As I have said a million times before, George Orwell is, at least from my own perpective, more of an essayist than a novelist. Among all his great essays, Politics and the English Language is my personal favourite.
In this essay, Orwell provides six rules for writers, which appear in practically every single Writing-related book. Besides, he, and I quote from Wikipedia: "wrote about the importance of precise and clear language, arguing that vague writing can be used as a powerful tool of political manipulation because it shapes the way we think."
Nowadays, you don't have to be an expert in language to tell that Chinese is in a bad way either. As long as you care about language enough, you will definitely feel sick when reading, and trying to understand, those $*%@#~ Chinese on the Internet. This kind of experience always reminds me of this piece. So, I made this material.
Every paragraph of the original work is divided into several parts, which is followed by 1 or 2 versions of Chinese translation from Dong Leshan and Chen Chao.
Please note that this material is intended only for Chinese English learners, who can use it as an intensive reading material to sharpen their English and writing skills and, hopefully, avoid political manipulation. Of course, the more times you read this piece, you are more likely to use Chinese in a decent and proper way as well.
If you, however, ONLY want to READ this essay, please don't download this document because your reading experience will be totally ruined. To get a perfect one, I strongly recommend that you type 'Politics and the English Language' in Google or any search engine you prefer or, if you can only read Chinese, search '奥威尔作品全集' (for Chen Chao's translation) or '我为什么要写作' (for Dong Leshan's translation) on WeRead app.
One more thing.
As an enthusiastic reader of George Orwell's works, I have awlays been thinking about designing an intensive reading course centered on George Orwell's essays. Now, I am finally unemployed and have a good amount of time. So, I will guide you to peruse this piece at word-to-word level.
The course videos, 20 or so I guess, will be uploaded to my YouTube channel '伽德弗莱英文研习社' (see the link below) for FREE. But, if unable to visit YouTube, you can add customer service WeChat 'EnglishBrewer' to order these videos at ¥ 99.
I know what you are thinking. The reason why I upload videos to YouTube for free is that it will attract English learners to follow my YouTube channel. When I meet YouTube's requirement in the future, I can earn a not-too-much-but-still-OK profit just by producing high-quality contents. So, if you cannot help me achieve that result, then just pay me. After all, those who CAN visit YouTube have to pay for the ladder, right?
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