第一封信是钱钟书19xx年留学巴黎时写给外国友人司徒亚的，后者是他在牛津大学的同院同学。 第二封信则是钱钟书先生写给自己的好朋友林书武的三封信当中的第二封。
My Dear Stuart,
亲爱的司徒亚：
We are overjoyed at your generously long letter(1). We have been rather worried about you since your reticent Xmas card from Spain. We thought that your indignation(2)at the Fascist terrors might have made you join the Spanish Republican army on leaving Oxford. In that case, the world would certainly gain a hero, but we might (O horrible thought!) lose a friend. You can imagine our relief to hear from you again.
收到你这封慷慨的长信，我们真是喜出望外。上次你从西班牙寄来的圣诞贺卡语焉未详，害得我们心里一直忐忑不安。我们以为，由于你对法西斯的恐怖行径出离愤怒，或许会在牛津毕业后投入到西班牙共和军的队伍中。那样的话，世界会多一位英雄，而我们或许会（啊，多可怕的想法！）失去一位朋友。我们收到你的信时的宽慰你可想而知了。
We are very, very sorry indeed to hear about your viva. We do hope that it will not be prejudicial to your chances of getting a job. As your favorite Walter Raleigh used to say, Oxford final schools and the Last Judgement are two examinations, not one. You are quite right to take the whole thing lightly(3).
关于你大学口语入学口试的事，我们感到十分遗憾。真希望它不会影响你找工作。正如你的Walter Raleigh曾说的，牛津的毕业考试不等于末日审判，它们是两种考试。你不把这事放在心上是对的。 We shall be here for another four or five months yet(4). My scholarship expires this August, and we shall sail home in September. Not that we have homes to return to(5)! Our houses, spared by the shell-fire, have been looted and gutted of all their valuable contents. Our respective families have taken refuge in mountains honeycombed with bandits. My wife lost her mother, and I myself have no prospect whatsoever of getting decent jobs in China. Still, one's lot is with one's own people(6); I don't mind roughing it a bit. The revolution of the Fortune's wheel might bring us up(6), and, as Goethe was fond of saying, abwarten Sie. You see, I spare my own patriotic heroics.
我们在这还要待四五个月。我的奖学金在八月到期，九月份我们将坐船回家。可不是因为我们有家可归！我们的房子虽免于战火，但值钱的家当被洗劫一空。我们俩各自的家庭也都在满是土匪的山上寻求避难之处。我的妻子失去了她的母亲，我对自己在中国找到体面的工作也不抱任何希望。但个人的命运是和民族的命运连在一起的。我并不介意生活得艰苦一些。会时来运转的，像歌德常说的abwarten Sie(德语，等待吧)。你看，我就不说那些爱国主义豪言壮语了。 Yes, my clairvoyant Stuart, I have been working entirely on my own. I have tried to read French literature systematically downwards, beginning with Villon, and already got as far as the mid-nineteenth century. I have also laboriously tackled the German romantics. I am reading Taine's novel Graindorge and Novalis's Fragmente. Besides, I have not neglected my English and Chinese studies. I am reading——no, I am not going to tell you my reading debauches. This paragraph reads already like a snippet from that model letter of a schoolboy to his parents ("or parent according to circumstances") in Anstey's Vice Versa.
得承认，你很有远见。我目前完全在自学。我在系统地用心读法国文学，从维龙开始，已经读到十九世纪中期。我也在费力地啃一些德国小说。我在读泰纳的 Graindorge和诺瓦利斯的《哲学片段》。此外，我也并未荒废英语和汉语的学习。我在看——不，我还是不告诉你我纵情阅读的内容了。这段文字读来已然像是摘自Anstey的Vice Versa《父亲的教训》中小学生给父母的（或其中之一的，视情况而定）范例书信了。
The baby is burstingly fat(7). She already boasts of six teeth (each tooth meaing a week or so of worries and sleeplessness on her part as well our own). She is very naughty and mutinous and self-willed, altogether an ugly customer to deal with. She will be able to walk a little next month.
小宝宝胖得要爆了。她已经了不起地有六颗牙了（每颗牙都代表我们和她一个星期左右的忧虑和失眠）。她淘气，叛逆，任性，整个一个难伺候的主。下个月她就会走路了。
You are a disquieting feller(8), my dear Stuart. You always give me the impression of some impending catastrophe. Why this sudden "treachery" to your "former interests"? You seem to have a "gout trop facilement degoute". Your mind seems to slough its idea as frequently as the snakes their skins. No doubt you will call me smug and incorrigible. Do keep me abreast of your lastest developments(9).
亲爱的Stuart,，你是个不让人放心的家伙。你总给人一种大难临头的感觉。这次你对“旧的爱好”的“叛变”是怎么回事？仿佛你有种gout trop facilement degoute(法语，有种爱改变口味的习惯)，你摆脱旧想法的频率犹如蛇蜕皮。无怪乎你称我是不可一世又不可救药。请务必要让我知道你的最新进展。
My wife sends you her best wishes, to which I say ditto. Write to me at your earliest convenience.
我妻子与我一并奉上最美好的祝愿。期待你早日来信。
Yours ever,
你永远的，
Chung-shu Tchi'ien
钱锺书
P.S. My wife wants me to tell you that the baby is really "her father's daughter". She loves nothing so much as books——to tear and nibble at, certainly not to read. She has already destroyed a German primer, not to mention innumberable tradesmen's circulars and booklets. She throws away her toys to grab at the books we happen to be reading.
又：我妻子让我告诉你，小宝宝颇有“其父之风”，最爱的就是书——撕或咬，绝不是为了读。她已毁掉一本德语入门书，更不要说不可计数的商家传单和手册。当我们读书时，她常扔掉手上的玩具，来抓我们的书。
注解：
reticent: 谨严的；含蓄的 indignation: 愤慨 (1) be overjoyed at 既非常生动地表达了“溢于言表的喜悦之情”，又很好地保持了一份“典雅精致的文风“。
(2) indignation的含义中有anger的意思，但是不同于anger的是indignation强调“这种愤怒并非出于个人的感情而是为了他人和集体”。
viva: [英国口语]口试 prejudicial : 引起偏见的 (3) take…lightly 意思是“不把……放在心上”。 looted: 被洗劫 gutted：被掠夺一空 honeycombed：如蜂巢般 bandits：土匪 (4) yet表明了“还有、还要”的意思，一个简单的词儿就使得这层意思活灵活现地表达了出来。 (5) 这句话强调了“我们没有家回”。 (6) bring us up很生动地表达了“生活有起色”的意思，富有动态。 clairvoyant： 千里眼的；有洞察力的 debauches：纵情声色 snippet：片段 mutinous：反叛的；暴动的 (7) burstingly用得实在是妙，小伙伴们看到这里的时候眼前是不是马上浮现出一幅“很美的画面”呢？
catastrophe：骤然而来的大灾难 slough：蜕掉 incorrigible：不可救药 (8) 钱老这里没有用fell来表达意思而是用了一个源于fell的“feller”活泼生动地表达了意义。 (9) abreat of 是一个表达“同步、同心”的很新颖的用法。
My Dear Lin May, Excuse this belated reply to your very kind May Day greetings(1).It's almost literally "a day after the fair". What with fixing the mosquito net, queuing for sweets at the co-op store, fetching &distributing letters, & the thousand and one odds and ends which eat away ones time, the red letter day was over before I know where I was(2). Well(3), here go my best wishes in which my wife joins. Your letter makes me ashamed. I feel guilty like a swindler who has won your "gratitude" without doing anything to earn it. Your characteristic generosity has led you to overestimate the aids to study I gave. Yes, vocabulary is important. Pedagogues used to distinguish a pupils active or (4) writing & speaking vocabulary. As you know, the latter is far more extensive than the former. How to turn the supinely passive into the nimbly active-that's the big problem(5). However, enough of shop talk. Tomorrow to the battle & more power to your elbow!(6) Yours Sincerely, queue：排队 co-op store：合作社商店 swindler：骗子 pedagogue： 老师（尤其指迂腐的） spinely：仰着头地 shop talk：行业内交流
林：
5月1日承蒙来信祝贺节日，迟复为歉。称之为“定期集市后的一天”，此语非虚。安蚊帐，在合作社小店排队买糖果，往邮局取信，回来分发，以及忙乎耗费时间的没完没了的琐事，不知不觉中纪念日已经过去了。在此，我和妻子向你致以最良好的祝愿。你的来信，使我感到惭愧。我像个骗子，没干什么就获得了你的感谢，感到内疚。我对你的学习，帮助甚少，你特有的忠厚，使你过高估计这种帮助。是的，词汇是重要的。教师通常把词汇分为积极的和消极的词汇，前者为写和说的词汇，后者为阅读的词汇。正如你所知道的，学生的词汇中，后者远比前者多得多。如何把呆板的消极词汇变成灵活的积极词汇，这是个大问题。但有关行内的议论，就说这么多吧。明天就要投入战斗了，加油干！ 钱钟书谨上 5月2日
注解：
(1) Excuse my late arrival．或Excuse me for coming late都可以说，但中国学生似乎更喜欢采 用后一个句型。所以信中说Excuse this belated reply,更显得新颖。
(2) 这是一个复杂句。Thousand and one odds and ends，极言琐事繁多。Red letterday:日历上节日、纪念日都是用红色字体印，故称。这个句子定是神来之笔，百读不厌。
(3) Well是个多义词。作为感叹词，也可以表达多种意思，不能一律译作、“嗳”、“嗯”、“啊”。 这里信中用来改变话题。
(4) Or，除了常见的“或者”义之外，这里是“等于”、“即”的意思。 (5) How to??是个话题，that是主话。这样的写法突出重点，又很生动。 (6) 两句都是不完全句。前一个常用，如快下课时说，Enough for the time being(暂时就谈这么多)，So much for today(今天就讲这么多)。后一个是口号式句，简洁有力。