在英语写作中,我们经常会很自然地使用describe ,其实很多情形用explain、elucidate、articulate、explicate更合适。这与中文里不太一样,中文里习惯“描述”而不是“解释”。其实,科技论文的写作就是在解释。
(By the way, 论文写作中比较少用discuss。)
在下面例句中,我们只用explain/elucidate/articulate 举例,其实explicate用法是一样的。
In the following, we will describe our motivation and goal of our work. (下面我们将描述我们工作的动机与目标。)
替代为explain/elucidate/articulate 会更好:
In the following, we will explain/elucidate/articulate our motivation and goal of our work.
又例如:
The authors described the idea behind their proposed protocol.(作者描述了他们所提出协议背后的思想。)
替代为explain/elucidate/articulate 会更好:
The authors explained/elucidated/articulated the idea behind their proposed protocol.
又例如:
The book “deep learning ”describes the mechanism of convolutional neural networks and recurrent neural networks.(《深度学习》这本书描述了卷积神经网络和循环神经网络的机理。)
替代为explain/elucidate/articulate 会更好:
The book “deep learning ”explains/elucidates/articulates the mechanism of convolutional neural networks and recurrent neural networks.
注意,在下面的例子中,替代是不妥的:
We will describe our protocol in the following.(我们将描述我们的协议。)
比较上面的几个例子,可以看出什么时候可以用explain/elucidate/articulate 替代,什么时候不宜替代。
相应地,名词explanation 在适当的情形可以替代description。不再举例。
(例句原创)