在近段时间，我决定暂停解答问题。只看别人解答，向别人学习。有时，会参加一些讨论。

我觉得，网友Facepalm 对陈老师要求太苛刻了，这个问题陈老师解答得非常好。

此外，“不止12年前”可否改为“12多年前”？若说“十多前年”就不准确了。

She did not truly know him; theirs had been a brief afternoon encounter more than 12 years before.

【参考译文】

她（以前）并不真的了解他，他们的交往仅限于一次短暂的午后邂逅而已，那还是远超12年以前的事啦/ 那都是不止12年前的事啦/ 那是12年前都不止的事啦。

【参考解析】

1.第一个问题陈根花老师解析的非常好。补充一点，名词性物主代词做主语的这种用法实际上有对句末出现的名词强调的作用，突出这个名词，前面不提名词，以引起读者的好奇心，同时把名词放在后面，也符合英文语义的“尾重”原则。

2.关于more than 的译文问题，咱们引述薄冰教授的观点吧。他认为当more than后跟数词或表示数的词往往表示“多的惊人”的含义，否则就用over 或在涉及的名词后加or more.所以咱们翻译的时候应尽量把这层含义表达出来，这也是上面本人拙译的依据。把more than另起一个小分句翻译似乎更加能达到这个效果并符合咱们中文的习惯。

▲同意陈老师的看法，句中的 theirs 相当于 their encounter（他们的相遇），即：

She did not truly know him; theirs had been a brief afternoon encounter more than twelve years before.

= She did not truly know him; their encounter had been a brief afternoon encounter more than twelve years before.

▲一般说来，名词性物主代词相当于“形容词性物主代词+名词”，我们之所以使用名词性物主代词，主要就是为了避免名词的重复（不管避免重复的名词是在前面还是在后面）。比如：

Mine is a big family.

= My family is big family.

= My family is big one.

类似的有：

Whose book is this?

= Whose is this book? (这个 whose 相当于 whose book)

▲其实，名词性物主代词用于代替后面后面的名词以避免重复的例子很普遍，如以下例子均摘自词典：

Hers was a rags-to-riches story. 她的经历可谓白手起家。

Hers was an essentially sunny cast of mind. 她本质上是属于阳光快乐的性格。

His was not a political career predestined from birth. 他并非生来就注定要从政的。

Ours is the newspaper with the widest circulation. 本报是销售最广的报纸。

Mine was a conventional family upbringing. 我接受的是传统的家庭教育。

Theirs was the most storied romance in Hollywood. 他们的恋情是好莱坞流传最广的一段佳话。

虽然大部分名词性物主代词用作主语时可以用“形容词性物主代词+名词+… one”来代替。如：

Theirs is an old system. = Their system is an old one. (出自张道真《英语语法大全》)

但并不是所有的名词性物主代词用作主语都可以这样转换的，比如当其中的中心词没有形容词修饰时，这种转换就很难。比如：

Theirs is a match made in heaven. 他们是天造地设的一对。

这句就很难转化为：

(?) Their match is a one made in heaven.（因为英语通常不说 a one）

先请看代词的英文解释：

1. A pronoun is a word that you use to refer to someone or something when you do not need to use a noun, often because the person or thing has been mentioned earlier. Examples are "it," "she," "something," and "myself." 

2. a word used instead of a noun group for referring to a person, group, or thing that has already been mentioned or that is obvious from the context. The words ‘you’, ‘it’, ‘mine’, ‘this’, and ‘myself’ are all pronouns. Words like ‘anyone’, ‘everything’ and ‘whoever’ are also pronouns.

再看看 theirs 的释义和例句：

theirs [possessive form of 'they']

1 used to refer to something that belongs to or is connected with people that have already been mentioned:

When our washing machine broke, our neighbours let us use theirs.

Our house is number 25, and theirs is just opposite.

从中可知，要想知道代词指代什么，自然应该有上下文为依据才行。光凭一句话，你什么也不知道。只能推测 theirs 为 their encounter “他们彼此之间的相识”。

陈老师肯定地说是 their encounter，我觉得这失之武断。没有语境是不能断定代词的指代物的。最多是猜测。还有，陈老师说用代词是为了避免与后面重复，好像不大好。重复重复，有事物发生了才有东西可以与之重复，应该是避免与前面的重复。

所以，我觉得这些例子如 Ours is a big family 不如用 Our family is a big one；Hers is a pretty colourless life 不如用 Her life is a pretty colourless one.

至于有人说的end-weight(尾重原则)，我查了有关资料，它的定义是 End-weight is the principle by which longer structures tend to occur later in a sentence than shorter structures. A sentence is clumsy and more difficult to understand when the subject is considerably longer than the predicate. We can rephrase the sentence to shift the weight to the end.

When the object is even longer and more complex, the position object + particle becomes increasingly unacceptable because of an increasing violation of the end-weight principle:

(a) We'll have to put the next meeting of the General Assembly off.
(b) We'll have to put off the next meeting of the General Assembly.

The order of (b) is clearly much more acceptable than that of (a)."
(Geoffrey N. Leech, A Glossary of English Grammar. Edinburgh University Press, 2006)

多用当某一部分特别特别长时！而这里的主语假定就是their encounter，它会很长吗？！所以我不赞同把尾重原则随便用于此处。至于这句话——“名词性物主代词做主语的这种用法实际上有对句末出现的名词强调的作用，突出这个名词，前面不提名词，以引起读者的好奇心”多半是中国人自己附会的观点，还值得商榷。反正我在外文资料上目前没看见这么一说。

more than twelve years before 是“12年多年前”（念起来感觉有点怪，汉语中说十多年前还通顺但我并不是说这里就该翻译成十多年前，反正就是这个意思，这并不难理解）。陈老师说的不止12年我觉得还好些，只是翻译顺序上要做些改动。