WeChat ID translationtips Intro 中国日报网翻吧研究英语学习和翻译中的一切问题。 本期专家答问邀请到中国日报资深编辑张欣老师来回答读者的问题。 Please explain this sentence: This was a focus group and is not necessarily representative of the public writ large. "This" focus group is a small group, as all focus groups usually are. In other words, there are not a lot of people in it and therefore their interests or opinion may not be representative of the public at large. A focus group, you see, is a small group of people selected for a study on something. For example, in light (or rather lacks thereof) of persistent smoggy air in Beijing, a select group of people is gathered together to form a focus group whose purpose is to both look into the cause of the smog and find possible solutions to it. Now, due to the fact that the group is small (otherwise it won't be called a focus group – a group to focus their attention on something particular), not all people from all walks of life are picked as members. Hence and therefore, the collective view point of this group may not be representative of the opinion of the general public. I mean, obviously, if most members of the group are environmental activists, their opinion may lean one way – in the way of banning polluting factories. If, on the other hand, if many members of the group are actually from those polluting factories, then their opinion may be very different. Let's just put it that way and leave it there. Anyways, and oh, writ large. Writ is an old spelling of written. Writ large then means written large, or literally written in large letters, large in size. If something is written in large letters, then it is clearly legible and easy to read. Hence, metaphorically speaking, if something is described as writ large, then it is big and magnified, clear and unmistakable. The public writ large, to wit, means the public at large or the population in general. All right, no more ado, media examples of writ large or, for that matter, small: 1. IT SEEMS every pundit in America has an opinion to offer Governor Christie on running for the presidency. Republican partisans urge him to run to save the GOP from drowning in a sea of bitter tea. Democratic partisans cite his faults, hoping Christie won't challenge a weakened President Obama. One well-known columnist even took on the governor's weight and advised a salad and a walk. I've spent time with Christie over the years, and my advice to the governor is this: Do not run if you will be less of a president than you want to be. The people who want you to run want to win the White House more than they care about what happens after the election. You're product to them. Good product, but product, nonetheless. Christie is not shy for ego. No one running for high office should be shy for ego. False modesty was perhaps attractive in an 18th-century debutante. It looks ridiculous on a 21st-century politician. Anyone who wants to be president has to want it beyond everything, because it is a job that defies description. If I may delve into some Catholic theology, sacraments change people for life. You can only be baptized once. One communion. One ordination. Becoming president of the United States is a sacramental act of a secular society. It changes the person forever. The effect cannot be undone. Christie, a Catholic, should see the presidency this way. The appeal of Christie is his self-confidence. Some call it arrogance. Some call it bullying. It's confidence writ large. It's intoxicating. That's what is driving the hysteria to make him a candidate for president. -- Doblin: The roar of the presidency, the smell of the crowds, by Alfred P. Doblin, NorthJersey.com, October 3, 2011. 2. Stealing my 9-year-old nephew's copy of The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill was the best thing I did last summer. I was his age the first time I read it, and twice his age the last time I went back to it. I'm twice that old again now, but as soon as I dove into this intimate, majestic tale of war writ small — of a battle between the pushcart peddlers and the truckers of New York City — I realized how timeless, and how deeply a part of me, the story was. Before long, I was tearing up as I anticipated events to come — not so much the major plot points as the masterful asides and grace notes that make the story so rich. I finished that same evening — a feat my nephew found stunning — and I haven't stopped thinking about the book since. The Pushcart War is presented as a history of a conflict that has not yet taken place; in each edition of the book, the date on which the hostilities commenced is nudged forward. I remember the power of that effect vividly from my first reading; it felt like standing with one foot in the past and one in the future, and it was strange and wonderful. Merrill, who died in August at the age of 89, begins by explaining that most wars are too massive and too complicated to be understood, and that we cannot prevent what we fail to comprehend — true when she wrote it, nearly 50 years ago, and undiminished since. But the Pushcart War, she tells us, is different. Its battles were confined to the streets of one city, and the weapons were simple enough to be understood by a 6-year-old. It was a war in microcosm, but there were generals and campaigns, truces and casualties. At stake were the streets themselves, and thus the future of the city. At the heart of the conflict lie two opposing models of business, and of thought: The trucking companies believe bigger is better, that growth means progress, and that might is right. They want to eliminate all other vehicles, and their first intended victims are the pushcart peddlers — small businesses beholden to a very different philosophy. Their customer service is personal, their territories well-defined; they perform hidden services fundamental to the function of the city. They are, in today's parlance, "sustainable." But the pushcarts are no pushovers. When their livelihoods and reputations are threatened, they take the fight to the enemy, with a peashooter offensive that leaves the trucks deflated. Literally. There is a familiar old-world charm to peddlers like Morris the Florist and Harry the Hot Dog, but there are no ingenues here. We know whom to root for, but Merrill's war is wrought in shades of gray. Battles are won in the court of public opinion, as often as on the streets. Pushcart king Maxie Hammerman is as savvy a strategist as his opponents, the trucking magnates, and their ally, the mayor. Both sides know how to cultivate powerful friends and the importance of manipulating the media. Merrill's story, full of unexpected reversals and understated witticisms, feels exceptionally modern. And by the end — after the two sides have hammered out a peaceful and deeply reasonable compromise — one can only hope that we'll catch up to Merrill's future one day. -- War Writ Small: Of Pushcarts And Peashooters, by Adam Mansbach, WABE.org, January 31, 2013. 3. The few existing videos of Kushner speaking on camera suggest a possible reason he doesn't do it more: He's not very good at it. Two brief videos from 2014 -- one from a real estate conference and one for the Jehovah's Witnesses talking about his $700 million purchase of the group's former Brooklyn headquarters -- show Kushner in his familiar uniform of a gray suit and dark tie, speaking blandly and without much conviction. With his soft voice and Tri-State Area accent, he sounds remarkably like his brother-in-law Eric Trump. "I don't talk to the press," he told Forbes in December. But someone is clearly shaping his image in the media as a beacon of moderation, the man working to pull Trump toward consensus-minded policies and socially liberal politics. Kushner and Ivanka "helped kill a proposed executive order that would have scrapped Obama-era L.G.B.T. protections," The New York Times reported in February, based on "people familiar with the issue." They also "intervened to strike language about the climate deal from an earlier draft of the executive order," The Wall Street Journal reported a few weeks later, "according to multiple people familiar with the move." Ivanka was in favor of bombing Syria, her brother Eric said, and Kushner supported the strike as well, according to unnamed sources. The exact same nuggets that seem engineered to elicit sympathy for Kushner and his wife from one group -- the public writ large -- are why other White House insiders reportedly mock them as "globalists" who are Democrats in all but name. (That moniker is also supposedly bestowed on Goldman Sachs alums Gary Cohn, Trump's National Economic Council director, and Dina Powell, who ran Goldman's charitable activity and now serves as a deputy adviser on the National Security Council. The term "globalist" is widely understood to have anti-Semitic connotations, and Kushner, Ivanka and Cohn are Jewish.) What the press anecdotes from unnamed sources don't do -- the ones in this story included -- is explain Jared's political beliefs. He keeps his views so hidden that it's not clear whether he actually has any at all. -- The Guide To Becoming Jared Kushner, HuffingtonPost.com, April 25, 2017. 注：本文转载自中国日报网英语点津，略有删节。 About the author:  Zhang Xin is a trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column. ☑ Banana skin? ☑ Going nuclear：放绝招 ☑ In the nosebleeds 偏远地方  ☑ Golden handcuffs：金饭碗 ☑ Gloves came off? ☑ Dyed in the wool：榆木脑袋 ☑ Sound and fury：空洞无趣 你觉得这个讨论有意思吗？直接发评论，与大家一起来聊聊这个话题！ 如果你遇到了英语学习或翻译的问题，欢迎通过微信发送问题，或到翻吧里提问！ Reward people gave a reward 长按二维码向我转账 受苹果公司新规定影响，微信 iOS 版的赞赏功能被关闭，可通过二维码转账支持公众号。 Scan QR Code via WeChat to follow Official Account