悄悄打听：口译价格

Conditional mood
Would and should are used in the same way as other preterite modal verbs in the apodosis clause when the conditional mood is being used. Would is the most common modal verb used in this sense, as it expresses simple consequence (as opposed to the uncertainty involved with might or could). Some speakers may additionally use should in the first person for the same purpose. Such usage is confined to those who would use shall in the first person to express simple futurity. It remains in stock phrases such as "I should think" and "I should expect".

We should/he would have consented if you had asked.
Should we/would he have missed you if you had been there?
I should/you would like a bath.
Should I/would he like it myself, himself?
You should do it if we could make you. (Our conditional command.)
They should have had it if they had asked. (My conditional consent.)

Shall as obligation
Should is used with a sense of obligation for should, synonymous with ought to:

You should not say such things.
Why should you suspect me? (What reason do you have to suspect me?)
In more formal language shall (or the archaic second person variant "shalt") is used for similar purpose: "Thou shalt not steal".

Joyce Curran wrote:

前次和终端客户就为了这个shall/should争了好半天，我敢肯定他们现在还在想这事。

我们谁都说服不了谁，他们的理由，在同一篇文章中，我shall/should 都用了。可是，我就觉得语境的不同，这两个词的含义就是不同。

lbone wrote:

我看到的合同和其它涉及法律效力的文档，基本都用shall，表示确定必须如此。

技术和说明类文档的一般都用should，委婉一些，表示介绍/建议，就算写用户should click/press一下某按钮才能执行某功能，我坚决不按，无非就是这个功能不执行，又能如何，警察大叔也不会来逮我吧？所以是should。

ysun wrote:


你说得很对！要根据语境来决定。在法律、法规、合同、国标等文件中也要根据具体句子的语境来决定是用 shall 还是 should。但在你摸不准的情况下，往往用 shall 比较保险，正如 Steve 所说。

当你给这家客户送发票时，一定不能这样写：
Payment should be made net 30 days from receipt of invoice.

You should use “shall” instead of “should”。否则，万一将来要打官司时，他们就可以跟你扯皮。当然，若遇到赖皮时，你写 shall 或 must 都没用！

ysun wrote:

若在国标中谈及某种试验时，说温度应维持在60度左右，此处就可用 should。如果说温度不得超过 100度，那就应当用 shall not 或 must not。

Joyce Curran wrote:

就像我刚才跟Steve说的：XXX材质的XXX产品应符合GBXXXX规定(我觉得这里应该是"should")?

然后：XXX产品的XXX指标应符合表X的规定(这里应该是“must")?

Legal use
Legislative acts and contracts sometimes use "shall" and "shall not" to express mandatory action and prohibition.


Technical specifications
In many requirement specifications, particularly involving software, the words shall and will have special meanings. Most requirement specifications use the word shall to denote something that is required,[citation needed] while reserving the will for a statement of fact. However, some documents deviate from this convention and use the words shall, will, and should to denote the strength of the requirement. Some requirement specifications will define the terms at the beginning of the document.

Shall and will are distinguished by NASA and Wikiversity as follows:

Shall is usually used to dictate the provision of a functional capability.
Will is generally used to cite things that the operational or development environment are to provide to the capability being specified. For example, "The building's electrical system will power the XYZ system."
On standards published by IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission), ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials), IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), requirements with "shall" are the mandatory requirements, meaning, "must", or "have to". The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) defines shall and must as synonymous terms denoting absolute requirements, and ‘‘should’’ as denoting a somewhat flexible requirement, in RFC documents.[5]

The most influential proponent of the distinction was John Wallis, whose 1653 Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae stated "The rule is... to express a future event without emotional overtones, one should say I shall, we shall, but you/he/she/they will; conversely, for emphasis, willfulness, or insistence, one should say I/we will, but you/he/she/they shall".

At the beginning of the 20th century, the various special cases made it necessary for Fowler's The King's English to devote 20 pages to the rules for shall vs. will, with the comment "the idiomatic use, while it comes by nature to southern Englishmen ... is so complicated that those who are not to the manner born can hardly acquire it". According to the English grammarian Charles Talbut Onions, the "correct" idiomatic use of shall and will was an infallible test of the true English speaker, since American, Irish, and Scottish speakers have such difficulty using the words in the same manner as the English. There is an illustrative old joke about the Scotsman who drowned in a river because he had cried "I will die! Nobody shall help me!" Dwight D. Eisenhower was reputed to have fired an aide who could not understand a distinction between "shall" and "will."[1]

Whether the prescribed usage had basis in common usage or not, it is largely ignored by American, Irish, and Scottish speakers of English, which are a majority of English-speaking people.[2] The Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage, OUP, 2002, says of the rule for the use of shall and will: "it is unlikely that this rule has ever had any consistent basis of authority in actual usage, and many examples of English in print disregard it". The rule has even less force in American English, where shall has a much more restricted role, and the negative contraction shan't does not occur. Indeed, in America, "I will" and "we will" are the usual forms, and anyone using "shall" in all but a few situations runs the risk of being thought haughty or pretentious.

wherestip wrote:

http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/leader

ysun wrote:

Steve,

Thanks for the link!

你以前建议的“名列前茅”、“首屈一指”以及 Zhou Dan 建议的“佼佼者”都是很好的译法。 很多人都将 World leader 译为“世界领先”，当然也不错，但我个人认为还是上述译法显得更雅些。 我原来用的就是“世界某某技术领域的佼佼者”，结果不知被谁改成了“某某技术领域的世界领袖”。