Unit-10-The-Jeaning-of-America课文翻译综合教程二
场景描写-假期社会实践心得
Unit-10-The-Jeaning-of-
Amer
ica课文翻译综合教程二
Unit 10 The
Jeaning of America
This is the story of a
sturdy
American symbol which has now spread
throughout most of the world. The
symbol
is not the dollar. It is not even
Coca-Cola.
It is a simple pair of pants
called blue
jeans, and what the pants
symbolize is what
Alexis de Tocqueville
called manly and
legitimate passion
for equality---Blue jeans
are favored
equally by bureaucrats and
cowboys;
bankers and deadbeats; fashion
designers and beer drinkers. They draw
no
distinctions and recognize no classes;
they
are merely American. Yet they are
sought after
almost everywhere in the
world -- including
recently
Russia,
broke
where
up a authorities
teen-aged gang that was
selling them on
the black market for two
hundred
dollars a pair. They have been around
for a long time, and it seems likely that
they will outlive even the
necktie.
This ubiquitous American symbol
was the invention of a Bavarian-born
Jew.
His name was Levi Strauss. He was
born in Bad
Ocheim, Germany, in 1829,
and during the
European political
turmoil of 1848 decided to
take his
chances in New York, to which his two
brothers already had emigrated. Upon
arrival, Levi soon found that his two
brothers had exaggerated their tales of
an
easy life in the land of the main
chance. They
were landowners, they
had told him; instead,
he found them
pushing needles, thread, pots,
pans,
ribbons, yam, scissors and buttons to
housewives. For two years he was a
lowly
peddler, hauling some 180 pounds
of sundries
door-to-door to eke out a
marginal living.
When a married sister
in San Francisco offered
to pay his way
West in 1850, he jumped at the
opportunity, taking with him
bolts of
canvas he hoped to sell for tenting.
It was the wrong kind of canvas for
that
purpose, but while talking with a
miner down
from the mother lode, he
learned that pants --
sturdy pants that
would stand up to the rigors
of the
digging -- were almost impossible to
find. Opportunity beckoned.
On the spot,
Strauss measured the
man's girth and inseam
with a piece of
string and, for six dollars in
gold dust,
had [the canvas] tailored into a
pair of
stiff but rugged pants. The miner was
delighted with the result, word got
around
about pants of Levi's,
and Strauss was in
business. The
company has been in business
ever
since.
When Strauss ran out of
canvas, he
wrote his two brothers to send
more. He
received instead a tough, brown
cotton
cloth made in Nimes,
France -- called
serge de Nimes and swiftly
shortened to
Genes, the French word for
Genoa,
where a similar cloth was produced).
Almost from the first, Strauss had his
cloth dyed the distinctive indigo that
gave blue jeans their name, but it was
not
until the 1870s that he added the
copper
rivets which have long since
become a company
trademark. The
rivets were the idea of a
Virginia City,
Nevada, tailor, Jacob W. Davis,
who
added them to pacify a mean-tempered
miner called Alkali Ike. Alkali, the story
goes, complained that the pockets of his
jeans always tore when he stuffed them
with ore samples and demanded that
Davis
do something about it. As a kind
of joke,
Davis took the pants to a
blacksmith and had
the pockets riveted;
once again, the idea
worked so well that
word got
around; in 1873 Strauss
appropriated and
patented the gimmick
-- and hired Davis as a
regional
manager.
By this time, Strauss
had taken both
his brothers and two brothers-
in-law
into the company and was ready for his
third San Francisco store. Over the
ensuing years the company prospered
locally, and by the time of his death in
1902, Strauss had become a man of
prominence in California. For three
decades thereafter the business
remained
profitable though small, with
sales largely
confined to the working
people of the
Westcowboys,
lumberjacks, railroad workers,
and the
like. Levi’s jeans were first
introduced
to the East, apparently, during the
dude-ranch craze of the 1930s, when
vacationing Easterners returned and
spread
the word about the wonderful
pants with rivets. Another boost came in
World War II, when blue jeans were
declared an essential commodity and
were
sold only to people engaged in
defense work.
From a company with
fifteen salespeople, two
plants, and
almost no business east of the
Mississippi in 1946, the organization
grew
in thirty years to include a sales
force of
more than twenty-two thousand,
with fifty
plants and offices in thirty five
countries.
Each year, more than
250,000,000 items of
Levi's clothing
are sold -- including more
than
83,000,000 pairs of riveted blue jeans.
They have become, through marketing,
word
of mouth, and demonstrable
reliability,
America.
the
They
common
can
be
pants of
purchased
pre-wash-ed,
pre-faded, and pre-shrunk
for the suitably
proletarian look. They
adapt themselves to any
sort of
idiosyncratic use;
women slit them at
the inseams and convert
them into long
skirts, men chop them off above
the
knees and turn them into something to
be worn while challenging the surf.
Decorations
abound.
The pants have
become a tradition,
and along the way have
acquired a
history of their own -- so much so
that
the company has opened a museum in
San Francisco. There was, for example,
the
turn-of-the-century trainman who
replaced a
faulty coupling with a pair of
jeans; the
Wyoming man who used his
jeans as a towrope to
haul his car out of
a ditch; the Californian
who found
several pairs in an abandoned mine,
wore them, then discovered they were
sixty-three years old and still as good as
new and turned them over to the
Smithsonian as a tribute to their
and
ornamentations
toughness. And then
there is the
particularly terrifying story of
the
careless construction worker who
dangled fifty-two stories above the
street
until rescued, his sole support the
Levi' s
belt loop through which his rope
was hooked.
美国的牛仔裤之路
本文讲述了美国一个坚实的象征物，如今已
经遍及世界
大部分地区。这个象征并不是美元。
也不是可口可乐。而是一条被称作蓝色牛仔裤的
普通裤子。
这种裤子所象征的，正如亚克力西德
托儿所谓的对“平等的果断的正当的追求”。无论
是官员还
是牛仔，银行家还是赖账徒，时尚设计
师还是酗酒者都同样青睐蓝色牛仔裤。这种裤子
不分高低
贵贱，只要是美国人都可以穿。可是牛
仔裤几乎在世界的任何地方都广受欢迎 -- 包
括俄罗
斯，其当局最近刚刚粉碎了一个在黑市贩
卖牛仔裤的团伙，他们的牛仔裤卖到了200美
元一条
。牛仔裤已经流行了很长时间了，看起来
其生命力已经超过了领带。
这种无处不在的美国象征是一个出生在巴
伐利亚的犹太人发明的。
他与1982年出生于
德国的巴德奥且姆。 1848年欧洲政局动荡期
间，他决定去纽约试试
运气，他的两个哥哥已经
移民到了那里。到了纽约，里维发现他的两个哥
哥广域他们在这片充满
机遇的土地上生活的比
较安逸的说法有点言过其实。他们说他们拥有土
地。可他发现他们正向家
庭主妇推销针线、锅罐、
缎带、见到和纽扣。里维做了两年寒酸的小贩，
拉着180磅的杂货挨
家挨户的叫卖，勉强维持
生计。他的一个嫁到旧金山的姐姐为他提供西行
路费，他急忙抓住这个
机会，带着几个帆布卷，
他打算卖给别人做帐篷。
岂料这些帆布并不适合做帐篷，不过里维与
自主矿脉的矿工交谈后了解到，人们买不到耐得
起采矿磨损的坚实耐穿的裤子。机会在向他招<
br>手。
施特劳斯当场用一根带子量了那人的腰围
和裤长，用帆布做成了一条粗硬的耐穿的
裤子，
卖了六美元的沙金。矿工觉得很满意，于是有关
里维斯的裤子一词不胫而走。他的公司一
直在运
转。
当施特莱斯用完了那些帆布料，他写信给他
的两个哥哥，让他们在送点过来。没想到却受到
了法国尼姆产的一种坚韧的棕色的棉布。称作<
br>“尼姆哔叽”（serge de Nimes），很快就简称
为“劳动布”（英语词jeans
牛仔裤）源自于法
语的Genes，即英语的Genoa（热那亚）此地
盛产一种类似的棉布）
。从一开始，斯特赖斯将
他的布料染成了湛蓝色。蓝牛仔裤因此而得名。
不过，知道19世纪7
0年代，他才在牛仔裤上
加了铜柳钉。长期以来，这铜柳丁成；公司的标
志。给裤子加上柳丁是
内华达州的一名名叫雅各
布W戴维斯的裁缝所想出的主意。他这样做是
为了安抚一个名叫叫阿尔
克利.艾可的脾气暴躁
的矿工。这名矿工抱怨他往牛仔裤里放矿石标本
时，牛仔裤的口袋那里总
是被撕破，他要求戴维
斯想想办法。戴维斯有点像开玩笑，把裤子拿到
了铁匠铺，给口袋打上柳
丁。这一招果然奏效，
消息不胫而走。1873年，施特莱斯采纳了这一
小发明，出资为其申请
了专利，并雇用了戴维斯
去做地区经理。
这时候，斯特赖斯把他的两位哥哥和两个姐
夫带进了公司，并准备在旧金山开办他第三家商
店。此后的几十年
，公司在当地生意兴隆。直到
1902年施特劳斯去世时，他已经成为加利福尼
亚的知名人士。
在此后的30年，生意虽然小，
但一直在盈利。主要的销售对象是西部劳工阶层
--—诸如牛仔
、伐木工、铁路工之类的人。里维
斯的牛仔第一次被引进到东部，显然，20世纪
30年代农场
热，在西部度假的东部人回家后，
到处宣扬带着柳丁的奇妙的裤子。二战期间，蓝
色牛仔裤再一
次走俏，被宣布为紧要商品，只卖
给从事防务工作的人，从1946年，只有15名
销售人员，
两家工厂，以及在密西西比东部没有
任何业务的公司，在30年间，发展成一个拥有
2万2千人
的销售团队，并在35个国家开设了
55个工厂和办事处。每年，里维斯服装的销售
量都超过了
两千五百万件，其中拥有830万件
是钉有柳丁的蓝色牛仔裤。通过市场营销，口口
相传，以及
显而易见的可靠性，牛仔裤成了美国
的寻常裤装。人们可以买到进行过水洗的、褪色
和缩水处理
的牛仔裤，以符合无产阶级的形象。
牛仔裤几经改造还可以供各种癖好的人使用。妇
女们将裤管
拆开，将裤子改成裙装。男人们将其
从膝盖下方截下来，变成冲浪用的短裤。人们还
给牛仔裤装上各式各样的装饰。
牛仔裤已经成为一种传统。在其发展过程中
叶谱写了自己的历史 -- 这历史丰富多彩的公<
br>司，在旧金山开设了一家博物馆。馆中的展品有，
例如：一位列车员用一条牛仔裤代替一条失灵的
联轴器。；怀俄明州的一个男子用牛仔裤把汽车
从沟里拖出来，：一个加利福尼亚人在一个废弃
的矿井里捡到几条牛仔裤，穿上的时候才发现这
些裤子有63岁年历史了，但却和新的一样好，
变将他们捐赠给史密斯学会，以表彰他们的坚实
耐用。还有一个特别惊心动魄的故事：一个粗心
的建筑工人悬挂在52层楼上，直至获救，他的
唯一支撑点就是李维牛仔裤的裤带扣，他的安全
绳就扣着这裤带扣。