高级英语阅读Lesson15 What life means to me译文.doc

What life means to me?BY JACK LONDON1.I was born in the working class. I early discovered enthusiasm, ambition, and ideals; and to satisfy these became the problem of my childlife. My environment was crude and rough and raw. I had no outlook, but an uplook rather. My place in society was at the bottom. Here life offered nothing but sordidness and wretchedness, both of the flesh and the spirit; for here flesh and spirit were alike starved and tormented.1、我出生于工人阶级。小时候我有激情，雄心和理想，如何实现这些是我童年的困惑。我生存的环境是原始的，粗糙的和艰难的。我看不到前途，但可以向上看。我生活在社会的底层。在这里，无论在身体上和精神上，生活都是肮脏的和不幸的，因为身体上和精神都饱受饥渴和折磨。2.Above me towered the colossal edifice of society, and to my mind the only way out was up. Into this edifice I early resolved to climb. Up above, men wore black clothes and boiled shirts, and women dressed in beautiful gowns. Also, there were good things to eat, and there was plenty to eat. This much for the flesh. Then there were the things of the spirit. Up above me, I knew, were unselfishnesses of the spirit, clean and noble thinking, keen intellectual living. I knew all this because I read Seaside Library novels, in which, with the exception of the villains and adventuresses, all men and women thought beautiful thoughts, spoke a beautiful tongue, and performed glorious deeds. In short, as I accepted the rising of the sun, I accepted that up above me was all that was fine and noble and gracious, all that gave decency and dignity to life, all that made life worth living and that remunerated one for his travail and misery.2、我头顶之上高耸着巨大的社会建筑，在我看来，只有向上爬才有出路，很小的时候我决心爬进这座高楼。我头顶上，男人们穿着白衬衣黑礼服，女人们则华衣锦服，还有佳肴，这是身体上的享受。然后还有精神上的享受。我知道，在我之上是慷慨无私的精神，纯净和崇高的思想，敏锐的智力的生活。我熟悉这些是因为我读过“海滨图书馆”的系列小说。小说里，除了恶棍和女冒险家，所有的男男女女都思考着美好的思想，说着动听的话，做着光荣的事。总之，就像接受太阳升起一样，我接受了这些。在我之上一切都是美好的，崇高的，优雅的，都给生命以体面和尊严，都使生活有意义。都能补偿人们的辛劳和痛苦。3.But it is not particularly easy for one to climb up out of the working classespecially if he is handicapped by the possession of ideals and illusions. I lived on a ranch in California, and I was hard put to find the ladder whereby to climb. I early inquired the rate of interest on invested money, and worried my childs brain into an understanding of the virtues and excellencies of that remarkable invention of man, compound interest. Further, I ascertained the current rates of wages for workers of all ages, and the cost of living. From all this data I concluded that if I began immediately and worked and saved until I was fifty years of age, I could then stop working and enter into participation in a fair portion of the delights and goodnesses that would then be open to me higher up in society. Of course, I resolutely determined not to marry, while I quite forgot to consider at all that great rock of disaster in the working class worldsickness.3、但是以工人阶级的社会底层走出是极不容易的尤其是受到理想和幻想制约时。那时我生活在加利福利亚的大农场，很难找到向上爬的梯子。一开始我询问投资的利率，绞尽了我的小脑壳，才明白人类了不起的创造复合利率的好处和优势。后来我弄清了各年龄层的工人的现行工资和生活开销，从这些数字中，我得出结论：如果我马上就开始工作存钱，直到五十岁我才能退休，开始享受到那个时候才向我开放的上层社会的乐趣和妙处。当然，我坚决不结婚，可是我完全忘记考虑到工人阶层最大的灾难疾病。But the life that was in me demanded more than a meager existence of scraping and scrimping. Also, at ten years of age, I became a newsboy on the streets of a city and found myself with a changed uplook. All about me were still the same sordidness and wretchedness, and up above me was still the same paradise waiting to be gained; but the ladder whereby to climb was a different one. It was now the ladder of business. Why save my earnings and invest in government bonds, when, by buying two newspapers for five cents, with a turn of the wrist I could sell them for ten cents and double my capital? The business ladder was the ladder for me, and I had a vision of myself becoming a baldheaded and successful merchant prince. 但是，这是在我的生活要求多了微薄的存在刮抠的。此外，在十几年的年龄，我成了一个城市的街头报童，发现自己有改变uplook。所有关于我的人还是一样的卑鄙和可怜，以及高达上面我还是一样的天堂等待上涨，但梯子据此攀登是不同的。现在是业务的阶梯。为什么要救我的收益，投资于国债的时候，通过购买两份报纸五毛钱，用手腕一转，我可以把它们卖出去10美分，加倍我的资金？业务梯是梯子我，我有自己的愿景成为一个光头和成功的商业巨子。Alas for visions! When I was sixteen I had already earned the title of prince. But this title was given me by a gang of cut-throats and thieves, by whom I was called The Prince of the Oyster Pirates. And at that time I had climbed the first rung of the business ladder. I was a capitalist. I owned a boat and a complete oyster-pirating outfit. I had begun to exploit my fellow creatures. I had a crew of one man. As captain and owner I took two-thirds of the spoils, and gave the crew one-third, though the crew worked just as hard as I did and risked just as much his life and liberty.唉，愿景！当我十六岁那年，我已经赢得了标题为“王子”。但这个称号是给我用的切割喉咙，盗贼团伙，由谁来我被称为“牡蛎海盗王子。”那时，我已经爬到了梯子业务的第一个梯级。我是一个资本家。我拥有一条船，一个完整的牡蛎盗版装备。我开始利用我的同胞的生物。我只好一个人船员。作为队长和所有者我把三分之二的战利品，并给船员三分之一，虽然剧组的工作只是很难，因为我没有和冒险一样多，他的生命和自由。This one rung was the heights I climbed up the business ladder. One night I went on a raid amongst the Chinese fishermen. Ropes and nets were worth dollars and cents. It was robbery, I grant, but it was precisely the spirit of capitalism. The capitalist takes away the possessions of his fellow-creatures by means of a rebate, or of a betrayal of trust, or by the purchase of senators and supreme-court judges. I was merely crude. That was the only difference. I used a gun.这一个梯级是我爬上梯子业务的高度。一天晚上，我去了一个突袭跻身中国渔民。绳索和网是值得美元和美分。这是抢劫，我承认，但恰恰是资本主义的精神。资本主义带走了他的同类的财产通过回扣的方式，或信任的背叛，或由购买参议员和最高法庭的法官。我只是粗。这是唯一的区别。我用了枪。But my crew that night was one of those inefficients against whom the capitalist is wont to fulminate, because, forsooth, such inefficients increase expenses and reduce dividends. My crew did both. What of his carelessness he set fire to the big mainsail and totally destroyed it. There werent any dividends that night, and the Chinese fishermen were richer by the nets and ropes we did not get. I was bankrupt, unable just then to pay sixty-five dollars for a new mainsail. I left my boat at anchor and went off on a bay-pirate boat on a raid up the Sacramento River. While away on this trip, another gang of bay pirates raided my boat. They stole everything, even the anchors; and later on, when I recovered the drifting hulk, I sold it for twenty dollars. I had slipped back the one rung I had climbed, and never again did I attempt the business ladder.但是我的船员，当晚是那些inefficients针对的人的资本主义是惯于雷酸盐之一，因为抽了，这样inefficients增加支出，减少股息。我的团队做了两个。他的粗心大意是什么，他放火烧了大主帆和完全摧毁它。没有发现任何股息当晚，中国渔民们更丰富的渔网和绳索，我们没有得到。我破产了，只是无法再支付65美元买了一个新的主帆。我离开了我的船停泊，去了在海湾海盗船袭击了萨克拉门托河。虽然远在这次旅行中，海盗湾的另一团伙袭击了我的船。他们偷走了一切，甚至锚;，后来，当我恢复了废船漂流，我卖了20块钱。我已经溜背了一个梯级我已攀升，并从此却再没有我尝试了业务阶梯。From then on I was mercilessly exploited by other capitalists. I had the muscle, and they made money out of it while I made but a very indifferent living out of it. I was a sailor before the mast, a longshoreman, a roustabout; I worked in canneries, and factories, and laundries; I mowed lawns, and cleaned carpets, and washed windows. And I never got the full product of my toil. I looked at the daughter of the cannery owner, in her carriage, and knew that it was my muscle, in part, that helped drag along that carriage on its rubber tires. I looked at the son of the factory owner, going to college, and knew that it was my muscled that helped, in part, to pay for the wine and good-fellowship he enjoyed.从那时起，我被其他资本家无情地剥削。我有肌肉，而他们赚了钱了它，而我做了，但很淡然的生活了吧。我是一个水手在桅杆上，一个码头工人，码头工人之前，我曾在罐头厂，和工厂和洗衣店，我修剪草坪，并清洗地毯，洗窗户。我从未得到我劳碌的完整产品。我看着罐头厂老板的女儿，在她的马车，知道这是我的肌肉，在某种程度上，帮拖沿着马车上的橡胶轮胎。我看着厂老板的儿子要上大学，并知道这是我的肌肉，帮助，部分支付葡萄酒和优质的奖学金，他享用。But I did not resent this. It was all in the game. They were the strong. Very well, I was strong. I would carve my way to a place amongst them, and make money out of the muscles of other men. I was not afraid of work. I loved hard work. I would pitch in and work harder than ever and eventually become a pillar of society.但我并没有感到不平。这是所有在游戏中。他们是强大的。非常好，我很坚强。我刻我的方式到一个地方在他们之中，赚钱了其他男人的肌肉。我并不害怕工作。我喜欢努力工作。我会球场和工作比以往任何时候都更加努力，最终成为社会的支柱。And just then, as luck would have it, I found an employer that was of the same mind. I was willing to work, and he was more than willing that I should work. I thought I was learning a trade. In reality, I had displaced two men. I thought he was making an electrician out of me; as a matter of fact, he was making fifty dollars per month out of me. The two men I had displaced had received forty dollars each per month; I was doing the work of both for thirty dollars per month.就在这时，因为幸运的是，我发现了一个雇主，这是同样的心态。我是愿意工作，他更愿意说我应该工作。我想我是学贸易。在现实中，我已经流离失所的两名男子。我以为他是在一名电工在我外面，因为事实上，他是在每月50块钱了我。两个男人我已经流离失所已收到40每月每美元;我在做双方的工作，每月30美元。This employer worked me nearly to death. A man may love oysters, but too many oysters will disincline him toward that particular diet. And so with me. Too much work sickened me. I did not wish ever to see work again. I fled from work. I became a tramp, begging my way from door to door, wandering over the United States, and sweating bloody sweats in slums and prisons.这个雇主工作我几乎死。一个人可以爱蚝，但太多的生蚝会disincline他走向那个特定的饮食。等我。太辛苦了厌恶我。我不希望以后还会见到工作。我下班逃离。我成了一个流浪汉，乞讨我的方式从门到门，游荡在美国，和出汗流血流汗在贫民窟和监狱。I had been born in the working class, and I was now, at the age of eighteen, beneath the point at which I had started. I was down in the cellar of society, down in the subterranean depths of misery about which it is neither nice nor proper to speak. I was in the pit, the abyss, the human cesspool, the shambles and the charnel house of our civilization. This is the part of the edifice of society that society chooses to ignore. Lack of space compels me here to ignore it, and I shall say only that the things I there saw gave me a terrible scare.我出生于工人阶级，而我现在，在十八岁的时候，在我已经开始点下方。我跌在社会中的地窖里，倒在苦难的地下深处关于它既不太好，也不恰当发言的。我是在坑的深渊，人类的污水池，在混乱和我们文明的藏尸家。这是社会的大厦是社会选择忽略的一部分。空间不足迫使我这里忽略它，我就只说我没有看到的东西给了我一个可怕的恐慌。I was scared into thinking I saw the naked simplicities of complicated civilization in which I lived. Life was a matter of food and shelter. In order to get food and shelter men sold things. The merchant sold shoes, the politician sold his manhood, and the representative of the people, with exceptions, of course, sold his trust; while nearly all sold their honor. Women, too, whether on the street or in the holy bond of wedlock, were prone to sell their flesh. All things were commodities, all people bought and sold. The one commodity that labor had to sell was muscle. The honor of labor had no price in the market place. Labor had muscle, and muscle alone, to sell.我很害怕，以为我看到了复杂的文明赤裸的纯朴在我居住的地方。生活是食品和住房的问题。为了得到食物和住所的人卖的东西。商家卖鞋，政治家卖掉了他的男子气概，和人民的代表，但有例外，当然，卖掉了他的信任，而几乎所有卖自己的荣誉。女性也一样，无论是在街头还是在婚姻神圣的债券，取俯卧出售自己的肉体。所有的东西都是商品，所有的人购买和出售。一个商品，劳动力不得不卖掉了肌肉。劳动的荣誉有没有价格在市场上。劳工有肌肉，而肌肉孤独，销售。But there was a difference, a vital difference. Shoes and trust and honor had a way of renewing themselves. They were imperishable stocks. Muscle, on the other hand, did not renew. As the shoe merchant sold shoes, he continued to replenish his stock. But there was no way of replenishing the laborers stock of muscle. The more he sold of his muscle, the less of it remained to him. It was his one commodity, and each day his stock of it diminished. In the end, if he did not die before, he sold out and put up his shutters. He was a muscle bankrupt, and nothing remained to him but to go down into the cellar of society and perish miserably.但有一个区别，一个重要的区别。鞋类及信任和荣誉有自我更新的一种方式。他们是不朽的股票。肌肉，而另一方面，没有续约。随着鞋商卖鞋，他继续补充他的股票。但没有办法补充肌肉的劳动者的股票。越是他卖掉了自己的肌肉，它的减留给他。这是他的一种商品，每一天，他的这股减少。最后，如果他没有死之前，他卖了，把他的百叶窗。他是一个肌肉破产，并没有留给他，而是下到社会的酒窖和灭亡草草收场。I learned, further, that brain was likewise a commodity. It, too, was different from muscle. A brain seller was only at his prime when he was fifty or sixty years old, and his wares were fetching higher prices than ever. But a laborer was worked out or broken down at forty-five or fifty. I had been in the cellar of society, and I did not like the place as a habitation. The pipes and drains were unsanitary, and the air was bad to breathe. If I could not live on the parlor floor of society, I could, at any rate, have a try at the attic. It was true, the diet there was slim, but the air at least was pure. So I resolved to sell no more muscle, and to become a vendor of brains.我学会了，而且，大脑是同样一种商品。它也来自不同的肌肉。而脑卖家只是在他的全盛时期，当他是五六十岁，他的商品比以往任何时候获取更高的价格。但劳动者已制定或细分为四十五或五十名。我已经在社会的酒窖，和我不喜欢的地方作为居住。管道和排水沟是不卫生的，空气是坏的呼吸。如果我不能生活在社会的客厅地板上，我可以，无论如何，有一试的阁楼。它是真实的，饮食上有苗条，但空气至少是纯粹的。所以，我决定不卖更多的肌肉，而成为大脑的供应商。Then began a frantic pursuit of knowledge. I returned to California and opened the books. While thus equipping myself to become a brain merchant, it was inevitable that I should delve into sociology. There I found, in a certain class of books, scientifically formulated, the simple sociological concepts I had already worked out for myself. Other and greater minds, before I was born, had worked out all that I had thought and a vast deal more. I discovered that I was a socialist.然后开始了疯狂的追求知识。我回到加州，打开了书。虽然如此装备自己成为一个商人大脑，这是不可避免的，我应该钻研社会学。在那里，我发现，在某一类的书籍，科学配方，简单的社会学概念我已经制定了自己。其他和更大的头脑，在我出生之前，已经制定了所有我曾想过和一个巨大的多得多。我发现我是一个社会主义者。The socialists were revolutionists, inasmuch as they struggled to overthrow the society of the present, and out of the material to build the society of the future. I, too, was a socialist and a revolutionist. I joined the groups of working-class and intellectual revolutionists, and for the first time came into intellectual living. Here I found keen-flashing intellects and brilliant wits; for here I met strong and alert-brained, withal horny-handed, members of the working class; unfrocked preachers too wide in their Christianity for any congregation of Mammon-worshipers; professors broken on the wheel of university subservience to the ruling class and flung out because they were quick with knowledge which they strove to apply to the affairs of mankind.社会主义者是革命者，因为它们挣扎着要推翻目前的社会，是构建未来的社会的物质。我也一样，是社会主义和革命家。我加入了工人阶级和知识分子革命家的群体，并首次进入了知识分子的生活。在这里，我发现热衷闪烁的智力和灿烂的智慧，在这里我遇到了强烈的警示和脑容量，叫人角质手，工人阶级的成员; unfrocked传教士太宽在他们的基督教为财神，任何崇拜者众;教授上破大学屈从于统治阶级的车轮和扔出来，因为他们很快与知识，他们力图适用于人类事务。Here I found, also, warm faith in the human, glowing idealism, sweetnesses of unselfishness, renunciation and martyrdomall the splendid, stinging things of the spirit. Here life was clean, noble, and alive. Here life rehabilitated itself, became wonderful and glorious; and I was glad to be alive. I was in touch with great souls who exalted flesh and sprit over dollars and cents; and to whom the thin wail of the starved slum-child meant more than all the pomp and circumstance of commercial expansion and world-empire. All about me were nobleness and purpose and heroism of effort, and my days and nights were sunshine and starshine, all fire and dew, with before my eyes, ever burning and blazing, the Holy Grail, Christs own Grail, the warm human, long suffering and maltreated, but to be rescued and saved at the last.在这里，我找到了，也，在人的温暖的信念，炽热的理想主义，无私的，放弃和牺牲，所有的辉煌，刺痛精神的东西sweetnesses。这里的生活很干净，高贵，而活着。在这里，生命恢复本身，成为美妙的和光荣，而我很高兴自己还活着。我是在与谁崇高的肉体和精神在美元和美分伟大的灵魂的触摸，以及向谁饿死贫民窟孩子的薄哀号意味着更多的比所有的排场和商业扩张和世界帝国的情况。所有关于我的是高贵和宗旨，努力英雄主义，和我的日日夜夜都是阳光和星光，所有消防和露水，用在我的眼前，永远燃烧和炽烈，圣杯，基督自己的圣杯，温暖的人，长苦难和虐待，但被救出并保存在最后。And I, poor foolish I, deemed all this to be a mere foretaste of the delights of living I should find higher above me in society. I had lost many illusions since the day I read Seaside Library novels on the California ranch. I was destined to lose many of the illusions I still retained.As a brain merchant I was a success. Society opened its portals to me. I entered right in on the parlor floor, and my disillusionment proceeded rapidly. I sat down to dinner with the masters of society, and with the wives and daughters of the masters of society. The women were gowned beautifully, I admit; but to my nave surprise I discovered that they were of the same clay as all the rest of the women I had known down below in the cellar. The colonels lady and Judy OGrady were sisters under their skinsand gowns.而我，可怜的愚蠢的我，认为这一切是生活的情趣，仅仅预示我应该找高在我之上的社会。因为那天我读了加州牧场“海边库”的小说我已经失去了很多的幻想。我是注定要失去很多我仍然保留了幻想。作为一个商人的大脑我是成功的。社会敞开了门户网站给我。我输入正确的在客厅地板上，和我的幻灭快速进行。我坐下来吃饭与社会的主人，并与妻子和社会的主人的女儿。这些妇女被gowned漂亮，我承认，但我天真的惊喜，我发现他们是相同的粘土，因为我曾在地窖里称为向下跌破妇女的所有的休息。和“上校的夫人和朱迪奥格雷迪是根据他们的皮肤姐妹”袍。It was not this, however, so much as their materialism, that shocked me. It is true these beautifully gowned, beautiful women prattled sweet little ideals and dear little moralities; but in spite of their prattle the dominant key of the life they lived was materialistic. And they were so sentimentally selfish! They assisted in all kinds of sweet little charities, and informed one of the fact, while all the time the food they ate and the beautiful clothes they wore were bought out of the dividends stained with the blood of child labor, and sweated labor, and of prostitution itself. When I mentioned such facts, expected in my innocence that these sisters of Judy OGrady would at once strip off their blood-dyed silks and jewels, they became excited and angry, and read me preachments about the lack of thrift, the drink, and the innate depravity that caused all the misery in societys cellar. When I mentioned that I couldnt quite see that it was the lack of thrift, the intemperance, and the depravity of a half-starved child of six that made it work twelve hours every night in a Southern cotton mill, these sisters of Judy OGrady attacked my private life and called me an agitatoras though that, forsooth, settled the argument.这不是这一点，但是，这么多的唯物主义，让我震惊。它是真实的这些精美gowned ，美女没完可爱的小理想和亲爱的小道德，但尽管他们闲聊，他们过的生活的主要关键是唯物主义的。他们是如此感情上自私！他们在各种可爱的小慈善机构的协助，并告知的事实之一，而所有的时间，他们吃他们穿的食物和漂亮的衣服被收买了沾满童工的血股息，汗水和劳动，卖淫本身。当我提到这样的事实，预计在我的清白的朱迪奥格雷迪的这些姐妹会立即脱掉他们的血液染丝绸和珠宝，他们变得激动和愤怒，并阅读我对缺乏节俭，饮料的说教，并导致所有的苦难在社会的酒窖与生俱来的堕落。当我提到我不能完全看出它是缺乏节俭的放纵，以及六个半饥饿的孩子，使得它在南棉纺厂，朱迪的这些姐妹每天晚上工作12小时的堕落奥格雷迪攻击我的私人生活，叫我的“搅拌器” ，好像是，抽了，落户的说法。Nor did I fare better with the masters themselves. I had expected to find men who were clean, noble, and alive, whose ideals were clean, noble, and alive. I went about amongst the men who sat in the high places, the preachers, the politicians, the business men, the professors, and the editors. I ate meat with them, drank wine