that disintegrated long ago.
• differ from:How did the work of American carvers in 1776 differ from that of contemporary sculptors?
• prefer to:They prefer the temperature and climate of the canopy to that of other environments.
• favor over:Rather, the denominator ideology is to favor businesses’ interests over those of individuals.
• superior/inferior to:The position of the women, lie says, is miserably inferior to that of English and American working women, and the hours of work of English people a whole age ahead of those of their Continental brethren.
• parallel to: The author discusses the development of flight in birds as resulting from a separate but parallel development process to that of pterosaurs.
• …

现在，让我们回到前面提到句子：

从书本中获得的知识要比从经验中获得的知识更广博。

之前大多数人会把这个句子翻译成：

Knowledge gained from books is broader than knowledge gained from experience.

这样翻译当然完全没错，不过，如果应用一下刚刚讲解过的内容，那么这句话可以写成：

Knowledge gained from books is broader than that gained from experience.

应用重点2，书面比较句第二个句子中的谓语动词建议不要省略，那么：

Knowledge gained from books is broader than that gained from experience is.

再应用重点4， 第二个句子的谓语动词可以倒装，那么：

Knowledge gained from books is broader than is that gained from experience.

再给提供两个例子：

• In particular, the responses of less-educated individuals are far more sensitive to issue framing than are those of highly educated individuals.
• “Thus,” Darwin concludes in the last sentence of the book, “we are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that of free will and predestination.”