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Through the multitude of stories, snapshots of a society in flux emerge: an age of scientific discovery, growing transport and communication links and increased professionalisation of scholarship.
从众多的故事之中，一个变化中的社会的大致图景浮现出来：众多科学发现、不断发展的交通和通信联系，以及学术的日益专业化。
Yet many of the dictionary’s contributors were autodidacts. The project’s popularity reflected a growing community of people eager for intellectual pursuits but excluded from conventional academia.
然而，这本词典的许多贡献者都是自学成才。该项目大受欢迎，说明当时越来越多的人渴望智识方面的追求，却被传统学术界拒之门外。
Ms Ogilvie’s book is full of quirky titbits. Many dictionary obsessives engaged in another crowdsourcing vogue: collecting and measuring rainwater.
奥格尔维的这本书充满了奇闻轶事。许多痴迷于词典的人还参与了另一种很时尚的众包工作：收集和测量雨水。
The presentation of the book is unconventional, too, taking its structure from the work it describes. There are 26 alphabetical chapters, each celebrating a group of contributors (memorably, “K” is for “kleptomaniac”).
这本书的呈现方式也是不同寻常的，借用了《牛津英语词典》的结构。全书有26个按字母顺序排列的章节，每个章节都是为了纪念某一群贡献者(让人印象很深的是K代表“偷窃狂”)。
This is a cunning conceit, though it sometimes means that broader issues emerge only piecemeal.
这是一种别出心裁的巧思，但这种结构也导致有时更宏大的问题只能零零碎碎地呈现。
“The Dictionary People” will appeal to logophiles. Pages abound with wonderful words: absquatulate (to abscond), couthutlaughe (a person knowingly concealing an outlaw) and zwodder (a drowsy feeling).
《编写词典的人》将会吸引词语爱好者。精彩的词汇在书中俯拾皆是：absquatulate(逃遁)、couthutlaughe (故意窝藏罪犯的人)、zwodder(昏昏欲睡的感觉)。
But Ms Ogilvie’s book is also a story of omissions. The OED aimed to record English as it was used across the world; it was a product of empire.
但奥格尔维的这本书也是一个关于遗漏的故事。《牛津英语词典》旨在记录英语在世界各地的使用情况，它是帝国的产物。
“The published sources of those words drew originally on the language of members of black and indigenous communities, whose names never made it into the pages of Murray’s address book,” Ms Ogilvie writes.
奥格尔维写道：“有些单词最初来自黑人和原住民的语言，但他们的名字从未出现在默里的通讯录上。”
In addition, many words were kept out of the OED: “homosexuality” was included in 1933, “lesbian” not until 1976. When it came to slang, Murray was cautious about obscenity laws; first editions of the “C” and “F” volumes remain clear of the obvious culprits.
此外，许多词曾经被《牛津英语词典》排除在外：“同性恋”一词于1933年被收录，“女同性恋”一词直到1976年才被收录在内。对于俚语，默里对淫秽语言的态度十分谨慎，第一版词典的C和F部分十分清白，没有那两个众人皆知的词。
Above all, though, this is a story about ordinary people. It is a powerful testament to those who, to cite dictionary-helper George Eliot, “lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs”.
不过，最重要的是，这本书讲述了普通人的故事。引用曾为词典提供帮助的乔治·艾略特的话来说，这本书是那些“生前忠实地过着无名的生活，生后于无人来访的坟墓中安息”的人们曾存于世间的有力证明。
