作品原文

林巍 《“一心二用”的境界》

学生一向被告知要“专心致志”才能学有所成，这是一般意义上的理解；在特殊意义上，“一心二用”则是更高层次上的一种心智。学习翻译，特别是同声传译，则一定要一心二用。
“一心二用”的生理基础，是注意力的分配。人的注意力的总量是有限的，但实验正面，这个总量又是可以进行分配的。没人怀疑，一般人都可以一边走路一边接电话。但一边开车一边接电话呢？就要取决于两种因素：一是谈话的内容，一是交通的路况。
同时从事两种任务的复杂程度，影响、决定着注意力分配的质量。在翻译中，鉴于大部分人不是真正意义上的“双语人”，而是“双语使用者”，故其注意力分配的布局就要有所不同。对于母语这一边要相对占有优势，而外语那一边则会牵涉更多的精力。
在同声传译的教学中，“一心二用”的练习是一种基本功，即训练学生同时听——想——译——讲的能力。其中，注意力的分配当然不是平均的，且每人各不相同。
据研究，在一般大会的同声传译期间，大会发言者与同声传译员之间会大致出现如下的互动情况：
讲者发言 译员传译 42%
讲者发言 译员沉默 18%
讲者沉默 译员沉默 12%
讲者沉默 译员传译 28%
作为同声传译员，本人深知其中会出现多次的“不平衡”，但两条原则必须把握：一是要点不可漏译，二是要在单元的总体上达到平衡。这可说是“一心二用”的一种理想境界。

作品译文

Two Tasks are Managed Simultaneously

In a general sense, students have always been told to study with single-hearted devotion. In a particular sense, however, being able to manage two tasks (or multiple tasks) at the same time is the advanced capacity required for carrying out sophisticated missions such as translation, specially simultaneous interpreting.

The biological foundation of the dull-ability lies in attention distribution. While its total capacity is confined, attention can still be distributed as experiments have proved. Cases can be easily found of people possessing the ability to walk while talking on the phone. However, the ability to juggle drive and conduct a telephone conversation is obviously more demanding, depending very much on the contents of conversation and the conditions of traffic.
The complexity of the tasks carried out concurrently determines the quality of attention distribution. Given the fact that most translators engaged in Chinese-English translation are not "bilinguals" in its true sense but "diglossias", the layout of their attention distribution may vary accordingly, virtually taking up more attention from foreign language side.

In daily practice, the drills of "spin and reel at the same time" are often adopted in simultaneous interpreter-trainings, where the trainees' concurrent ability of listening, evaluating, converting and speaking are expected to develop in terms of attention distribution, not evenly but individually.

According to research, certain typical interactions between the speaker and the simultaneous interpreter during an average conference can be viewed as follows,

Speaker speaks Interpreter interprets 42%
Speaker speaks Interpreter silent 18%
Speaker silent Interpreter silent 12%
Speaker silent Interpreter interprets 28%

As a simultaneous interpreter, I have some insights into certain "imbalances" during the interpreting and the efforts to "balance out" the process phase by phase without missing out the main points, which are deemed to be an ideal outcome for an interpreter to achieve.