夏济安（1916—1965），著名翻译家、文学评论家。曾任教于台湾大学，1955年春赴美，半年后返台，翌年主编《文学杂志》，提倡现实主义文学，介绍西方文学和文艺理论。1959年再度赴美，于西雅图华盛顿大学及加州大学伯克利分校任教。夏济安的中英文著作皆被公认为杰作，译文神似原文。著有《夏济安选集》、《夏济安日记》等，译有《美国名家散文选读》等。夏济安亦是国际公认的研究中国新文学的专家，在台湾文坛影响深远，是著名作家白先勇、欧阳子、王文兴、陈若曦、叶维廉等人的启蒙老师。

    夏志清（1921—2013 ），著名文学史家、评论家。美国耶鲁大学英文系博士。先后任教于北京大学、纽约州立大学、匹兹堡大学、哥伦比亚大学等。夏志清学贯中西，涉猎广泛，主张现实主义文学。其散文也非常出色，独具风格。主要著作有《中国现代小说史》、《中国古典小说》、《新文学的传统》、《鸡窗集》等。

　　《现代英文选评注》收入四十余位英美作家的文章，加以夏济安先生细密周详的评注，由夏志清先生校对。《现代英文选评注》是学习英文的课外读物，选文内容有趣，风格清新，对原文难词难句及章节结构均有深入浅出的阐释，读者不但可加深对原文的理解，亦能欣赏原文修辞之精微，领会作者雕词琢句的苦心。

　　The Whistle  寒笛
　　Eudora Welty (1909—2001)
　　本文是尤多拉·韦尔蒂所著短篇小说首集《绿幕》（A Curtain of Green ）里的一篇。韦尔蒂女士是美国南部密西西比州人，著有多种长篇小说，短篇小说已集于Collected Stories（1980）。她的短篇小说剪裁经济，勾画生动，笔触轻灵，含意丰富，堪入世界名作之列。
　　Night fell. The darkness was thin, like some sleazy dress that has been worn and worn for many winters and always lets the cold through to the bones. Then the moon rose. A farm lay quite visible, like a white stone in water, among the stretches of deep woods in their colorless dead leaf. By a closer and more searching eye than the moon’s everything belonging to the Mortons’ might
　　have been seen—even to the tiny tomato plants in their neat
　　rows closest to the house, gray and featherlike, appalling in their exposed fragility. The moonlight covered everything, and lay upon the darkest shape of all, the farmhouse where the lamp had just been blown out.
　　·sleazy ：稀薄的。黑夜比作一件不能御寒的敝衣。lets 的主语是关系代名词that，the cold 是它的宾语。through 是副词，作用和pass through 相同，“让它穿过”，to 是介词。
　　·visible （清楚可辨）是complement ，形容主语farm （田庄）。田庄之在月色之中，犹如水中白石，这样比说“月色如水”要高明一筹。
　　·stretch 原意是一长条，stretches 并不是几条，而是绵延不断的一块或一片：一片深林。leaf 在这里是collective noun ，即等于leaves 。colorless ：黑、白、灰，皆为无色。
　　·the Mortons’ 在文法上称为absolute genitive ，把后面应该跟的名词house （莫顿夫妇的家）省掉了。这一句是被动语态，又是虚拟式。我们不知道有没有一只眼睛，可以比月亮看得更仔细，更能洞察一切，假如有的话，莫顿家每一样东西都可“被”（即句首之By ）它看见了。这只眼睛应该是小说家的眼睛。
　　· 但是作者并没有列举他们家里的东西，在横线之后只举了一件东西：番茄田。替番茄防冻是本篇的主题，别的东西自可以不提，写短篇小说不得不注意描写上的经济。
　　·even to 的to=as far as ：每样东西都可以看见，即小至小小的番茄秧，也可以看见。后面跟着几个形容tomato plants 的字。featherlike ：像羽毛似的，指番茄的茎叶而言。fragility ：脆弱。exposed ：暴露（在寒夜中）的，番茄这样暴露着，使人惊心（appalling）。
　　·the farmhouse 是the shape 的同位语。
　　Inside, Jason and Sara Morton were lying between the quilts of a pallet which had been made up close to the fireplace. A fire still fluttered in the grate, making a drowsy sound now and then,
　　and its exhausted light beat up and down the wall, across the rafters, and over the dark pallet where the old people lay, like a bird trying to find its way out of the room.
　　·quilt ：一床被。pallet ：稻草所铺成的床。铺（made up ）在火炉附近（close）。
　　·grate ：火炉里的铁格子。drowsy ：催眠的。exhausted ：无力的。把火炉里的光比作一只寻出路的鸟，可称妙绝。动词用beat 也妙，譬喻还没有点明以前，单凭这个动词，已经显出有一样东西在东碰西撞了。fluttered ：跳动，用于火可以，用于鸟也可以。rafters ：屋椽。
　　The long-spaced, tired breathing of Jason was the only noise besides the flutter of the fire. He lay under the quilt in a long shape like a bean, turned on his side to face the door. His lips opened in the dark, and in and out he breathed, in and out, slowly and with a rise and fall, over and over, like a conversation or a tale—a question and a sigh.
　　·long-spaced ：两声鼾声之间停顿得很长。bean ：这里是附有豆荚的豆子。turned on his side ：侧着身。turned 是过去分词。
　　·in and out he breathed=he breathed in and out 。rise and fall ：起伏。最后一句句子的节奏，也模仿鼾声的起伏。
　　Sara lay on her hack with her mouth agape, silent, but not asleep. She was staring at the dark and indistinguishable places among the rafters. Her eyes seemed opened too wide, the lids strained and limp, like openings which have been stretched shapeless and made of no more use. Once a hissing yellow flame stood erect in the old log, and her small face and pale hair, and one hand holding to the edge of the cover, were illuminated for a moment, with shadows bright blue. Then she pulled the quilt clear over her head.
　　·lay on her back ：仰天而卧。agape ：张着（嘴）。indistinguishable：分辨不清楚的。opened 是过去分词，形容主语。the lids strained and limp 是nominative absolute phrase 。“眼皮绷紧的又是软软的
　　（limp）”。她的眼睛就“像两个眶眶，张大得已经不成形状，而且给弄得不再有什么用处了”。在“which”clause 里，有两个动词：have been stretched 和（have been）made；shapeless 和of no more use 都形容主语which 。
　　· 第四句又是描写火光：一下子她的脸、头发和捏住被单边缘的一只手都
　　给照亮了。火是嘶嘶作响（hissing ）的黄色火焰，笔直地（erect ）立在（炉子里的）陈旧的木柴（log ）上。
　　·hold 作不及物动词用，有cling （紧附）的意义，所以holding to 比holding （及物动词）可能捏得更紧。末一句的clear 是副词，解作completely ，把被单拉上，把头全盖没了。
　　Every night they lay trembling with cold, but no more communicative in their misery than a pair of window shutters beaten by a storm. Sometimes many days, weeks went by without
　　words. They were not really old—they were only fifty; still, their lives were filled with tiredness, with a great lack of necessity to speak, with poverty which may have bound them like a disaster too great for discussion but left them still separate and undesirous of sympathy. Perhaps, years ago, the long habit of silence may have been started in anger or passion. Who could tell now·
　　·communicative ：喜与人交谈的，形容主语they 。受暴风雨打击的两扇百叶窗，即使有个别的反应，也不会互相交谈，这一对老夫妇虽然生活困苦，也不互相交谈，两个活人的话并不比两扇窗的话更多一些（no more…than）。went by=passed 。
　　·他们的生命充满了三件东西：第一是“疲倦”；第二是“没有说话的需要”（filled with a lack ：充满了一种缺乏——好像是不通的，这样把两个意义相反的字联在一起，修辞学上称为“矛盾修饰法”[oxymoron]，中文也有这种说法，例如“公开的秘密”）；第三是“贫穷”。
　　·poverty 后跟着一个adjective clause 。在这个子句里，作者就她写作的时候（故用现在式的辅助动词may），去猜想当时的情形（故用完成式不定词have bound 和have left）。贫穷把他们老夫妻俩联系（bound 是bind 的过去分词）在一起，可能如同一个灾祸一样（同受灾者命运相同），灾祸太大了，用不着再去讨论它。但是贫穷使得他们俩仍旧是彼此分离的，而且是不希望别人来同情的。（separate 和undesirous 两个形容词都是objective complements 。）
　　·末一句，作者猜想他们什么时候开始互相不交谈的。这个沉默的习惯可能很多年（years 前面不必加many 也可表示很多年）前就开始了。怎样开始的呢？可能有一次在生气的时候，两人不说话，以后就一直不说话了（passion=violent anger）。但是现在谁知道呢？
　　She was so tired of the cold! That was all it could do any more—make her tired. Year after year, she felt sure that she would die before the cold was over. Now, according to the Almanac, it was spring…. But year after year it was always the same. The plants would be set out in their frames, transplanted always too soon, and there was a freeze…. When was the last time they had grown tall and full, that the cold had held off and there was a crop·
　　·第二句的it 代the cold 。make 是省去了to 的不定式。
　　·Almanac ：历本。虽然交了春，天还是很冷。交了春，番茄苗要从苗圃里移植到田里去。但是年年总是如此，移植（transplanted ）得太早了，
　　一夜春寒，可能把番茄全冻死，辅助动词用would 表示过去屡次发生的事。set out=planted （此解根据Thorndike-Barnhart: Comprehensive Desk Dictionary）。frames ：番茄太重，番茄树枝支持不起，需搭架子来扶助。
　　·年年种的番茄，都在春天冻死，她已记不起哪一年的番茄是种活的。末一句是Sara 自己问自己，上一回是什么时候，番茄苗（they ）长得又高，结得又满；寒冷不来侵犯（hold off=keep at a distance ）而有收获呢？
　　Like a vain dream, Sara began to have thoughts of the spring and summer. At first she thought only simply, of the colors of green and red, the smell of the sun on the ground, the touch of leaves and of warm ripening tomatoes. Then, all hidden as she was under the quilt, she began to imagine and remember the town of Dexter in the shipping season. There in her mind, dusty little Dexter became a theatre of almost legendary festivity, a place of pleasure. On every road leading in, smiling farmers were bringing in wagonloads of the most beautiful tomatoes. The packing sheds at Dexter Station were all decorated—no, it was simply that the May sun was shining. Mr. Perkins, the tall, gesturing figure, stood in the very centre of everything, buying, directing, waving yellow papers that must be telegrams, shouting with great impatience. And it was he, after all, that owned their farm now. Train after train of empty freight cars stretched away, waiting and then being filled. Was it possible to have saved out of the threat of the cold so many tomatoes in the world·
　　·这一段是回忆五月间收购番茄时的盛况（就是番茄有收成的那一年），运用视觉（colors）、嗅觉（smell）、触觉（touch ）的描写，正同上文凄凉寒夜作一对照。
　　·all hidden as she was under the quilt=though she was all hidden under the quilt 。
　　·Dexter 在密苏里州。shipping season ：装运的季节。注意：shipping 只是“装运”，水路旱路均可，这里是指装火车。
　　·theatre ：场合。legendary festivity ：如传说般的盛大庆祝。
　　·leading in ：通到Dexter 城去的。a wagonload 是装满一马车那么多，这里用的是复数。bring in 的in 是副词。
　　·packing：（给番茄）装箱或装篓子。sheds ：专作此用的帐棚。decorated：装饰起来，但是作者（或者可以说是Sara ）又修正自己的话，并没有装饰，只是阳光照耀得灿烂夺目而已。
　　·下面接着描写Mr. Perkins ：一个高大而装腔作势的人（figure ：人的形状，Sara 所记得的是这个人的形状）；directing ：在指挥别人；waving yellow papers that must be telegrams ：手里拿着一叠黄纸在舞，这叠黄纸，据Sara 猜想起来，一定是电报。四个现在分词buying 、directing 、waving 和shouting （叫喊），都是形容主语Mr. Perkins（with great impatience ：很不耐烦地）。
　　·after all=all things considered ：总而言之。
　　·Train ：列车。freight cars ：货车。stretched away ：长长地延伸出去。
　　·末一句Sara 还是很奇怪：怎么可能从寒冷的威胁下救出这许多番茄来？saved 的宾语是tomatoes 。
　　……

The Bear 熊
The Whistle 寒笛
The Life and Work of Professor Roy Millen 米伦教授的生活与工作
The Ballet Dancer 芭蕾舞家
Herb Gathering 采药
Two Mutes 两哑巴
The Last Puritan 最后一个清教徒
The Great Fire of 1945 一九四五年大火记
The Jersey Heifer 杰西牛
A Visit to the Grandfather’s Grave 扫墓
Natives Don’t Cry 亨利小姐的信
Rosie 露西姑娘
At Gallipoli 大军出征
The Treasure Game 觅宝
The Duck 鸭
A Special Occasion 两小
Bookshops in Paris 巴黎的书店
A World of Glass 玻璃世界
A Hemingway Sample 海明威的写作技巧
Kant the Man 康德的日常生活
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities 君子好逑
A Mountain Adventure 登山遇险记
Father and Daughter 父与女
Merry Christmas 圣诞快乐
D-Day 诺曼第登陆
A Student in Economics 工读生