http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html

October 2015
2015年10月

Here's a simple trick for getting more people to read what you write: write in spoken language.
这里有一些简单的技巧用于让更多的人去阅读你所写的文章：用口语去写
Something comes over most people when they start writing. They write in a different language than they'd use if they were talking to a friend. The sentence structure and even the words are different. No one uses "pen" as a verb in spoken English. You'd feel like an idiot using "pen" instead of "write" in a conversation with a friend.

当大多数人开始写作时，总会有一些事情发生。他们用不同的语言写作，而不是和朋友交谈时使用的语言。句子结构甚至单词都不一样。英语口语中没有人用“笔”作动词。你会觉得自己像个白痴，在和朋友的谈话中用“笔”而不是“写”。

The last straw for me was a sentence I read a couple days ago:

The mercurial Spaniard himself declared: "After Altamira, all is decadence."

It's from Neil Oliver's A History of Ancient Britain. I feel bad making an example of this book, because it's no worse than lots of others. But just imagine calling Picasso "the mercurial Spaniard" when talking to a friend. Even one sentence of this would raise eyebrows in conversation. And yet people write whole books of it.

最后一根稻草是我几天前读到的一句话：
这位善变的西班牙人自己宣称：“在阿尔塔米拉之后，一切都是堕落。”
这是尼尔·奥利弗的《古英国史》里的。我为这本书做榜样感到很难过，因为它并不比其他许多书差。但想象一下，当你和一个朋友交谈时，你会把毕加索称为“善变的西班牙人”。这句话哪怕一句都会在谈话中引起人们的不满。但人们却写了一整本书。

Ok, so written and spoken language are different. Does that make written language worse?

好吧，所以书面语和口语是不同的。这会让书面语更糟吗？

If you want people to read and understand what you write, yes. Written language is more complex, which makes it more work to read. It's also more formal and distant, which gives the reader's attention permission to drift. But perhaps worst of all, the complex sentences and fancy words give you, the writer, the false impression that you're saying more than you actually are.

如果你想让人们阅读和理解你写的东西，是的。书面语言更复杂，这使它更容易阅读。它也更正式，更遥远，这让读者的注意力允许漂移。但也许最糟糕的是，复杂的句子和花哨的词汇给你，作家，一个错误的印象，你说的比你实际说的要多。

You don't need complex sentences to express complex ideas. When specialists in some abstruse topic talk to one another about ideas in their field, they don't use sentences any more complex than they do when talking about what to have for lunch. They use different words, certainly. But even those they use no more than necessary. And in my experience, the harder the subject, the more informally experts speak. Partly, I think, because they have less to prove, and partly because the harder the ideas you're talking about, the less you can afford to let language get in the way.

你不需要复杂的句子来表达复杂的想法。当某个深奥话题的专家相互谈论各自领域的想法时，他们不会使用比谈论午餐吃什么更复杂的句子。当然，他们用不同的词。但即使是他们使用的那些也只是必要的。以我的经验，这门课越难，专家们讲得越不正式。我认为，一方面是因为他们没有太多的证据，另一方面是因为你说的想法越难，你就越不可能让语言成为障碍。

Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas.

非正式语言是思想的运动服装。

I'm not saying spoken language always works best. Poetry is as much music as text, so you can say things you wouldn't say in conversation. And there are a handful of writers who can get away with using fancy language in prose. And then of course there are cases where writers don't want to make it easy to understand what they're saying—in corporate announcements of bad news, for example, or at the more bogus end of the humanities. But for nearly everyone else, spoken language is better.

我不是说口语总是最有效的。诗歌和文字一样都是音乐，所以你可以说一些你在谈话中不会说的话。还有一些作家可以在散文中使用花哨的语言。当然，还有一些情况，比如，作家不想让人们容易理解他们在公司发布的坏消息中所说的话，或者在人文学科中更为虚假的一端所说的话。但对几乎所有人来说，口语更好。

It seems to be hard for most people to write in spoken language. So perhaps the best solution is to write your first draft the way you usually would, then afterward look at each sentence and ask "Is this the way I'd say this if I were talking to a friend?" If it isn't, imagine what you would say, and use that instead. After a while this filter will start to operate as you write. When you write something you wouldn't say, you'll hear the clank as it hits the page.

对大多数人来说，用口语写作似乎很难。所以，也许最好的解决办法是按照你通常的方式写你的初稿，然后再看每句话，然后问“如果我和朋友说话，我会这样说吗？”如果不是，想象一下你会说什么，然后用它来代替。过一段时间，这个过滤器就会在你写的时候开始工作。当你写一些你不会说的东西时，你会听到当当的声音。

Before I publish a new essay, I read it out loud and fix everything that doesn't sound like conversation. I even fix bits that are phonetically awkward; I don't know if that's necessary, but it doesn't cost much.

在我发表一篇新文章之前，我大声地读出来，把所有听起来不像谈话的东西都修好。我甚至修复了一些语音不好的地方；我不知道是否有必要，但它不贵。

This trick may not always be enough. I've seen writing so far removed from spoken language that it couldn't be fixed sentence by sentence. For cases like that there's a more drastic solution. After writing the first draft, try explaining to a friend what you just wrote. Then replace the draft with what you said to your friend.

这种伎俩可能并不总是足够的。我看到书写与口语相去甚远，无法一句一句地固定下来。对于这样的情况，有一个更激进的解决方案。写完第一稿后，试着向朋友解释你刚写的东西。然后用你对朋友说的话来代替草稿。

People often tell me how much my essays sound like me talking. The fact that this seems worthy of comment shows how rarely people manage to write in spoken language. Otherwise everyone's writing would sound like them talking.

人们经常告诉我我的文章听起来有多像我在说话。这一点似乎值得一提，这说明人们很少能用口语写作。否则每个人的写作听起来都像在说话。
If you simply manage to write in spoken language, you'll be ahead of 95% of writers. And it's so easy to do: just don't let a sentence through unless it's the way you'd say it to a friend.

如果你只是设法用口语写作，你将领先于95%的作家。这很容易做到：除非是你对朋友说的，否则不要让一句话通过。



Thanks to Patrick Collison and Jessica Livingston for reading drafts of this.

感谢帕特里克·科利森和杰西卡·利文斯顿阅读这本书的草稿。