人生在世，難免會有各種情緒。人的情緒可以用多種方式表達，包括語言文字。科學研究發現，一種語言裏的情緒，翻譯成另一種語言以後，往往會有一些偏差。
Emotions are hard to translate
by Kate Baggaley
In the English language, "love" is a pretty important word. It describes one of our most powerful feelings, so it's no surprise that plenty of other languages have words for this emotion too. And these words all seem to capture the same emotion.
emotion /ɪˈməʊʃ(ə)n/ n. 情緒、情感
capture /ˈkæptʃə(r)/ v. 準確表達
But when it comes to language, feelings are a tricky business. A massive new study of thousands of languages around the world has revealed that the words we use to describe our feelings often don't sync up.
tricky /ˈtrɪki/ adj. 棘手的、難辦的
business /ˈbɪznɪs/ n. 事情
massive /ˈmæsɪv/ adj. 龐大的
reveal /rɪˈviːl/ v. 揭示
sync /sɪŋk/ up 同步
"We might have a word like 'love' in English and look it up in a translation dictionary in any language and find a comparable word," says Joshua Conrad Jackson, a doctoral（博士的） student in psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lead author of the new paper, which was published online December 19 in the journal Science. "But whether those two words actually refer to the same underlying concept, that's an open question and that's what we were testing."
look up 查閱
translation /trænzˈleɪʃ(ə)n/ n. 翻譯（由translate加後綴-ion變成名詞）
comparable /ˈkɒmp(ə)rəb(ə)l/ adj. 可比較的、類似的（由compare加後綴-able變成形容詞）
psychology /saɪˈkɒlədʒi/ n. 心理學
paper /ˈpeɪpə(r)/ n. 論文
publish /ˈpʌblɪʃ/ v. 發表
journal /ˈdʒɜːn(ə)l/ n. 期刊
refer /rɪˈfɜː(r)/ to 指
underlying /ˌʌndəˈlaɪɪŋ/ adj. 基礎的、表面之下的
concept /ˈkɒnsept/ n. 概念
open question 待解決的問題
Jackson and his colleagues analyzed a database of 2,474 languages from 20 different language families, which are languages that share a common ancestor or parent tongue. To investigate whether words that represent an emotion have different shades of meaning around the globe, they used a phenomenon called colexification（一詞多義） that happens when the same word is used to describe multiple ideas. In English, for example, the word "funny" can mean "humorous" or "odd."
analyze /ˈæn(ə)laɪz/ v. 分析
database /ˈdeɪtəbeɪs/ n. 數據庫
ancestor /ˈænsestə(r)/ n. 祖先
tongue /tʌŋ/ n. 語言
investigate /ɪnˈvestɪɡeɪt/ v. 調查研究
represent /ˌreprɪˈzent/ v. 代表
shade /ʃeɪd/ n. 具有細微差別的類似事物
the globe /ɡləʊb/ 全世界
phenomenon /fəˈnɒmɪnən/ n. 現象
multiple /ˈmʌltɪp(ə)l/ adj. 多個的
humorous /ˈhjuːmərəs/ adj. 幽默的（由humor加後綴-ous變成形容詞）
odd /ɒd/ adj. 怪異的
Often, words that become colexified（多義化） describe concepts that the speaker views as related; in many languages, Jackson says, the same word can be used to describe leather, skin, and bark.
view /vjuː/ v. 看待、看作
related /rɪˈleɪtɪd/ adj. 有關聯的
leather /ˈleðə(r)/ n. 皮革
bark /bɑːk/ n. 樹皮
Across the languages Jackson and his colleagues studied, they identified around 66,000 cases of colexification. They used these instances to draw up maps of the concepts that people link to emotions and how they vary between languages.
identify /aɪˈdentɪfaɪ/ v. 識別、辨認出
instance /ˈɪnstəns/ n. 實例
draw up 起草
It turned out that people understood emotion words very differently around the world. For example, in Indo-European languages, anxiety was closely tied to anger. But among Austroasiatic languages (a group of languages spoken in areas of Southeast Asia and India), anxiety was more related to grief and regret.
turn out 結果是
Indo-European 印歐語系的
anxiety /æŋˈzaɪəti/ n. 焦慮
grief /ɡriːf/ n. 悲痛
regret /rɪˈɡret/ n. 後悔
And however differently we think about emotion across cultures, there were a few patterns that held true around the world. Emotions that feel positive – like love – rarely shared meanings with unpleasant feelings like anger. People also drew a distinction between highly-charged emotions like anger – which come with a racing heart and rising blood pressure – and less heady feelings such as contentment or sadness.
however /ˌhaʊˈevə(r)/ adv. 不管多麼
pattern /ˈpæt(ə)n/ n. 模式
positive /ˈpɒzətɪv/ adj. 正面的、積極的
distinction /dɪˈstɪŋkʃ(ə)n/ n. 區別、差別
highly-charged 令人情緒激動的
race /reɪs/ v. 快速移動、（心臟）急速跳動
pressure /ˈpreʃə(r)/ n. 壓力
heady /ˈhedi/ adj. 上頭的、令人興奮的
contentment /kənˈtentmənt/ n. 知足、滿足（由content加後綴-ment變成名詞）
sadness /ˈsædnəs/ n. 悲傷、難過（由sad加後綴-ness變成名詞）
The research implies neither that emotion is universal nor that it is a social construct, Jackson says. "Our findings suggest that both are true – that there are some universal building blocks of emotion, but that the way we build on those depends on where we were raised, who we're learning from, and the culture that we identify with," he says.
imply /ɪmˈplaɪ/ v. 暗示、意味着
universal /ˌjuːnɪˈvɜːs(ə)l/ adj. 普遍適用的
construct /ˈkɒnstrʌkt/ n. 觀念、構想
suggest /səˈdʒest/ v. 表明
building block 建築磚塊、構成元素
depend /dɪˈpend/ on 依賴於、取決於
raise /reɪz/ v. 撫養、養大
identify with 認同
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