新世纪 大学英语 阅读教程 第四册 文章翻译 Unit 4 PartII.doc

August 31 is typically the end of Europes holiday season, that Great Migration of the continents leathery bourgeoisie to southern shores. For Europeans, the August vacation isnt a privilege but a cular-humanist right, a major premise for a civilized and dignified life. This assumption about the August holiday goes well beyond the EUs borders, to poorer, struggling societies in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Not so in America. For us, August conjures up no particular feelings of anticipation or relief. If August means anything to us, its heat. Not the European heat: the this-is-perfect-Speedo-weather type of heat; but rather the dreadfully familiar how-will-I-hide-my-sweat-stains-around-my-armpits-at-the-office heat. The reason why August has so little meaning to American workers is because Americans dont take vacations any more. According to a Conference Board poll taken in May, 40% of Americans had no plans to take any sort of summer vacation this year - the worst showing in the polls 28 years. Indeed vacation time has been slowly disappearing for American workers ever since the Reagan revolution, which ushered in a violent shift in corporate culture away from the paternalistic post-New Deal model towards the current stock-price-is-God model. According to Harvard economist Juliet Schor, in the 30 years before Reagans presidency American workers were getting more and more vacation time; however, in the 1980s, that trend suddenly reversed. By the time Reagan left office, Americans got three-and-a-half fewer days off per year, on average. And the trend has only worsened. By 2003, according to a Boston College study, 26% of Americas workers took no vacation time at all. This year, as the Conference Board survey shows, that number looks set to continue rising. Why dont Americans take vacations? For one thing, fewer and fewer companies offer their workers paid time off. In 1998, 5% of Americas companies didnt offer paid vacation; by 2003, the figure had risen to 13%. According to the governments Bureau of Labor Statistics, today a full quarter of American workers get no paid vacation time, while another 33% only get a week. As middle Americas workers continue to see their leisure time stripped away from them, guess where that time, that scarce resource, winds up? You can find the answer in a Forbes magazine article, Billionaires On Vacation, dated September 19 2002: From the ski slopes of Aspen and Gstaad to the beaches of Mustique and the Hamptons, instead of staying at a resort many billionaires (and millionaires) prefer to own multiple homes around the world - partly because its always nicer to sleep in your own bed and partly because, well, they can. All of this might be infuriating, in a kind of white-collar, Wigan Pier sort of way, if it werent for the fact that the designated victims in this drama - Americas workers - are such willing collaborators in their own existential demise. According to a New York Times article, British workers get more than 50% more paid holiday per year than Americans, while the French and Italians get almost twice what the Americans get. The average Americans response is neither admiration nor envy, but rather a kind of sick pride in their own wretchedness, combined with righteous contempt for their European worker counterparts, whom most Americans see as morally degenerate precisely because they have more leisure time, more job security, health benefits and other advantages. Its like a classic case of East Bloc lumpen-spite: middle Americans would rather see the European system collapse than become beneficiaries themselves. If there is one favourite recurring propaganda fable Americans love to read about Europeans, its the one about how Europe is decaying and its social system is on the verge of imploding; we Americans pray for that day to come, with even more fervour than we pray for the End of Days, because the very existence of these pampered workers makes us look like the suckers and slaves we really are. This is why you wont see Bono or Sir Bob Geldof rallying the bleeding-hearts anytime soon on behalf of Americas workers. Theyre not in the least bit sympathetic. Better to stick with well-behaved victims like starving Africans. The cultural propaganda that accompanied the Reagan revolution has been so hugely successful that Americas workers internalised it too well, like those famously fanatical Soviet workers who literally worked themselves to death in order to help bring true communism that much closer. According to Expedia, American workers save their employees some $21 billion per year by not taking even the meagre vacation time theyre allowed. How can anyone possibly feel sympathy for a people this gullible and craven? The New York Times article on the vanishing vacation told one particularly grotesque story about American workers own refusal to take vacations even when their companies offer it to them. Accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers has lately become so frustrated in its inability to force workers to take holiday time that it resorted to shutting down and locking out its 19,000 employees twice a year in order to force them to relax. One can imagine PwCs parking lot the day after forced-vacation lockdown. It would look like the scene outside of the mall in George A. Romeros Dawn of the Dead: thousands of starched, dazed yuppies converging on the corporate grounds, clawing at the entrance, growling for the opportunity to just put in one more 70-hour work week. In fact, the scene where Dawns heroes try to explain the zombies behaviour applies all too well to the PwC workers. Replace the Swat heroes of Dawn with a pair security cops at PwC watching the dazed yuppies from their video monitors, and their dialogue fits perfectly: What brings them here? one asks, zooming in on the yuppies scratching at the office entrances tinted glass doors. The answer would be the same as that of the films hero: Instinct. Memory. This was an important place in their lives. And like Romeros zombies, Americas workers wont stop scratching at their office doors, starving for more work, until someone finally opens them back up. Or until they break the doors down themselves, and resume their vile orgy of slavishness.通常，8月31日是倔强的欧陆资产阶级向南部海滩进行“大迁徙”式度假结束的日子。对欧洲人而言，八月的假期不是一种特权而是一种最理所应当的权利，也是一种文明且有尊严生活的前提。这种对八月假期的见解不仅在欧盟，甚至在白俄罗斯乌克兰俄罗斯这些较为贫穷落后的国家同样适用。但在美国不是这样。对我们来说，八月从未让人联想到消遣或放松的感觉。如果说八月对我们意味着什么，我只能说是炎热。这并非欧洲的那种热，而是一种“这就是穿speedo的日子”的炎热，亦或是“我怎样将腋下的汗水藏起来”式的炎热。之所以八月对美国工人毫无意义，是因为在这期间他们并不休假。根据五月份的一项统计，百分之四十的美国人在今年没有夏季休假计划，这也是28年来最糟糕的统计数据。在里根改革之后，随着商业文化从家长式后罗斯福模式向股价至上模式的急剧转变，对美国工人而言，真正的假期时间正慢慢的消失着。如哈佛经济学家Juliet所说，在里根总统任期前的30年中，美国工薪阶层的休假时间在持续增长，而在二十世纪八十年代，这种趋势完全被逆转。在里根离任之前，美国人休假时间平均每星期减少了三天半。而且这种趋势仍在恶化。根据波士顿大学的一项调查，在2003年年底前，百分之二十六的美国工人没有任何假期时间。而今年，这个数据看起来仍在持续上升。美国人为什么不休假呢？其中一个原因就是为员工提供带薪休假的公司越来越少了。在1998年，百分之五的美国公司不提供带薪休假，而到2003年，该数据飙升到百分之十三。根据劳工部的数据，现在有四分之一的美国工薪阶层没有带薪假期，而另外享受带薪休假33%只得到了一周时间。在美国中产阶级看着自己的假期被一点点剥夺的情况下，试想什么时候这些会结束？你可以在2002年9月19日的福布斯杂志上一篇名为百万富翁的假期的文章中找到答案。“从滑雪胜地阿斯彭格式塔德到马斯迪克小岛和汉普顿的海滩，亿万富翁们更喜欢在世界各地购置多处私宅，而不是仅仅待在一个地方，可能一方面原因是由于他们在自己家的床上睡着更舒适，而另一方面原因是他们能做到这一点。”要不是这一出戏剧当中的受难者美国工人如此心甘情愿的当合作者，所有的这些都令人懊恼不已。根据纽约时报的一篇文章，与美国工人相比，英国工人每年的带薪假期多出一半，而法国和意大利人的大新假期几乎是他们的两倍。普通美国人对此的回应时机不羡慕也不嫉妒，而是对自己悲惨处境的一种病态的骄傲。这其中夹杂着对那些在美国人眼里看起来十分堕落的欧洲享乐主义工人的