大学英语综合教程4课文翻译
巡山小妖精
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2020年07月29日 16:03
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kva是什么单位-螟蛉义子
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,
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
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
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
e had impaled the lopped head of a boa, open-mouthed, on a pointed stick by the canoes, for decoration.
丛林中狭长的湖泊上波光闪闪。我们荡舟其上,划着用大砍刀砍削而成的木桨,在浅水处则以竹当篙。有着一半印第安血统的向导前一天已经辟出了通往湖泊的小路;我们在小路上行走时,看见他砍下作为装饰的蟒蛇头,张开大口,钉在独木舟边尖头枝条上。
15 This lake was wonderful. Herons plodded the shores, kingfishers and cuckoos clattered from sunlight to shade, great turkeylike birds fussed in dead branches, and hawks hung overhead. There was all the time in the world. A turtle slid into the water. The boy in the bow of my canoe slapped stones at birds with a simple sling, a rubber thong and leather pad. He aimed brilliantly at moving targets, always, and always missed; the birds were out of range. He stuffed his sling back in his shirt. I looked around.
湖泊奇妙无比。苍鹭在岸边缓缓地迈着步子,翠鸟和杜鹃欢叫着从阳光里飞入树荫,火鸡模样的大鸟在枯枝间忙碌,鹰在头上盘旋。我们毋庸为时间担忧,可以从容地欣赏周围的一切。一只乌龟滑入水中。我乘坐的独木舟船头坐着个男孩,他用简陋的弹弓――橡皮弹架和皮索――发射石弹击打飞鸟。他摆出漂亮的架势瞄准飞鸟,却一次又一次地偏离目标;鸟总是飞出他的射程。他把弹弓塞回进衬衣内。我移开目光。
16 The lake and river waters are as opaque as rainforest leaves; they are veils, blinds, painted screens. You see things only by their effects. I saw the shoreline water heave above a thrashing paichi, an enormous black fish of these waters; one had been caught the previous week weighing 430 pounds. Piranha fish live in the lakes, and electric eels. I dangled my fingers in the water, figuring it would be worth it.
湖水与河水都如热带雨林中的树叶那样乳浊;那水是面纱,是窗帘,是画屏。你只能从表象看事物。我看到近岸的河水在起伏,上面翻腾着一条巨滑舌鱼,那是这一带水域出产的一种奇大的黑鱼;上一个星期捕获一条,重达430磅。湖里有水虎鱼,还有电鳗。我用手指在水里划着,心想即使被鱼咬一口也值得。
17 We would eat chicken that night in the village, together with rice, onions and heaps of fruit. The sun would ring down, pulling darkness after it like a curtain. Twilight is short, and the unseen birds of twilight wistful, catching the heart. The two nuns in their dazzling white habits -- the beautiful-boned young nun and the warm-faced old -- would glide to the open cane-and-thatch schoolroom in darkness, and start the children singing. The children would sing in piping Spanish, high-pitched and pure; they would sing "Nearer My God to Thee" in Quechua, very fast. As the children became