A For the century before Johnson's Dictionary was published in 1775, there had been concern about the state of the English language. A在 1775 年 Johnson 出版《字典》之前的一百年里，曾经存在着一种对于英语使用状态的忧虑。 There was no standard way of speaking or writing and no agreement as to the best way of bringing some order to the chaos of English spelling. 口语和书面语的标准尚未确立，而且对于哪种方法才能最好地理清英语拼写的混乱状态，学术界也无法达成一致。 Dr Johnson provided the solution. Johnson 博士找到了解决方案。

B There had, of course, been dictionaries in the past, the first of these being a little book of some 120 pages, compiled by a certain Robert Cawdray, published in 1604 under the title A Table Alphabeticall’ of hard usuall English wordes'. B当然，之前也曾有过一些字典，其中最早的是一本 120 来页的小册子，由一位名为 Robert Cawdray的人编写，出版于 1604 年，书名为《非常用英文单词手册》。 Like the various dictionaries that came after it during the seventeenth century, Cawdray's tended to concentrated on ‘scholarly’ words; one function of the dictionary was to enable its student to convey an impression of fine learning. 与 17 世纪后来出版的字典一样，Cawdray的字典更倾向于关注“学术”词汇。该字典的一个功能就是要使学生能够给人一种优雅的印象。

C Beyond the practical need to make order out of chaos, the rise of dictionaries is associated with the rise of the English middle class, who were anxious to define and circumscribe the various worlds to conquer- lexical as well as social and commercial. C除了理清混乱状态这一实际需求之外，各种字典的产生还与英格兰中产阶级的崛起有关，他们急切的要与各种需要被征服的领域划清界限，不仅在词汇方面，在社交和商业领域也是如此。 It is highly appropriate that Dr Samuel Johnson, the very model of an eighteenth-century literary man, as famous in his own time as in ours, should have published his Dictionary at the very beginning of the heyday of the middle class. Samuel Johnson 博士作为 18 世纪文人的典范，在当时已经与今日一样名声远播，在中产阶级鼎盛时期开始到后来出版《字典》，对于他而言是再合适不过的时机。

D Johnson was a poet and critic who raised common sense to the heights of genius. D Johnson 是一位诗人兼评论家，他把常识提升到了天才的高度。 His approach to the problems that had worried writers throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was intensely practical. 他解决问题的方法影响了 17 世纪以及 18 世纪初的作家，因为他的方法非常实际。 Up until his time, the task of producing a dictionary on such a large scale had seemed impossible without the establishment of an academy to make decisions about right and wrong usage. 在他之前，要出版如此大规模的字典，却不建立一个学院来确定单词用法的对错与否，似乎是不可能完成的。 Johnson decided he did not need an academy to settle arguments about language; he would write a dictionary himself; and he would do it single-handed. Johnson 认定他不需要建立一个学院来解决语言方面的争论，他决定靠他自己的力量写一本字典。

E Johnson signed the contract for the Dictionary with the bookseller Robert Dosley at a breakfast held at the Golden Anchor Inn near Holborn Bar on 18 June 1764. EJohnson 与书商 Robert Dosley 于 1764 年 6 月 18 日 在Holborn 酒吧附近的 Golden Anchor 旅馆吃了一顿早餐，席间签订了编写《字典》的合同。 He was to be paid ~1,575 in instalments, and from this he took money to rent 17 Gough Square, in which he set up his 'dictionary workshop'. 他将得到1 575 英镑的酬劳，分期支付，他用这笔钱租下了 Gough 广场 17 号公寓，在这里，他建立了“字典工作室”。 James Boswell, his biographer, described the garret where Johnson worked as 'fitted up like a counting house' with a long desk running down the middle at which the copying clerks would work standing up. James Boswell，他的传记作家，在描述 Johnson 工作过的顶楼时说那里“就像一个账房一样”，中间有一张长长的桌子，抄写员就在桌子旁站着工作。

F Johnson himself was stationed on a rickety chair at an 'old crazy deal table' surrounded by a chaos of borrowed books. FJohnson 自己坐在一张“破旧的管账台”旁边的摇椅上，“管账台”被杂乱无章的借来的书籍包围着。 He was also helped by six assistants, two of whom died whilst the Dictionary was still in preparation. 他还有六位助手，其中有两位在《字典》还在准备阶段时就过世了。 The work was immense; filling about eighty large notebooks (and without a library to hand). 这部作品非常宏大。在 80 本巨大的笔记本中（附近没有图书馆）， Johnson wrote the definitions of over 40,000 words, and illustrated their many meanings with some 114,000 quotations drawn from English writing on every subject from the Elizabethans to his own time. Johnson 写下了 40 000 个单词的定义，并且从各个学科的英语著作（从伊丽莎白时代到当时的著作）中引用了大约 114 000 项内容来解释这些单词的多种词义。 He did not expect to achieve complete originality. 他不指望完全依靠原创来完成这项工作。 Working to a deadline, he had to draw on the best of all previous dictionaries, and to make his work one of heroic synthesis. 由于有出版时限，他必须吸取之前字典中的精华，然后完成大量的整合工作。 In fact it was very much more. 而事实上，还不止于此。

Unlike his predecessors, Johnson treated English very practically, as a living language, with many different shades of meaning. 与他的前辈不同的是，Johnson 用非常实际的手法处理英语，把英语当成活的语言，赋予单词多重的含义。 He adopted his definitions on the principle of English common law- according to precedent. 他定义单词的原则是按照英国惯例，即“依据先例”。 After its publication, his Dictionary was not seriously rivalled for over a century. 在出版后的一百年里，没有一本词典能够与他的《字典》相媲美。

After many vicissitudes the Dictionary was finally published on 15 April 1775. 几经周折后，《字典》终于在 1775 年 4 月 15 日出版， It was instantly recognised as a landmark throughout Europe. 随即就被认为是全欧洲的标志性书籍。 'This very noble work,' wrote the leading Italian lexicographer, 'will be a perpetual monument of Fame to the Author, an Honour to his own Country in particular, and a general Benefit to the republic of Letters throughout Europe.' 意大利顶尖字典编纂家写道，“这部伟大的著作将成为作者声望的永久标志，成为他祖国的荣耀，也将使全欧洲‘文字共和国 ’ 共同受益”。 The fact that Johnson had taken on the Academies of Europe and matched them (everyone knew that forty French academics had taken forty years to produce the first French national dictionary) was cause for much English celebration. Johnson 战胜了诸多欧洲学院并超越了他们（众所周知，法国的 40 个学院花了 40 年时间才完成了第一部国家级字典），这一事实成为很多英国人引以为荣的原因。 Johnson had worked for nine years, 'with little assistance of the learned , and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow'. Johnson 用了 9 年时间编写《字典》，其间“没有学者的协助，没有伟人的光顾，不是在退休后舒适的隐居状态下，也没有学院的眷顾，有的只是不便和干扰，疾病和忧伤”。

For all its faults and eccentricities his two-volume work is a masterpiece and a landmark, in his own words, 'setting the orthography, displaying the analogy, regulating the structures, and ascertaining the significations of English words'. 虽然有一些错误和偏失，但是这部两卷本的著作仍然是一部杰作，也是一个里程碑，用他自己的话来说，“这部字典确定了拼写法，展示了类推法，规范了句式，并且确定了英语词汇的含义”。 It is the cornerstone of Standard English, an achievement which, in James Boswell's words,'conferred stability on the language of his country'. 它是标准英语的基石 ，用 James Boswell 的话讲，这个成就“使得祖国的语言被赋予了稳定性”。 The Dictionary, together with his other writing, made Johnson famous and so well esteemed that his friends were able to prevail upon King George III to offer him a pension. 《字典》 以及他的其他作品使得 Johnson 声名鹊起，备受尊重，也使得他的朋友们最终说服了乔治三世为他提供退休金。 From then on, he was to become the Johnson of folklore. 从那时起，他就变成了家喻户晓的 Johnson。