| It is widely believed that every word has a correct meaning, that we learn these meanings mainly from teachers and grammarians, and that dictionaries and grammars are the supreme authority in matters of meaning and usage. 人们普遍认为每个单词都有准确的词义，人们还认为我们主要是向教师和语法学家们学习这些词义，人们还谥为一切词典和语法书都是解释词义和词的用法的最高权威。 Few people ask by what authority the writers of dictionaries and grammars say what the say. 几乎没有人会提出这样的问题：词典和语法的编著者们根据什么权威资料来说出他们所说的那些话。 I once got into a dispute with an English woman over the pronunciation of a word and offered to look it up in the dictionary. 我有一次曾和一位英国妇女争论过一个英语单词的发音。我让她查一查英语词典。 The English woman said firmly, "What for? I am English. I was born and brought up in England. The way I speak is English." 这位英国妇女坚定地说："还查词典干什么？我是英国人。我生在英国，长在英国。我讲的话是英语"。 Such self-assurance about one's own language is fairly common among the English. 在全体英格兰人当中这种对自己语言的十分自信的态度是相当普遍的。 In the United States, however, anyone who is willing to quarrel with the dictionary is regarded as either eccentric or mad. 可是，在美国，若是有人想同词典争论，那或者会被认为是颠狂或者是疯子。 What follows applies only to those dictionary offices where first-hand, original research goes on - not those in which editors simply copy existing dictionaries. 下面所述的方法是那些汇集第一手的原始研究资料的词典编纂机构所采用的，而不是那些只是简单地抄一抄现有的一些词典的内容的那些编词典的机构所采用的方法。 The task of writing a dictionary begins with the reading of vast amounts of the literature of the period or subject that the dictionary is to cover. 编词典的工作始于博览所编的词书内容所包括的该段时期里该门学科内有关的浩瀚的文献资料。 As the editors read, they copy on cards every interesting or rare word, every unusual or peculiar occurrence of a common word, a large number of common words in their ordinary uses, and also the sentences in which each of these words appears. 在词书编者们博览群书的过程中，他们把每一个有趣的词汇，罕见的词汇，每一个普通词汇的不普通的特别的用法，大量常见词的种种常见的用法，以及这些词汇所出现的例句都一一作成卡片。 That is to say, the context of each word is collected, along with the word itself. 这也就是说，不但要汇集该词汇，而且还要把每个词所出现的上下文语言环境也汇集起来。 |
