以下原文、原译文和我的译文
原文地址:http://zylhattie.blog.sohu.com/8944242.html
原文: 好孩子居家守则10条
原译文:A good child may fulfill the following promises at home: I will
译文: Ten Tips / Common Sense Ways for Children at Home
原文: 1. 作业效率高,质量好,
原译文:1. finish my homework quickly and perfectly,
译文: 1. Do your homework attentively and aim at good results.
原文: 2. 家务事,要参与,
原译文:2. join hands in doing household chores,
译文: 2. Know your responsibility for housework and share the chores around the house.
原文: 3. 尊老爱幼记心间,
原译文:3. respect the old and take care of the young,
译文: 3. Show respect and concern for the elderly, and take care of the little ones.
原文: 4. 家长批评要接受,
原译文:4. accept my parents’ criticism,
译文: 4. Accept your parents’criticisms and get the most out of them.
原文: 5. 家中使用文明语,
原译文:5. speak agreeable phrases only,
译文: 5. Mind your Ps and Qs at home, and use proper language when talking.
原文: 6. 遵守大家的约定,
原译文:6. abide by agreements,
译文: 6. Keep up your promises and fulfill agreements with others.
原文: 7. 客人来了要热情,
原译文:7. welcome guests whole-heartedly,
译文: 7.Be a warm-hearted host to guests and visitors.
原文: 8. 自己事情自己做,
原译文:8. finish the chores that should be done by myself,
译文: 8. Be sure to attend to your own work or task yourself.
原文: 9. 居家安全要牢记,
原译文:9. bear in mind the safety of our family,
译文: 9. Be aware of home safety and security to protect your family.
原文: 10.宝贵能源要珍惜。
原译文:10.and conserve energy whenever possible.
译文: 10.Make an effort to save scarce energy in and around the house.
以下是我的英文点评!!
Meaning of Mind your Ps and Qs
Be on your best behaviour; be careful of your language.
Ps and Qs are just the plural of the letters P and Q. There some disagreement amongst grammarians about how to spell Ps and Qs - either upper-case or lower-case and either with or without a hyphen. You may see the phrase as mind your p's and q's or mind your Ps and Qs or (occasionally) mind your P's and Q's or (rarely) as mind your ps and qs.
As well as the spelling, the original meaning is also in doubt. Francis Grose, in his 1785 edition of The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, defines it like this:
"To mind one's P's and Q's; to be attentive to the main chance."
Origin
The date of the coinage of mind your Ps and Qs is uncertain. The OED used to print a citation from 1779 but, as they have now withdrawn it from the online version of the dictionary, presumably they consider it unreliable.
So, the meaning, spelling and coinage of the phrase are all debatable. Now we come to what is really uncertain - the derivation. Nevertheless, it is one of those phrases that people know the origin of. When pressed all that really means is that the person they heard explain the origin had made a random choice from the list of proposed derivations below. As no one knows the origin I'll just list those suggestions - mind your ps and qs derives from one of these:
- Mind your pints and quarts. This is suggested as deriving from the practise of chalking up a tally of drinks in English pubs (on the slate). Publicans had to make sure to mark up the quart drinks as distinct from the pint drinks. This is a favourite of folk-etymology. It is scuppered somewhat by the fact that drinks were rarely sold in quarts in English pubs.
- Advice to printer’s apprentices to avoid confusing the backward-facing metal type lowercase Ps and Qs. I've never heard any suggestion that printer should mind their Ds and Bs though and that has the benefit of rhyming which would have made it a more attractive slogan.
- Mind your pea (jacket) and queue (wig). Pea jackets were short, rough woollen overcoats, commonly worn by sailors in the 18th century. Perruques were full wigs worn by fashionable gentlemen. It is difficult to imagine who might be seen wearing both a pea jacket and a perruque.
- Mind your pieds (feet) and queues (wigs). This is suggested to have been an instruction given by French dancing masters to their charges. This has the benefit of placing the perruque in the right context - so long as we accept the phrase as being originally French. There's no reason to suppose it is from France and no version of the phrase exists in French.
- It is advice to children learning to write to take care not to mix up the lower-case letters p and q.
- It derived as reminder to children to be polite. This is supposed to be as a form of 'mind your pleases and thank-yous' - 'mind you pleases and kyous'. Pretty far-fetched that one.
- P and q stands for "prime quality." There is, or rather was as this now seems to have also been withdrawn, a 1612 citation which links PQ with 'prime quality'. If that's the origin why isn't the phrase mind your PQ?
So, pay nothing and take your choice. For what it's worth, my virtual two-penneth goes to the advice to children learning to write.