新视野大学英语6课文英汉对照翻译.docx

新视野大学英语6课文英汉对照翻译The Pursuit of Happiness 追求幸福The right to pursue happiness is promised to Americans by the US Constitution, but no one seems quite sure which way happiness runs. It may be we are issued a hunting license but offered no game. Jonathan Swift conceived of happiness as "the state of being well-deceived”, or of being "a fool among idiots ", for Swift saw society as a land of false goals.美国宪法赋予美国人民追求幸福的权利,但是似乎谁也说不清幸福跑到哪里去了。这 就好比我们获得了打猎许可却无猎物可打样。乔纳森斯威夫特认为幸福是”种大 上其当而浑然不觉的状态",或者是充当”一名白痴中的傻瓜"的感觉,因为斯威夫特把 社会看作是一片布满虚假目标的土地。It is, of course, un-American to think in terms of false goals. We do, however, seem to be dedicated to the idea of buying our way to happiness. We shall all have made it to Heaven when we possess enough.虚假目标的提法当然不是美国式思维。然而,我们似乎执迷于花钱买幸福的理念。当 我们拥有足够的财时,我们就会获得极大的成功。And at the same time the forces of American business are hugely dedicated to making us deliberately unhappy. Advertising is one of our major industries, and advertising exists not to satisfy desires but to create them - and to create them faster than anyone, s budget can satisfy them. For that matter, our whole economy is based on addicting us to greed. We are even told it is our patriotic duty to support the national economy by buying things.与此同时,美国商业势却大肆渲染,人为地使我们感到不幸福。广告业是我们的主 要产业之它的存在不是为了满足欲望,而是为了制造欲望,其速度之快为任何人的预 算所不及。这样来,我们整个的经济就建立在使我们沉溺于贪婪的基础上。甚至有人 告诉我们通过购物来支持国家经济是我们的爱国义务。Look at any of the magazines that cater to women. There advertising begins as art and slogans in the front pages and ends as pills and therapy in the back pages. The art at the front illustrates the dream of perfect beauty. This is the baby skin that must be hers. This, the perfumed breath she must breathe out. This, the sixteen-year-o1d figure she must display at forty, at fifty, at sixty, and forever. This is the harness into which Mother must strap herself in order to display that perfect figure. This is the cream that restores skin, these are the tablets that melt away fat around the thighs, and these are the pills of perpetual youth.随便翻开一本迎合妇女口味的杂志,不难发现,开头的几页广告都是艺术和口号,到了 结尾的几页就都变成了药丸和疗法。开头几页的艺术包装所展示的是对至尊美丽的渴 望。她拥有的是婴儿般的细腻皮肤。她呼出来的是芬芳的气息。无论她40岁、50岁、 60岁，还是任何时候，她永远都拥有16岁的身段。这就是母亲为了展示她的优美体形所 使用的束带。这是可使人肌肤恢复细嫩的护肤霜,这些是减去大腿脂肪的药片,这些是 首春永驻的药丸。Obviously no reasonable person can be completely persuaded either by such art or by such pills and devices. Yet someone is obviously trying to buy this dream and spending billions every year in the attempt. Clearly the happinessmarket is not running out of customers, but what is it they are trying to buy?很明显,任何有理智的人都不会完全被此类广告艺术、药丸或器械所打动。不过确实 有人想要花钱买这个梦,不惜为此每年花销数十亿美元。显然,幸福市场不乏顾客,但 是他们想要购买的又是什么呢?Defining the meaning oi happiness" is a perplexing proposition: the best one can do is to tryto set some extremes to the idea and then work towards the middle. To think of happiness as achieving superiority over others, living in a mansion made of marble, having a wardrobe with hundreds of outfits, will do to set the greedy extreme. To think of happiness as the joy of a holy man of India will do to set the spiritual extreme. He sits completely still, contemplating the nature of reality, free even of his own body. If admirers bring him food, he eats it; if not, he starves. Why be concerned? What is physical is trivial to him. To contemplate is his joy and he achieves complete mental focus through an incredibly demanding discipline, the accomplishment of which is itself a joy to him.给"幸福”下定义是个令人困惑的问题:最好的办法是先设定两个极端,然后寻求中 庸。认为幸福就是高人一等,住的是大理石豪宅,衣柜里有上百套衣服,这可成为贪婪 的极端。认为幸福就是印度圣人似的快乐,这将成为精神生活的极端。圣人打坐,冥想 着现实的本质,超脱于肉身的拖累。如果有崇敬者给他端上食物,他就吃:如果没人 给,他就饿着。何苦为此事烦恼? 一切物质的东西对他都微不足道。冥想就是他的快 乐。他凭借常人难以想像的自律达到高度的精神集中,对他来说,能够达到如此境界,这 本身就是快乐。Is he a happy man? Perhaps his happiness is only another sort of illusion. But who can take it from him? And who will dare say it is more false than happiness paid for through an installment plan?他是个幸福的人吗?也许他的幸福不过是又一种幻觉罢了。但是，谁能剥夺他的幻 觉呢?谁又敢说这种幸福比靠分期付款购买的幸福更虚假呢?Although the holy man* s concept of happiness may enjoy considerable prestige in the Orient, I doubt the existence of such motionless happiness. What is certain is that his way of happiness would be torture to almost anyone of Western temperament. Yet these extremes will still serve to define the area within which al 1 of us must find some sort of balance. Thoreau had his own firm sense of that balance: save on the petty in order to spend on the essential.尽管圣人的幸福观在东方享有很高的声誉,但我却怀疑是否真有这样静态的幸福。可 以肯定的是,他的幸福方式儿乎对于任何具有西方性格的人来说都是种折磨。但这些 极端认识仍将有助于说明幸福的概念,我们每个人都能从中找到某种平衡。梭罗自己的 坚定平衡信念是:小事省一省,大事有保证。Possession for its own sake or in competition with the rest of the neighborhood would have been Thoreau, s idea of the petty. The active discipline of raising one* s perception of what is eternal in nature would have been his idea of the essential. Time saved on the petty could be spent on the essential. Thoreau certainly didn't intend to starve, but he would put into feeding himself only as much effort as would keep him functioning for more important efforts.为了占有而占有,或是为了与邻里攀比而占有,可能就是梭罗认为的小事。自觉提高 自己对自然界中永恒价值的认识能力，应该属于梭罗认识中的大事。从小事上省下来的 时间可以花在大事上。梭罗当然不会让自己挨饿,但是他的进食仅仅是为了保持其体 能，以便有精力做大事。Effort is the essence of it: there is no happiness except as we take on challenges. Short of the impossible, the satisfactions we get from a lifetime depend on how high we place our difficulties. The mortal flaw in the advertised version of happiness is in the fact that it claims to be effortless.努力是幸福的精髓:只有接受了挑战,我们会有幸福感。除非不可能,我们一生的 满足均取决于我们把困难定位到怎样的高度。广告版幸福的致命缺陷在于它声称幸福不 需要做出任何努力。We demand difficulty even in our diversions. We demand it because without difficulty therecan be no game; a game is a way of making something hard for the fun of it. The rules of the game are an arbitrary addition of difficulty. It is easier to win at chess if you are free to change the rules, but the fun is in winning within the rules. If we could mint our own money, even building a fortune would become boring. No difficulty, no fun.即使是在娱乐中，我们也希望有点难度。我们想要难度,因为没有难度就没有了游戏 乐趣;游戏要靠制造难度来生成乐趣。游戏的规则是大为地增加难度。如果可以自行改 变棋赛规则，赢盘棋将会容易得多。然而,下棋赢棋的乐趣是在规则下赢棋。如果我 们自己就能够造钱，那么即使造出一座金山也了然无趣。没有难度，就没有乐趣。Those in advertising seem too often to have lost their sense of the pleasure of difficulty. And the Indian holy man seems dull to us, I suppose, because he seems to be refusing to play anything at all. The Western weakness may be in the illusion that happiness can be bought. Perhaps the oriental weakness is in the idea that there is such a thing as perfect happiness.广告中推销的东西似乎常常因缺少难度而缺少乐趣。我想,印度圣人在我们看来似乎 也提不起兴趣,因为他好像拒绝任何游戏。西方幸福观的弱点可能在于他们幻想幸福是 可以买来的。而东方幸福观的弱点或许在于他们相信存在完美的幸福。Happiness is never more than partial. Whatever else happiness may be, it is neither in having nor in being, but in becoming. What the writers of the Constitution declared for us as an inherent right was not happiness but the pursuit of happiness. What the early patriots might have underlined, could they have foreseen the happiness-market, is the cardinal fact that happiness is in the pursuit itself, in the pursuit of what is engaging and life-changing, which is to say, in the idea of becoming. A nation is not measured by what it possesses or wants to possess, but by what it wants to become.幸福从来就是不圆满的。不管我们对幸福还有什么别的解释,它都既不是拥有,也不 是存在,而是过程。美国宪法的制订者为我们公布的天赋人权,不是幸福权,而是对幸 福的追求权。如果当年的爱国者能够预见后来的幸福市场，他们或许会强调这样个基 本事实:幸福在于追求本身,在于参与和改变人生，也就是说，在于相信"过程”这理 念。评估一个国家的标准，不是看它已经拥有什么,或者想要拥有什么，而是看它想要 成为什么。My Teacher, My Salvation我的老师,我的救星I stepped off the ship on a gray March day in 1949, a small boy with a new American visa shoved in his pocket, a boy who had lost his mother and was emigrating to America to live with a father he did not know. I was very suspicious of the heavy, bald man who embraced my sisters and me at the dock. Still, he was the very image of American people in his gleaming black shoes, gray overcoat, and new hat.1949年3月的一个阴沉的日子,我,个小男孩,兜里揣着新领的美国签证走下了船。 我刚刚失去了母亲,这次移民来美国,准备同素未谋面的父亲一道生活。在码头上,看 着这个拥抱我和我的姐妹们的秃顶胖男人,我满怀疑惑。不过,他的皮鞋黑色,穿着灰 色大衣,戴着崭新的帽子,是典型的美国人形象。After several years in an elementary school class for those with low IQ - there were no classes for non-English-speaking children I made it to junior high school. The first week of classes we were told to select a hobby to pursue during "club hour"on Fridays. I decided to follow the prettiest girl in my class, who led me through a door marked Newspaper Club. And there was asharp-tongued, no-nonsense English teacher named Marilyn Burd. "We're going to put out a newspaper, " she yelled, rapping her desk with a ruler, "so if any of you don't want to work, I suggest you go across the hal1 to the Theater Club rehearsal now, because you' re going to work your tails off here!"由于没有专为不会讲英语的孩子开设的课程,我在低智商孩子班读了几年小学后,升入 了初中。第一周的课上,老师通知我们要为周五的俱乐部活动时间选择个自己喜欢 的活动项目。我决定随班里最漂亮的女孩去,她带着我进了一道门,门上标着报刊俱乐 部。在那里,我们见到了言辞尖刻、一本正经的英语教师玛丽莲伯德。我们准备出 份报纸,她用尺子敲着桌子,高声地说,所以,如果你们不想出力的话,我建议你们 现在就到大厅那边去参加戏剧俱乐部的排练,因为在这里你们要玩命地干!I was soon under the spell of this formidable and eloquent woman. She drilled us on grammar and made me fall in love with literature. I was fascinated by the way she could read a story or a piece of verse, then open it up like a fan, displaying its various facets, colors, and meanings. I had considered stories to be simple adventures, but she showed me they could express feelings as well: pain, frustration, anger, and loss. And she taught me that my motherland was the foundation of Western civilization. I began to be proud of my origins.我很快就被这个令人望而生畏、U若悬河的女士所折服。她反复训练我们掌握语法, 并使我爱上了文学。她能够读篇故事或一首诗,然后像打开折扇样,将它的各个侧 面、色彩和含义全部展示出来,这一点强烈地吸引了我。我过去一直认为小说写的只不 过是不平凡的生活经历,而她却使我知道小说还可以表达情感:如痛苦、挫折、愤怒和失 落。她使我知道我的祖国是西方文明的发源地。我开始对自己的出身感到骄傲。One day she assigned us to compose a concise essay from our own experience. Fixing me with a stern look, she added, "Nick, I want you to write about what happened to your family in your homeland."一天,她布置了一份作业,让我们根据自己的亲身经历写篇短文。她用严厉的目光 盯着我,接着说:尼克,我要你写你们一家在你家乡的经历。That was the last thing I wanted to write about, and so I left the assignment until the last moment. Then, on a warm weekend afternoon, I sat in my room with a pad and pencil and stared out the window. The chorus of bird song, the buzz of insects, and the perfume of freshly cut grass distracted me. Finally I wrote the first sentence: "To many people the coming of spring means the end of winter, the first birds, thoughts of love. Spring to me has a very different meaning because this was when I hugged my mother for the last time."这可是我最不愿写的东西,所以我把作业拖到了最后时刻。后来,一个周末温暖的下 午,我坐在自己的房间里，备好稿纸和铅笔，两眼呆呆地望着窗外。鸟儿的欢唱声、昆 虫的唧唧声,以及新剪草地的芳香使我无法集中注意力。最后,我写下了第一句:"对很 多人来说,春天的来临意味着冬季的结束,第一批候鸟的出现,以及对爱的思念。而春 天对我来说却有着完全不同的意义,因为我最后一次拥抱母亲就是在这个季节。”I kept writing, telling how the local guerrillas occupied our village and took our home and food; how my mother planned our escape when she learned al 1 the children were to be sent to schools in another country for the indefinite future; and how she could not come with us because the guerrillas sent her to dig an irrigation ditch in a distant village.我不停地写着,讲述当地游击队如何占领我们村庄,强占我们的房屋,夺走我们的食 物。写母亲在听说所有的孩子都要被送到外国的学校而前途未卜之后,如何安排让我们 逃走,而她自己却被游击队强迫到远处的村庄挖水渠而不能与我们同行。I wrote about how one night we were smuggled down the mountain and into the lines of government soldiers, where a sergeant sent us to a refugee camp. It was there that we learned of our mother* s torture and execution. I wrote that I could still hear the cries of my sisters when we were told my mother was taken into a cellar and shot by the guerrillas for what they called disloyalty the escape of her children.我描述了在一天夜里我们是怎样被偷偷地送下山,进入到政府军的地界,然后一位中土 把我们送进难民营。正是在难民营里，我们听说了母亲遭受的折磨和被处决的消息。我 写道，我依然能够听到姐妹们的哭声，那时，有人告诉我们,母亲因为让孩子们逃走而被 认为是对游击队的不忠,所以被带到个地窖枪杀了。But I did write that I felt very lucky to have started a new life, my mother* s dream for us. I ended my narrative by saying that, nevertheless, the coming of spring always reminded me of the green and gold day in 1948 when I last saw my mother.但我也写道,开始了新的生活,我感到很幸运,这也是母亲为我们编织的梦。在故事 的结尾,我这样写道:不过,春天的来临总让我想起1948年那个大地返青、阳光灿烂的 日子,那天,我最后一次见到母亲。I handed in my essay, hoping that was the end of it, but Miss Burd had it published in the school paper. I was horror-struck - until I saw that my classmates reacted with sympathy and understanding. Without telling me, Miss Burd also entered the essay in a national contest, and it won a medal.我交上了自己的作文,希望这件事到此为止,但伯德小姐却将它发表在了校刊上。我 非常惶恐,直到看见同学们同情和理解的反应心里塌实了下来。后来伯德小姐没让我 知道,又报名让此文参加全国作文竞赛,并获得了 枚奖章。For the first time I began to understand the power of the written word. Meanwhi1e, I followed the literary path Miss Burd had set me on. I managed to finance four years of university tuition with scholarships and part-time jobs with newspapers. An article I wrote about a friend who died in the Phi lippines one of the first volunteers to lose his life in the Peace Corps won a national award. The award was given to me in the White House by the President. When the local paper ran a picture of me clasping hands with the President, my father clipped it, had it sealed in plastic and carried it in his breast pocket. I found it there on the day he died 20 years later.我第一次开始理解文字的力量。与此同时,我开始按着伯德小姐为我铺设的文学道路 前行。我设法用奖学金和在报社兼职赚的钱筹措了大学4年的学费。我的一篇关于个 在菲律宾捐躯的朋友（他是和平队第一批志愿者中的牺牲者）的文章获得了国家奖,这个 奖是总统在白宫为我颁发的。当地报纸刊登了我与总统握手的照片,我父亲把它剪下塑 封起来,放在自己胸前的口袋里。20年后父亲去世的那天,我在他的口袋里发现了这张 照片。Miss Burd taught for 41 years. Often her students were from troubled homes, yet she would alternately bully and charm each one until the spark of potential caught fire. She retired in 1981 at the age of 62.伯徳小姐教了 41年书。她的学生大多来自不幸的家庭,但她总会交替使用逼迫和诱导 的方法对待每个学生,直到他们的潜能绽放出火花。1981年,她退休了,时年62岁。Marilyn Burd is still an honored and enthusiastic guest at all our family celebrations. At my 50th-birthday picnic last summer, my sisters and I felt a painful void because my father was not there to lead the line of dancers, the way he did at every celebration during his 92 years. But Miss Burd was there, sipping wine and viewing the scene with quiet satisfaction. Her presence was a comfort.玛丽莲伯德至今仍是我们每次家庭聚会上的一位尊贵而热情的客人。去年夏天我50 岁生日野餐聚会,我和姐妹们都感到痛苦和空虚,因为我父亲不在了,不能再像他92年 生命中每次喜庆场合那样领舞了。但伯德小姐来了,她边品啜着葡萄酒,边平静而 满意地看着这一切。她的到来是对我们的一种安慰。Life is full of opportunity, and I would have enjoyed its plenty even if I hadn, t walked into Miss Burd's classroom. But she was the one who directed my grief and pain into writing. She was my salvation, the one that sent me into writing and indirectly caused al1 the good things that came after.生活充满了机遇,即使我未曾走进伯徳小姐的教室,我也会享有大量的机会。但是她 指导我把悲伤和痛苦写出来。她是我的救星，是她把我引上了写作道路,随之而来的所 有好事也是她间接地带给我的。A few years ago, I answered the telephone and heard her telling me that I was to deliver the speech at her funeral. I hope, Miss Burd, that you，11 accept this tribute instead.几年前,我接到她的电话,要我在她的葬礼上讲话。伯德小姐,我希望您还是接受我 以此文向您表达的敬意吧。A Long-Lost History Comes to Light Humans in the Amazon 亚马孙河流域的文明一 段被忘却已久的历史重见光明The Amazon rainforest is one of the most significant and largely intact ecosystems left on the earth. It is often characterized as an essentially untouched nat