Clear as mud -- -- 介绍一篇关于科技文章写作的文章 （with部分翻译）

Clear as mud -- -- 介绍一篇关于科技文章写作的文章

【水龙吟注】这是一篇nature２００３年５月的一篇文章，讲的是如何改进科技文章的写作，写的挺不错的。文中讲了清楚的表达在科学论文（对科普文章同样适用）里的重要性。就像文中说的：“越来越多的语意模糊的文章带来的影响，即使难以量化，也很容易想象得出。如果文章的开篇和摘要很难理解，研究者可能会丧失和其他交叉学科合作的机会。如果整个文章都很不清楚，学生们可能更多的分心到其他的兴趣里，而公众的对科学的畏惧和不信任，当然也有部分源于对新研究的难以理解，都有可能增加。”

以前没看过这类的文章，总以为学术论文是科学的事，和文学没有关系，现在想想确实不对。这文写得挺有意思的。后面的分析只适用于英语，但是前面一段具有普适性，因此水龙吟简单的翻译了一下，（何止简单，简直是复述了，见谅，呵呵）。Btw，题目读不懂。。。。

【部分翻译／原文】
像泥浆一样清晰（Clear as Mud）　by Jonathan Knight
水龙吟　译

“没有什么形式的文章比一般的学术论文更乏味、难懂的了。”Francis Crick 1994年在他的《惊人的假说》一书中这样写道。这是书中对那些打算深入探究文章引文的外行人士的劝诫。但是，DNA的发现者之一也曾说过一个科学界众所周知的话：读研究论文有时就像场噩梦。

但并非总是如此。Crick和同龄的一些人，从上世纪四十年代就开始写学术文章，见证了科学文章的演化。科学文章从像一般报纸文章那么轻松可读变成了满是乱七八糟的行话术语，甚至使熟悉这一领域的人也很难弄明白。

罪责很大程度在于科学分裂成了若干分支，而每个分支都有自己的词汇库。很多杂志尝试着应付这一点，它们提供简单易读的文章概要，将网上文章链接到网上术语表。但是这些做法效果似乎有限，不过提出很多因素——尤其是写作风格——可以改变很多文章。写作需要练习，但这并不是/标准的科学训练的一部分。那么是否让研究人员回去上学或者上些写作课就可以使科学重新变得轻松可读呢？

可读性本身很难量化。微软的Word程序有个特色功能：Flesch阅读容易度——它能测出平均每个单词和句子的长度，并以此来计算需要多少年的教育水平才能读懂这个文档。但是这种工具有时会失效。比如说，一个沿着读者思路走下去的长句子会比一个混乱的短句子更容易理解。而且常见的单词可以相对来说很长——比如说technological（技术的）或者professor（教授）——然而很多技术术语可以很短，比如meson（介子）,genome（基因组）或者glycan(多聚糖).

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越来越多的语意模糊的文章带来的影响，即使难以量化，也很容易想象得出。如果文章的开篇和摘要很难理解，研究者可能会丧失和其他交叉学科合作的机会。如果整个文章都很不清楚，学生们可能更多的分心到其他的兴趣里，而公众的对科学的畏惧和不信任，当然也有部分源于对新研究的难以理解，都有可能增加。

(以下略，有兴趣的去看原文吧。^_^　)

“There is no form of prose more difficult to understand and more tedious to read than the average scientific paper,” wrote Francis Crick in his 1994 book The Astonishing Hypothesis. The observation is a caution to lay readers tempted to delve into the papers referenced in the book. But the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA was also acknowledging what everyone in science knows: research papers can be a nightmare to read.

It wasn’t always so. Crick and others of his generation, who began writing scientific papers in the 1940s, have witnessed the transformation of scientific prose. A form that was as readable as the average newspaper has, in some fields, become a jungle of jargon that even those familiar with the territory struggle to understand.

The balkanization of science into subdisciplines, each with its own vocabulary, is largely to blame. Many journals are trying to tackle this, producing easy-to-read summaries of papers, and linking online papers to web-based glossaries. But these approaches tend to have a limited impact, whereas addressing other factors — notably writing style — could transform many papers. Writing takes practice, yet it is not part of standard scientific training. So could science become readable again if researchers went back to school and took writing lessons?

Readability itself is not easy to quantify. Microsoft’s Word program features the Flesch Reading Ease scale, which measures the average length of words and sentences to calculate the number of years of education needed to comprehend a document. But such tools fail on several counts. For one, a long sentence that walks the reader own a path to its conclusion can be easier to follow than a muddled short sentence. And common words can be relatively long — technological or professor, for example — hereas many technical terms are short,such as meson,genome or glycan.

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The effects of an increasingly opaque literature are easy to imagine, if difficult to
quantify. If opening paragraphs or abstracts are difficult to understand, researchers
may miss opportunities for collaboration between disciplines. If whole papers are unclear, students get diverted to other interests and the public’s fear and mistrust of science, which in part arises from difficulties in understanding new research,may increase.

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