专八英译汉

1998 To speak of American literature, then, is not to assert that it is completely unlike that of Europe. Broadly speaking, America and Europe have kept step. At any given moment the traveler could find examples in both of the same architecture, the same styles in dress, the same books on the shelves. Ideas have crossed the Atlantic as freely as men and merchandise, though sometimes more slowly. When I refer to American habit, thoughts, etc., I intend some sort of qualification to precede the word, for frequently the difference between America and Europe (especially England) will be one of degree, sometimes only of a small degree. The amount of divergence is a subtle affair, liable to perplex the Englishman when he looks at America. He is looking at a country which in important senses grew out of his own, which in several ways still resembles his own — and which is yet a foreign country. There are odd overlappings and abrupt unfamiliarities; kinship yields to a sudden alienation, as when we hail a person across the street, only to discover from his blank response that we have mistaken a stranger for a friend.

说到美国文学，并非意欲断言，它与欧洲文学全然大相径庭。广而言之，美国与欧洲一直同步发展，协调一致。在任何一个特定的时刻，旅行者在两地均能目睹同一样式的建筑实例，相同款式的服饰，书架上相同的书籍。在大西洋两岸，思想如同人员与货物往来一样自由交流，尽管有时会略显迟缓。当我提及美国式的习惯、思想等概念时，我意欲在“美国式的”这一词汇之前加上某种限定，因为欧美（尤其是英美）之间的差异往往只是程度上的差异而已，并且有时候仅仅只是微乎其微的一点程度差异而已。差异的多寡是件极为微妙的事务，这极容易使一个英国人在审视美国时大惑不解。他所审视的那个国家，从某些重要的意义上来说，诞生于他自己的国家，并在某些方面仍与他自己的国家相差无几——然而，它却实实在在是一个异邦。两者间存在着某些古怪的交替重迭，以及令人甚感突兀的陌生感；亲缘关系已让位于一种突如其来的异化与疏远，这种情景仿佛就像我们隔着马路向另一个人打招呼，结果却从这个人漠无表情的反应中发现，我们原来竟将一个陌生人误认为我们的熟人。

1999 In addition, one class of family reasons shares a border with the following category, namely, having children in order to maintain or improve a marriage: to hold the husband or occupy the wife; to repair or rejuvenate the marriage; to increase the number of children on the assumption that family happiness lies that way. The point is underlined by its converse: in some societies the failure to bear children (or males) is a threat to the marriage and a ready cause for divorce.

Beyond all that is the profound significance of children to the very institution of the family itself. To many people, husband and wife alone do not seem a proper family —they need children to enrich the circle, to validate its family character, to gather the redemptive influence of offspring. Children need the family, but the family seems also to need children, as the social institution uniquely available, at least in principle, for security, comfort, assurance, and direction in a changing, often hostile, world. To most people, such a home base, in the literal sense, needs more than one person for sustenance and in generational extension.

此外，有一类家庭原因与下列类别不无共通之处，这便是：生儿育女是为了维系或改善婚姻：能拴住丈夫或者使妻子不至于无所事事；修复或重振婚姻；多

子多孙，以为家庭幸福惟有此法。这一点更可以由其反面得到昭示：在某些社会中，无法生儿育女对婚姻而言是一种威胁，还可作为离婚的现成借口。

后代对于家庭这一体制本身所具有的深远意义远非如此。对许多人来说，夫妻两人尚不足以构成一个真正意义上的家庭——夫妻需要孩子来丰富其两人小天地，赋予该小天地以真正意义上的家庭性质，并从子孙后代身上获取某种回报。 孩子需要家庭，但家庭似乎也需要孩子。家庭作为一种社会机构，以其特有的方式，至少从原则上说，可在一个变幻莫测、常常是充满敌意的世界中让人从中获取某种安全、慰藉、保障，以及价值取向。

2000 If people mean anything at all by the expression “untimely death”, they must believe that some deaths run on a better schedule than others. Death in old age is rarely called untimely—a long life is thought to be a full one. But with the passing of a young person, one assumes that the best years lay ahead and the measure of that life was still to be taken.

History denies this, of course. Among prominent summer deaths, one recalls those of Marilyn Monroe and James Deans, whose lives seemed equally brief and complete. Writers cannot bear the fact that poet John Keats died at 26, and only half playfully judge their own lives as failures when they pass that year. The id ea that the life cut short is unfulfilled is illogical because lives are measure d by the impressions they leave on the world and by their intensity and virtue.

提起“英年早逝”人们或有所指，他们必然相信某些人的离世可以算是寿终正寝，而另一些人则“死不逢时”。老年死亡很少被认为是“死不逢时”，因为能度过漫长的一生被认为是甚为圆满的。反之，如果所碰到的是一位年轻人之死，人们会以为这位年轻人风华正茂，前途无可限量，生命的倒计时尚未真正开始。 当然，历史否定这一切。在诸多较为著名的" 英年早逝" 的情形中，我们会忆起玛丽莲. 梦露与詹姆斯·迪恩斯之死，其生命的短暂丝毫无损于其生命的完整性。对于约翰. 济慈26岁便与世长辞这一事实，文人墨客们皆痛不欲生，但他们中仅有半数人诙谐地认为，设若他们也死于这一年龄，其一生可视为失败。视英年早逝为不圆满，这一观念不符合逻辑，因为衡量生命的尺度乃是留给世界的印记，是生命的深度与美德。

2001 Effort is the gist of it. There is no happiness except as we take on life- engaging difficulties. Short of the impossible, as Yeats put it, the satisfaction we get from a lifetime depends on how high we choose our difficulties. Robert Frost was thinking in something like the same terms when he spoke of “The pleas u re of taking pains”. The mortal flaw in the advertised version of happiness is in the fact that it purports to be effortless.

We demand difficulty even in our games. We demand it because without difficulty there can be no game. A game is a way of making something hard for the fun of it. The rules of the game are an arbitrary imposition of difficulty. When someone ruins the fun, he always does so by refusing to play by the roles. It is easier to win at chess if you are free, at your pleasure, to change the wholly arbitrary roles, but the fun is in winning within the rules. No difficulty, no fun.

努力奋斗，废寝忘食是其精髓所在。除非我们愿意直面那些需要我们全身心

投入的艰难困苦，否则便不会有幸福可言。正如叶芝所言，除却某些不可能的情形，我们于人生中所获取的满足皆取决于我们在多高的境界中选择我们所愿意面对的艰难困苦。当罗伯特? 弗罗斯特言及“以苦为乐”时，他内心所思，大体如此。商业广告中所宣扬的那种幸福观，其致命的缺陷就在于这样一个事实，即它宣称，一切幸福皆唾手可得，不费吹灰之力。

即便于游戏之中，我们也需要有艰难困苦。我们之所以需要它，因为设若没有困难，便断无游戏可言。游戏即是这样一种方式，为了享受其中的情趣而人为地使事情变得不那么轻而易举。游戏中的种种规则，便是将困难武断地强加于人。当有人将情趣摧毁殆尽时，他总是因为拒不按游戏规则行事而使然。这犹如下棋；如果你随心所欲、心血来潮地去更改那些全然武断的游戏规则，这样去赢棋当然会更加容易。但下棋的情趣则在于，应在规则的限定范围内赢取胜利。一言以蔽之，没有艰难，断无情趣。

2002 Winners do not dedicate their lives to a concept of what they imagine they should be: rather, they are themselves and as such do not use their energy putting on a performance, maintaining pretence, and manipulating others. They are aware that there is a difference between being loving and acting loving, between being stupid and acting stupid, between being knowledgeable and acting knowledgeable. Winners do not need to hide behind a mask.

Winners are not afraid to do their own thinking and to use their own knowledge. They can separate facts from opinions and don’t pretend to have all the answers. They listen to others; evaluate what they say, but come to their own conclusions. Although winners can adore and respect other people, they are not totally defined, demolished, bound, or awed by them.

Winners do not play “helpless”, nor do they play th e blaming game. Instead, they assume responsibility for their own lives.

成功者不会毕生致力于这样一种概念：即想象自己应该成为何种人。相反，他们即他们自己。因此，他们不会费神去装腔作势，故作姿态，摆布他人。他们明白：爱与装爱，傻与装傻，知与装知、真正博学与假装博学之间是有区别的。成功者无须躲在面具后面。

成功者敢于独立思考，敢于运用自己的知识。他们能够把事实从纷繁的意见中剥离出来，而又不会假装无所不知。

他们倾听他人的意见，品评他人的言论，却能得出自己的结论。虽然胜利者也钦佩他人，尊敬他人，但是，他们不会完全被他人所规定、所摧垮、所束缚，所吓倒。

成功者不会假装无助，也不会怨天尤人，相反，他们承担起自己生命的责任。

2003 In his classic novel, “The Pioneers”, James, Feminore Cooper has his hero, a land developer, take his cousin on a tour of the city he is building. He describes the broad streets, rows of houses, a teeming metropolis. But his cousin looks around bewildered. All she sees is a forest, “Where are the beauties and improvements which you were to show me?” she asks. He’s astonished she can’t see them. “Where! Why everywhere,” he replies. For though they are not yet built on earth, he has built them in his mind, and they are as concrete to him as if they were already constructed and

finished.

Cooper was illustrating a distinctly American trait, future-mindedness: the ability to see the present from the vantage point of the future; the freedom to feel unencumbered by the past and more emotionally attached to things to come. As Albert Einstein once said, “Life for the American is always becoming, never being.”

詹姆斯·费尼莫尔·库柏在其经典小说《拓荒者》中，记述了主人公—— 一位土地开发商——带着表妹游览一座他将要建造的城市的情景。他向表妹描绘了宽阔的街道，排排的房屋，俨然一座熙来攘往的大都市。然而，表妹环顾四周，却一脸迷茫，她所看到的只是一片森林。于是她问：“你要给我看的美景和改观在哪里啊？”他很惊讶，她居然还不能心领神会。便回答说：“还问哪里？这不到处都是嘛。”因为尽管他还没有把它们真正建成，他却早已在心中构想好了。它们对他来说是如此真实具体仿佛它们早已建成。

库柏在这里揭示了一种美国人独有的特征，即前瞻性：他们能够站在未来的高度来看现在的一切；摆脱过去束缚而更加心系未来。正如埃尔伯特? 爱因斯坦曾言：“对美国人来说，生活总是进取，而非守成。”

2004 I am lonely only when I am overtired , when I have worked too long without a break, when for the time being I feel empty and need filling up. And I am lonely sometimes when I come back home after a lecture trip, when I have seen a lot of people and talked a lot, and am full to the brim with experience that needs to be sorted out.

Then for a little while the house feels huge and empty, and I wonder where my self is hiding. It has to be recaptured slowly by watering the plants and, perhaps, by looking again at each one as though it were a person.

It takes a while, as I watch the surf blowing up in fountains, but the moment comes when the world falls away, and the self emerges again from the deep unconscious, bring back all I have recently experienced to be explored and slowly understood.

只有当我疲劳过度的时候，在我长时间工作而没有休息的时候，或是在我感到心头空虚而需要充实的时候，我才感到孤独。有时，当外出讲学后回家，见过许多人，讲了很多话，满脑子的感受，需要梳理的时候，我也会感到孤独。 屋子有一阵子显得空荡荡的，而我不知自我潜藏何处。只有去浇浇花草，或许，然后再注目每一株花草，将之视为活生生的人，我才能渐渐找回失去的自我。 找回自我，需要一点时间。我看着浪花状若喷泉，不过这样的时刻降临了，身边的世界渐次隐遁，自我，再次从潜意识深处浮现，带回了最近的经历，那等待探究和细细品味的经历。

2005 Yet few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning. Do not dictate to your author; try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice. If you hang back, and reserve and criticize at first, you are preventing yourself from getting the fullest possible value

from what you read. But if you open your mind as widely as possible, then signs and hints of almost imperceptible fineness, from the twist and turn of the first sentences, will bring you into the presence of a human being unlike any other.

然而，人们对书籍往往求非所予。开卷之时，我们常常思想模糊，思维割裂，苛求小说真实，认定诗歌造作，视传记为美化，期望史书认同一己之见。阅读之时，若能摒弃所有此类成见，那将是一个可喜的开端。不要对作者指指点点，而应尝试设身处地，做作者的同道和“同谋”。若是你一开始便故步自封，先入为主，求全责备，你就不可能最大限度地从所读的书中获益，但是，你若能大大敞开思想，那么，开篇的那几行曲径通幽的文字，那若明若暗的微妙表达和深意将把你带到一个独具特色的灵魂面前。

2006 I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering.

You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea and air. //War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime.

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word, It is victory. Victory at all costs-victory in spite of all terrors-victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.

Let that be realized. No survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge, the impulse of the ages, that mankind shall move forward toward his goal.

除了苦干、流汗、流泪、甚至流血，我别无所能。我们所面对的是一种最痛苦的磨难，是历时数月之久的斗争和苦难。

你们会问， 我们的对策是什么？我认为是从地面，海上和空中发动的一场战争，一场竭尽我们所能，竭尽上帝所赐予我们的全部力量的战争，一场与人类罪行簿上所记载的最黑暗，最悲哀的恶魔暴政相抗争的战争。

你们还会问， 我们的目的是什么？我可以用一个词来回答，那就是胜利，——付出任何代价的胜利，不顾任何恐怖的胜利。没有胜利就没有生存。

我们必须意识到这一点：没有胜利，就没有大英帝国的存在， 就没有大英帝国所代表的一切的存在， 就没有愿望的存在， 就没有时代理想的存在， 就没有朝着人类目标的买进。

2007 Scientific and technological advances are enabling us to comprehend the furthest reaches of the cosmos, the most basic constituents of matter, and the miracle of life. At the same time, today, the actions, and inaction, of human beings imperil not only life on the planet, but the very life of the planet.

Globalization is making the world smaller, faster and richer. Still, 911, avian flu, and Iran remind us that a smaller, faster world is not necessarily a safer world.

Our world is bursting with knowledge - but desperately in need of wisdom. Now, when sound bites are getting shorter, when instant messages crowd out essays, and when individual lives grow more frenzied, college graduates capable of deep

reflection are what our world needs.

For all these reasons I believed - and I believe even more strongly today - in the unique and irreplaceable mission of universities.

科技进步正在使我们能够探索宇宙的边陲、物质最基本的成分及生命的奇迹。与此同时，今天，人类所做的及没能做到的事情，不仅危害到这个星球上的生命，也危害到该星球的寿命。

全球化正在使地球变得愈来愈小、愈来愈快和愈来愈富有。尽管如此，911、禽流感及伊朗提醒我们，更小更快的世界决不意味着其更安全。

我们正处于一个知识爆炸的世界之中，不过，迫切需要智慧。现在，在原声摘要播出变得愈来愈短，即时信息淘汰了杂记文，个人生活变得如痴如狂之际，这个世界还是需要能够深思的大学生。

考虑到这些理由，我过去信仰，而今天甚至更加强烈地信仰大学独特的、无可取代的使命。

2008 But, as has been true in many other cases, when they were at last married, the most ideal of situations was found to have been changed to the most practical. Instead of having shared their original duties, and as school-boys would say, going halves, they discovered that the cares of life had been doubled. This led to some distressing moments for both our friends; they understood suddenly that instead of dwelling in heaven they were still upon earth, and had make themselves slaves to new laws and limitations. Instead of being freer and happier than ever before, they had assumed new responsibilities; they had established a new household, and must fulfill in some way or another the obligations of it. They looked back with affection to their engagement; they had been longing to have other to themselves, apart from the world, but it seemed they never felt so keenly that they were still units in modern society.

但是正如其他许多已经发生过的事情一样，当他们最终结婚后，发现最憧憬的生活变得再实际不过了。他们非但没有分担各自原先的责任---正如那些学生们所说" 一半一半" ，相反却发现生活的重担加倍了。这使得我们那两个结婚的朋友时常觉得沮丧；他们突然发现自己并没有过着天堂般的生活而是仍实实在在地生活在地球上，而且成为了新规则和新约束的奴隶。生活并没有比以前更自由、更幸福，因为他们要去承担新的责任。既然成立了一个新的家庭，那就无论如何也要尽一点家庭的义务。他们深情地回想起订婚的那段时光，曾经如此地渴望拥有彼此而忘掉这个世界，然而现在最深切的感受却是自己仍是这个世界的一份子。

2009 We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency- a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst -though not all-of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly.

However, despite a growing number of honorable exceptions, too many of the world's leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler's threat: "They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent."

So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.

人类正面临一场全球性的危机，文明的延续受到威胁。正当我们聚在这里共商对策的时候，危机的可能性和破坏性却在增大。但希望依然存在：如果行动大胆、果断、迅速，我们即使无法预防所有的不利事情发生，但还是能够阻止最坏的情况出现，有能力解决这场危机。

当年，温斯顿·丘吉尔批评欧洲政要忽视阿道夫·希特勒的威胁时发表过一句名言，用这句名言来描述时下太多的世界领袖是再恰当不过了：“他们的决策自相矛盾，令人费解：表面上很坚决，其实犹豫不决；看起来很果断，其实优柔寡断；给人的印象是无所不能，实际上却是软弱无能。”

今天，我们向地球周围薄薄的大气层排放了七千万吨的温室气体，把大气层当作天然排污口。明天，我们的排放量还会增大，累积的温室气体吸收太阳的热量会越来越多。

2010 I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May；that it was Easter Sunday，and as yet very early in the morning．I was standing，as it seemed to me，at the door of my own cottage．Right before me lay the very scene which could really be commanded from that situation ，but exalted, as was usual ，and solemnized by the power of dreams ． There were the same mountains，and the same lovely valley at their feet； but the mountains were raised to more than Alpine height，and there was interspace far larger between them of savannahs and forest lawns ；the hedges were rich with white roses ；and no living creature was to be seen, excepting that in the green churchyard there were cattle tranquilly reposing upon the verdant graves ，and particularly round about the grave of a child whom I had once tenderly loved，just as I had really seen them，a little before sunrise，in the same summer when that child died.

我想那是五月的一个周日的早晨; 那天是复活节，一个大清早上。我站在自家小屋的门口。就在我的面前展现出了那么一番景色，从我那个位置其实能够尽收眼底，可是梦里的感觉往往如此，由于梦幻的力量，这番景象显得超凡出尘，一派肃穆气象。群山形状相同，其山脚下都有着同样可爱的山谷; 不过群山挺然参天，高于阿尔卑斯峰，诸山相距空旷，丰草如茵，林地开阔，错落其间；树篱上的白玫瑰一望无际；远近看不见任何生物，唯有苍翠的教堂庭院里，牛群静静地卧躺在那片郁郁葱葱的墓地歇息，好几头围绕着一个小孩的坟墓。我曾对她一腔柔情，那年夏天是在旭日东升的前一刻，那孩子死去了，我如同当年那样望着牛群。