大学英语综合教程4课文翻译

UNIT3-1


Harvey Mackay, who runs his own company, often interviews applicants for jobs. Here he lets us into the secret of what qualities an employer is looking for, and gives four tips on what can help you to stand out from the crowd.
自己经营公司的哈维·麦凯经常对求职者进行面试。文中他告诉我们关于雇主看重什么样品质的秘密，并提出4点建议，帮助你显得比众人突出。


Get the Job You Want

Harvey B. Mackay


1 I run a manufacturing company with about 350 employees, and I often do the interviewing and hiring myself. I like talking to potential salespeople, because they're our link to customers.


得到你想要的工作

哈维·B·麦凯

我经营着一家有350名左右员工的制造公司，我本人常常要对求职者进行面试，决定是否聘用。我喜欢与可能成为营业员的人交谈，因为他们会是我们与顾客联系的纽带。
　
2 When a recent college graduate came into my office not too long ago looking for a sales job, I asked him what he had done to prepare for the interview. He said he'd read something about us somewhere.
不久前一个新近毕业的大学生到我办公室谋求一份销售工作。我问他为这次面试做过哪些准备。他说他在什么地方看到过有关本公司的一些情况。

3 Had he called anyone at Mackay Envelope Corporation to find out more about us? No. Had he called our suppliers? Our customers? No.
他有没有给麦凯信封公司的人打过电话，好了解更多有关我们的情况？没打过。他有没有给我们的供应厂商打过电话？还有我们的客户？都没有。

4 Had he checked with his university to see if there were any graduates working at Mackay whom he could interview? Had he asked any friends to grill him in a mock interview? Did he go to the library to find newspaper clippings on us?
他可曾在就读的大学里查问过有没有校友在本公司就职，以便向他们了解一些情况?他可曾请朋友向他提问，对他进行模拟面试？可曾去图书馆查找过有关本公司的剪报？

5 Did he write a letter beforehand to tell us about himself, what he was doing to prepare for the interview and why he'd be right for the job? Was he planning to follow up the interview with another letter indicating his eagerness to join us? Would the letter be in our hands within 24 hours of the meeting, possibly even hand-delivered? 他事先有没有写封信来介绍自己，告诉我们自己为这次面试在做哪些准备，自己何以能胜任此项工作？面试之后他是否打算再写一封信，表明自己加盟本公司的诚意？这封信会不会在面试后的24小时之内送到我们手上，也许甚至是亲自送来？

6 The answer to every question was the same: no. That left me with only one other question: How well prepared

would this person be if he were to call on a prospective customer for us? I already knew the answer.
他对上述每一个问题的回答全都一样：没有。这样我就只剩一个问题要问了：如果此人代表本公司去见可能成为我们客户的人，他准备工作会做得怎样？答案不言自明。


7 As I see it, there are four keys to getting hired:
在笔者看来，如欲被聘用，应注意四个要诀：

8 1. Prepare to win. "If you miss one day of practice, you notice the difference," the saying goes among musicians. "If you miss two days of practice, the critics notice the difference. If you miss three days of practice, the audience notices the difference."
1. 准备去赢。“一日不练，自己知道，”音乐家中有这样的说法。"两日不练，音乐评论家知道。三日不练，观众知道。"

9 When we watch a world-class musician or a top athlete, we don't see the years of preparation that enabled him or her to become great. The Michael Jordans of the world have talent, yes, but they're also the first ones on and the last ones off the basketball court. The same preparation applies in every form of human endeavor. If you want the job, you have to prepare to win it.
我们在观看世界级音乐家或顶尖运动员的表演时，看到的并不是使他们变成出类拔萃人物的长年苦练。世界上诸如迈克尔·乔丹这样的顶尖人物无疑具有非凡才能，但他们在篮球场上也是第一个到，最后一个走。同样的苦练适用于人类的各项活动。若想被聘用，就要准备去赢。

10 When I graduated from college, the odds were good that I would have the same job for the rest of my life. And that's how it worked out. But getting hired is no longer a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Employment experts believe that today's graduates could face as many as ten job changes during their careers.
我大学毕业时，我极有可能终身从事同一个工作。当时情况也的确如此。但如今已不再是一生被聘去做一个工作了。指导就业的专家认为，今天的大学毕业生在他们的生涯中可能会经历多达10次的职业变动。

11 That may sound like a lot of pressure. But if you're prepared, the pressure is on the other folks -- the ones who haven't done their homework.
听上去似乎压力不小。然而，如果你做了准备，压力就是别人的—那些没做准备的人.

12 You won't get every job you go after. The best salespeople don't close every sale. Michael Jordan makes barely half of his field-goal attempts. But it takes no longer to prepare well for one interview than to wander in half-prepared for five. And your prospects for success will be many times better.
你不可能得到你想要的每份工作。最好的售货人员也不可能每次都成交。迈克尔·乔丹投篮命中率勉强

过半。但认真准备一次面试的时间不会多于马马虎虎准备五次面试的时间，而你成功的可能性要多得多。

13 2. Never stop learning. Recently I played a doubles tennis match paired with a 90-year-old. I wondered how things would work out; I shouldn't have. We hammered our opponents 6-1, 6-1!
2. 永不中断学习。最近我和一位90高龄的老者搭档打双人网球。我琢磨着那会是什么结局；可我的担心是多余的。我们以两个6:1击败对手。

14 As we were switching sides to play a third set, he said to me, "Do you mind if I play the backhand court? I always like to work on my weaknesses." What a fantastic example of a person who has never stopped learning. Incidentally, we won the third set 6-1.
我们交换场地打第三局时，他对我说：“我打反手击球你不介意吧？我向来喜欢多练练自己的弱点。”好一个永不中断学习的精彩实例。顺便说一下，我们6:1赢了第三局。

15 As we walked off the court, my 90-year-old partner chuckled and said, "I thought you'd like to know about my number-one ranking in doubles in the United States in my age bracket, 85 and up!" He wasn't thinking 90; he wasn't even thinking 85. He was thinking number one.
走出赛场，我那90高龄的搭档笑着说：“你也许想知道我在85岁以上年龄段的美国网球双打排名第一！”他想的不是年届90，想的甚至也不是85岁高龄。他想的是第一。

16 You can do the same if you work on your weaknesses and develop your strengths. To be able to compete, you've got to keep learning all your life.
如果你努力克服自己的弱点，发挥自己的优势，你同样可以做得那么好。要有能力竞争，就得终生学习。

17 3. Believe in yourself, even when no one else does. Do you remember the four-minute mile? Athletes had been trying to do it for hundreds of years and finally decided it was physically impossible for humans. Our bone structure was all wrong, our lung power inadequate.
3. 相信自己，哪怕没人相信你。还记得那4分钟跑一英里的往事吗？几百年来，运动员们一直试图实现这一目标，最终人类的身体无法做到。我们的骨结构不适应，我们的肺活量跟不上。

18 Then one human proved the experts wrong. And, miracle of miracles, six weeks after Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile, John Landy beat Bannister's time by nearly two full seconds. Since then, close to eight hundred runners have broken the four-minute mile!
可是，有一个人证明那些专家错了。奇迹中的奇迹是，在罗杰·班尼斯特打破4分钟一英里的纪录6个星期之后，约翰·兰迪又以几乎快出整整2秒的成绩打破了班尼斯特的纪录。此后，有大约800多名运动员打破了4分钟一英里的记录。

19 Several years ago my da

ughter Mimi and I took a crack at running the New York Marathon. At the gun, 23,000 runners started -- and 21,244 finished. First place went to a Kenyan who completed the race in two hours, 11 minutes and one second. The 21,244th runner to finish was a Vietnam veteran. He did it in three days, nine hours and 37 minutes. With no legs, he covered 26.2 miles. After my daughter and I passed him in the first few minutes, we easily found more courage to finish ourselves.
几年前，我和女儿米米参加了纽约马拉松比赛。发令枪一响，23,000名运动员冲出起跑线—最后有21,244名运动员到达终点。第一名是一位以2小时11分钟零1秒跑完全程的肯尼亚人。第21,244名运动员是一位越战老兵。他用了3天9小时37分钟跑完全程。没有双腿的他坚持跑完了26.2英里。我和女儿在比赛的最初几分钟内超过了他，当时顿觉勇气倍增，一定要跑完全程。

20 Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't accomplish your goals. Who says you're not tougher, harder working and more able than your competition? You see, a goal is a dream with a deadline: in writing, measurable, identifiable, attainable.
别听旁人说你不能实现自己的目标。谁说你不比你的竞争对手更坚强、更努力、更能干？要知道，所谓目标就是有最后限期的梦想：写成文字，可测量，可确认，可实现21 4. Find a way to make a difference. In my opinion, the majority of New York cabdrivers are unfriendly, if not downright rude. Most of the cabs are filthy, and almost all of them sport an impenetrable, bulletproof partition. But recently I jumped into a cab at LaGuardia Airport and guess what? It was clean. There was beautiful music playing and no partition.
4. 想方设法显得与众不同。在我看来，纽约大多数的出租车司机即使不算无礼透顶，至少也是不友好的。车辆大都十分肮脏，几乎所有的车都触目地装有难以穿透的防弹隔离装置。可近日我在拉瓜迪亚机场跳上了一辆出租车，你猜怎么样？车子竟然干干净净。放着优美的音乐，而且没有隔离装置。

22 "Park Lane Hotel, please," I said to the driver. With a broad smile, he said, "Hi, my name is Wally," and he handed me a mission statement. A mission statement! It said he would get me there safely, courteously and on time.
“请到帕克街酒店，”我对司机说。他笑容满面地说：“你好，我叫沃利，”他说着递给我一份保证书。一份保证书！上面写着他将安全、礼貌、准时地将我送到目的地。

23 As we drove off, he held up a choice of newspapers and said, "Be my guest." He told me to help myself to the fruit in the basket on the back seat. He held up a cellular phone and said, "It's a dollar a minute if you'd like to make a call."
车开后，他拿出几份报纸说：“请随意翻阅。

”他还让我随意品尝后座篮子里的水果。接着他又拿出手机说：“您要是想打电话，每分钟1美元。”

24 Shocked, I blurted, "How long have you been practicing this?" He answered, "Three or four years."
我大吃一惊，脱口问道：“你这么做有多久了？”他回答说：“有三、四年了。”

25 "I know this is prying." I said, "but how much extra money do you earn in tips?"
“我知道不该问，”我说，“可是，你能多挣多少小费？”

26 "Between $12,000 and $14,000 a year!" he responded proudly.
“一年12,000到14,000美元左右，”他得意地回答说。

27 He doesn't know it, but he's my hero. He's living proof that you can always shift the odds in your favor.
他不知道他成了我心目中的英雄。他就是一个生动的例证，说明你总是可以争取到成功的机会。

28 My mentor, Curt Carlson, is the wealthiest man in Minnesota, owner of a hotel and travel company with sales in the neighborhood of $9 billion. I had to get to a meeting in New York one day, and Curt generously offered me a ride in his jet. It happened to be a day Minnesota was hit with one of the worst snowstorms in years. Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport was closed for the first time in decades.
我的良师益友柯特·卡尔森是明尼苏达州的首富，拥有一家酒店和旅行社，营业收入约达90亿美元。一次我要去纽约赴会，柯特慷慨地请我乘坐他的私人飞机。碰巧那天明尼苏达州遭受多年不遇的暴风雪袭击。明尼阿波利斯—圣保罗国际机场几十年来第一次关闭。

29 Then, though the storm continued to pound us, the airport opened a runway for small craft only. As we were taxiing down it to take off, Curt turned to me and said gleefully, "Look, Harvey, no tracks in the snow!"
虽然暴风雪仍在肆虐，机场还是特地为小型飞机清出了一条跑道。我们正在跑道上滑行准备起飞时，柯特转过头来兴奋地说：“看哪，哈维，雪地上没有痕迹啊！”

30 Curt Carlson, 70 years old at the time, rich beyond anyone's dreams, could still sparkle with excitement about being first.
柯特·卡尔森，当时年届70，富甲一方，竟然还会因为自己是第一个而如此兴奋。

31 From my standpoint, that's what it's all about. Prepare to win. Never stop learning. Believe in yourself, even when no one else does. Find a way to make a difference. Then go out and make your own tracks in the snow.
在我看来，这些正是关键之所在。准备去赢。永不中断学习。相信自己，哪怕没人相信你。想方设法显得与众不同。然后就出发，在雪地上留下你自己的足迹。








UNIT4-1




Is America going to decline like other great nations have before? The author thinks not,

arguing that the type of society being created in America is quite unlike any that has gone before it. Read what he has to say and see whether you agree.
美国是否会如同历史上其他强国一样走向衰亡？作者持否定观点，认为美国创建的社会模式不同于任何已出现的社会模式。读一读他的观点，看看你是否同意。


America as a Collage

Ryzsard Kapuscinski


1 The mere fact that America still attracts millions of people is evidence that it is not in decline. People aren't attracted to a place of decline. Signs of decline are sure to be found in a place as complex as America: debt, crime, the homeless, drugs, dropouts. But the main characteristic of America, the first and most enduring impression, is dynamism, energy, aggressiveness, forward movement.


美国大拼盘

里扎德·卡普钦斯基

仅看美国依然吸引着千百万人这一事实就足以证明美国并未衰落。人们不会被吸引到一个衰落的地方。在美国这样一个错综复杂的国家，当然能看到衰落的迹象，如债务、犯罪活动、无家可归者、吸毒、逃避现实社会的人。但美国的主要特征，亦即它给人的最初的、最持久的印象，却是充满活力、生机勃勃、不断进取、积极向上。
　
2 It is so hard to think of this nation in decline when you know that there are vast regions of the planet which are absolutely paralyzed, incapable of any improvement at all.
如果你知道世界上有广大地区完全处于瘫痪状态，无法取得任何进步时，那就难以想象这个国家在衰落。


3 It is difficult for me to agree with Paul Kennedy's thesis in The Rise and Fall of Great Powers that America must inevitably follow historical precedent. That's the way history used to be -- all powerful nations declined and gave way to other empires. But maybe there is another way to look at what is happening. I have a sense that what is going on here concerns much more than the fate of a nation.
我很难同意保罗·肯尼迪在《列强之兴衰》中的论点， 即美国将不可避免地重蹈历史覆辙。历史一直如此循环—强国衰落，为新兴的帝国所取代。但或许我们能从另外一个角度看待正在发生的一切。我有种感觉，这个国家正在发生的一切不仅仅关乎一国之命运。


4 It may be that the Euro-centered American nation is declining as it gives way to a new Pacific civilization that will include, but not be limited to, America. Historically speaking, America may not decline, but instead fuse with the Pacific culture to create a kind of vast Pacific collage, a mix of Hispanic and Asian cultures linked through the most modern communication technologies.
以欧洲为中心的美国或许是在衰落，正由一个新的太平洋文化所取代，这一文化包括但并不局限于美国。从历史的

角度来看，美国或许不会衰落，相反，它将与太平洋文化相融合，创建一种广泛的太平洋拼盘文化，一种依靠最现代的通讯技术连接的拉丁文化与亚洲文化的混合文化。

5 Traditional history has been a history of nations. But here, for the first time since the Roman Empire, there is the possibility of creating the history of a civilization. Now is the first chance on a new basis with new technologies to create a civilization of unprecedented openness and pluralism. A civilization of the polycentric mind. A civilization that leaves behind forever the ethnocentric, tribal mentality. The mentality of destruction. 传统意义上的历史一直是各个国家的历史。但在美国，自罗马帝国以来，首次出现了创建一个文化的历史的可能。现在第一次有了这样一个机遇，在新的基础上用新技术创建一个有着前所未有的开放性的多元文化。一个有着多种精神中心的文化。一个永远抛弃种族中心主义心态、部落心态的文化。那是一种破坏性的心态。

6 Los Angeles is a premonition of this new civilization.
洛杉矶就是这一新兴文化的先兆。

7 Linked more to the Third World and Asia than to the Europe of America's racial and cultural roots, Los Angeles and southern California will enter the twenty-first century as a multiracial and multicultural society. This is absolutely new. There is no previous example of a civilization that is being simultaneously created by so many races, nationalities, and cultures. This new type of cultural pluralism is completely unknown in the history of mankind.
洛杉矶以及南加州与第三世界和亚洲的联系要比与美国的民族、文化之根欧洲的联系密切，因此将以一个多民族、多元文化的社会进入21世纪。这是一种全新的现象。一个文化由如此之多的种族、民族和文化同时创建，这样的先例从未有过。这种新型的文化多元化在人类历史上闻所未闻。


8 America is becoming more plural every day because of the unbelievable facility of the new Third World immigrants to put a piece of their original culture inside of American culture. The notion of a "dominant" American culture is changing every moment. It is incredible coming to America to find you are somewhere else -- in Seoul, in Taipei, in Mexico City. You can travel inside this Korean culture right on the streets of Los Angeles. Inhabitants of this vast city become internal tourists in the place of their own residence.
由于来自第三世界的新移民所具有的将本族文化融入美国文化的令人难以置信的本领，美国正变得越来越多元化。美国有“主导”文化的概念时刻在改变。来到美国，你会不可思议地发现自己身在别地—来到了汉城，台北，墨西哥城。你在洛杉矶街头行走， 就可以感受到

韩国的文化氛围。这个大城市的居民成了自己居住地的游客。


9 There are large communities of Laotians, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Mexicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Iranians, Japanese, Koreans, Armenians, Chinese. We find here Little Taipei, Little Saigon, Little Tokyo, Koreatown, Little Central America, the Iranian neighborhood in Westwood, the Armenian community in Hollywood, and the vast Mexican-American areas of East Los Angeles. Eighty-one languages, few of them European, are spoken in the elementary school system of the city of Los Angeles.
这里有规模很大的社区，住着老挝人、越南人、柬埔寨人、墨西哥人、萨尔瓦多人、危地马拉人、伊朗人、日本人、韩国人、亚美尼亚人以及中国人。这里我们能找到小台北、小西贡、小东京、韩国城、小中美洲、威斯特伍德的伊朗人社区、好莱坞的亚美尼亚人社区，以及东洛杉矶墨西哥裔美国人范围很大的居住区。洛杉矶市的小学系统共使用81种语言，其中鲜有欧洲语言。


10 This transformation of American culture anticipates the general trend in the composition of mankind. Ninety percent of the immigrants to this city are from the Third World. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, 90 percent of the world's population will be dark-skinned; the white race will be no more than 11 percent of all human beings living on our planet.
美国文化的这一变化预示着人类构成的普遍趋势。洛杉矶市90%的移民来自第三世界。到21世纪初，90%的世界人口将是深肤色的；所有生活在地球上的人中，白人不会超过11%。

11 Something that can only be seen in America: In the landscaped, ultraclean high-technology parks of northern Orange County there is a personal computer company that seven years ago did not exist. There were only strawberry fields where the plant is. Now, there is a $500 million company with factories in Hong Kong and Taiwan as well.
只有在美国才会出现这种情况：在北部桔县环境作过美化的、超净的高科技园区，有家7年前尚不存在的个人电脑公司。公司的所在地那时还是草莓地。如今，这是一家有着5亿美元资产、在香港和台湾都设有工厂的大公司。

12 The company was founded by three young immigrants -- a Pakistani Muslim and two Chinese from Hong Kong. They only became citizens in 1984. Each individual is now probably worth $30 million.
这家公司由3位年轻的移民创办—一位巴基斯坦穆斯林和两位来自香港的中国人。他们1984年才成为美国公民。如今他们每个人的身价都可能值3千万美元。

13 Walking through this company we see only young, dark faces -- Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Mexicans -- and the most advanced technology. The culture of the work force is a mix of Hispanic-Catholic family values and

Asian-Confucian group loyalty. Employment notices are never posted; hiring is done through the network of families that live in southern California. Not infrequently, employees ask to work an extra twenty hours a week to earn enough money to help members of their extended family buy their first home.
在这家公司走走，我们看到的都是年轻的深肤色面孔—越南人、柬埔寨人、老挝人和墨西哥人—还有最先进的技术。员工文化混合着拉丁美洲天主教的家庭价值观念和亚洲儒家的效忠集体的观念。招聘从来不张贴告示；用人都是通过在南加州居住的家庭网络完成的。雇员常常会要求一周加班20小时，好多赚钱帮助大家庭成员购买房屋。

14 In Los Angeles, traditional Third World cultures are, for the first time, fusing with the most modern mentalities and technologies.
在洛杉矶，第三世界国家的传统文化首次与最先进的理念和技术相融合。


15 Usually, the contact between developed and underdeveloped worlds has the character of exploitation -- just taking people's labor and resources and giving them nothing. And the border between races has usually been a border of tension, of crisis. Here we see a revolution that is constructive.
发达国家与不发达国家的关系通常有剥削榨取这一特点—掠夺劳力和资源，不给任何回报。种族交界处往往是关系紧张的交界处，是危机的交界处。而在这里，我们看到了一场建设性的革命。


16 This Pacific Rim civilization being created is a new relationship between development and underdevelopment. Here, there is openness. There is hope. And a future. There is a multicultural crowd. But it is not fighting. It is cooperating, peacefully competing, building. For the first time in four hundred years of relations between the nonwhite Western world and the white Western world, the general character of the relationship is cooperation and construction, not exploitation, not destruction.
这一创建中的环太平洋文化是发达与不发达之间一种新型的关系。这里有开放精神。这里有希望，有前途。这里是一个多元文化的群体，但没有冲突，而是进行合作，进行和平竞争，进行建设。在非白种人的西方世界与白种人的西方世界400多年的关系史上，双方关系的基本特性第一次表现为合作与建设，而不是剥削，不是破坏。

17 Unlike any other place on the planet, Los Angeles shows us the potential of development once the Third World mentality merges with an open sense of possibility, a culture of organization, a Western conception of time.
不同于世界上任何其他地方，洛杉矶向我们表明，第三世界的心态一旦与充满机会的开放精神相融合，与有条有理的文化相融合，与西方的时间观念相融合，就会具有发展的

潜能。

18 For the destructive, paralyzed world where I have spent most of my life, it is important, simply, that such a possibility as Los Angeles exists.
对那个我在其间度过大半生的破坏性、停滞不前的社会来说，说实在话，存在着洛杉矶这样一种发展前景意义十分重大。

19 To adjust the concept of time is the most difficult thing. It is a key revolution of development.
调整时间观念最为困难。这是发展的一个关键变革。

20 Western culture is a culture of arithmetical time. Time is organized by the clock. In non-Western culture, time is a measure between events. We arrange a meeting at nine o'clock but the man doesn't show up. We become anxious, offended. He doesn't understand our anxiety because for him, the moment he arrives is the measure of time. He is on time when he arrives.
西方文化是计算时间的文化。时间由时钟来安排。在非西方文化中，时间是以事件与事件之间的间隔来计算。我们安排在9点开会，但人没来。我们焦急不安，感到很生气。他无法理解我们为何那么焦急，因为对他而言，他到达的一刻才算时间。他到了，就是准时了。

21 In 1924, the Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos wrote a book dreaming of the possibility that, in the future, all races on the planet would merge into one type of man. This type of man is being borne in Los Angeles, in the cultural sense if not the anthropological sense. A vast mosaic of different races, cultures, religions, and moral habits are working toward one common aim. From the perspective of a world submerged in religious, ethnic, and racial conflict, this harmonious cooperation is something unbelievable. It is truly striking.
1924年，墨西哥哲学家荷塞·伐斯冈萨雷斯在他的一本著作中，梦想着未来地球上所有不同种族都融合成一种类型人的可能性。在文化的意义上，即便不是在人种的意义上，这样一种类型的人正在洛杉矶诞生。由不同种族、不同文化、不同宗教和不同道德行为组成的巨大合成体正奔向一个共同的目标。世界充满着宗教的、种族的、民族的冲突，从这个角度来看，这种融洽的合作令人难以置信。的确令人瞩目。

22 What is the common aim that harmonizes competing cultures in one place?
使得在一个地区的相互竞争的文化和谐共存的共同目标是什么呢？

23 It is not only the better living standard. What attracts immigrants to America is the essential characteristic of American culture: the chance to try. There is a combination of two things that are important: culture and space. The culture allows you to try to be somebody -- to find yourself, your place, your status. And there is space not only in a geographical sense, but in the sense of opportunity, of social mobility. In societies that

are in crisis and in societies which are stagnant -- or even in those which are stable -- there is no chance to try. You are defined in advance. Destiny has already sentenced you.
目标不仅仅是更高的生活水准。吸引移民前来美国的是美国文化的主要特性：有尝试的机会。文化与空间这两个重要方面结合了起来。文化使你得以想办法出人头地—去发现自我，找到自己的位置、自己的地位。还有空间，不仅仅是地理意义上的空间，更是指机会，指社会身份的流动性。在充满危机的社会中，在停滞不前的社会中—甚至在那些稳定的社会中—没有尝试的机会。你一生已被预先决定。命运已经将你注定。


24 This is what unites the diverse races and cultures in America. If the immigrant to America at first fails, he always thinks, "I will try again." If he had failed in the old society, he would be discouraged and pessimistic, accepting the place that was given to him. In America, he's thinking, "I will have another chance, I will try again." That keeps him going. He's full of hope.
正是这一点，使得美国的不同种族和文化连结在一起。如果美国移民开始时遭遇失败，他总是想：“我要再试一下。”如果他在原来的社会中遭遇失败，他就会失去信心，变得悲观失望，接受自己所处的地位。在美国，他想的是：“我还会有机会，我还要试一下。”这使他坚持下去。他充满了希望。






UNIT6-1



As the pace of life in today's world grows ever faster, we seem forever on the go. With so much to do and so little time to do it in, how are we to cope? Richard Tomkins sets about untangling the problem and comes up with an answer.
随着当今世界生活节奏日益加快，我们似乎一直在不停奔忙。事情那么多，时间却那么少，我们该怎么办？里查德·汤姆金斯着手解决这一问题，并提出了建议。


Old Father Time Becomes a Terror

Richard Tomkins


1 Once upon a time, technology, we thought, would make our lives easier. Machines were expected to do our work for us, leaving us with ever-increasing quantities of time to waste away on idleness and pleasure.


时间老人成了可怕的老人

理查德·汤姆金斯

从前，我们以为技术发展会使我们的生活变得更安逸。那时我们觉得机器会替代我们工作，我们则有越来越多的时间休闲娱乐。

2 But instead of liberating us, technology has enslaved us. Innovations are occurring at a bewildering rate: as many now arrive in a year as once arrived in a millennium. And as each invention arrives, it eats further into our time.
但技术发展没有把我们解放出来，而是使我们成为奴隶。新技术纷至沓来，令人目不暇接：一年涌现的技术创新相当于以前一千年。而每一项新

发明问世，就进一步吞噬我们的光阴。


3 The motorcar, for example, promised unimaginable levels of personal mobility. But now, traffic in cities moves more slowly than it did in the days of the horse-drawn carriage, and we waste our lives stuck in traffic jams.
比如，汽车曾使我们希望个人出行会方便得让人难以想象。可如今，城市车辆运行得比马车时代还要慢，我们因交通堵塞而困在车内，徒然浪费生命。

4 The aircraft promised new horizons, too. The trouble is, it delivered them. Its very existence created a demand for time-consuming journeys that we would never previously have dreamed of undertaking -- the transatlantic shopping expedition, for example, or the trip to a convention on the other side of the world.
飞机也曾有可能为我们拓展新天地。问题是，飞机提供了新的天地。其存在本身产生了对耗时的长途旅行的需求，这种旅行，如越洋购物，或远道前往地球的另一半参加会议，以前我们是根本无法想象的。

5 In most cases, technology has not saved time, but enabled us to do more things. In the home, washing machines promised to free women from having to toil over the laundry. In reality, they encouraged us to change our clothes daily instead of weekly, creating seven times as much washing and ironing. Similarly, the weekly bath has been replaced by the daily shower, multiplying the hours spent on personal grooming. 在大多数情况下，技术发展并未节省时间，而是使我们得以做更多的事。在家里，洗衣机可望使妇女摆脱繁重的洗衣劳作。但事实上，它们促使我们每天，而不是每星期换一次衣服，这就使熨洗衣物的工作量变成原来的7倍。同样地，每周一次的沐浴为每日一次的淋浴所代替，使得用于个人穿着打扮的时间大大增加。


6 Meanwhile, technology has not only allowed work to spread into our leisure time -- the laptop-on-the-beach syndrome -- but added the new burden of dealing with faxes, e-mails and voicemails. It has also provided us with the opportunity to spend hours fixing software glitches on our personal computers or filling our heads with useless information from the Internet.
与此同时，技术发展不仅听任工作侵入我们的闲暇时间――带着便携式电脑去海滩综合症――而且添加了收发传真、电子邮件和语音邮件这些新的负担。技术发展还向我们提供机会，在个人电脑上一连几小时处理软件故障，或把因特网上那些无用的信息塞进自己的大脑。


7 Technology apart, the Internet points the way to a second reason why we feel so time-pressed: the information explosion.
除去技术发展，因特网指出了我们为何感到时间如此紧迫的第二个原因：信息爆炸。

8 A couple of centuries ago, nearly

all the world's accumulated learning could be contained in the heads of a few philosophers. Today, those heads could not hope to accommodate more than a tiny fraction of the information generated in a single day.
几个世纪以前，人类积累的几乎所有知识都能装在若干哲人的大脑之中。如今，这些大脑休想容纳下一天中产生的新信息中的小小一部分。

9 News, facts and opinions pour in from every corner of the world. The television set offers 150 channels. There are millions of Internet sites. Magazines, books and CD-ROMs proliferate.
各种消息、事实和见解从世界各个角落大量涌入。电视机能收到150个频道。因特网网址多达千百万。杂志、书籍和光盘只读存储器的数量也激增。


10 "In the whole world of scholarship, there were only a handful of scientific journals in the 18th century, and the publication of a book was an event," says Edward Wilson, honorary curator in entomology at Harvard University's museum of comparative zoology. "Now, I find myself subscribing to 60 or 70 journals or magazines just to keep me up with what amounts to a minute proportion of the expanding frontiers of scholarship."
“在18世纪，整个国际学术界总共只有屈指可数的几家科学刊物，出版一本书是件了不起的大事，”哈佛大学比较动物学博物馆昆虫馆名誉馆长爱德华·威尔逊说。“如今，我本人就订阅了60或70种期刊杂志，以便自己跟上不断拓展的学术前沿中一个微小部分的发展动向。”


11 There is another reason for our increased time stress levels, too: rising prosperity. As ever-larger quantities of goods and services are produced, they have to be consumed. Driven on by advertising, we do our best to oblige: we buy more, travel more and play more, but we struggle to keep up. So we suffer from what Wilson calls discontent with super abundance -- the confusion of endless choice.
我们产生日益加重的时间紧迫感还有一个原因：日渐繁荣富足。由于生产的物品与提供的服务越来越多，我们必须去消费。在广告的推动下，我们努力照办：我们多多购买多多旅游多多玩儿，但得尽力坚持下去。于是我们就深受威尔逊所谓的对极大富足不满之苦――即无休止的选择所造成的困惑。


12 Of course, not everyone is overstressed. "It's a convenient shorthand to say we're all time-starved, but we have to remember that it only applies to, say, half the population," says Michael Willmott, director of the Future Foundation, a London research company.
当然，并非人人感到时间过度紧迫。“说我们都缺少时间只是随意讲讲，我们应该记住，这种说法大约只适用于一半人，”未来基金公司――一家伦敦研究公司――的经理迈克尔·威尔莫特说。


13 "You've got peop

le retiring early, you've got the unemployed, you've got other people maybe only peripherally involved in the economy who don't have this situation at all. If you're unemployed, your problem is that you've got too much time, not too little."
“有些人早早退休了，有些人失业了，有些人或许只与经济活动沾点边，根本不会有这种情况。如果失业了，那你的问题就是时间太多，而不是太少。”


14 Paul Edwards, chairman of the London-based Henley Centre forecasting group, points out that the feeling of pressures can also be exaggerated, or self-imposed. "Everyone talks about it so much that about 50 percent of unemployed or retired people will tell you they never have enough time to get things done," he says. "It's almost got to the point where there's stress envy. If you're not stressed, you're not succeeding. Everyone wants to have a little bit of this stress to show they're an important person."
总部设在伦敦的亨利中心预测小组组长保罗·爱德华兹指出，压力感也可能被夸大，或者被强加于自身。“人人都大谈压力，以至于多达半数的失业者或退休人员都会跟你说，他们根本来不及把事情做完，”他说。“这几乎是到了羡慕压力的程度。没有感到有压力，就不是成功者。人人都想表现几分时间紧迫感，以显示自己的重要。”


15 There is another aspect to all of this too. Hour-by-hour logs kept by thousands of volunteers over the decades have shown that, in the U.K. , working hours have risen only slightly in the last 10 years, and in the U.S., they have actually fallen -- even for those in professional and executive jobs, where the perceptions of stress are highest.
这一切还有另外一个方面。几十年来由数千名志愿者所作的钟点日志表明，英国在最近十年中工作时间只略微增加，而在美国，即使对工作压力最大的专业人士和管理人员而言，工作时间实际上减少了。


16 In the U.S., John Robinson, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, and Geoffrey Godbey, professor of leisure studies at Penn State University found that, since the mid-1960s, the average American had gained five hours a week in free time -- that is, time left after working, sleeping, commuting, caring for children and doing the chores.
在美国，马里兰大学社会学教授约翰·鲁宾逊和宾夕法尼亚州立大学研究闲暇问题的教授杰弗里·戈德比发现，自20世纪60年代中期以来，普通美国人每周增加了5小时空余时间，即工作、睡眠、乘车上下班、照料孩子和家务劳动之余的时间。


17 The gains, however, were unevenly distributed. The people who benefited the most were singles and empty-nesters. Those who gained the least -- less than an hour -- were working couples with pre-school children, perhaps reflect

ing the trend for parents to spend more time nurturing their offspring.
但增加的时间分配得并不均匀。受惠最多的是未婚者和子女不在身边的人。得益最少的――增加了不足1个小时――是有学前子女的双职工夫妇，这或许反映了父母在抚养子女方面花费更多时间这一倾向。
18 There is, of course, a gender issue here, too. Advances in household appliances may have encouraged women to take paying jobs: but as we have already noted, technology did not end household chores. As a result, we see appalling inequalities in the distribution of free time between the sexes. According to the Henley Centre, working fathers in the U. K. average 48 hours of free time a week. Working mothers get 14.
这里当然也存在着性别问题。家用器具的更新换代或许鼓励妇女去做有报酬的工作，但正如我们已经注意到的，技术发展并没有扫除家务杂活。其结果是，我们发现男女空余时间的分配惊人地不平等。据亨利中心的调查，在英国，有工作的父亲平均每周有48小时的空余时间。有工作的母亲只有14小时。

19 Inequalities apart, the perception of the time famine is widespread, and has provoked a variety of reactions. One is an attempt to gain the largest possible amount of satisfaction from the smallest possible investment of time. People today want fast food, sound bytes and instant gratification. And they become upset when time is wasted.
除去不平等，缺乏时间的感觉也普遍存在，并引起了各种反应。反应之一是试图投入最少的时间以获取最大的满足。如今人们需要快餐，需要电台、电视台播放简短片断，还要即刻得到满足。时间一旦被浪费，人们就会很不高兴。


20 "People talk about quality time. They want perfect moments," says the Henley Centre's Edwards. "If you take your kids to a movie and McDonald's and it's not perfect, you've wasted an afternoon, and it's a sense that you've lost something precious. If you lose some money you can earn some more, but if you waste time you can never get it back."
“人们谈论着质量时间。他们需要最佳时光，”亨利中心的爱德华兹说。“如果你带孩子去看电影或去麦当劳，但度过的时光并不甜美，你浪费了一个下午，感觉就像是你丢失了宝贵物品。钱丢失了还能挣回来，但时间浪费了就再也无法追回。”


21 People are also trying to buy time. Anything that helps streamline our lives is a growth market. One example is what Americans call concierge services -- domestic help, childcare, gardening and decorating. And on-line retailers are seeing big increases in sales -- though not, as yet, profits.
人们还试图购买时间。任何能帮助我们提高生活效率的事物都有越做越大的市场。美国人所谓的家政服务――做

家务，带孩子，修剪花木，居家装饰――即为一例。网上零售商在看着销售额大幅增长――虽然利润尚未同样大幅增长。


22 A third reaction to time famine has been the growth of the work-life debate. You hear more about people taking early retirement or giving up high pressure jobs in favour of occupations with shorter working hours. And bodies such as Britain's National Work-Life Forum have sprung up, urging employers to end the long-hours culture among managers and to adopt family-friendly working policies.
对时间匮乏的第三个反应是有关人的一生应该工作多少年的争论增多。你比过去更常听到人们谈论早早退休，谈论放弃压力大的工作去从事工作时间短的工作。诸如英国全国工作年限论坛这样的机构像雨后春笋般出现了，敦促雇主终止让管理人员长时间加班的做法，而采取能适应家庭生活的工作方式。


23 The trouble with all these reactions is that liberating time -- whether by making better use of it, buying it from others or reducing the amount spent at work -- is futile if the hours gained are immediately diverted to other purposes.
所有这些反应的问题在于，把时间解放出来――无论是靠更充分地利用时间，靠购买他人的时间，还是靠缩短工作时间――是没有意义的，如果赢得的时间又即刻被用于其他目的。

24 As Godbey points out, the stress we feel arises not from a shortage of time, but from the surfeit of things we try to cram into it. "It's the kid in the candy store," he says. "There's just so many good things to do. The array of choices is stunning. Our free time is increasing, but not as fast as our sense of the necessary."
正如戈德比所指出的，我们的紧张感并非源于时间短缺，而是因为我们试图在一个个时段中塞入过多的内容。“就像糖果店里的孩子，”他说，“有那么多美好的事情要做。选择之多，令人眼花缭乱。我们的空余时间在增加，但其速度跟不上我们心中日益增多的必须做的事。”


25 A more successful remedy may lie in understanding the problem rather than evading it.
更有效的解决方式或许在于去理解这一问题，而不是回避这一问题。


26 Before the industrial revolution, people lived in small communities with limited communications. Within the confines of their village, they could reasonably expect to know everything that was to be known, see everything that was to be seen, and do everything that was to be done.
工业革命前，人们居住在交通联系不方便的小社区里。在本村范围内，人们自然而然地期望了解该了解的一切，见到该见的一切，做该做的一切。


27 Today, being curious by nature, we are still trying to do the same. But the global village is a w

orld of limitless possibilities, and we can never achieve our aim.
如今，生性好奇的我们仍试图这么做。然而，地球村是一个有着无限可能的世界，我们永远无法实现自己的目标。

28 It is not more time we need: it is fewer desires. We need to switch off the cell-phone and leave the children to play by themselves. We need to buy less, read less and travel less. We need to set boundaries for ourselves, or be doomed to mounting despair.
我们需要的不是更多的时间：是更少的欲望。我们定要关掉手机，让孩子们自己玩耍。我们定要少购物，少阅读，少出游。我们定要在有所为、有所不为方面给自己设定界限，不然则注定会越来越感到绝望。





UNIT8-1



Annie Dillard tells of her visit to the Napo River in the heart of the Ecuadorian jungle, one of nature's most unspoiled places. She describes the beauty of the forest and her admiration for the people who live there.
安妮·迪拉德讲述了自己游览厄瓜多尔丛林深处的纳波河的经历。那是大自然遭受人为破坏最少的地区之一。她描述了森林之美以及对生活在那里的土著人的歆慕之情。


In the Jungle

Annie Dillard


1 Like any out-of-the-way place, the Napo River in the Ecuadorian jungle seems real enough when you are there, even central. Out of the way of what? I was sitting on a stump at the edge of a bankside palm-thatch village, in the middle of the night, on the headwaters of the Amazon. Out of the way of human life, tenderness, or the glance of heaven?
在丛林中

安妮·迪拉德

如同所有僻远之地，当你身临其境时，厄瓜多尔丛林深处的纳波河就显得那么真实，甚至有中心要地的感觉。那么僻远之地远离什么呢？夜半时分，在亚马逊河的源头，我坐在一个树墩上，身后是傍水的棕榈叶作屋顶的小村落。远离人类活动，远离脉脉温情。或者说远离天堂的扫视？

　
2 A nightjar in deep-leaved shadow called three long notes, and hushed. The men with me talked softly: three North Americans, four Ecuadorians who were showing us the jungle. We were holding cool drinks and idly watching a hand-sized tarantula seize moths that came to the lone bulb on the generator shed beside us.
一只欧夜鹰在密密的树叶间发出三声长啼，旋即静默无声。和我一起的那些男人轻声交谈着：3个北美人，4个为我们在丛林中带路的厄瓜多尔人。我们手里拿着清凉的饮料，悠闲地看着一只有手那么大小的狼蛛捕捉纷纷扑向我们身旁发电机棚屋上一个灯泡的飞虫。


3 It was February, the middle of summer. Green fireflies spattered lights across the air and illumined for seconds, now here, now there, the pale trunks of enormous, solitary trees. Beneath us the brown Napo River was rising,

in all silence; it coiled up the sandy bank and tangled its foam in vines that trailed from the forest and roots that looped the shore.
时值2月，正当仲夏。绿莹莹的萤火虫在空中闪出光亮，一会儿这里照亮一下，一会儿那里照亮一下幽木巨树的暗淡的树干。在我们下方，褐黄色的纳波河水正在涨潮。万籁俱寂：惟见河水沿着沙岸蜿蜒流过，水沫裹挟在蔓生在森林里的藤蔓间以及盘绕岸边的树根上。


4 Each breath of night smelled sweet. Each star in Orion seemed to tremble and stir with my breath. All at once, in the thatch house across the clearing behind us came the sound of a recorder, playing a tune that twined over the village clearing, muted our talk on the bankside, and wandered over the river, dissolving downstream.
夜晚吸入的每口气都沁人心脾。猎户星座里的每一颗星星似乎都因了我的呼吸而颤动。突然，我们身后空地旁的茅屋里，传出了录音机的声音，一首乐曲在村子空地之上缭绕，减弱了我们在河畔谈话的声音，然后又传至河面，随流飘去。


5 This will do, I thought. This will do, for a weekend, or a season, or a home. 人生遇此情景足矣，我暗想。在此度过周末足以，在此小住数月足以，在此安家足以。


6 Later that night I loosed my hair from its braids and combed it smooth -- not for myself, but so the village girls could play with it in the morning.
夜半时分，我散开辫子，把头发梳理得平平整整--不是为我自己，而是为了村里那些姑娘早上可以玩我的头发。


7 We had disembarked at the village that afternoon, and I had slumped on some shaded steps, wishing I knew some Spanish or some Quechua so I could speak with the ring of little girls who were alternately staring at me and smiling at their toes. I spoke anyway, and fooled with my hair, which they were obviously dying to get their hands on, and laughed, and soon they were all braiding my hair, all five of them, all fifty fingers, all my hair, even my bangs. And then they took it apart and did it again, laughing, and teaching me Spanish nouns, and meeting my eyes and each other's with open delight, while their small brothers in blue jeans climbed down from the trees and began kicking a volleyball around with one of the North American men.
我们是那天下午在这个小村上岸的，我垂着头坐在树阴下的踏级上，真希望自己会说几句西班牙语或盖丘亚语，好跟围成一圈的小女孩说说话，她们一会儿看看我，一会儿又低头看着自己的脚趾窃笑。我还是开口了，笑着抚弄自己的头发，她们显然也都非常想碰碰我的头发。没过一会儿，她们就给我编辫子了，她们5个人，50个手指，我是一头辫子，连留海也编成了辫子。她们拆了编，编了拆，一边笑一边

教我西班牙语单词，望望我，又相互对望，个个喜形于色，她们那些穿着牛仔服的小弟弟们则纷纷下得树来，跟一个北美人踢排球玩耍。

8 Now, as I combed my hair in the little tent, another of the men, a free-lance writer from Manhattan, was talking quietly. He was telling us the tale of his life, describing his work in Hollywood, his apartment in Manhattan, his house in Paris.... "It makes me wonder," he said, "what I'm doing in a tent under a tree in the village of Pompeya, on the Napo River, in the jungle of Ecuador." After a pause he added, "It makes me wonder why I'm going back."
此刻，我在低矮的帐篷里梳理着头发，另一个北美人，一位来自曼哈顿的自由作家，正在轻声说话。他在向我们讲述他人生的故事，讲述他在好莱坞的工作、在曼哈顿的公寓、在巴黎的家…… “我不由纳闷，”他说，“在厄瓜多尔的丛林里，在纳波河上，在蓬帕雅小村，在树下的帐篷里，自己在干什么。”他顿了顿，接着说：“我不由寻思，自己为什么要回去。”

9 The point of going somewhere like the Napo River in Ecuador is not to see the most spectacular anything. It is simply to see what is there. We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place. We might as well get a feel for the fringes and hollows in which life is lived, for the Amazon basin, which covers half a continent, and for the life that -- there, like anywhere else -- is always and necessarily lived in detail: on the tributaries, in the riverside villages, sucking this particular white-fleshed guava in this particular pattern of shade.
去厄瓜多尔纳波河这种地方不是为了观赏什么世界奇观，而只是去看一看那里有些什么。人生在世，惟有一次，我们不妨去感受一下那个地方。我们不妨去感受一下有生命生活其间的远方水乡山谷，去感受覆盖了半个大陆的亚马逊河流域，去感受那样一种生活――在那里，一如在别的地方――那种必定总是琐碎的生活：在各条支流上，在临水的村落里，在有着独特形状的阴凉处吮吸着有白色浆果的独特的番石榴。


10 What is there is interesting. The Napo River itself is wide and brown, opaque, and smeared with floating foam and logs and branches from the jungle. Parrots in flocks dart in and out of the light. Under the water in the river, unseen, are anacondas -- which are reputed to take a few village toddlers every year -- and water boas, crocodiles, and sweet-meated fish.
那里的一切都趣味盎然。纳波河河面宽阔，河水混浊，呈褐黄色，浮沫以及丛林里来的木段和树枝翻浮其上。成群的鹦鹉忽而飞进树荫里，忽而飞入阳光里。水下潜伏着南美蟒蛇――据说每年都要吞吃几名村童――还有水蟒、鳄鱼，以及肉质鲜美

的鱼类。


11 Low water bares gray strips of sandbar on which the natives build tiny palm-thatch shelters for overnight fishing trips. You see these extraordinarily clean people (who bathe twice a day in the river, and whose straight black hair is always freshly washed) paddling down the river in dugout canoes, hugging the banks.
水浅的地方露出灰茫茫的狭长沙洲，土著人在沙洲上为过夜的渔夫搭建了小小的棕榈茅舍。你能见到这些清洁得出奇的人（他们在河里一天沐浴两次，满头直挺的黑发更是刚刚洗过）在独木舟里紧贴着河岸荡桨。


12 Some of the Indians of this region, earlier in the century, used to sleep naked in hammocks. The nights are cold. Gordon MacCreach, an American explorer in these Amazon tributaries, reported that he was startled to hear the Indians get up at three in the morning. He was even more startled, night after night, to hear them walk down to the river slowly, half asleep, and bathe in the water. Only later did he learn what they were doing: they were getting warm. The cold woke them; they warmed their skins in the river, which was always ninety degrees; then they returned to their hammocks and slept through the rest of the night.
在本世纪早期，这一地区的一些印第安人常常赤身睡在吊床里。夜晚颇凉。勘测亚马逊河支流的美国探险家戈登·麦克里奇曾记述说，他凌晨3点就听见印第安人起身，深感愕然。更令他惊奇的是，夜复一夜，他都听见他们半睡半醒地缓步走向河边，趟到河里洗起澡来。后来他才弄明白他们是在干什么：他们在取暖。凉意把他们冻醒，他们便到河里暖暖身子，因为河水保持90（华氏）度不变；随后他们再回到吊床上，睡到天亮。


13 When you are inside the jungle, away from the river, the trees vault out of sight. Butterflies, bright blue, striped, or clear-winged, thread the jungle paths at eye level. And at your feet is a swath of ants bearing triangular bits of green leaf. The ants with their leaves look like a wide fleet of sailing dinghies -- but they don't quit. In either direction they wobble over the jungle floor as far as the eye can see.
当你离开大河，深入丛林，满眼树木高耸入云。一眼望去，成群的蝴蝶穿过丛林小径，有宝蓝的，有条纹的，有纯色翅膀的。在脚下，则有一长列蚂蚁背负着三角形的绿叶碎片。负叶爬行的蚂蚁就像一支规模庞大、扬帆行驶的船队――只是它们不会停歇。无论什么方向，都能看到它们在丛林的地面上摇摇摆摆地爬行。


14 Long lakes shine in the jungle. We traveled one of these in dugout canoes, canoes paddled with machete-hewn oars, or poled in the shallows with bamboo. Our part-Indian guide had cleared the path to the lake the day before; when we walked the path we saw where h