外刊阅读｜什么是有用的“废话”？

"Omit needless words!" But not all of them

"删掉不必要的词语!"但不是全部

When and why redundancy can be useful in writing and speech

在写作和演讲中，冗余何时及为何有用

"Please return your tray tables to their full upright and locked position." "Remember to take all of your personal belongings with you when you leave the train." Something about writing announcements for public transport seems to bring out the wordiness in people. These instructions can be shortened to "Please put your trays up" and "Please take your things."

"请将您的小桌板完全收起来，并将锁扣扣好。" "下火车时，记得带上您所有的个人物品。"为公共交通工具所写的语音播报似乎让人觉得有些啰嗦。这些播报可以简述为"请将小桌板收好"和"请拿好个人物品"。

Redundancy is widely seen as a stylistic sin. "Omit needless words" is perhaps the least redundant statement of this view, made famous by "The Elements of Style", a bestselling usage manual published in 1959. In it, E.B. White, an essayist and novelist, attributed the dictum to his university English teacher, William Strunk. 

人们普遍认为冗余是一种文体错误。"省略不必要的语句"可能是对这一观点最不冗余的陈述，1959年出版的畅销书《风格要素》使这一观点闻名于世。在书中，散文家兼小说家埃尔文·布鲁克斯·怀特将这句名言归功于他的大学英语老师威廉·斯特伦克。

In the classroom, Strunk "omitted so many needless words" that he was often "left with nothing more to say, yet with time to fill". So Strunk resorted to saying everything three times: "Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!"

在课堂上，斯特伦克"省略了许多不必要的单词"，以至于他经常"无话可说，但有时间来补充"。所以斯特伦克每件事都会说三遍: "省略不必要的词汇！省略不必要的词汇！省略不必要的词汇！"

On reflection, though, did he really need to say that three times himself? If he had already said everything that was required, he could have let the class out early rather than repeating his call for concision. That he did so suggests there may be more value in redundancy than meets the eye. Language scholars, indeed, think it fulfils several functions.

不过，仔细想想，他真的有必要说三遍吗？如果他已经讲完了所有需要讲的内容，他本可以让学生们早点下课，而不是重复进行简洁呼吁。他这样做表明，冗余可能比人们所认为的更具价值。事实上，语言学者确实认为冗余具有多种功能。

One, hinted at by Strunk's repetition, is learnability. Repetition, after all, is reinforcement. Languages that include the same piece of grammatical information in more than one way are probably more easily acquired by children, or indeed adults. 

其一正是斯特伦克所暗示的，那就是可学习性。毕竟，重复是一种强化。以多种方式包含同一语法信息的语言可能更容易被儿童或成年人习得。

For example, the -ed ending on the verb gives no new information in "Yesterday, he walked", because "yesterday" already situates the event in the past. Many languages — Mandarin, for example — do not require such endings. In those, such as English, which do, the doubling up of signals may have developed to make them easier to learn.

例如，在"Yesterday, he walked"中，动词的-ed 结尾并没有给出新的信息，因为"Yesterday"已经将事件定位在过去。许多语言不需要这样的词尾，比如汉语。在像英语这样的语言中，信息的重复可能是为了使它们更容易学习。

Another benefit of redundancy can be seen on those trains and planes. These are noisy and distracting places where a brusque "Please take your things" may not be heard by all passengers. 

冗余的另一个好处可以在火车和飞机上看到。这些地方很嘈杂，会让人分心，不是所有的乘客都能听到一句粗鲁的"请拿好个人物品"。

Redundancy makes a signal robust. For instance, spacecraft beaming digital messages to Earth include "error-correction bits", redundancies in the signal that allow engineers back home to reconstruct the inevitably degraded transmissions. Here redundancy is a feature not a flaw.

冗余能够加强信息的传递。例如，向地球发送数字信号的航天器包含"纠错位"(即信号中的冗余信息)，使工程师们得以应对传回信息中不可避免的降级传输。在这里，冗余是一种功能，而非缺陷。

Another possible use of redundancy is simply to make listening or reading less taxing. If every possible word that can be removed is removed, so that every remaining one is absolutely crucial, listening and reading become stressful. 

冗余的另一个可能的用途是使人们听起来或读起来不那么费力。如果把每一个可省略的单词都删掉，那么剩下的每一个单词都将至关重要，听力和阅读就会变得有压力。

You cannot let your mind wander for even a moment. Such prose is almost too dense with information; even a short passage of this kind would be demanding to read. Sometimes a little room to breathe is no bad thing.

你一刻也不能走神。这样的文本信息量太大了；即使只是一篇短文也很难读。有时候，给自己留一点喘息的空间并不是坏事。

1. bestselling ['bests'elɪŋ]

adj. 畅销的

e.g.

The top 10 bestselling list included textbooks and reference books in economics, English, math and computer programming.

交易最火爆的10本包括经济学、英语、数学、计算机编程方面的教科书、参考书。

2. dictum [ˈdɪktəm]

n. 正式声明；权威意见；格言；箴言

e.g.

"Pride comes before a fall" is a famous dictum.

"骄必败"乃至理名言。

3. brusque [brəsk]

adj. 唐突的；无礼的

e.g.

His manner was self-assured and brusque.

他态度傲慢无礼。