(完整版)Unit10TheJeaningofAmerica课文翻译综合教程二
阿姆斯特丹自由大学-校本培训总结
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 Russia, where authorities
recently broke up a 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
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
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, the
common pants of America. They can be 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 and
ornamentations 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 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<
br>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<
br>耐得起采矿磨损的坚实耐穿的裤子。机会在向他招手。
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“尼姆哔叽”（s
erge de Nimes），很快就简
称为“劳动布”（英语词jeans牛仔裤）源自于法语的G
enes，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70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1
902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。