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非英文母语者常见写作错误：时间与地点

我们来到非英文母语者常见英语论文写作错误系列专栏的最后一篇，主题将探讨先后顺序与背景设定，简单来说就是时间与地点。特别是如果您有数个「行进中的角色」在您的写作中，亦即「在不同的情境中有不同的人物」，倘若能够有效地在文章中添加时间和地点的修饰语，将有助读者将您的想法拼凑完整，享受更顺畅的阅读。当您进行写作或翻译文学作品时，时间的先后顺序与地点的背景设定尤其重要，最好尽可能地表达清楚及完整。现在就让我们看看以下两句由华语学生所练习的新闻写作。

For the final column in our series on common writing mistakes by non-native speakers, we will be talking about sequence and setting, or more simply time and place. Especially if you have several “moving parts” in your writing—i.e. different actors in different situations—the judicious addition of time and place qualifiers can do wonders in helping your readers put together a clearer mental picture of your ideas. This is particularly important when writing or translating nonfiction, where the emphasis is on delivering your message in the clearest, most accessible way possible. Let’s now take a look at the following examples, both of which were taken from a news writing exercise done by Chinese students.

1) Government officials work with local volunteers to provide seeds to farmers in several townships where rice farming is the predominant way of life.
1) 政府官员与当地志工合作，提供水稻种子给数个乡镇农民种植，而稻作农业是这些乡镇农民赖以为生的主要方式。

2) Rice farming is predominant in the townships of A and B, which sit 80 miles away from Yangon. More than 10,000 farmers have been out of work.
2) A镇与B镇距离仰光80哩远，其稻作农业是主要耕作方式。一万多名的农民都已经失业了。

Although the above sentences are quite good, they still suffer from ambiguity due to their failure to make clear sequence and setting. Let’s look at the first sentence:
尽管上面两个例句写得相当不错，然而仍面临到语句模糊不清的写作错误，因为未能做出清楚的先后顺序与背景设定。

1) Government officials work with local volunteers to provide seeds to farmers in several townships where rice farming is the predominant way of life.
1) 政府官员与当地志工合作，提供水稻种子给数名乡镇农民种植，而稻作农业是这些乡镇农民赖以为生的主要方式。

While you could argue that this sentence is grammatically OK, it remains unnecessarily vague in its timeline. The problem is that we don't know when the events described are talking place. Last year? Last month? Still ongoing? For the sake of clarity, when introducing new information to the reader, I would encourage ESL writers to do their best to spell out a timeframe or setting whenever possible. With this in a mind, perhaps a better version of the sentence would be:
尽管您可能会觉得这句话文法正确，不过该句仍然在时间轴上存在不必要的模糊。问题在于我们不知道事件的发生时间。去年？上个月？还是正在进行中？为了使读者更加清楚事件的脉络，我鼓励英语作为第二语言的作者，当您提出新信息时，尽可能地勾勒出或设定好时间框架。当您谨记此规则，或许更好的版本为：

a) Government officials are currently working with local volunteers to provide seeds to farmers in several townships where rice farming is the predominant way of life.
a) 政府官员目前正与当地志工合作，提供水稻种子给数名乡镇农民种植，而稻作农业是这些乡镇农民赖以为生的主要方式。

or
或者

b) In August, government officials worked with local volunteers to provide seeds to farmers in several townships where rice farming is the predominant way of life.
b) 今年八月，政府官员与当地志工合作，提供水稻种子给数名乡镇农民种植，而稻作农业是这些乡镇农民赖以为生的主要方式。

A timeframe also goes a long way in helping the reader know what to expect in the exposition that will come. For example, in sentence A we can reasonability infer that the following content will be about the cooperation that is currently happening between the government and volunteers. Turning to B, it would not be far-fetched to assume that since we know the cooperation