我英文水平不太好,本没有资格写这样一篇文字,真的是这本书翻译的太烂了,我中英参照阅读的过程中,有一些翻译真的影响理解。即使是我这样的英语渣,都忍不了的部分,我摘抄一些放在下面,供大家阅读的时候参考。也希望哪位大佬有空的时候能够重新把塔勒布的书翻译一下,不要被中信出版社糟蹋。

本人阅读的是中信出版社2012.7(2017.9重印)版,译者是盛逢时。

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1

书名:Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

翻译:《随机漫步的傻瓜:发现市场和人生中的隐藏机遇》

探讨:结合书中内容,书名的含义应该是——被随机性愚弄:人生和市场机会背后的另一面

2

位置:自序第一段

原文:This book is the synthesis of, on one hand, the no-nonsense mathematical trader (self-styled "practitioner of uncertainty") who spent his life trying to resist being fooled by randomness and trick the emotions associated with uncertainty and, on the other, the aesthetically obsessed, literature-loving human being willing to be fooled by any form of nonsense that is polished, refined, original, and tasteful. I am not capable of avoiding being the fool of randomness; what I can do is confine it to where it brings some aesthetic gratification.

书中翻译:缺失

探讨:这本书是作者两种特质的结合体。一方面,作者是一个言简意赅的数学交易者(自诩为“不确定性的实践者”),他一生都在努力抵制被随机性愚弄和与不确定性有关的情感欺骗,另一方面,作者是一个迷恋美学、热爱文学作品的人,愿意被各种优雅、精致、见解独特、有品位的鬼话所愚弄。我无法避免成为随机性的傻瓜;我能做的就是把它限制在能带来某种审美满足的地方。

3

位置:自序最后一段之前

书中翻译:缺失

原文:

Second, I have been lucky to meet Myles Thompson and David Wilson, when they both were at J. Wiley & Sons. Myles has vision - he is the reverse "me too" publisher. He understands that books need not be written to satisfy a pre-defined labeled audience, but that a book will find its own unique set of readers - thus giving more credit to the reader than the off-the-rack publisher. As to David, he believed enough in the book to push me to take it into its natural course, free of all labels and taxonomies. David saw me the way I view myself; someone who has a passion for probability and randomness, who is obsessed with literature but happens to be a trader, rather than a generic "expert". He also saved my idiosyncratic style from the dulling of the editing process (for all its faults, the style is mine). Finally, Mina Samuels proved to be the greatest conceivable editor: immensely intuitive, cultured, aesthetically concerned, yet nonintrusive.

Many friends have fed me with ideas during conversations, ideas that found their way into the text. I can mention the usual suspects, all of them prime conversationalists: Cynthia Shelton Taleb, Helyette Geman, Marie-Christine Riachi, Paul Wilmott, Shaiy Pilpel, David DeRosa, Eric Briys, Sid Kahn, Jim Gatheral, Bernard Oppetit, Cyrus Pirasteh, Martin Mayer, Bruno Dupire, Raphael Douady, Marco Avellaneda, Didier Javice, Neil Chriss, and Philippe Asseily.

Some of these chapters were composed and discussed as part of the "Odeon Circle", as my friends and I met with a varying degree of regularity (on Wednesdays at 10 p.m. after my Courant class) at the bar of the restaurant Odeon in Tribecca. Genius loci ("the spirit of the place") and outstanding Odeon staff member Tarek Khelifi made sure that we were well taken care of and enforced our assiduity by making me feel guilty on no-shows, thus helping greatly with the elaboration of the book. We owe him a lot.

I must also acknowledge the people who read the MS, diligently helped with the errors, or contributed to the elaboration of the book with useful comments: Inge Ivchenko, Danny Tosto, Manos Vourkoutiotis, Stan Metelits, Jack Rabinowitz, Silverio Foresi, Achilles Venetoulias, and Nicholas Stephanou. Erik Stettler was invaluable in his
role as a shadow copy editor. All mistakes are mine.

Finally, many versions of this book sat on the web, yielding sporadic (and random) bursts of letters of encouragement, corrections, and valuable questions which made me weave answers into the text. Many chapters of this book came in response to readers' questions. Francesco Corielli from Bocconi alerted me on the biases in the dissemination of scientific results.

探讨:这段不太重要,我就不翻译了,不过对于翻译能漏掉这么大一段表示不理解。只翻译了“首先”,后面第二、第三都没翻译。

4

位置:第一章 P10 最后一段

书中翻译:他从来不卖“未抵押期权”(naked options,一种操作策略,有可能发生很大的损失)

原文:He never sells "naked options" (a strategy that would leave him exposed to large possible losses)

探讨:naked options 应该翻译成“裸期权”,裸期权又称无保护期权、无掩护选择权,是指期权卖方本身并未持有期权标的资产的期权,如股票看涨期权卖方本身并没有持有期权相应的股票(百度百科)。

5

位置:第一章 P13 标题

书中翻译:富豪交易员约翰

原文:John the High-Yield Trader

探讨:这里不是富豪的意思,是高收益债,标题应该叫“高收益债交易员约翰”

6

位置:第一章 P13 最后一段

书中翻译:约翰和塔利波两人的太太彼此也认识,但塔利波太太和约翰的太太在一起时非常不自在,她总觉得约翰的太太不只爱炫耀,也瞧不起她。塔利波见多了交易员发财后,一心想要成为葡萄酒收藏家和歌剧爱好者的德性,而他太太也很少碰到三缄其口的首富,跻身新富阶级的人这辈子穷怕了,一有了钱便产生唯恐天下不知的补偿心理。塔利波常说,身为交易员,唯一的缺点是会见到一大笔钱掉到毫无心理准备的人手里,逼得他们不得不去试着了解维瓦尔第的《四季》这种“优美的”音乐。

原文:The wives of John and Nero were acquaintances, of the health-club type of acquaintance, but Nero's wife felt extremely uncomfortable in the company of John's. She felt that the lady was not merely trying to impress her, but was treating her like someone inferior. While Nero had become inured to the sight of traders getting rich (and trying too hard to become sophisticated by turning into wine collectors and opera lovers), his wife had rarely encountered repressed new wealth - the type of people who have felt the sting of indigence at some point in their lives and want to get even by exhibiting their wares. The only dark side of being a trader, Nero often says, is the sight of money being showered on unprepared people who are suddenly taught that Vivaldi's Four Seasons is "refined" music.

探讨:这段话大体没什么问题,但是读起来不是很通顺。尝试翻译如下:

约翰和塔利波两人的太太彼此认识,就是相约健身房健身的那种“认识”,但塔利波的太太和约翰的太太在一起时感觉非常不自在。她觉得约翰太太不仅仅想给她留下好印象,更待她如下人一样。尽管塔利波已经司空见惯那些变得富有的交易员(他们太难通过成为葡萄酒收藏家和歌剧爱好者变得圆滑老练),他的太太可很少碰到“暴发户”——那种人在人生的某些时刻感受过贫穷的刺痛感,就希望通过展示他们所有获得心理平衡。塔利波经常说,作为交易员,唯一的阴暗面是金钱落到那些毫无准备的人们手里的景象,他们突然被教导说维瓦尔第的《四季》是“优美的”音乐。

7

位置:第二章 P22 第一段

书中翻译:这种以不同方式呈现的历史,我们称之为“另类历史”。

原文:Such substitute courses of events are called alternative histories.

探讨:翻译的人估计对数理统计的专有名词不太熟悉。塔勒布这里的“alternative histories”借用的是数理统计的概念。数理统计里面有原假设(Null Hypothesis)和备择假设(Alternative Hypothesis),对应在这里就是原历史(Null History)和备择历史(Alternative History)。因此这句话应该翻译为,“这种历史事件的另一种可能过程被称为备择历史”。

8

位置:第二章 P26 最后一段

书中翻译:因此我认为人分成截然相反的两类:一类绝不接受随机性,另一类则为随机性所苦。

原文:I thus view people distributed across two polar categories: on one extreme, those who never accept the notion of randomness; on the other, those who are tortured by it.

探讨:distributed across 应该理解为分布在两种极端类型之间。应该翻译为“因此我认为人分布在两种极端之间:一个极端是完全不接受随机性,另一个极端是为随机性所苦。”

9

位置:第二章 P31 中间一段

书中翻译:……躺的多是自称重视“财务盈余”的人。

原文:……stocked with the self-styled "bottom line" people

探讨: "bottom line"结合上下文,应该是指“结果导向”。翻译的人在上一段还翻译成“结果导向”。

10

位置:第三章 P39 第一段

书中翻译:我们不关心比如说一年后投资人的财富有多少,但关心这段时间内他所有财富的起落。

原文:We are not concerned with what the investor's worth would be in, say, a year, but rather of the heart-wrenching rides he may experience during that period.

探讨:翻译为“我们不关心投资者的财富未来(比如说一年后)会有多少,而是关心他在这段期间可能经历的令人心痛的旅程”。

11

位置:第三章 P41 最后一段

书中翻译:数字专家

原文:quants

探讨:这种人被称为“宽客”,或者叫做“金融工程师”。文中所有“数字专家”都应该翻译成“宽客”。

12

位置:第三章 P43 题目及第一段

书中翻译:题目“历史的意义”,第一段有一个“造物主”

原文:题目——“Fun in My Attic”,造物主——“Demiurgus”

探讨:造物主这里还应该更加明确一些,Demiurgus是柏拉图《Timaeus》(翻译作“迪美吾斯”或“蒂迈欧”)中提到创造世界的神祗,在柏拉图的哲学观中,在先于不永恒世界(会变化的世界)被创造之前,有一个永恒且完美的世界,而Demiurge根据永恒世界的蓝图去编织出不永恒世界的身体和灵魂。这里不是传统意义上的“上帝”。

13

位置:第三章 P45 “向未来学习”第一段

书中翻译:后者试图在历史的演变过程中发现某些定律,据以形成理论,并且解释各种事件。这是黑格尔哲学和伪科学的历史主义。

原文:the grand-scale historicism that aims to interpret events with theories based on uncovering some laws in the evolution of history - the sort of Hegelianism and pseudoscientific historicism leading to such calls as the end of history (it is pseudoscientific because it draws theories from past events without allowing for the fact that such combinations of events might have arisen from randomness; it is mostly pseudoscientific because there is no way to verify the claims in a controlled experiment).

探讨:应该翻译为,大量的历史学家试图在历史的演变过程中发现某些定律,据以形成理论,并且解释各种事件。这些黑格尔主义者和伪科学历史学家得出了所谓“历史终结论”(历史终结论是伪科学,因为它从过去的事件中抽象出理论,而没有考虑到这种历史事件的结合可能是因为随机性的事实。它通常是伪科学,因为没有办法在对照实验中验证它的说法)。这段翻译中提到的“历史终结论”,来源于黑格尔,黑格尔认为历史是“绝对精神的自我展开。”历史是观念的历史,这个历史本身就有终结之处,终结的地方是“绝对的历史精神”。斯坦福大学政治学家Francis Fukuyama于1989年发表了《The End of History》一文。福山说,自由民主就是这绝对精神自我展开的终极。不过有趣的是,福山在这本书面世20年后,亲自推翻自己的观点。

14

位置:第三章 P45 标题 P46 标题

书中翻译:前面是“向未来学习”,后面是“拒绝历史”

原文:前面是“Denigration of History”,后面是“The Stove is Hot”

探讨:前面应该是“无视历史教训”,后面应该是“炉子烫手”。

15

位置:第四章 P61 标题及第一段

书中翻译:标题“随机的作品”,第二句“要区分天花乱坠的人和真正的思想家,还有另一种更为有趣的方式。”

原文:标题“Reverse Turning Test”,第二句“For there is another, far more entertaining way to make the distinction between the babbler and the thinker.”

探讨:标题应该翻译成“反向图灵测试”,第二句应该是,“随机性在另一件事上也有帮助,即用更为有趣的方式区分絮絮叨叨的人和思想家”。

16

位置:P63 “随机性之美”之前

书中翻译:漏掉了一节

原文:

The Father of All Pseudothinkers

It is hard to resist discussion of artificial history without a comment on the father of all pseudothinkers, Hegel. Hegel writes a jargon that is meaningless outside of a chic Left-Bank Parisian cafe or the humanities department of some university extremely well insulated from the real world. I suggest this passage from the German "philosopher" (this passage was detected, translated and reviled by Karl Popper):

Sound is the change in the specific condition of segregation of the material parts, and in the negation of this condition; merely an abstract or an ideal ideality, as it were, of that specification. But this change, accordingly, is itself immediately the negation of the material specific subsistence; which is, therefore, real ideality of specific gravity and cohesion, i.e. - heat. The heating up of sounding bodies, just as of beaten and or rubbed ones, is the appearance of heat, originating conceptually together with sound.

Even a Monte Carlo engine could not sound as random as the great philosophical master thinker (it would take plenty of sample runs to get the mixture of heat and sound). People call that philosophy and frequently finance it with taxpayer subsidies! Now consider that Hegelian thinking is generally linked to a "scientific" approach to history; it has produced such results as Marxist regimes and even a branch called "neo-Hegelian" thinking. These "thinkers" should be given an undergraduate-level class on statistical sampling theory prior to their release in the open world.

探讨:翻译如下:

伪思想家之父

我们在讨论“虚构历史”时,不对伪思想家之父——黑格尔发表一些看法是不可能的。黑格尔写下的专业术语,除了在别致的巴黎左岸咖啡店或者某些完全与世隔绝的大学人文系外,一点意义都没有。我想起这位德国“哲学家”的一段话(卡尔·波普尔发现、翻译并批判了这段话):

“声音是物质各部分分离的特殊状态的变化,是这种状态之否定的结果——纯然是特殊的一种抽象或一种理念的理想。因此,这种变化本身直接就是物质特定存在的否定;因而它是特殊的重力凝聚力的实在的理想,亦即热。发声物体的升温,就像物体的加热和摩擦的物体的升温一样,是一种热现象,在概念上是与声音同时产生的。”(摘自《开放社会及其敌人》)

即使一个蒙特卡罗引擎也不能像这位伟大的哲学巨擘一样表述的这么“乱七八糟”(引擎需要大量的样本运行才能把“声音”和“热现象”放在一起)。人们把这个称为“哲学”,还经常用纳税人的钱支持它!现在普遍认为黑格尔思维是一种“科学的”对待历史的方法,在其后产生了马克思主义政权,甚至产生了被称为“新黑格尔学派”哲学分支。这些“思想家”应该在他们文章发表到这个开放世界之前,学习一门关于统计抽样理论的本科课程。

17

位置:第四章 P65 最后一段

书中翻译:漏掉了一段

原文:

There is a Yiddish saying: If I am going to be forced to eat pork, it better be of the best kind. If I am going to be fooled by randomness, it better be of the beautiful (and harmless) kind. This point will be made again in Part III.

探讨:翻译如下:

意第绪语的谚语说过:如果我不得不吃猪肉,最好是最好的那块。同样地,如果我要被随机性愚弄,最好是无害且美丽的那部分。这一点我们在Part III里面还要提到。

18

位置:第五章 P78-P79

探讨:主要问题在于排版。作者描绘了“随机性的傻瓜”的基本特征,包括6点。所以从P78第二段到P79的文字都应该是小字。P78第二段是1,P79每一段是2-6。

19

位置:第五章 P81 倒数第二段

书中翻译:比方说,古尔德发现,有许多的证据显示,确实有他所说的“基因噪声”或“负突变”,我们得承认他比较像是科学知识的传播者,而非纯粹的科学家。他把这理论延伸得有点过头,因此触怒了一些同行。学术辩论因之而起,另一方的主将是道金斯,生物学家大多认为后者对于随机性的数学素养较强。负突变是指虽然从繁殖适应性的观点来看,新的特质变得比所取代的特质还差,却还是能够生存下去,但不能期望它们维持好几代以上,即所谓的临时聚集。

原文:For instance, Steven Jay Gould (admittedly more of a popularizer than a genuine scientist) found ample evidence of what he calls "genetic noise", or "negative mutations", thus causing the wrath of some of his colleagues (he took the idea a little too far). An academic debate ensued, plotting Gould against colleagues like Dawkins who were considered by their peers as better trained in the mathematics of randomness. Negative mutations are traits that survive in spite of being worse, from the reproductive fitness standpoint, than the ones they replaced. However, they cannot be expected to last more than a few generations (under what is called temporal aggregation).

探讨:翻译如下:

比方说,古尔德(诚然,与其说他是一个真正的科学家,不如说他是一个大众科普作家)找到了足够的证据证明他所说的“基因噪声”或“负突变”,而这引起了他的一些同事的愤怒(古尔德把这个概念引申过头了)。他们策划了一场学术辩论,让古尔德和像道金斯(道金斯在同侪中被认为在随机性数学方面受过更好的训练)这样的同事辩论。从繁殖适应性的观点来看,负突变是指尽管比它们所取代的更糟,但仍能存活的性状。但是,这种性状预期不会持续几代以上(在所谓的“时频归并”法下)。

20

位置:第七章 P101 第一段

书中翻译:休谟厌恶18世纪当时的科学受到培根的影响,从士林哲学转而对天真的经验论产生过度的反应。士林哲学奠基于演绎法则,不强调对真实世界的观察。培根反对在没有实际成果的情形下,“结成学习蜘蛛网”。受到培根的影响,科学转而强调经验的观察。问题是,如果方法不适当,经验观察会引导你误入歧途。休谟警告我们不要形成这样的知识,并且强调搜集和解读知识时应该持严谨的态度——这称做知识论。

原文:Hume had been irked by the fact that science in his day (the eighteenth century) had experienced a swing from scholasticism, entirely based on deductive reasoning (no emphasis on the observation of the real world) to, owing to Francis Bacon, an overreaction into naive and unstructured empiricism. Bacon had argued against "spinning the cobweb of learning" with little practical result. Science had shifted, thanks to Bacon, into an emphasis on empirical observation. The problem is that, without a proper method, empirical observations can lead you astray. Hume came to warn us against such knowledge, and to stress the need for some rigor in the gathering and interpretation of knowledge - what is called epistemology (from episteme, Greek for learning). Hume is the first modern epistemologist, (epistemologists are often called methodologists or philosophers of science).

探讨:翻译如下:

在休谟那个时期(十八世纪),由于弗朗西斯·培根,科学经历了从完全基于演绎推理(不注重对现实世界的观察)的经院哲学过度转向天真和非结构化的经验主义,这使休谟感到厌烦。培根反对没有实践结果的“闭门造车”。由于培根,科学当时转而强调实证观察。问题在于,没有合适的方法,实证观察可能会让你误入歧途。休谟开始提醒我们警惕这类基于实证的知识,强调在知识的收集和解释过程中保持一些严谨——这被称为认识论(epistemology来源于episteme,希腊语中表示“学习”)。休谟是最早的现代知识学家(知识学家经常被称为方法论家或科学哲学家)。

21

位置:第七章 P105 倒数第二段

书中翻译:当时不觉得波普尔有什么重要。……(后面缺失)

原文:It was either my conditioning by the intellectual-chic culture at the time (too much Plato, too many Marxists, too much Hegel, too many pseudoscientific intellectuals), the educational system (too many conjectures ropounded as truth) or the fact that I was too young and was reading too much then to make a bridge to reality.

探讨:翻译如下:

要么就是我受到那时知识分子流行文化(太多柏拉图,太多马克思主义者,太多黑格尔,太多伪科学知识分子)和教育体系(太多被认为是真理的猜想)的熏陶,要么就是我那时太年轻,读了太多却无法架起通向现实的桥梁。

22

位置:第七章 P106 第二段

书中翻译:据说人们通常记得在什么时候、什么地方被某个重要的观念感动。我也记得一清二楚。受到索罗斯的激励,1987年我在纽约第二十一街和第五大道路口的巴诺书店一口气看了50页《科学发现的逻辑》,并且疯狂买下双手抱得动的所有波普尔著作,担心以后会缺货买不到。

原文:It is said that people generally remember the time and geographic condition where they were swept with a governing idea. The religious poet and diplomat Paul Claudel remembers the exact spot of his conversion (or re-conversion) to Catholicism in the Cathedral NotreDame of Paris, near a precise column. Thus I remember exactly the spot at Barnes and Noble on 21st Street and Fifth Avenue where in 1987, inspired by Soros, I read 50 pages of The Logic of Scientific Discovery and feverishly bought all the Popper titles I could get my hands on lest they run out of stock. It was in a sparsely lit side-room that had a distinctive smell of mildew. I remember vividly the thoughts that rushed through my head like a revelation.

探讨:原文有几句没有翻译。翻译如下:

据说当人们被重要的理念打动时,一般都会记得当时的时间和场景。宗教诗人和外交官保罗·克洛岱尔记得他受洗(或者说再次受洗)归入天主教的确切地点,精确到巴黎圣母院某一根圆柱旁。像这样,我也清楚记得在1987年,就在纽约第二十一街和第五大道路口的巴诺书店,受到索罗斯的鼓舞,我读了50多页波普尔的《科学发现的逻辑》,然后狂热地买下双手抱得动的所有波普尔著作,唯恐以后会缺货买不到。那是在一间光线稀少的边房,房间里有一股与众不同的霉味。我清楚地记得那些像启示一样从我脑海中闪过的想法。

23

位置:第七章 P106 最后一段

书中翻译:

关于归纳法的问题,波普尔有个很重要的答案。没有人像波普尔那样,对科学家研究科学的方式有那么大的影响,但是仍有许多专业哲学家认为他太过天真。他表示,科学并不像表面上看到的那么严肃,世界上只有两类理论:

第一,经过检验并以适当的方法予以驳斥,已知为错误的理论,称之为已被证伪。

第二,尚未得知是否错误或者尚未遭否证,但将来有可能被证明为错误的理论。

为什么没有一个理论正确?因为我们无从得知是否所有的天鹅皆为白色。其中使用的检验机制可能有误,但是我们仍旧可以提出这样的陈述:世界上有黑天鹅。理论无法被验证,只能暂时被人接受。以棒球教练贝拉的话来说,过去的资料里面有很多好东西,可惜的是它也有坏的一面。落在这两类理论之外的,就不叫理论。如果一个理论没有包含一组可以被验证为错误的条件,只能称之为骗术——否则无法加以驳斥。

原文:

Popper came up with a major answer to the problem of induction (To me he came up with the answer). No man has influenced by the way scientists do science more than Sir Karl - In spite of the fact that many of his fellow professional philosophers find him quite naive (to his credit, in my opinion). Popper's idea is that science is not to be taken as seriously as it sounds (Popper when meeing Einstein did not take him as the demigod he thought he was). There are only two types of theories:

  1. Theories that are known to be wrong, as they were tested and adequately rejected (he calls them falsified).
  2. Theories that have not yet been known to be wrong, not falsified yet, but are exposed to be proved wrong.

Why is a theory never right? Because we will never know if all the swans are white (Popper borrowed the Kantian idea of the flaws in our mechanisms of perception). The testing mechanism may be faulty. However, the statement that there is a black swan is possible to make. A theory cannot be verified. To paraphrase baseball coach Yogi Berra again, past data has a lot of good in it, but it is the bad side that is bad. It can only be provisionally accepted. A theory that falls outside of there two categories is not a theory. A theory that does not present a set of conditions under which it would be considered wrong would be termed charlatanism - they would be impossible to reject otherwise.

探讨:

关于归纳法的问题,波普尔找到了一个重要的答案(对我来说,他找到了真正的答案)。没有人比波普尔在科学家们的研究方法上更有影响力——尽管波普尔的很多专业哲学家同侪们认为他太过天真(在我看来,这是值得称赞的)。波普尔认为,科学并没有像听上去的那么严肃(波普尔在会见爱因斯坦时并没有把他当作半神一样的人物,虽然爱因斯坦自己这样认为)。世界上只有两种理论:

  1. 众所周知是错误的理论,这些理论经过检验并被完全拒绝(他称其为“被证伪的”);
  2. 还没有被广泛认为是错误的理论,这些理论尚未被证伪,但面临被证明是错误的。

为什么一个理论不可能是“正确的”?因为我们永远无法知道是否所有的天鹅都是白色的(波普尔借用了康德哲学中人类感知机制缺陷的概念)。判断“是否所有的天鹅都是白色的”这一验证机制可能是有缺陷的。然而,“存在黑天鹅”这种说法却可以存在(并验证)。一个理论无法“被证实”。再次套用棒球教练约吉·贝拉的话,“(棒球队员的)历史数据有很多好球记录,但坏球记录才是真正糟糕的。”一个理论只能被暂时接受。那些不属于这两类的理论并不是理论。如果一个理论无法在某些条件下被证明是错误的,这种理论只能称之为“忽悠”——也就是说它们无法被证伪。

24

位置:第七章 P108 第一段

书中翻译:在他看来,在处理已知的事物和未知的事物时,知识和发现并没有多大的用处,我觉得这一点对交易员来说很重要。

原文:Sir Karl feared that some type of knowledge did not increase with information - but which type we could not ascertain. The reason I feel that he is important for us traders is because to him the matter of knowledge and discovery is not so much in dealing with what we know, as in dealing with we do not know.

探讨:波普尔担心某些知识不会随着信息的增加而增加,但我们无法确定是哪一类知识。我之所以觉得波普尔对我们交易员很重要,是因为对他来说,知识和发现的作用与其说是处理我们所知道的,不如说是处理我们所不知道的。

25

位置:第七章 P110 第二段

书中翻译:我不谈言行不一的问题,只谈基因上有趣的事情:我们喜欢表达合乎逻辑且理性的观念,但不见得乐在其中。说来奇怪,这件事直到最近才被人发现。我们还会谈到人的基因生来不理性且行为上不理性。

原文:I will refrain from commonplace discourse about the divorce between those who have ideas and those who carry them in practice, except to bring out the interesting genetics problems; we like to emit logical and rational ideas but we do not necessarily enjoy this execution. Strange as it sounds, this point has only been discovered very recently (we will see that we are not genetically fit to be rational and act rationally; we are merely fit for the maximum probability of transmitting our genes in some given unsophisticated environment).

探讨:感觉翻译的人翻译到现在已经开始崩溃了,这种翻译接近恶搞了。原文应该翻译为:

我会避免那些关于思想者和这些思想的实践者分裂的平庸论调,除非能够提出有趣的遗传学问题;我们喜欢提出逻辑和理性的想法,但我们不一定喜欢实践它。奇怪的是,这一点最近才被发现(我们将会看到我们并非天生就是理性的,并且能够理性行事;我们只能够在某些给定的简单环境中最大概率的把基因传给下一代)。

26

位置:第八章 P118 标题

书中翻译:太多“下一个富翁”

原文:TOO MANY MILLIONAIRES NEXT DOOR

探讨:应该翻译为到处是“邻家的百万富翁”。

27

位置:第八章 P119 最后一段最后

书中翻译:遗漏,没有翻译

原文:Their children's private school harbors the second set of children of corporate raiders, from their trophy wives - perhaps even the third set, if one takes into account the age discrepancy and the model-like features of the other mothers. By comparison, Marc's wife Janet, like him, presents a homely country-home-with-a-rose-garden type of appearance.

探讨:他们孩子的私立学校接纳了第二批“凤凰男”的孩子(从他们的“战利品”——他们的妻子——那里)。如果考虑到这些人妻和其他母亲在年龄上的差距以及其他妈妈模特般的外貌,这些孩子甚至可能是第三批。相比之下,马克的妻子珍妮特和他一样,呈现出一种朴素的田园风格。

28

位置:第八章 P123 第一个标题和第二个标题

书中翻译:赢家的能见度;表现最好的最容易被看见

原文:Visibility Winners;It's a Bull Market

探讨:看得见的赢家;现在是牛市。

29

位置:第十一章 P160 倒数第二段

书中翻译:无

原文:In spite of economists' envy of physicists, physic is an inherently positive science while economics, particularly microeconomics and financial economics, is predominantly a normative one.

探讨:尽管经济学家羡慕物理学家,但物理学本质上是一门实证科学,而经济学,尤其是微观经济学和金融经济学,很明显是一门规范经济学。

30

位置:第十一章 P166 第二段

书中翻译:……但是其中也包括一大堆好发议论之士,把长篇大论的理论浓缩在几分钟内表示。

原文:but it also allowed a collection of extrovert practitioners long on theories to voice them in a few minutes of television time.

探讨:核心是long on sth,应该翻译为“善于”、“长期从事”,而不是“长篇大论”。翻译为:但它也让一批长期从事理论研究的外向型从业者在几分钟的节目时长里发表自己的观点。

31

位置:第十一章 P169 第二段

书中翻译:有句话说:“若后者发生,必然是前者的结果”。

原文:Post hoc ergo propter hoc (it is the reason because it came after).

探讨:本句虽然翻译的不算错,但翻译的太复杂了。这句话本身是拉丁文,对应中文是有普适的翻译方法的。应该翻译为:因果关系中常见的是“后此谬误”,或者说“在此之后,因而必然由此造成(拉丁文:post hoc ergo propter hoc)”,即如果A事件先于B事件发生,A事件则是B事件的原因。

32

位置:第十一章 P170 最后一段标题

书中翻译:我们不了解信赖水准

原文:we do not understand confidence levels

探讨:confidence levels是指置信水平,为什么这种名词都会翻译错误?同样下一段中这个名词翻译也是错误的。

33

位置:第三部分序言 P178 倒数第二段

书中翻译:书中翻译遗漏了一段。

原文:I had this idea of stripping people from language while, on a trip, I listened (while brutally jetlagged) to a speech in Cantonese, a language I do not understand, without the benefit of translation. Since I had no possible clue about his subject, the animated orator lost a large share of his dignity. The idea came to me that perhaps I could use a genetic bias, here prejudice, to offset another genetic bias, our predisposition to take information seriously. It seems to work.

探讨:这段可能涉及广东人,所以就跳过了。但是内容还是蛮重要的。翻译如下:在一次旅行中,我在没有翻译的帮助下,(忍受着严重的时差)听了一场广东话(一种我不太懂的语言)演讲,这让我产生了上面将人和语言分离的想法。由于我对他谈论的内容一无所知,这位活跃的演说家有点体面扫地。我突然想到,也许我可以利用遗传倾向,这里是偏见,来抵消另一种遗传倾向——我们过于看重信息的倾向。这似乎很管用。

34

位置:第三部分序言 P178 最后一段

书中翻译:本篇是为本书作结,将说明在面对不确定性是,人的本性为何。

原文:This part, the conclusion of this book, presents the human aspect of dealing with uncertainty.

探讨:这部分是本书的结论,介绍了处理不确定性时的人为手段。

35

位置:第十二章 P179 第二段

书中翻译:书中漏翻。

原文:The bareness was not ideological; it was simply because I never managed to enter a furniture store, as I would eventually stop at a bookstore along the way and haul bags of books instead. As can be expected, the kitchen was devoid of any form of food and utensils, save for a defective expresso machine, as I learned to cook only very recently (even then ...).

探讨:这些文字应该接在“除以别无他物的公寓里”后面,译者将下一段话(出租车的事情)直接接在后面了,不知道怎么想的。翻译如下:然而这种空荡并非思想上的。这只是因为我从来没有真正进入过家具店,因为我每次去家具店,都会在路上的一家书店停下来,最后拎回来几袋书。也可以想到,我的厨房里没有任何形式的食物和用具,除了一台有缺陷的咖啡机,因为我最近才学会做饭(即便如此……)。

36

位置:第十二章 P179 第二段

书中翻译:书中漏翻

原文:Cab drivers in New York City are known to be rather untamed and universally unfamiliar with the geography of the place, but, on occasion, one can find a cab driver who can both be unacquainted with the city and skeptic of the universality of the laws of arithmetic.

探讨:这些文字应该接在“在公园大道和五十三街的路口下车”后面,翻译如下:众所周知,纽约市的计程车司机天生对纽约的大部分地理环境不熟悉,但偶尔,你也可以找到那种既不熟悉纽约市,也对算术定律的普遍性持怀疑态度(译者注:就是数数都不太会的意思,比如53街道往南走1个街道是第几街道)的计程车司机。