10. 比较表达法的两种作用
(1) He is an expert more in name than in reality. 他这个专家有其名而无其实。(优势比较)
(2) Her book is more than a guide. 她的书不仅仅是一般的指南。（强调）
(3) Hitler's mistakes gave Roosevelt the victory; just as at Waterloo it was less Wellington who won than Nagolepn who lost.希特勒犯了错误使罗斯福获胜，正如滑铁卢一战，与其说是威灵顿打赢了，不如说是拿破仑打败了。（劣势比较）
(4) No one would accuse you of looking less than a gentleman if you wore a shirt like this.你穿这样的衬衫不会有人指责你缺少绅士气派。（强调）
(5) I had as much chance of getting such a simple fact across to that pompous windbag as of changing lead into gold.要想让这个自命不凡夸夸其谈的人明白这样简单的一个事实，除非我能把铅变成金。（同等比较）
(6) We could not afford to go away together to the health resort; it is as much as I could do to
get him off—he is really in dire need of it.我财力不够，没法一块儿去疗养地，把他一个人送去已经是尽我所能，他实在太需要疗养了。（强调）
(7) It is not advice as much as approval that he seeks.他不像是在征求意见，更像是想得到赞同。（否定比较）
Notes：
本次练习的主题是英语比较式的翻译。英语这种语言现象很广泛，表达力也很强。大体上说这种表达法有两方面的作用：一是表示比较，如1-优势比较；3-劣势比较；5-同等比较；7-否定比较（此句的as much as=but）。二是表示强调，如句2，4，6，形式是比较，实际只起强调作用，从正面或反面加强语气。
英语的比较式就其第一种作用来看，只有最基本的、语义同层次的优势比较，如He runs faster than I. 才能译成汉语的“比”：他比我跑得快。此外英语的比较实质上是从各个不同的方面对语义进行程度上的肯定或否定，因此往往难用“比”字来翻译。比方说汉语不爱用劣势比较，第3句那样的less …than不能译成“比…更少”，只能换个说法“与其说…不如说”。同等
比较好办些，因为汉语有其对应说法“像…一样”。英语的优势比较和否定比较往往是肯定一方否定一方，因此往往译成“不是…而是”，如句1，7两句。
现代英语将比较式用作强调的情况很多。从形式上看，与上述的比较的情况不同的是：比较式各部分必须连在一体（more than,less than,as much as）,不能将各词分开，分开便成了比较而不是强调，上述1与2，3与4，5与6各句比较即可一目了然。More than或less than修饰名词时，该名词便具有抽象品质的意义：more than a guide指该书虽名为指南却比一般指南所起作用大；less than a gentleman则是指绅士派头方面。这两个比较式还可用于形容词、副词（more than enough绰绰有余，treated less than human不当人看待）及动词（如it has more than doubled增加一倍以上）。同等比较的as much as用于强调时往往指“尽量”,如句6，但在句7中与not连用构成比较，意思就发生了变化。英语此句可以写成It is not so much advice as approval that he seeks, 意思不变。这一结构往往用来比较两种说法的正确程度。
“That trumpet player was certainly loud.”那个小号手确实吹得够响了。
“I wasn’t bothered by his loudness so much as by his lack of talent缺乏演奏才能.”
…
Passage 10  “I feel it cannot get any worse”我感觉情况糟透了/我感觉再没有比这情况更糟的了
    The oil patch is more than skeletal steel rigs sprouting from sagebrush flats of old rangeland and the shallow green waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It is an entire region whose economy is inextricably bound up in the rise and fall of oil-and-gas prices. In trouble since 1981, Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana continue to reel today from price shocks=feeling extremely surprised or upset from price shocks that show no sign of abating. Little relief is in sight through next year, and the day is long gone when oil-coampany profits transformed the proud new skylines of New Orleans and Houston into testaments to a time of plenty. Tless is more代言人oday, many buildings in these cities stand half empty, and the migration of rust-belt（夕阳工业区） job seekers to the promised land of the oil patch is over. The best that the Southwest can hope for in 1987: a bottoming out of the recession.
    Calvin Wilson and his wife Wanda might seem to be unlikely casualties of skidding oil pri
ces. Neither has anything to do with the oil-and-gas industry, yet their public-employee salaries in New Orleans---he is a police officer, she a school teacher---are tightly tied to tax revenues that have taken a heavy battering from falling industry income.
    At the peak of the boom a few years ago, Louisiana had more cash than it knew what to do with. But its surplus of $400 million has dried up, replaced by $300 million wirth of red ink on the ledgers. And both state and local governments have taken draconian严厉的 austerity measures财政紧缩措施in an attempt to make ends meet.
    When the city decreeed a four-day workweek for the police to save money, Wilson, 40, a 12-year veteran of the force, was forced to work special details part time to keep his family’s bills paid. His wife, 36, who has a master’s degree, faces a fourth year with no salary increase and perhaps another one after that. She teaches in a high school and worries about the impact of the “new economy”---as these hard times are being called euphemistically in the South-west---on her students.
    Children who once would have been concerned mostly with weekend dances and footba
ll games now hold down nearly full-time jobs, as much to help their parents as to replace the allowancees they no longer receive.
    “My 11th graders, all they talk about is their jobs,” says Wanda Wilson.”Those who have them are holding on to=try to keep them for dear life=with the greatest effort.” She is concerned, too, about the quality of education when the trend is to cut school costs and streamline operations.
    Things lately have brightened a bit. Calvin Wilson has been returned to a five-day workweek. But his hard-pressed family still cannot resume simple pleasures such as breakfast out once a week at a fast-food restaurant, and he has postponed a badly needed repair job on a leaky roof. “I will never feel it is always going to be a smooth road ahead again,” says Wilson. His wife is only slightly more optimistic. “I have this feeling that next year is going to be better than this,”she says. “I know that I feel it can’t get any worse.”