The Thin Red Line 细细的红线

50 文苑·纪事

The Thin Red Line细细的红线文/约翰·辛普森 译/田兵By John Simpsonn the days before the Internet, I came

to see that one of the characteristics

that really distinguished OED entries

was the quality of the historical re-search that went into their compilation.

Later, we had help from all manner

of digital resources to discover earlier

references to the words or phrases we

were working on. Back then, it was

just the researcher against a shelf full

of books and library catalogues, and no

one gave you any hints about where to

start looking. A classic example of this

is illustrated by the work we conducted

to research the history of the expression

the thin red line.2 The thin red line was an expression

that the original OED compilers had

utterly forgotten to include. Arguably,

this was rather casual of them. The

expression was well established when

they reached red, and even if it hadn’t

been, there would have been another

chance to include it several years later

when they reached thin. I presume1 they

1 presume（虽无证据但）确信；设定。2022·09 英语世界

I互联网时代到来之前，我已逐渐明白，真正使《牛津英语词典》卓尔不的一个特征，是它将高品质的历史研究带进了词典编纂。之后，我们拥有了各种形式的数字资源，帮助我们针对词典所收的单词和短语寻更早的参考文献。当年，只有研究者单匹马，面对满满一架子的书和资料馆藏书目录，也没有谁给出任何提示，该从哪里开始寻。这方面的一个经典案例，是针对the thin red line这一表达的历史所做的检索，很能够说明我们当时的工作状况。2

the thin red line这一表达，第一版《牛津英语词典》的编纂者竟完全忘记收录。可以说，他们有些大意了。当编辑工作进行到red时，该表达已经众所周知，即便当时没有收录，几年后编纂至thin时，他们也还是有机会将它补录进来的。在

文苑·纪事 51thought that, since it consisted of three

words, it was more of a phrase than a

word, and so its natural right of entry

into the dictionary was compromised.

We had to be practical: two-word

compounds could easily be included if

they had gained a firm foothold in the

language; three-word compounds were

more questionable, and it was some-times hard to determine whether they

were fixed expressions or chance collo-cations of the three elements; four-word

compounds were even less likely to be

included.3 By the late 1970s, when we were

working on red for the Supplement to

the OED, we concluded that thin red

line was admissible. Almost all of the

work on red had been edited by my old

trainer, Lesley, and she was not one to

leave any stone unturned. Her bundle2

of red words included thin red line.

Everyone knew, in those days, that this

was a historical expression that referred

to the British Army in line of battle, in

its role as protector—thin and stretched

out in its redcoat uniform trying desper-ately to save the British Empire from

the forces of darkness. The more of

these forces that came along, the thinner

the line became.4 Suggestions in our card file indi-cated that the phrase was redolent3 of

the Battle of Balaclava, in the Crimean

我推测他们可能是这么认为的：既然这一表达由三个实词组成，那么它就应是一个短语而非单词，因而作为独立条目收入词典的天然“合法性”就被破坏了。我们不得不实际一些：双词组成的合成词，一旦在语言中立稳脚跟，很容易被收录；三词组成的合成词，更容易受到质疑，有时难以确定它们到底是固定表达，还是三个组分的随机搭配；四词组成的合成词，被收录的可能性就更小了。3 到1970年代末，《牛津英语词典·补编》在修订red词条时，我们一致认为：可以收录thin red line。red一词的所有编辑工作几乎都是由我原先的培训导师莱斯莉一手完成的，她在工作中向来干净彻底、不留死角。她编辑的那组red词语中包括了thin red line。在当时，尽人皆知，这是一个有历史含义的表达，指英军排成作战队形、起到保护作用：他们阵列稀疏，横向伸展，士兵们身穿红制服，为保卫大英帝国而与黑暗力量殊死较量。这些黑暗势力来得越多，那条英军阵列就变得愈加稀疏单薄。4 我们卡片文档中记载的种2 bundle一大堆，一大批。 3 redolent (of)使人想到；使人联想起。英语世界 2022·09

52 文苑·纪事

种信息显示，这一短语可关联到克里米亚战争中的巴拉克拉瓦战役。但是，莱斯莉在此碰到一个严重问题。对于thin

red line，她有大量文献证据，是大约100年里《牛津英语词典》的“读者”所收集的，但没有一则早于1935年，还有一则表达沙文主义含义的出现在乔治·奥威尔的一部小说中。巴拉克拉瓦战役发生在1854年10月25日。所以，要么thin red line这一表达与那场战役毫无瓜葛，要么我们的文献证据开始收集的时间晚了将近100年。5 对于日常的词典编辑人员来讲，在语言气息浓厚的《牛津英语词典》资料馆里，关于克里米亚战争的资料极少，但也并非是遗失殆尽。在词典部工具书资料馆中检索该表达时，莱斯莉遵守规程，核检了那些引语词典，只是想碰碰运气。除标准的《牛津引语词典》，我们还一一核查了约翰·巴特利特《常见引语》的不同版本——该词典19世纪中期在美国出版后连续再版，是一个包含鲜见信息的资源库，收录了大量人们熟悉和不熟悉的格言警句。War. But Lesley had a serious problem

here. She had an armful of documentary

evidence for thin red line collected over

a hundred years or so by the diction-ary’s “readers,” but none of this pre-dated 1935 and a jingoistic4 occurrence

in a novel by George Orwell. The Battle

of Balaclava took place on 25 October

1854. So either the expression thin red

line had nothing to do with the battle,

or our documentary evidence started

almost a hundred years too late.5 For the everyday dictionary edi-tor, there were precious few resources

on the Crimean War in the language-flavoured OED library. But all was

not lost. In researching the expression

in the dictionary’s reference library,

Lesley had followed protocol5 and in-spected quotations dictionaries, just on

the off-chance6. As well as the standard

Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, we

also checked through various editions

of John Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations,

4 jingoistic极端沙文（或民族）主义的。 5 protocol协议，规程。 6 on the off-chance抱有一线希望； 心存侥幸地。2022·09 英语世界

文苑·纪事 53published in America since the mid-nineteenth century and a powerhouse of

recondite information on sayings famil-iar and less so. My personal favourite

in this corner of the library was Burton

Stevenson’s Home Book of Quotations,

a massive red brick of a book published

posthumously in New York in 1967,

and amalgamating much of Stevenson’s

early work on phrases.6 But this time it was John Bartlett who

nearly came up trumps, with a reference

to The Times report of 25 October 1854

on the Battle of Balaclava, which pro-vided a reference to the “thin red streak

tipped with a line of steel7” at the battle,

and attributed the reference to the pa-per’s Irish war correspondent (later Sir)

William Howard Russell (1820–1907).

Problem No. 1: this wasn’t actually the

expression we were looking for. It was

close, but not close enough.7 Lesley called in the help of our re-searchers in London and Oxford. At the

British Library’s newspaper library in

Colindale, out in the north-west sub-urbs of London, long-time OED word

researcher George Chowdharay-Best

looked for the 25 October Times report

and found that it didn’t exist. That was

Problem No. 2. Facts were dissolving

like butter in a pan. At this point, the re-search was transferred back to Oxford,

where it was taken up by my colleague

7 指士兵手持武器上的钢刃。

在资料馆的这一角落，我个人最喜欢伯顿·史蒂文森的《家庭引语集》，一部红砖般的大部头词典，是他去世后于1967年在纽约出版的，算是他早期大部分短语著述的集成之作。6 但是这一次，差点儿帮上大忙的是巴特利特，他提及《泰晤士报》1854年10月25日报道过巴拉克拉瓦战役，文中提到该战役 thin red streak

tipped with a line of steel（镶着钢铁亮边的细红条带），并将引文作者标为该报爱尔兰战地记者（后授勋爵）威廉·霍华德·拉塞尔（1820—1907）。首要的问题是：这其实并不是我们在的那个表达。很接近，但还不够近。7 莱斯莉向我们在伦敦和牛津的研究者求助。英国国家图书馆的报刊分馆坐落在伦敦西北郊的科林代尔，《牛津英语词典》资深的词汇研究者乔治·乔杜里-贝斯特到那儿查《泰晤士报》10月25日的那篇报道，结果发现并不存在。这是第二个问题。所有事实就如同热锅上的黄油——融化不见了。到了此时，检索工作又转交回牛津，由我的同事伊冯娜·沃伯顿接手。她一期一期英语世界 2022·09

54 文苑·纪事Yvonne Warburton. She hunted through

issues of The Times, looking for the

report, and eventually found it on 14

November—but still it read “thin red

streak,” not “thin red line.” We had to

put that lead on hold.88 The bloodhounds now picked up

another trail. Although John Bartlett

hadn’t come up with the goods9, a later

reference from 1877, in the Oxford Dic-tionary of Quotations, offered a fall-back10 position. This was to another

William Russell source, his Expedition

to the Crimea (1877 edition). Sure

enough, this did contain the “thin red

line tipped with steel,” but only twenty-three years after the battle. There was

still hope. There always is. Russell’s

Expedition to the Crimea (1877) was

a later edition of his book The War:

From the Landing at Gallipoli (1855),

so it would be no trouble to convert thin

red line to 1855. No, back then he had

still used “thin red streak.” How about

his 1858 edition? Back to our London

researcher to check this, as the book

wasn’t in Oxford. But no, it was still

“thin red streak” there.119 We were flummoxed at 1877. We

had red line, but not thin red line, from

1855. It was frustrating, but in the ab-sence of any other leads, we had no op-tion but to publish the entry with 1877

地翻阅《泰晤士报》，寻那篇报道，最终在11月14日的报纸上到了——但报道中写的仍是 thin red streak ，而不是

thin red line 。这条线索我们只好就此打住。8 “捕快们”此时到了另一条线索。虽然巴特利特并没有提供直接帮助，但他在《牛津引语词典》中给出的一条1877年的文献引例提供了一个备选。这又是一个出自威廉·拉塞尔的文本资源——他写的《远征克里米亚》（1877年版）。果然，书中确实包含

thin red line tipped with steel 的表达，只是离战争结束已有23年之久。其时希望仍在。希望其实常在。威廉·拉塞尔的《远征克里米亚》（1877）是其《那场战争：从加利波利登陆开始》（1855）一书后来的版本，所以将

thin red line

追溯至1855年应该不会成问题。实际上，那时候他使用的仍然是 thin red streak。那么这本书1858年的版本呢？因为书不在牛津，问题打回至我们在伦敦的研究者进行核对。答案不是我们想要的，那个版本里仍旧是

thin red streak。8 bloodhound大警犬；捕猎者；侦探。 9 come up with the goods按约交货；达到要求。

10 fall-back后退的；让步的。 11 flummox使困惑（或慌乱）。2022·09 英语世界

文苑·纪事 55

我们受了挫，止步于1877年。从1855年往后，我们有red line，但都不是thin red

line，这让人很沮丧。但因为9缺乏另外的线索，我们别无选择，只好在出版时用1877年的资料作为该条目下thin red

line 短语最早的文献出处。10 这么一则有关词典人日常as the earliest reference to the precise

phrase thin red line.10 There is naturally a postscript to this

everyday tale of lexical folk. Several

years later Yvonne published a brief ar-ticle about her research and asked read-ers to see if they could find earlier evi-dence for thin red line. Sure enough, the

challenge was taken up, with quotations

supplied to the dictionary back to 1859,

including a commemorative12 verse

contained in Sebastian Evans’s Rhymes

Read in the Queens Drawing Room at

Aston Hall, which linked the expression

directly to the Battle of Balaclava:How too, on Balaclava’s hills,Two miles of deadly riding,That ‘thin red line’ charged,—and

returned,

How thin! to tell the tiding!11 The icing on the cake came a year

or two later. More and more historical

publications were steadily becoming

12 commemorative用作纪念的。工作的故事，自然有后话。数年后，伊冯娜发表了一篇短文，讲述她的研究，同时请读者看看能否到thin red line的更早依据。果然，这一挑战得到回应，寄到词典部的引例追溯到了1859年，包括一节纪念诗，收录在塞巴斯蒂安·埃文斯的《在阿斯顿大厅昆斯客厅朗读的韵文》中，该节诗直接将这一表达同巴拉克拉瓦战役联系在了一起：怎么又是，在巴拉克拉瓦山坳，排成两英里长线一条，骑士们冒死赴蹈，那条“细细的红线”，前冲，——后退，怎么那么细！却将信息来报！11 锦上之花一两年后出现了。越来越多的历史出版物可在互联网上查得，词典编纂者英语世界 2022·09

56 文苑·纪事accessible on the Internet, and the pos-sibilities for lexicographical research

were changing dramatically once again.

By this time, The Times archives had

become searchable online. There was

a dash for the keyboards around the

world, and one of the OED’s back-room contributors found what we

wanted—“The services of that ‘thin

red line’ which had met and routed the

Russian cavalry”—from an edition13 of

the newspaper published on 24 January

1855. Maybe the quotation marks imply

that it was a misremembering of Rus-sell. The text places it all in context, as

the British government debated which

soldiers should receive medals for their

service in the Crimea:Where in history was a parallel to be

found to the glorious charge of Balakla-va? Nor were the services performed by

the gallant 93d Regiment, under Gen-eral Sir Colin Campbell, to be forgot-ten—the services of that “thin red line”

which had met and routed the Russian

cavalry.12 Folk-memory and documentary

evidence had finally come together to

clinch the deal. ■

可选的研究方式又一次发生剧变。到了这时候，《泰晤士报》文档库已经可以在线检索。世界各地的键盘在急速敲击。《牛津英语词典》后台的一位研究者在1855年1月24日出版的一份报纸特刊上到了我们所期盼的东西：The services of that

“thin red line” which had met and

routed the Russian cavalry（排成那条“细细红线”般阵列的军队迎战并阻挡了沙俄铁骑）。其中的引号或许是暗指记错了拉塞尔的原话。该文本将这一表达完全置于具体语境中，因为英国政府正在讨论：哪些士兵因在克里米亚战争中服役而该被授予勋章：巴拉克拉瓦的威武征战，历史上谁与匹敌？勋爵科林·坎贝尔将军麾下第93步兵团的英勇表现也被世人铭记——排成那条“细细红线”般阵列的军队迎战并阻挡了沙俄铁骑。12 百姓记忆和文献证据最终汇合为一，整个问题就此有了定论。

□13 edition常指某报纸（专为某特定日子或目的）刊出的特别一期。2022·09 英语世界