最近几次翻译练习参考译文.doc

Americans have a sense of space, not of place. Go to an American home, and almost the first thing you do is drift toward the picture window. How curious that the first compliment you pay your host inside his house is to say how lovely it is outside his house! He is pleased that you should admire his vistas. The distant horizon is not merely a line separating earth from sky; it is a symbol of the future. The American is not rooted in his place, however lovely; his eyes are drawn by the expanding space to a point on the horizon, which is future.By contrast, consider the traditional Chinese home. Blank walls enclose it. Step behind the wall and you are in a courtyard with perhaps a miniature garden around a corner. Once inside his private compound you are wrapped in an ambiance of calm beauty, an ordered world of buildings, pavement, rock and decorative vegetation. But you have no distant view: nowhere does space open out before you. Raw nature in such a home is experienced only as weather, and the only open space is the sky above. The Chinese is rooted in his place. When he has to leave, it is not for the promised land on the terrestrial horizon, but for another world altogether along the vertical, religious axis of his imagination. Chinese desire for stability and rootedness in place is prompted by the constant threat of war, exile, and the natural disasters of flood and drought. Forcible removal makes the Chinese keenly aware of their loss. By contrast, Americans move, for the most part, voluntarily. Their nostalgia for hometown is really longing for a childhood to which they cannot return: in the meantime the future beckons and the future is out there, in open space.（1）美国人有空间感，但没有位置感。（2）如果你去一户美国人家，你所做的第一件事恐怕总是看一眼景窗。（3）你进屋后对主人的第一句赞语是屋外的风景真美，这是多么奇怪的事啊！（4）他对你欣赏他屋外的风景感到高兴。（5）远处的地平线并不仅仅是天地之间的分界线，它也是未来的象征。（6）不管一地有多美，美国人是不会扎根于一个地方的。（7）他的视线被广阔的空间吸引到地平线上的一点-他的未来所在的地方。（8）相比之下，中国传统家庭却是别有一番风景。（9）居所四周是清一色的围墙。（10）穿过围墙你便会步入一片庭院，拐角处或许还有一座小花园。（11）一旦步入他的私人领地，你便会被包围在静谧之美的氛围中，亭台、曲径、奇石、花草组成了一个错落有致的世界，（12）但你却看不到远处的风景：没有一处开阔的空间展现在你的面前。（13）在这样的住所里惟一能感受到的纯天然的东西就是天气了，唯一的空间仅是头顶上的蓝天。（14）中国人扎根于一块固定的土地，（15）当他被迫离开时，他并不是去地平线上的充满希望的土地，而是去其宗教幻想中升华的另一个世界。（16）中国人希望稳定和扎根的愿望源于战争、背井离乡、旱涝自然灾害的不间断的威胁。（17）被迫流离失所使得他们有一种深深的失落感。（18）与之相反的是，许多美国人是自愿搬家的。（19）他们对于故土的眷恋实际上是对他们一去不复返的童年的追忆。（20）同时未来在向他们召唤，未来就在外面的世界，在那片广阔的空间里。人类顶大的长处是智慧。但什么是智慧呢？智慧由一个要点，就是要冷静。譬如，正在计算数目、思索道理的时候，如果心里气恼，或喜乐，或悲伤，必致错误或简直不能进行，这是大家都明白的事。但是一般人对于解决社会问题，偏不明此理。他们总是为感情所蔽，而不能静心体察事理，从事理中寻出解决办法。Mans greatest strength is wisdom, but what is wisdom? The key to wisdom is the ability to remain composed. For example, when you are calculating numbers or pondering over problems, if you are emotionally disturbed by anger, joy or grief, you are bound to make mistakes, or you may not even be able to proceed. This is something everyone understands. However, people who address social problems often dont understand this. They are always taken over by their emotions and thus are unable to calm down to observe how things work and find solutions to their problems.有些人生来比较聪明，有些人生来就笨吗？或智力是靠我们的环境和经历发展起来的吗？奇怪的是，对这两个问题的答案是肯定的。在某种程度上，我们的智力是生而有之，没有什么特殊教育能吧生来就智力低下的儿童培养成天才。然而，生活在差的环境中的儿童培养出来的智力低于生活在丰富多彩环境中的儿童。因此一个人的智力的限度取决于他的生活环境。Are some people born clever, and others stupid? Or is intelligence developed by our environment and our experience? Strange enough, the answer to both these questions are yes. To some extent, our intelligence is given us at birth, and no amount of special education can make a genius out of a child born with low intelligence. On the other hand, the acquired intelligence of the children living in a bad environment is lower than that of those living in a colorful environment. Therefore, the limits of a persons intelligence will depend on his environment.Sept. 11 delivered both a shock and a surprise the attack, and our response to it and we can argue forever over which mattered more. There has been so much talk of the goodness that erupted that day that we forget how unprepared we were for it. We did not expect much from a generation that had spent its middle age examining all the ways it failed to measure up to the one that had come before all fat, no muscle, less a beacon to the world than a bully, drunk on blessings taken for granted.It was tempting to say that Sept. 11 changed all that, just as it is tempting to say that every hero needs a villain, and goodness needs evil as its grinding stone. But try looking a widow in the eye and talking about all the good that has come of this. It may not be a coincidence, but neither is it a partnership: good does not need evil, we owe no debt to demons, and the attack did not make us better. It was an occasion to discover what we already were. “Maybe the purpose of all this, “ New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said at a funeral for a friend, “is to find out if America today is as strong as when we fought for our independence or when we fought for ourselves as a Union to end slavery or as strong as our fathers and grandfathers who fought to rid the world of Nazism.” The terrorists, he argues, were counting on our cowardice. Theyve learned a lot about us since then. And so have we.For leading that lesson, for having more faith in us than we had in ourselves, for being brave when required and rude where appropriate and tender without being trite, for not sleeping and not quitting and not shrinking from the pain all around him, Rudy Giuliani, Mayor of the World, is TIMEs 2001 Person of the Year. “911”事件既令人震惊，也令人意外。震惊的是恐怖袭击事件本身，意外的是我们对事件的反应。至于说这二者孰轻孰重，人们也许会永远争论下去。对于当天一下子涌现出来的闪耀着人性光辉的英雄事迹，我们已经谈得不少了。在一片谈论声中，我们居然忘了，面对这些令