Describe a banana. It's yellow, perhaps with some green edges. When peeled, it has a smooth, soft, mushy texture. It tastes sweet, maybe a little creamy. And it smells like... well, it smells like a banana.
描述下香蕉。黃顏色，或許邊緣帶點兒綠。剝開香蕉皮，光滑綿軟、糊狀質地。味甜，口感細膩有點兒像奶油。聞起來...嗯，香蕉味兒。

Every sense has its own “lexical field,” a vast palette of dedicated descriptive words for colors, sounds, tastes, and textures. But smell?
每種感官都有其“詞場”，有各色各樣專門的詞匯來描述顏色、聲音、口味和質地。但氣味呢？

In English, there are only three dedicated smell words—stinky, fragrant, and musty—and the first two are more about the smeller's subjective experience than about the smelly thing itself.
英語中，只有三個專門描述氣味的詞——惡臭、芳香和霉味兒。前兩者更多是聞味者的主觀體驗，而非事物本身的氣味。

Asifa Majid from Radboud University in the Netherlands has found that the Jahai people of Malaysia and the Maniq of Thailand use between 12 and 15 dedicated smell words.
荷蘭奈梅亨大學的阿西法·馬吉德發(fā)現，馬來西亞海族人(Jahai)和泰國曼尼科人（Maniq)運用12至15個專門描述氣味的詞語。

For example, ltpit describes the smell of a binturong or bearcat—a two-meter-long animal that looks like a shaggy, black-furred otter, and that famously smells of popcorn. But ltpit doesn't mean popcorn—it's not a source-based term. The same word is also used for soap, flowers, and the intense-smelling durian fruit, referring to some fragrant quality that Western noses can’t parse.
舉個例子，ltpit 一詞用來描述麝貓和熊貍這種長兩米、毛發(fā)蓬亂、看上去像黑皮毛水獺的動物，因其氣味像爆米花而聞名。但ltpit 并不是爆米花的意思，這不是個基于來源的術語。ltpit 還同樣用以形容肥皂、花朵和氣味濃重的榴蓮，這都是些西方人鼻子無法辨識的氣味芬芳。

Smell information translates straight into behavior or mood and evokes whole memories. Smell doesn't need language. Odors are expressible in language, as long as you speak the right language. It changes the way you perceive the world. Smell is an?intrinsic?part of Jahai culture in a way that it simply isn't in the west.
氣味信息直接轉化為行為和心情，并能喚起回憶。氣味無需語言，但可以用語言來表達，只要你說對語言，便能改變你看世界的目光。氣味是海族文化固有的內在，而西方人偏偏沒有。

聲明：本雙語文章的中文翻譯系滬江英語原創(chuàng)內容，轉載請注明出處。中文翻譯僅代表譯者個人觀點，僅供參考。如有不妥之處，歡迎指正。