一．英译中

     Simplicity is not such an obvious merit as lucidity. I have aimed at it because I have no gift for richness. Within limits I admire richness in others, though I find it difficult to digest in quantity. I can read one page of Ruskin with delight, but twenty only with weariness. The rolling period ,the stately epithet, the noun rich in poetic associations, the subordinate clauses that give the sentence weight and magnificence, the grandeur like that of wave following ware in the open sea; there is no doubt that in all this there is something inspiring. Words thus strung together fall on the ear like music. The appeal is sensuous rather than intellectual, and the beauty of the sound leads you easily to conclude that you need not bother about the meaning. But words are tyrannical things, they exist for their meanings, and if you will not pay attention to these, you can not pay attention at all. Your mind wanders. This kind of writing demands a subject that will suit it. It is surely out of place to write in the grand style of inconsiderable things.

   But if richness needs gifts with which everyone is not endowed, simplicity by no means comes by nature. To achieve it needs rigid discipline. So far as I know ours is the only language in which it has been found necessary to give the name to the price of prose which is described as the purple patch; it would not have been necessary to do so unless it were characteristic. English prose is elaborate rather than simple. It was not always so. Nothing could be more racy, straightforward and alive than the prose of Shakespeare; but it must be remembered that this was dialogue written to be spoken. We do not know how he would have written if like Corneille he had composed prefaces to his plays. It may be that they would have been as euphuistic as the letters of Queen Elizabeth. But earlier prose, the prose of Sir Thomas More, for instance, is neither ponderous,   flowery nor oratorical. It smacks of the English soil. To my mind King James’s Bible has been a very harmful influence on English prose. I am not so stupid as to deny its beauty. It is majestical. But the Bible is an oriental book. Its alien imagery has nothing to do with us.

二．汉译中

半城港口半城树

      我们从市政厅来到阿斯特湖畔。这儿湖水粼粼，天鹅成群，景色十分迷人。是的，人们大都知道，意大利的威尼斯是闻名世界的水乡，殊不知市内河道纵横的汉堡，拥有桥梁2，125座。这是汉堡市的一大特色。据说，威尼斯只有桥400座。因此汉堡又有“北部威尼斯”之称。

    从飞机上俯瞰，与其说汉堡是座海港，毋宁说它是一座绿色的花园城市。早在上个世纪，汉堡就以树多而闻名。市内街道整洁，绿树成荫。市区过半面积是草地、公园、树林。商业区街道两边大型百货店、服装店、古玩店、豪华的饭店鳞次栉比，用幽静的住宅区形成鲜明的对照。有数百年历史的大教堂等古老建筑和风格各异的现代化建筑交相辉映，构成了这个千年古城的的独特风韵。汉堡。确实是美丽的。

      但汉堡也有它阴郁的一个角落。离码头不远的圣保利区是欧洲颇有名气的“红灯区”，德国人称之为“罪恶的一英里”。这里是一些海员、游客寻欢作乐之地。连汉堡的一本导游册子也称之为名气极坏的罪恶去处。它反映了汉堡社会生活的一个小侧面。

      历史上，汉堡曾屡遭浩劫。第二次世界大战期间，市内建筑的70%、港口设施的80%毁于空袭。但勤劳智慧的德国人民迅速的重建了这座城市，并使它变的更加容光焕发、引人入胜。汉堡，它又是西德战后重建努力的一个缩影。