英语自考本科高级英语笔记-上册-Lesson Nine

Lesson Nine The Trouble with Television Words and Expressions

Text Explanation

1 A prominent anchorman warns of TV's adverse effect on America's culture.

An anchorman is a person who coordinates a broadcast usually by commenting and introducing reports from correspondents from different cities, countries or other areas.

2…by the age of 20 you will have been exposed to at least 20,000 hours of televison.

…by the age of 20, you will have watched television at least 20,000 hours.

Note: by + time, 句子的谓语部分多用将来完成时。

expose to: leave uncovered or unprotected 暴露于

The soldiers were exposed to the enemy's gunfire.

3Calculat for a moment what could be done with even part of those hours.

计算一下，如果只拿出这些时间的一部分，我们可以做些什么呢？could be down 是虚拟语气

4 a bachelor's degree

学士学位

5If it appealed to you…

If it was interesting to you…

6you could be reading Homer in the original Greek or Dostoyevsky in Russian.

you could be reading Homer's work written in the original Greek or Dostoyevsky's novels in Russian instead of their English translations.

7The trouble with television is that it discourages concentration.

The trouble with television is that it prevents us from concentrating on what we are doing.

8It sells us instant gratification.

TV makes us accept instant pleasure and satisfaction it provides.

9It diverts us only to divert, to make the time pass without pain.

TV programs entertain us so that we just want to entertain ourselves instead of doing something serious, and let our time pass without pain.

10Television's variety becomes a narcotic, not a stimulus.

Television's various programs become a narcotic that drugs our mind, instead of a stimulus that quickens our thought.

11Its serial, kaleidoscopic exposures force us to follow its lead.

TV's constant changing pictures shownone after another force us to follow its lead.

12the spans alloted are on the order of minutes or seconds…

The length of time given to each item is just about a few minutes or seconds.

on the order of: about, approximately

13But it has come to be regarded as a given, as inherent in the medium itself; as an imperative, as though General Sarnoff, or one of the other august pioneers of video, had bequeathed to us tablets of stone commanding that nothing in television shall ever require more than a few moments' concentration.

但它被认为是宣传媒体所特有的，内在的性质，是一种职责，就像萨尔诺夫将军或电视上其他的威严的先锋遗留给我们的石碑，命令电视中任何节目都不得需要片刻以上的注意力。

had bequeathed to us tablets of stone commanding that…

hand handed down to us the fast rule requiring that…

14In its place that is fine.

If the appeal to the short attention span is used properly, there is nothing wrong with it.

15Who can quarrel with a medium that so brilliantly packages escapist entertainment as a mass-marketing tool?

把逃避现实的娱乐精彩地包装成一个大的推销工具，谁又会和这样的媒体争辩呢？

16In the case of news, this practice, in my view, results in inefficient communication.

From my point of view, so far as news is concerned, this practice brings about inefficient exchange of information.

result in: bring about 导致，带来

The dispute between two countries resulted in war.

17Much of it is what has been aptly described as "machine-gunning with scraps".

Much of the news program is only a rapid broadcast of unrelated bits of information, just like firing a machine-gun with broken pieces. And that is an appropriate description of it.

18I believe that TV's appeal to the short attention span is not only inefficient communication but decivilizing as well.

I believe that TV's appeal to the short attention span is not only inefficient communication but reducing the level of civilization as well.

19…that verbal precision is an anachronism.

…that accuracy in words is something out of date now.

20…some 30 million adult Americans are "functionally illiterate"…

…about 30 million adult Americans are unable to cope with everyday reading and writing demands of their society…

21…but we are falling further and further short of attaining it.

…but we are getting further away from achieving literacy.

22Yet its dominating communications instrument, its principal form of national linkage, is one that sells neat resolution to human problems that usually have no neat resolutions.

但是占主导地位的传播工具，全国联系的主要形式，向通常没有简洁明了解决方法的人类问题出售简洁明了的解决方法。

23It is all symbolized in my mind by the hugely successful art form that television has made central to the culture…

电视成为文化中心这一成功的艺术形式深深印在我的脑海中

24When before in human history has so much humanity collectively surrendered so much of its leisure to one toy, one mass diversion?

在人类历史上，以前什么时候有这么多人把休闲时光花在一件玩具上，花在一种大型娱乐上呢？

Here humanity means mankind in general and all the people in the United States in particular. Both one toy and one mass diversion refer to the same thingg-television. The whole sentence means that never before in human history have so many people collectively spent their spare time doing nothing but watching TV.

25…forced feeding on trivial fare is not itself a trival matter.

让人们接受无价值的东西，这本身就不是一件小事。

The original meaning of fored feeding is feeding by force when someone does not feel like eating. Here it means forcing people to accept thing. The sentence means that it is not in itself a small and unimportant matter to force people to accept things of little worth.

26I fear that the effects on our habits of mind, our language, our tolerance for effort, and our appetite for complexity are only dimly preceived.

我担心人们只是隐约认识到它对我们思维习惯、语言、努力的耐性以及复杂事物的兴趣的影响。

Television reduces our ability to endure hard workand lessens our desire for tackling complex problems, but these effects are only vaguely understood.

27The dullet, the least gifted of us can achieve things that seem miraculous to those who never concentrate on anything.

concentrate on: focus attention on 集中注意力

You should concentrate on listening to the teacher in class.

28The surest way to avoid doing so is to keep everything brief.

avoid doing something：避免做某事

No one can avoid making mistakes in his life.

29That visual stimulation is a substitute for thought.

substitute for: use as a substitute 代替

They use tea as a substitute for beer to celebrate.

30When before has virtually an entire nation surrendered itself wholesale to a media for selling?

以前什么时候把整个国家都交给新闻媒体呢？

surrender oneself to: give way to 向……投降

We advised the burglar to surrender himself to the police.