2004年英译汉全文
仍在修改中，有错请指出，谢谢。
The relation of language and mind has interested philosophers for many centuries. 61) The Greeks assumed that the structure of language had some connection with the process of thought, which took root in Europe long before people realized how diverse languages could be.
几个世纪以来，语言与思维的关系一直让哲学家很感兴趣。希腊人认为语言结构与思维过程之间存在某种联系，这种观点早在人们认识到语言的多样性之前就在欧洲扎下了根。
Only recently did linguists begin the serious study of languages that were very different from their own. Two anthropologist-linguists, Franz Boas and Edward Sapir, were pioneers in describing many native languages of North and South America during the first half of the twentieth century. 62) We are obliged to them because some of these languages have since vanished, as the peoples who spoke them died out or became assimilated and lost their native languages. Other linguists in the earlier part of this century, however, who were less eager to deal with bizarre data from "exotic" language, were not always so grateful. 63) The newly described languages were often so strikingly different from the well studied languages of Europe and Southeast Asia that some scholars even accused Boas and Sapir of fabricating their data. Native American languages are indeed different, so much so in fact that Navajo could be used by the US military as a code during World War II to send secret messages.
直到最近，语言学家们才开始认真研究与自己母语大不相同的语言。人类学语言学家弗兰茨·博厄斯和爱德华·萨皮尔是两位先驱，他们在20世纪上半叶描述了南美和北美的多种土著语言。我们得感激他们，因为在此之后，说这些语言的民族已经灭亡或者被同化进而失去其母语,一些土著语言也就随之消失了。然而，本世纪初的另一些语言学家对上述两位语言学家就没那么感激了，因为他们对“异族”语言的古怪资料不感兴趣。那些新近得到描述的语言和过去得到充分研究的欧洲和东南亚语言往往差异显著，以至于有些学者甚至指责博厄斯和萨皮尔杜撰资料。美洲土著语言之间确实大不相同，以至于美军在二战期间将纳瓦霍语用作发送秘密情报的电码。
Sapir's pupil, Benjamin Lee Whorf, continued the study of American Indian languages. 64) Being interested in the relationship of language and thought, Whorf developed the idea that the structure of language determines the structure of habitual thought in a society. He reasoned that because it is easier to formulate certain concepts and not others in a given language, the speakers of that language think along one track and not along another. 65)Whorf came to believe in a sort of linguistic determinism which, in its strongest form, states that language imprisons the mind, and that the grammatical patterns in a language can produce far-reaching consequences for the culture of a society. Later, this idea became to be known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but this term is somewhat inappropriate. Although both Sapir and Whorf emphasized the diversity of languages, Sapir himself never explicitly supported the notion of linguistic determinism.
萨皮尔的学生本杰明·李·沃尔夫继续研究美洲印第安语。沃尔夫对语言与思维的关系很感兴趣，逐渐得出了这样一种观点：语言结构决定了一个社会中惯性思维的结构。他的推论是，使用一种特定的语言更容易形成某些观念，而非其它观念，因此说这种语言的人会沿着某种轨迹思考问题，而非沿着另一种轨迹。沃尔夫进而相信了某种语言决定论。这种理论的极端说法是：语言禁锢了思维，一种语言的语法结构能对一个社会的文化产生深远影响。后来，这个观点成为了著名的萨皮尔-沃尔夫假说，但这个说法不是很恰当。尽管萨皮尔和沃尔夫都强调语言的多样性，但萨皮尔本人从未明确支持语言决定论的观点。
