Unit 3 Our culture, our treasure Reading课文翻译及知识点讲解讲义 2025-2026学年高三译林版选修三/创新学程三

牛津新教材选修三 Unit3 Reading

Chinese characters: foundation of a remarkable writing system

汉字: 非凡书写系统的基础

In the year 1899, some mystical symbols carved on oracle bones attracted the attention of a scholar in Beijing. That was when people first began to realize the significance of these beautiful inscriptions. Since then, the mystery surrounding the origin of Chinese characters, the foundation of a remarkable writing system, has started to be revealed.

1899 年，甲骨文上的一些神秘符号引起了北京一位学者的注意。从那时起， 人们开始意识到这些美丽的铭文的重要性。从那时起，围绕着汉字起源的谜团开始被揭开，汉字是一种非凡的书写系统的基础。

1. mystical adj.神秘的；神秘主义的

adv. mystically神秘地

mysteriously神秘地；故弄玄虚地；难以理解地

adj. mysterious神秘的；不可思议的；难解的

1).difficult to understand or explain; strange神秘的；奇怪的；不易解释的

2). ( especially of people尤指人 ) strange and interesting because you do not know much about them神秘的；陌生的

3) ( of people人 ) not saying much about sth, especially when other people want to know more诡秘的；故弄玄虚的

•He was being very mysterious about where he was going.他十分诡秘，闭口不谈他要去哪里。

 mystical

1). having spiritual powers or qualities that are difficult to understand or to explain神秘的；不可思议的；难以解释的

• mystical forces/powers 神秘的力量╱能力

2).connected with mysticism潜修的；神秘主义的

n. mystery神秘，秘密；奥秘；神秘的事物

vt. mystify 使神秘化；使迷惑，使困惑

2. inscription n.题词；铭文；刻印

scribe n.抄写员；作家；划线器 v.写下，记下；用划线器划

scribble v.潦草地写，匆匆地写；乱涂，乱画

n.潦草的书写（或字迹），匆忙完成的文章；胡写乱画的东西，涂鸦

describe v. 描述；形容；把…称为; 做…运动；画出…图形；形成…形状

subscribe v.订阅，订购；定期缴纳会员费; 定期捐款赞助；认购（股票）；赞成，同意；〈正式〉签署（遗嘱、合同或其他文件）；申请，注册，报名；购买（一系列演出的）联票

prescribe v.给……开（药），让……采用（疗法）；开处方；规定，命令；制定规定；推荐，推举

These oracle bone inscriptions, the earliest form of Chinese characters ever found to this day, are clear proof that the history of the Chinese writing system stretches back about 3,500 years. The inscriptions are highly complex, suggesting that earlier forms are yet to be discovered. All we have at the moment, however, is the legend of Cang Jie, who is said to have invented the first characters about 5,000 years ago. Legend has it that he saw animal tracks in the ground, and began drawing pictures of objects in nature, such as the moon, the sun and the trees.

这些甲骨文是迄今为止发现的最早的汉字形式，清楚地证明了中国文字系统的历史可以追溯到大约 3500 年前。这些铭文非常复杂，表明早期的形式尚未被

发现。然而，目前我们所掌握的只有仓颉的传说，据说是他在大约 5000 年前发明了第一批汉字。传说他在地上看到了动物的足迹，并开始画自然界的物体，如月亮、太阳和树木。

to this day直到现在，一直持续到今天

stretch back回溯到

be yet to do尚未

be said to have done据说...做了...

be said to be doing据说正在进行

be said to do sth据说...要做...

Not surprisingly, the earliest Chinese characters were the fruits of our ancestors' careful observation and striking imagination. The Chinese character shan, for example, is simply a drawing of a mountain. However, our ancestors found not everything was convenient to draw as a concrete image, so another way of forming Chinese  characters was developed to represent abstract concepts. Some characters were  created by adding symbols like a dot or a line to an existing pictographic ( adj.象形文字的，绘画文字的) character to indicate things. For instance, the characters shang and xia indicate things on top of and below a line. Gradually, these characters were far from enough to describe the colourful and diverse world, so a new way of forming characters was developed by putting together different characters to indicate a new meaning. An example of this is the character ming, which combines ri for “sun" and yue for "moon" to express

the meaning of being bright. These types of characters indicate meaning, but they do not provide clues about their pronunciation. Another group of characters were created by combining meaning and pronunciation. In hu,the Chinese character for “lake”, for instance, the left part indicates the meaning and the right part the pronunciation. This method made it easier to create new characters, so most Chinese characters today belong to this group.

毫不奇怪，最早的汉字是我们祖先细心观察和惊人想象的结果。例如，汉字“山”就是简单地画一座山。然而，我们的祖先发现并不是所有的东西都能方便地用具体的图形来画出来，所以发展出了另一种汉字的写法来表示抽象的概念。有

些汉字是通过在已有的象形文字上添加点或线等符号来表示事物而产生的。例如，

“上”和“下”两个字表示的是线上下的东西。渐渐地，这些汉字远远不足以描述丰