优秀英语短文翻译(共62页).doc

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1、精选优质文档-倾情为你奉上历届英文翻译大奖赛竞赛原文及译文专心-专注-专业英译汉部分Beauty (excerpt)美(节选) Judging from the scientists I know, including Eva and Ruth, and those whom Ive read about, you cant pursue the laws of nature very long without bumping into beauty. “I dont know if its the same beauty you see in the sunset,” a friend te

2、lls me, “but it feels the same.” This friend is a physicist, who has spent a long career deciphering what must be happening in the interior of stars. He recalls for me this thrill on grasping for the first time Diracs equations describing quantum mechanics, or those of Einstein describing relativity

3、. “Theyre so beautiful,” he says, “you can see immediately they have to be true. Or at least on the way toward truth.” I ask him what makes a theory beautiful, and he replies, “Simplicity, symmetry, elegance, and power.” 我结识一些科学家（包括伊娃和露丝），也拜读过不少科学家的著作，从中我作出推断：人们在探求自然规律的旅途中，须臾便会与美不期而遇。一个朋友对我说：“我不敢肯定这

4、种美是否与日落之美异曲同工，但至少，两者带给我的感受别无二致。” 我的这个朋友是一位物理学家，他大半辈子都在致力于破解群星内部的秘密。他向我讲述了当年邂逅科学之美时的狂喜：那是当他生平第一次顿悟狄拉克的量子力学方程式，或是洞彻爱因斯坦相对论的方程式时的感受。“那些方程式是如此动人，”他说道，“只消看一眼你就会明白，它们一定是正确的，或者说-至少，它们的指向是正确的。” 我好奇一个“动人的”理论是个什么样，他的回答是：“简约、和谐、典雅，有力。”Why nature should conform to theories we find beautiful is far from obvious.

5、 The most incomprehensible thing about the universe, as Einstein said, is that its comprehensible. How unlikely, that a short-lived biped on a two-bit planet should be able to gauge the speed of light, lay bare the structure of an atom, or calculate the gravitational tug of a black hole. Were a long

6、 way from understanding everything, but we do understand a great deal about how nature behaves. Generation after generation, we puzzle out formulas, test them, and find, to an astonishing degree, that nature agrees. An architect draws designs on flimsy paper, and her buildings stand up through earth

7、quakes. 那些打动我们的理论，往往受到自然之母的肯定，其中奥妙不可言宣。诚如爱因斯坦所言：这个世界最让人费解之处就在于：它是能够被了解的。想想这一切是多么地不可思议：在一个不起眼的星球上，生存着一种拥有短暂生命的两足生物，然而，正是这些微不足道的小生物，不但测量出了光速，而且把原子层层剥开，还计算出了黑洞的引力。人类虽然尚未全知全能，但是，关于大自然的脾性，我们所知道的确实不能算少。人类经过世世代代的努力，猜想出各种定理公式，并在实践中检验它们，然后惊讶地发现：大自然竟然与我们不谋而合。这就像一位建筑师在薄薄的图纸上绘制出设计方案，依此建造的高楼大厦，竟能够经受住地震的洗礼考验，依然耸立

8、。 Dirac: 迪拉克，保罗阿德利安莫里斯1902-1984英国数学和物理学家。1933年因新原子理论公式与人分享诺贝尔奖。We launch a satellite into orbit and use it to bounce messages from continent to continent. The machine on which I write these words embodies hundreds of insights into the workings of the material world, insights that are confirmed by ev

9、ery burst of letters on the screen, and I stare at that screen through lenses that obey the laws of optics first worked out in detail by Isaac Newton. 我们发射一枚人造卫星，它便帮助我们将讯息传遍世界各地。而我，正在一台机器上记录下这些文字，这台机器包涵着人类思想的精髓-对物质世界运作方式的真知灼见-每一次敲打键盘，这些真知便化为字母跳入屏幕；当我注视着屏幕，架在鼻梁上的眼镜则是根据光学原理配制而成的，而对这一理论进行详细论证的开山始祖则是艾萨克

10、牛顿。By discerning patterns in the universe, Newton believed, he was tracing the hand of God. Scientists in our day have largely abandoned the notion of a Creator as an unnecessary hypothesis, or at least an untestable one. While they share Newtons faith that the universe is ruled everywhere by a cohe

11、rent set of rules, they cannot say, as scientists, how these particular rules came to govern things. You can do science without believing in a divine Legislator, but not without believing in laws. 通过对万物造化的深入观察，牛顿相信自己正追随着上帝的笔触。如今的科学家大都摒弃了“造物主”一说，认为那是无稽的假设，即使不全盘否定，至少也认定那是不可能得到验证的假说。诚然，他们坚信牛顿的看法-世界受一套整

12、合的法则所支配，但问题在于，发轫之始，这些法则是如何开始掌管世界的？对此，身为科学家的他们也无从知晓。在科学的疆界，我们可以拒绝相信上帝的存在，但我们不能否认万物之法的存在。I spent my teenage years scrambling up the mountain of mathematics. Midway up the slope, however, I staggered to a halt, gasping in the rarefied air, well before I reached the heights where the equations of Einste

13、in and Dirac would have made sense. Nowadays I add, subtract, multiply, and do long division when no calculator is handy, and I can do algebra and geometry and even trigonometry in a pinch, but that is about all that Ive kept from the language of numbers. Still, I remember glimpsing patterns in math

14、ematics that seemed as bold and beautiful as a skyful of stars. 少年时，我曾试图攀登数学之颠。可惜才到半山腰，便开始步履踉跄；空气稀薄，使我气喘吁吁，不得不停下脚步，而爱因斯坦和狄拉克的方程式却仍旧远在高处。现在的我，若是手边没有计算器，便通过心算处理加减乘除；有必要时，我还能应付代数、几何，甚至三角运算；但是话说回来，数字世界留给我的也就只有这些零星点滴了。不过，我至今仍然记得曾在数学王国里浅尝到的无穷变幻-大胆、迷人，犹如群星漫天。 Isaac Newton: 牛顿 (1642-1727) 英国物理学家、数学家。Im neve

15、r more aware of the limitations of language than when I try to describe beauty. Language can create its own loveliness, of course, but it cannot deliver to us the radiance we apprehend in the world, any more than a photograph can capture the stunning swiftness of a hawk or the withering power of a s

16、upernova. Evas wedding album holds only a faint glimmer of the wedding itself. All that pictures or words can do is gesture beyond themselves toward the fleeting glory that stirs our hearts. So I keep gesturing. 每当我尝试着将美付诸于文字时，我便极为深刻地意识到：文字的力量是多么有限。语言自有其灵动可人之处，可它却无法传达大千世界的绚烂。正如一方相片框不住一只鹰的迅捷，也再现不了一颗超

17、新星毁灭时的壮丽。伊娃的婚礼相册仅仅留存了一丝微弱的光芒，以见证婚礼现场的光鲜夺目。相片和文字能够做到的最多只是描摹那些瞬息即逝的、那些让我们心潮涌动的光芒。于是，我一直都在努力描摹。“All nature is meant to make us think of paradise,” Thomas Merton observed. Because the Creation puts on a nonstop show, beauty is free and inexhaustible, but we need training in order to perceive more than t

18、he most obvious kinds. Even 15 billion years or so after the Big Bang, echoes of that event still linger in the form of background radiation, only a few degrees above absolute zero. Just so, I believe, the experience of beauty is an echo of the order and power that permeate the universe. To measure

19、background radiation, we need subtle instruments; to measure beauty, we need alert intelligence and our five keen senses. 托马斯梅尔顿说过，“世间造物之神奇无不令人联想到天堂乐土”，因为创世纪本身就是一出永不落幕的表演；其间芳华之美悠游自在，无穷无尽。有些美显而易见，容易为我们所捕捉，但另一些则不然：若要欣赏她们，我们得付出一点努力。宇宙大爆炸在一百五十多亿年后的今天仍余波未平，爆炸当时所释放的能量（即使这些能量看起来似乎微不足道）仍以背景辐射现象的形式存在着。由此，我得出

20、一个观点：人类对美的体验中暗含着秩序和力量的影子，而这些秩序和力量充斥着整个宇宙空间。测量背景辐射，我们需要精密仪器；而衡量美，则需要动用我们的聪慧和所有敏锐的感官。 supernova: 超新星，一种罕见的天文现象，表现为一恒星中的绝大部分物质爆炸后，产生能放射极大能量的极为明亮而存在时间极短的物体。 Thomas Merton: 默顿，托马斯1915-1968美国天主教教士和作家，其作品主要是关于当代宗教和世俗生活的，包括 七重山（1948年）和 无人为孤岛（1955年）。 the Big Bang: 创世大爆炸按照大爆炸理论，标志宇宙形成的宇宙爆炸。(6) background radi

21、ation: 背景辐射,又名3K宇宙背景辐射，是60年代天文学上的四大发现之一，它是由美国射电天文学家彭齐亚斯和威尔逊发现的。该学说认为，大爆炸之初，宇宙的温度高得惊人。随着宇宙膨胀的进行，其温度不断降低，到现在平均只有绝对温度度（相当于零下摄氏度）左右。 (7) absolute zero: 绝对零度在此温度下物质没有热能，相当于摄氏-273.15度或华氏-459.67度。Anyone with eyes can take delight in a face or a flower. You need training, however, to perceive the beauty in

22、mathematics or physics or chess, in the architecture of a tree, the design of a birds wing, or the shiver of breath through a flute. For most of human history, the training has come from elders who taught the young how to pay attention. By paying attention, we learn to savor all sorts of patterns, f

23、rom quantum mechanics to patchwork quilts. This predilection brings with it a clear evolutionary advantage, for the ability to recognize patterns helped our ancestors to select mates, find food, avoid predators. But the same advantage would apply to all species, and yet we alone compose symphonies a

24、nd crossword puzzles, carve stone into statues, map time and space. 任何人都能在一颦一笑，一花一草中体验快乐。但是，发现数学之美、物理之绝、象棋之妙的眼睛并不是与生俱来，而欣赏树木形态、鸟翼构造、或是悠扬笛声的心灵也非浑然自成。我们需要点拨和引领。纵观历史传承，这样的点拨和引领往往来自长者，籍此，年轻人学会专注；因为专注，我们领略到万千形态的美，无论是量子力学中精妙的理论，还是棉被上漂亮的拼花图案。正是出于对美的强烈偏爱，才使得人类在物种进化的追逐比拼中处于上风。因为人类能够辨识出美的事物，而我们的祖先则因循这一标准选择伴侣，

25、寻找食物，躲避敌人。如果自然界中所有的物种都拥有发现美的能力，那么它们都将在进化过程中称霸一方。然而，惟独人类在演变中独占鳌头：我们谱写交响曲，创造字谜游戏；在我们的手中，顽石诞生为雕像，时空归依为坐标。Have we merely carried our animal need for shrewd perceptions to an absurd extreme? Or have we stumbled onto a deep congruence between the structure of our minds and the structure of the universe? 这

26、一切究竟来源于何？仅仅是我们将本能的敏锐感知力推向了荒谬的极致，还是我们不经意间摸索到了扎根于人类思想和苍茫万物间那深刻的一致性？ I am persuaded the latter is true. I am convinced theres more to beauty than biology, more than cultural convention. It flows around and through us in such abundance, and in such myriad forms, as to exceed by a wide margin any mere ev

27、olutionary need. Which is not to say that beauty has nothing to do with survival: I think it has everything to do with survival. Beauty feeds us from the same source that created us.我相信后者是正确的。我坚信美不仅仅存在于生物学和文化习俗中。美我们身边流淌，充盈、润泽着我们的心田；而其量之充沛，形态之多变已经远远超越了进化本身的需要。我这样说并不意味着美和生存毫无干系；恰恰相反，我相信美和生存之间有着千丝万缕的联系

28、。如果说是自然造就了我们，那么，是美通过自然滋养了我们。It reminds us of the shaping power that reaches through the flower stem and through our own hands. It restores our faith in the generosity of nature. By giving us a taste of the kinship between our own small minds and the great Mind of the Cosmos, beauty reassures us that

29、 we are exactly and wonderfully made for life on this glorious planet, in this magnificent universe. I find in that affinity a profound source of meaning and hope. A universe so prodigal of beauty may actually need us to notice and respond, may need our sharp eyes and brimming hearts and teeming min

30、ds, in order to close the circuit of Creation.无论是一朵花或是一双手，都让我们联想到美的创造力量。美让我们重拾信念-相信自然对于我们的无私恩惠与慷慨。美在人类渺小的心灵和宇宙伟大的精魂之间，化身为一座沟通的桥梁，并以此让我们不再怀疑：在这片恢宏的宇宙中，在这颗璀璨的星球上，人类的存在实为天工之作，神明之意。宇宙和人类对于美的共识，给予我生存的意义与希望。我们的宇宙中，美无处不在；她等待着我们敏锐的眼睛、充实的心灵，和泉涌般的智慧，去发现美，去回应美，由此成全造物的圆满。译者注：本文为美国当代作家司各特罗素桑达（Scott Russell Sande

31、r，1945-）所写。桑达出生于美国田纳西州(Tennessee)的孟菲斯(Memphis)。1963年，他就读于布朗大学(Brown University), 其后，又就读于剑桥大学（Cambridge University）并获得文学博士。1971年，他携妻子(就是本文一开始提到的Ruth，而Eva则是作者的女儿)迁往印地安那州(Indiana)的布鲁明顿(Bloomington), 并在那里的印地安那大学(Indiana University)任教至今。印地安那的自然风光给予他创作的灵感，他在作品中对于自然的生动细致描写充分体现出他对环境的关注。本文选自他新近出版的作品寻找希望（Hunt

32、ing for Hope）。（编辑：李吉琴）The Literature of Knowledge and the Literature of Power byThomas De Quincey知识文学与力量文学托 马斯昆西What is it that we mean by literature? Popularly, and amongst the thoughtless, it is held to include everything that is printed in a book. Little logic is required to disturb that definiti

33、on. The most thoughtless person is easily made aware that in the idea of literature one essential element is some relation to a general and common interest of manso that what applies only to a local, or professional, or merely personal interest, even though presenting itself in the shape of a book,

34、will not belong to Literature. So far the definition is easily narrowed; and it is as easily expanded. For not only is much that takes a station in books not literature; but inversely, much that really is literature never reaches a station in books. The weekly sermons of Christendom, that vast pulpi

35、t literature which acts so extensively upon the popular mindto warn, to uphold, to renew, to comfort, to alarmdoes not attain the sanctuary of libraries in the ten-thousandth part of its extent. The Drama againas, for instance, the finest of Shakespeares plays in England, and all leading Athenian pl

36、ays in the noontide of the Attic stageoperated as a literature on the public mind, and were (according to the strictest letter of that term) published through the audiences that witnessed their representation some time before they were published as things to be read; and they were published in this

37、scenical mode of publication with much more effect than they could have had as books during ages of costly copying or of costly printing.我们所说的“文学”是什么呢？人们，尤其是对此欠考虑者，普遍会认为：文学包括印在书本中的一切。可这种定义无需多少理由便可被推翻。最缺乏思考的人也很容易明白，“文学”这一概念中有个基本要素，即文学或多或少都与人类普遍而共同的兴趣有关；因此，那些仅适用于某一局部、某一行业或仅仅处于个人兴趣的作品，即便以书的形式面世，也不该属于“文

38、学”。就此而论，文学之定义很容易变窄，而它同样也不难拓宽。因为不仅有许多跻身于书卷之列的文字并非文学作品，而且与之相反，不少真正的文学著作却未曾付梓成书。譬如基督教世界每星期的布道，这种篇什浩繁且对民众精神影响极广的讲坛文学，这种对世人起告戒、鼓励、振奋、安抚或警示作用的布道文学，最终能进入经楼书馆的尚不及其万分之一。此外还有戏剧，如英国莎士比亚最优秀的剧作，以及雅典戏剧艺术鼎盛时期的全部主流剧作，都曾作为文学作品对公众产生过影响。这些作品在作为读物出版之前，已通过观看其演出的观众而“出版”了（这正是“出版”一词最严格的意义）。在抄写或印刷都非常昂贵的年代，通过舞台形式“出版”这些剧作远比将它

39、们出版成书效果更佳。Books, therefore, do not suggest an idea coextensive and interchangeable with the idea of Literature; since much literature, scenic, forensic, or didactic (as from lecturers and public orators), may never come into books, and much that does come into books may connect itself with no litera

40、ry interest. But a far more important correction, applicable to the common vague idea of literature, is to be sought not so much in a better definition of literature as in a sharper distinction of the two functions which it fulfills. In that great social organ which, collectively, we call literature

41、, there may be distinguished two separate offices that may blend and often do so, but capable, severally, of a severe insulation, and naturally fitted for reciprocal repulsion. There is, first, the literature of knowledge; and, secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first isto teach;

42、 the function of the second isto move: the first is a rudder; the second, an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy. Remotely, it

43、may travel towards an object seated in what Lord Bacon calls dry light; but, proximately, it does and must operateelse it ceases to be a literature of poweron and through that humid light which clothes itself in the mists and glittering iris of human passions, desires, and genial emotions. Men have

44、so little reflected on the higher functions of literature as to find it a paradox if one should describe it as a mean or subordinate purpose of books to give information. But this is a paradox only in the sense which makes it honorable to be paradoxical. Whenever we talk in ordinary language of seek

45、ing information or gaining knowledge, we understand the words as connected with something of absolute novelty. But it is the grandeur of all truth which can occupy a very high place in human interests that it is never absolutely novel to the meanest of minds: it exists eternally by way of germ or la

46、tent principle in the lowest as in the highest, needing to be developed, but never to be planted. To be capable of transplantation is the immediate criterion of a truth that ranges on a lower scale. Besides which, there is a rarer thing than truthnamely, power, or deep sympathy with truth. What is t

47、he effect, for instance, upon society, of children? By the pity, by the tenderness, and by the peculiar modes of admiration, which connect themselves with the helplessness, with the innocence, and with the simplicity of children, not only are the primal affections strengthened and continually renewe

48、d, but the qualities which are dearest in the sight of heaventhe frailty, for instance, which appeals to forbearance, the innocence which symbolizes the heavenly, and the simplicity which is most alien from the worldlyare kept up in perpetual remembrance, and their ideals are continually refreshed. A purpose of the same nature is answered by the higher literature, viz. the literature of power. What do you learn from Paradise Lost? Nothing at all. What do you learn from a cookery book? Something new, something that you did not know before, in every paragraph. But would you therefore