That's a quite difficult argument to pin down does it work or does it not work.

这个论证很难确定,是不是说得通。

耶鲁公开课 - 死亡课程节选

You need to pin down an object of study, a first principle from which other principles can emerge, and part of the process is to say, "Hey, it's not literature we're talking about.

首要原则是，需要锁定要谈论，即学习的目标，可是，谁知道什么是文学。

耶鲁公开课 - 文学理论导论课程节选

The similes are continually working to unleash -and they're really quite unruly in this respect -to unleash the moral and the theological confusion that so much of the rest of the poem seems really quite eager to pin down and to fix.

这里的比喻不断的想要解脱束缚,-它们从这个方面来看也的确不受什么束缚,-解脱道德上和理论上的混乱无序,这首诗的剩余部分都显得急切于,下定论进行弥补。

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选

One of the reasons for thinking it's not clear whether the argument fails or not is because it's hard to pin down, where exactly did it go wrong?

并不能确定这个论证是否成立,的其中一个原因就是,我们很难确定,到底是哪里出了问题

耶鲁公开课 - 死亡课程节选

It's more difficult to pin down where it goes wrong.

这个论证更难分析出,哪里有错。

耶鲁公开课 - 死亡课程节选

The interesting thing about Descartes' argument is that it's easy to see something has gone wrong in the case of the Morning Star and the Evening Star, but it's difficult to pin down what exactly went wrong.

笛卡尔论证的奇妙之处在于,我们能明显感觉到,晨星和昏星的例子中,有些东西不对劲,但很难确定,错误到底在出哪里

耶鲁公开课 - 死亡课程节选

So it's not that the result is going to be that I'm going to try to convince you that death isn't bad, but it takes actually a little bit of work to pin down precisely what is it about death that's bad and how can it be death?

所以，这么说,并不是我试图让你相信死亡不是坏事，但是这的确要花点时间来准确地说清楚,什么让死亡成了坏事，和怎样才算死亡？

耶鲁公开课 - 死亡课程节选

Because once you actually push people,to pin them down, what do you mean by it,you end up with something that's either just not true, or not interesting,or not necessary, or not particularly unique to death.

因为你一旦逼问他们这到底是什么含义，得到的东西既不会是真实的，也不会是必要和有趣的，也不会是对于死亡来说独特的。

耶鲁公开课 - 死亡课程节选