Mon, Jan 29, 2018 page9

• USING IDIOMS 活用成語

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  Chinese Practice

  無風不起浪

  (wu2 feng1 bu4 qi3 lang4)

  

  The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai. 《神奈川沖浪裏》，葛飾北齋作。

  Photo: Wikimedia Commons
  照片：維基共享資源

  without wind, there are no waves

  英文俗語「there’s no smoke without fire」的意思是，每個傳言和指控，其背後多多少少都有真實的成分，即便難以確切得知其細節。今日也難以確切定論此語的出處，但可追溯到久遠的年代。例如以下出自安東尼‧特羅洛普一八六五年的小說《貝爾頓莊園》中的一段對話：

  「She is the only neighbour I have, papa.」（爸爸，她是我唯一的鄰居。）

  「And better none than her, if all that people say of her is true.」（如果關於她的傳聞屬實，我們寧願不要有鄰居。）

  「All that people say is never true, papa.」（不是所有別人說的事情都是真的。）

  「There is no smoke without fire. I am not sure that it’s good for you to be so much with her.」（有煙就不會沒有火，你和她那麼常見面，我不知道這對你來說是不是件好事。）

  年代再推遠些，在一六五五年，托馬斯‧富勒在他的《英國教會史》中寫道：「There was no Smoak but some Fire: either he was dishonest, or indiscreet」（看不到煙卻又有火光：他要不就是不誠實，要不就是不莊重），而英國詩人托馬斯‧赫克列夫（約一三六八～一四二六）是十五世紀中古英國文學的關鍵人物，在他的詩〈A Dialoge〉（對話）中寫道：「Wher no fyr maad is, may no smoke aryse」（沒升火的地方，就不起煙）。在古法文中也有這種比喻，例如十三世紀的「nul feu est sens fumee nefumee sens feu」，意為「沒有煙就沒有火，沒有火就沒有煙」。

  然而，最早的例子咸認出自古羅馬劇作家普勞圖斯（約西元前二五四～前一八四年）的劇作《庫爾庫利奧》，其中一句為「flamma fumo est proxima」（火焰就在煙旁邊）。

  中文也有個意義類似的成語──「無風不起浪」，意為沒有風的吹拂，就不會興起波浪，比喻任何一件事的發生都是有原因的。此語一般認為出自《建中靖國續燈錄》的〈傳祖禪師〉，文中禪師說道：「楊子江心，無風起浪；石公山畔，平地骨堆。」（楊子江的中間，沒有風卻起了浪；石公山邊，憑空堆起了白骨。）因此「無風起浪」原本的意思是，平白無故地生出事來。當時，由於佛道思想的盛行，人們將眾所熟知的「無風起浪」一語以「無…不…」的雙重否定句法加以變造，便成了「無風不起浪」──有風才有浪，引申為所發生的事，背後總是有原因的。

  （台北時報林俐凱譯）

  對於反對派的指控，我們知道是子虛烏有，但選民認為無風不起浪，已對我們失去信心了。

  (We knew that the opposition’s accusations were baseless, but the voters lost confidence in us, as there is no smoke without fire.)

  這對銀色夫妻的傳聞見諸報導後，雖然當事人否認，但後來還是宣布離婚了，果然是無風不起浪。

  (Even though the celebrity denied everything after the scandal broke, the couple would later file for divorce. It seems there really is no smoke without fire.)

  英文練習

  There’s no smoke without fire

  The English saying “there’s no smoke without fire” means that there is usually at least an element of truth behind every rumor or accusation, even if the details are difficult to come by. It is also difficult to pinpoint exactly where the phrase originates, but references to it certainly go back a long way. It is in the following exchange found in Anthony Trollope’s 1865 novel The Belton Estate, for example:

  “She is the only neighbour I have, papa.”

  “And better none than her, if all that people say of her is true.”

  “All that people say is never true, papa.”

  “There is no smoke without fire. I am not sure that it’s good for you to be so much with her.”

  Even further back, in 1655, Thomas Fuller wrote, in his Church History of Britain, “There was no Smoak but some Fire: either he was dishonest, or indiscreet,” while the English poet and clerk Thomas Hoccleve (c. 1368–1426), a key figure in 15th-century Middle English literature, wrote in his poem A Dialoge (a dialogue), “Wher no fyr maad is, may no smoke aryse” (Where no fire has been made, no smoke will arise.) There are early examples of the metaphor in French, too, such as “nul feu est sens fumee nefumee sens feu,” from the 13th century: “no fire is without smoke, nor smoke without fire.”

  The earliest example, however, is thought to be in the play Curculio by the Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus (c. 254 – 184 BC), in which we find the line, “flamma fumo est proxima”: “the flame is right next to the smoke.”

  There is an idiom with a similar idea in Chinese, too: 無風不起浪, meaning that there are no waves when the weather is calm and, by extension, there is a cause behind everything that happens. The idiom is generally thought to originate from the Jianzhong Jingguo Era Continued Transmission of the Lamp record of Ch’an (Zen) masters and other prominent Buddhist monks, in which a monk says 楊子江心，無風起浪；石公山畔，平地骨堆 (Waves appear in the middle of the Yangzi River, when there is no wind blowing; bones pile up beside Mt. Shigong). That is, the original meaning of the phrase was that some things happen for no reason. At the time, Buddhist thought was very popular, and people would have taken the widely known phrase 無風起浪 and altered it by adding the double negative 無…不… (without ... not) grammatical construction, to arrive at 無風不起浪, giving causality to the phrase, when originally the very point was the lack of causality. Still, the meaning of the idiom now used is that all things do have a cause.

  (Paul Cooper, Taipei Times)

  I’m not sure I believe all of those rumors, but there must be some truth to it. After all, there’s no smoke without fire.

  （我不太確定能不能全盤相信那些謠言，不過其中應該有某種程度的真實性，畢竟無風不起浪。）

  Well, there’s the smoke. My question is, where’s the fire?

  （嗯，我想確實已經可以看到徵兆，但問題是證據在哪裡呢？）
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