Hidden Within Technology?s Empire, a Republic of Letters
隐藏于技术帝国的文学界
索尔?贝妻
When I was a boy “discovering literature”, I used to think how wonderful it would be if every other person on the street were familiar with Proust and Joyce or T. E. Lawrence or Pasternak and Kafka. Later I learned how refractory to high culture the democratic masses were. Lincoln as a young frontiersman read Plutarch, Shakespeare and the Bible. But then he was Lincoln.
我还是个"探索文学"的少年时，就经常在想：要是大街上人人都熟悉普鲁斯特和乔伊斯，熟悉T.E.劳伦斯，熟悉帕斯捷尔纳克和卡夫卡，该有多好啊！后来才知道，平民百姓对高雅文化有多排斥。虽说少年时代身居边陲的林肯就在阅读普鲁塔克，、莎士比亚和《圣经》，但他毕竟是林肯。
Later when I was traveling in the Midwest by car, bus and train, I regularly visited small-town libraries and found that readers in Keokuk, Iowa, or Benton Harbor, Mich., were checking out Proust and Joyce and even Svevo and Andrei Biely. D. H. Lawrence was also a favorite. And sometimes I remembered that God was willing to spare Sodom for the sake of 10 of the righteous. Not that Keokuk was anything like wicked Sodom, or that Proust?s Cha rlus would have been tempted to settle in Benton Harbor, Mich. I seem to have had a persistent democratic desire to find evidences of high culture in the most unlikely places.
后来，我坐小车、巴士和火车在中西部旅行，经常走访小镇图书馆；发现在衣阿华州基奥卡克市，或者密歇根州本顿港市，读者们借阅普鲁斯特和乔伊斯的作品，甚至还有斯维沃@和安德烈?别雷?的著作。D. H.劳伦斯的书也深受欢迎。有时我会想起上帝愿为十个义人而饶恕所多玛城的故事^并非基奧卡克市和邪恶的所多玛有何相似之处，也并非普鲁斯特笔下的夏吕斯?想移居密西根州的本顿港，只不过我似乎一直有一种开明的想法，希望在最难觅高雅文化的地方找到高雅文化的证据。
For many decades now I have been a fiction writer, and from the first I was aware that mine was a questionable occupation. In the 1930?s an elderly neighbor in Chicago told me that he wrote fiction for the pulps. “The people on the block wonder why I don?t go to a job, and I?m seen putteri ng around, trimming the bushes or painting a fence instead of working in a factory. But I?m a writer. I sell to Argosy and Doc Savage,” he said with a certain gloom. “They wouldn?t call that a trade.” Probably he noticed that I was a bookish boy, likely to sympathize with him, and perhaps he was trying to warn me to avoid being unlike others. But it was too late for that.
至今，我已写了几十年小说，而且一开始就意识到，这是个颇有争议的职业。20世纪30年代，芝加哥一位年长的邻居告诉我，他给通俗杂志写小说。"街坊邻里都纳闷，为什么不去上班，却见我游来荡去，修剪修剪树木，粉刷粉刷篱笆，就是不去工厂干活儿。可我是作家啊，稿子卖给《大商船》和《萨维奇医生》⑦那些杂志，"他说话时神情有些抑郁。"他们不会把这当作正事儿。"他很可能已经觉察到，我是个喜欢读书的孩子，兴许会与他产生共鸣，或者他想提醒我，不要与众不同，但这为时已晚。
From the first, too, I had been warned that the novel was at the point of death, that like the walled city or the crossbow, it was a thing of the past. And no one likes to be at odds with history. Oswald Spengler, one of the most widely read authors of the early 30?s, taught that our tired old civilization was very nearly finished. His advice to the young was to avoid literature and the arts and to embrace mechanization and become engineers.一开始也有人告诫我，小说正频临死亡，犹如城郭或弓弩，已属昨日之物。谁也不愿和历史作对。奥斯瓦尔德?斯宾格勒*——30年代初拥有最广泛读者的作者之--曾教导我们，陈腐、古老的文明已几近末路，建议年轻人避开文学和艺术，拥抱机械化，去当工程师。
In refusing to be obsolete, you challenged and defied the evolutionist historians. I had great respect for Spengler in my youth, but eve n then I couldn?t accept his conclusions, and (with respect and admiration) I mentally told him to get lost.
你拒绝被淘汰，就是对进化论史学家的挑战和蔑视。年轻时我非常尊重斯宾格勒，但即使那个时候，也无法接受他的结论，而（怀着敬慕之情）在心里对他说：你走远点吧。
Sixty years later, in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal, I come upon the old Spenglerian argument in a contemporary form. Terry Teachout, unlike Spengler, does not dump paralyzing mountains of historical theory upon us, but there are signs that he has weighed, sifted and pondered the evidence.
时隔60年，在最近一期《华尔街日报》上，偶见斯宾格勒式老调新弹。跟斯宾格勒不同，特里?蒂奇奥特并没有将一座座令人窒息的史论大山压在我们身上，但迹象表明，他权衡、筛选、思索过相关证据。
He speaks of our “atomized culture,” and his is a responsible, up-to-date and carefully considered opinion. He speaks of “art forms as technologies.” He tells us that movies will soon be “downloadable”—that is, transferable from one computer to the memory of another device—and predicts that films will soon be marketed like books. He predicts that the near-magical powers of technology are bringing us to the threshold of a new age and conclu des, “Once this happens, my guess is that the independent movie will replace the novel as the principal vehicle for serious story telling in the 21st century.”
他谈到了我们的"原子化文化"，观点新颖可靠，并经过深思熟虑，谈到了"作为技术的艺术形式"，告诉我们，电影很快就"可以下载"，即从一台电脑转入另一存储设备。他还预测，电影不久会如书籍般销售。他预言近乎魔法的技术之力将把我们引入一个新时代，并得出结论："一旦这成为现实，我猜想，独立电影会替代小说，成为21世纪严肃故事叙述的主要载体。"
In support of this argument, Mr. Teachout cites the ominous drop in the volume of book sales and the great increase in movie attendance: “For Americans under the age of 30, film has replaced the novel as the dominant mode of artistic expression.” To this Mr. Teachout adds that popular novelists like Tom Clancy and Stephen King “top out at around a million copies per book,” and notes, “The final episode of NBC?s …Cheers,? by contrast, was seen by 42 million people.”
为了支持这一观点，蒂奇奥特先生指出，图书销量不幸下降，而电影观众却大幅上升。"对30岁以下的美国人来说，电影已经取代小说，成为艺术表达的首要模式。"蒂奇奥特先生补充道，汤姆?克兰西和斯蒂芬?金@等畅销小说家"每本书最多也就卖到一百万册左右，"还说，"相比之下，全国广播公司的《欢乐酒店》*的最后一集，观众达4200万之多。"
On majoritarian grounds, the movies win. “The power of novels to shape the national convers ation has declined,” says Mr. Teachout. But I am not at all certain that in their day “Moby-Dick” or “The Scarlet Letter” had any considerable influence on “the national conversation.” In the mid-19th century it was “Uncle Tom?s Cabin” that impressed the great public. “Moby-Di ck” was a small-public novel.
就数量多寡而言，电影赢了。"小说左右国民言谈的力量巳经削弱，"蒂奇奥特先生说。但我丝毫不敢肯定，当初《白鲸》或《红字》对"国民言谈"有过什么重大影响。19世纪中期，打动大众的是《汤姆叔叔的小屋》。《白鲸》是一部小众小说。
The literary masterpieces of the 20th century were for the most part the work of novelists who had no large public in mind. The novels of Proust and Joyce were written in a cultural twilight and were not intended to be read under the blaze and dazzle of popularity.
20世纪的文学杰作大多出自没有大众意识的小说家之手。普鲁斯特和乔伊斯的小说，创作于暗淡的文化暮色之中，本来就无意让人在大众化的耀眼光焰下阅读。
Mr. Teachout?s article in The Journal follows the path generall y taken by observers whose aim is to discover a trend. “According to one recent study 55 percent of Americans spend less than 30 minutes reading anything at all…. It may even be that movies have superseded novels not because Americans have grown dumber but because the novel is an o bsolete artistic technology.”
蒂奇奧特先生在《华尔街日报》上的文章，沿用了观察家们旨在发现某种倾向的套路，指出"根据最近一项调査，55%的美国人阅读时间不超过30分钟……甚至可以说，电影取代了小说，不是因为美国人变傻了，而是因为小说这种技艺已经过时。""
“We are not accustomed to thinking of art forms as technologies,” he says, “but that is what they are, which means they have been rendered moribund by new technical developments.”
我们还不习惯把艺术形式看成技术，"他说，"但事实上艺术形式就是技术，也就是说，艺术形式已经
因为新技术的发展而濒临死亡。"
Together with this emphasis on technics that attracts the scientific-minded young, there are other preferences discernible: It is better to do as a majority of your contemporaries are doing, better to be one of millions viewing a film than one of mere thousands reading a book. Moreover, the reader reads in solitude, whereas the viewer belongs to a great majority; he has powers of numerosity as well as the powers of mechanization. Add to this the importance of avoiding technological obsolescence and the attraction of feeling that technics will decide questions for us more dependably than the thinking of an individual, no matter how distinctive he may be.
文章除了强调崇尚科学的年轻人有吸引力的技术之外，还看得见其他一些取向。如大多数同时代人做什么，你最好就做什么，与其和区区数千人一样读一本书，不如和几百万人一样看一场电影。另外，读者只是独自阅读，而观众却是与许多人共赏，既借机械技术之力，又得人数众多之势。不妨还可以补充说，避免技术上落伍也很重要，而人们总觉得就解决问题而言，不管个人有多么出众，技术要比个人的思想更可靠。这种感觉也很有吸引力。
John Cheever told me long ago that it was his readers who kept him going, people from every part of the country who had written to him. When he was at work, he was aware of these readers and correspondents in the woods beyond the lawn. “If I couldn?t picture them, I?d be sunk,” he said. And the novelist Wright M orris, urging me to get an electric typewriter, said that he seldom turned his machine off. “When I?m not writing, I listen to the electricity,” he said. “It keeps me company. We have conversations.”
很久以前，约翰?契弗⑧对我说，让他坚持不懈地写作的是读者，那些从全国各地给他写信的人。写作时，他觉得那些读者和写信人就在草坪那边的小树林里。"脑子里要是没有他们，那我就完了，"他说。还有小说家赖特?莫里斯?极力劝我去买一台电动打字机，说他自己的打字机都很少关掉。"不写作的时候，就倾听电流的声音，"他说，"它陪伴着我。我们可以交谈。"
I wonder how Mr. Teachout might square such idiosyncrasies with his “art forms as technologies.” Perhaps he would argue that these two writers had somehow isolated themselves from “broad-based cultural influence.” Mr. Teachout has at least one laudable purpose: He thinks that he sees a way to bring together the Great Public of the movies with the Small Public of the highbrows. He is, however, interested in millions: millions of dollars, millions of readers, millions of viewers.
不知道蒂奇奥特先生如何使这些个人习性与"作为技术的艺术形式"两者相容。也许他会说，这两位作家由于某种原因脱离了"广泛的文化影响"。蒂奇奥特先生至少有一个值得称道的目的：他认为自己发现了一个方法，能使"电影大众"与"精英小众"协调起来。但是，他感兴趣的却是几百万这个数字：几百万美元，几百万读者，几百万观众。
The one thing “everybody” does is go to the movies, Mr. Te achout says. How right he is.
蒂奇奥特先生说，"人人"都做的一件事情，就是去看电影。他说得对极了。
Back in the 20?s children between the ages of 8 and 12 lined up on Saturdays to buy their ni ckel tickets to see the crisis of last Saturday resolved. The heroine was untied in a matter of seconds just before the locomotive would have crushed her. Then came a new episode; and after that the newsreel and “Our Gang.” Finally there was a western with Tom Mix, or a Janet Gaynor picture about a young bride and her husband blissful in the attic, or Gloria Swanson and Theda Bara or Wallace Beery or Adolphe Menjou or Marie Dressler. And of course there was Charlie Chaplin in “The Gold Rush,” and from “The Gold Rush” it was only one step to the stories of Jack London.
回想20年代，每到周六，8到12岁的孩子们就会排队买张五美分的电影票，看看上个周六的危机是如何化解的。女主人公在火车就要辗过她之前几秒钟被松了绑。接着新的一集开始了，然后就是新闻短片和《小顽童》"。最后是一部汤姆?米克斯的西部片；或者是一部珍妮《盖诺的电影，讲述年轻的新娘和她丈夫在阁楼上的幸福生活，或是葛洛莉娅?斯旺森和蒂达?巴拉，或是华莱士?比里，阿道夫?门吉欧，玛丽?杜丝勒等影星主演的影片。当然，还有査理《卓别林的《淘金记》，而《淘金记》离杰克?伦敦的故事只不过一步之遥。
There was no rivalry then between the viewer and the reader. Nobody supervised our reading. We were on
our own. We civilized ourselves. We found or made a mental and imaginative life. Because we could read, we learned also to write. It did not confuse me to see “Treasure Island” in the movies and then read the book. There was no competition for our attention.
那时候观众和读者并不对立。没人去管我们的阅读。我们自己做主，自我教化。我们发现或者说创造了充满想象的精神生活。我们因为能够阅读，所以也学会了写作。先看电影《金银岛》，然后再去读这本书，并没有让我感到困惑。那时候，电影和书籍并没有为吸引我们的注意力而争先恐后。
One of the more attractive oddities of the United States is that our minorities are so numerous, so huge. A minority of millions is not at all unusual. But there are in fact millions of literate Americans in a state of separation from others of their kind. They are, if you like, the readers of Cheever, a crowd of them too large to be hidden in the woods. Departments of literature across the country have not succeeded in alienating them from books, works old and new. My friend Keith Botsford and I felt strongly that if the woods were filled with readers gone astray, among those readers there were probably writers as well.
美国有一件更引人注目的奇事，那就是我们的少数群体数目众多，规模庞大。几百万人构成一个少数群体，根本算不得反常。但实际上，还有几百万能识文断字的美国人，相互之间处于隔离状态。可以说，阅读契弗作品的人，就是一个数量大得无法藏身于小树林的群体。全国各地的文学系没能让他们疏远书籍，无论是旧作还是新书。我和我的朋友基思?博茨福德都深深感到，如果小树林中挤满了迷路的读者，那么其中很可能也有作家。
To learn in detail of their existence you have only to publish a magazine like The Republic of Letters. Given encouragement, unknown writers, formerly without hope, materialize. One early reader wrote that our paper, “with its contents so fresh, person-to-person,” was “real, non-synthetic, undistracting.” Noting that there were no ads, she asked, “Is it possible, can it last?” and called it “an antidote to the shrinking of the human being in every one of us.” And toward the end of her letter our correspondent added, “It behooves the elder generation to come up with reminders of who w e used to be and need to be.”
要详细了解他们的生存状态，你只需办一份像《文学界》这样的杂志。一旦得到鼓励，原先的无望之辈，就会显山露水。一位早期读者来信说，我们的刊物"内容非常新鲜、非常亲切"，"真实、不造作，阅读时不会让人分心。"她注意到上面没登广告，便问，"这行吗？能办得下去吗？"还将其称作"一味解毒剂，治疗我们每个人身上的人性萎缩症。"在书信末尾，我们这位笔友补充道，"老一代人有必要站出来提醒一下，我们过去是什么样的人，应该成为什么样的人。"
This is what Keith Botsford and I had hoped that our “tabloid for literates” would be. And for two ye ars it has been just that. We are a pair of utopian codgers who feel we have a duty to literature. I hope we are not like those humane do-gooders who, when the horse was vanishing, still donated troughs in City Hall Square for thirsty nags.
这正是当初我和基思?博茨福德期望中的"读书人小报"。两年来，刊物信守着这个理念。我们俩是一对乌托邦式的老怪物，总觉得对文学负有责任。我希望我们别像那些不现实的行善者，马匹都快绝迹了，居然还把料槽捐赠到市政广场，以备口渴的马儿饮水。
We have no way of guessing how many independent, self-initiated connoisseurs and lovers of literature have survived in remote corners of the country. The little evidence we have suggests that they are glad to find us, they are grateful. They want more than they are getting. Ingenious technology has failed to give them what they so badly need.
我们无从猜测，究竟有多少独立、自发的文学鉴赏者和爱好者在全国各个偏远的角落里生存了下来。手头的点滴证据表明，他们为能够找到我们而高兴，也很感激。他们期望的比眼下得到的要多，精巧的技术并没有满足他们的迫切需求。
英译汉参考译文：
注释
1) 本文作者索尔?贝娄（1915—2005)为美国作家、1976年诺贝尔文学奖得主.原文发表于1999年10月11曰《纽约时拫》，后收入《纽约时拫：作家谈写作选辑》。标题中"文学界"（the republic of letters) —词来自拉丁语Respublica literaria, 18世纪盛行于欧美，指的是一个由文人组成的、想象的"共和国"，
不受地域和国别限制，这一概念对启蒙时代的学者影响很大。
2）普鲁塔克（46? -120?),古希腊传记作家、散文家，著有《希腊罗马名人比较列传》等。
3）斯维沃（1861—1928),意大利商人、作家，著有《泽诺的意识》等。
4) 安德烈?别雷（1880~1934),俄罗斯诗人、文艺理论家，著有《银鸽》、《彼得堡》等。
5）圣经《创世纪》第18章：上帝欲灭所多玛城，亚伯拉罕代为求恳，上帝允诺若城内有十名义人.便不施惩罚。
6）夏吕斯男爵为普鲁斯特小说《追忆似水年华》中的人物，生活堕落。
7)《大商船》是美国一份通俗杂志，创刊于1882年，一般认为是美国第一份通俗杂志，《萨维奇博士》是美国一份杂志，1933年至1949年发行，1964年起，杂志中的故事先后单独出版发行，影响颇大。8）斯宾格勒（1880~1936),德国史学家、哲学家，著有《西方的没落》等。
9）汤姆?克兰西（1947—),美国通俗小说家，著有《猎杀红色十月》等，斯蒂芬?金（1947—),美国畅销作家,著有《肖申克的救赎》等。
10）美国一部情景喜剧。
11）约翰?契弗（1912—1982),美国小说家，著有《华普肖一家》、《大收音机》等。
12）赖特?莫里斯（1910"—1998),美国小说家，著有《幻象之地》、《草原之歌》等。
13）美国20世纪初一部流行的喜剧短片。
On Irritability Irritability is the tendency to get upset for reasons that seem – to other people – to be pretty minor. Your partner asks you how work went and the way they ask makes you feel intensely agitated. Your partner is putting knives and forks on the table before dinner and you mention (not for the first time) that the fork should go on the left hand side, not the right. They then immediately let out a huge sigh and sweep the cutlery onto the floor and tell you that you can xxxx-ing do it yourself if you know better. It was the most minor of criticisms and technically quite correct. And now they’ve exploded. There is so much irritability around and it exacts a huge daily cost on our collective lives, so we deserve to get a lot more curious about it: what is really going on for the irritable person? Why, really, are they getting so agitated? And instead of blaming them for getting het up about “little things”, we should do them the honour of working out why, in fact, these things may not be so minor after all. The journey begins by recognising the role of fear in irritability in couples. Behind most outbursts are cack-handed attempts to teach the other person something. There are things we’d like to point out, flaws that we can discern, remarks w e feel we really must make, but our awareness of how to proceed is panicked and hasty. We give cack-handed, mean speeches, which bear no faith in the legitimacy (even the nobility) of the act of imparting advice. And when our partners are on the receiving end of these irritable “lessons”, they of course swiftly grow defensive and brittle in the face of suggestions which seem more like mean-minded and senseless assaults on their very natures rather than caring, gentle attempts to address troublesome aspects of joint life. The prerequisite of calm in a teacher is a degree of indifference as to the success or failure of the lesson. One naturally wants for things to go well, but if an obdurate pupil flunks trigonometry, it is – at base – their problem. Tempers can stay even because individual students do not have very much power over teachers’ lives. Fortunately, as not caring too much turns out to be a critical aspect of successful pedagogy. Yet this isn’t an option open to the fearful, irritable lover. They feel ineluctably led to deliver their “lessons” in a cataclysmic, frenzied manner (the door slams very loudly indeed) not because they are insane or vile (though one could easily draw these
The pearl 吉纳，一位穷渔夫，刚发现了一颗非常大而且非常珍贵的珍珠，准备去最近的城镇把它卖掉。他急切需要钱给刚给蝎子螫伤的孩子看病。吉纳发现珍珠前，他---一位可以看病的医生拒绝给孩子治病，因为吉纳付不起治疗费。 一个小镇就像个集群动物，有神经系统头肩膀和肢。它与其他城镇不想连。因此没有两座城镇是相似的。城镇里还有完整的感情。要知道消息是怎样传遍整个小镇的可是个难解之谜。消息传得似乎比小男孩冲出去告诉别人的速度还快，比女人隔着篱笆大声说消息的速度还要快。? 在吉纳胡安纳和其他渔夫回到吉纳的茅草屋前，小镇的神经正随着消息--吉纳发现了世界上最大的珍珠--传播而奔腾，跳动。跑得气喘吁吁的小男孩还没说出这个消息，母亲们早已知晓了。消息席卷而过茅草屋，激起波浪泡沫，然后冲进镇里的石头灰泥瓦房里。消息传到正在花园里散步的牧师，他的眼中露出若有所思的表情，他想起教堂的有些地方该维修了，他纳闷珍珠值多少钱。他想知道是否为吉纳的婴儿施过洗礼，或是否主持过他的结婚仪式。消息传到零售商那儿的时候，他们看着卖的不太好的男式衣服。?? 消息传到医生那儿的时候，他正在给一位妇人看病，这位夫人的疾病其实就是“年龄太老的问题”，尽管他们两人都不承认这点。弄清楚谁是吉纳后，医生变得严肃认真而又明智起来。医生说，“他是我的一个病人，我在给他的孩子治疗被蝎子螫伤的伤口。”眼珠在肿眼泡的眼眶内转来转去，医生想起巴黎，想起那他住过的既宽敞又豪华的房间。越过他的老年病人，医生仿佛看见自己坐在巴黎的一家餐馆，男侍者正在打开酒瓶。 消息早早地传到了教堂前乞讨者，他们咯咯地高兴地笑着，因为他们知道没有比突然
Irritability is the tendency to get upset for reasons that seem – to other people – to be pretty minor. Your partner asks you how work went and the way they ask makes you feel intensely agitated. Your partner is putting knives and forks on the table before dinner and you mention (not for the first time) that the fork should go on the left hand side, not the right. They then immediately let out a huge sigh and sweep the cutlery onto the floor and tell you that you can xxxx-ing do it yourself if you know better. It was the most minor of criticisms and technically quite correct. And now they’ve exploded. There is so much irritability around and it exacts a huge daily cost on our collective lives, so we deserve to get a lot more curious about it: what is really going on for the irritable person? Why, really, are they getting so agitated? And instead of blaming them for getting het up about “little things”, we should do them the honour of working out why, in fact, these things may not be so minor after all.
第二十届韩素音青年翻译奖竞赛参赛原文 1楼2008-05-14 15:00回复查看(800) 回复(2) 1楼 cathyhello cathy 积分2008等级6入室弟子 英译汉部分：Philosophy vs. Emerson (Excerpt)“HE is,” said Matthew Arnold of Emerson, “the friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit.” These well-known words are perhaps the best expression of the somewhat vague yet powerful and inspiring effect of Emerson,s courageous but disjointed philosophy. Descended from a long line of New England ministers, Emerson, finding himself fettered by even the most liberal ministry of his day, gently yet audaciously stepped down from the pulpit and, wi t h little or no modification in his interests or utterances, became the greatest lay preacher of his time. From the days of his undergraduate essay upon “The Present State of Ethical Philosophy” he continued to be preoccupied wi t h matters of conduct: whatever the object of his attention—an ancient poet, a fact in science, or an event in the morning newspaper—he contrives to extract from it a lesson which in his ringing, glistening style he drives home as an exhortation to a higher and more independent life. Historically, Emerson marks one of the largest reactions against the Calvinism of his ancestors. That stern creed had taught the depravity of man, the impossibility of a natural, unaided growth toward perfection, and the necessity of constant and anxious effort to win the unmerited reward of being numbered among the elect. Emerson starts with the assumption that the individual, if he can only come into possession of his natural excellence, is the most godlike of creatures. Instead of believing with the Calvinist that as a man grows better he becomes more unlike his natural self (and therefore can become better only by an act of divine mercy), Emerson believes that as a man grows in excellence he becomes more like his natural self. It is common to hear the expression, when one is deeply stirred, as by sublime music or a moving discourse: “That fairly lifted me out of myself.” Emerson would have said that such influences lift us into ourselves. For one of Emerson’s most fundamental and frequently recurring ideas is that of a “great nature in which we rest as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere,” an “Over-Soul, within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one wi t h all other,”which “evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand and become wisdom and virtue and power and beauty.”This is the incentive—the sublime incentive of approaching the perfection which is ours by nature and by divine intention—that Emerson holds out when he asks us to submit us to ourselves and to all instructive influences. Natur e, which he says“is loved by what is best in us,”is all about us, inviting our perception of its remotest and most cosmic principles by surrounding us with its simpler manifestations.“A man does not tie his shoe without recognizing laws which bind the fart hest regions of nature.”Thus man “carries the world in his head.” Whether he be a great scientist, proving by his discovery of a sweeping physical law that he has some such constructive sense as that which guides the universe, or whether he be a poet behol ding trees as“imperfect men,”who“seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground,”he is being brought into his own by perceiving “the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind of material objects, whether inorganic or organized.”Ranging over time and space with astonishing rapidity and binding names and things together that no ordinary vision could connect, Emerson calls the Past also to witness the need of self-reliance and a steadfast obedience to intuition.The need of such independence, he thought, was particularly great for the
Lesson One: The Time Message Elwood N, Chapman 新的学习任务开始之际，千头万绪，最重要的是安排好时间，做时间的主人。本文作者提出了7点具体建议，或许对你有所启迪。 1 Time is tricky. It is difficult to control and easy to waste. When you look a head, you think you have more time than you need. For Example,at the beginning of a semester, you may feel that you have plenty of time on your hands, but toward the end of the term you may suddenly find that time is running out. You don't have enough time to cover all your duties (duty), so you get worried. What is the answer? Control! 译：时间真是不好对付，既难以控制好，又很容易浪费掉，当你向前看时，你觉得你的时间用不完。例如，在一个学期的开始，你或许觉得你有许多时间，但到学期快要结束时，你会突然发现时间快用光了，你甚至找不出时间把所有你必须干的事情干完，这样你就紧张了。答案是什么呢？控制。 2 Time is dangerous. If you don't control it, it will control you. I f you don't make it work fo r you, it will work against you. So you must become the master of time, not its servant. As a first-year college student, time management will be your number one Problem. 译：时间是危险的，如果你控制不了时间，时间就会控制你，如果你不能让时间为你服务，它就会起反作用。所以，你必须成为时间的主人，而不是它的奴仆，作为刚入学的大学生，妥善安排时间是你的头等大事。 3 Time is valuable. Wasting time is a bad habit. It is like a drug. The more time you waste,the easier it is to go on wasting time. If seriously wish to get the most out of college, you must put the time message into practice. 译：时间是珍贵的，浪费时间是个坏习惯，这就像毒品一样，你越浪费时间，就越容易继续浪费下去，如果你真的想充分利用上大学的机会，你就应该把利用时间的要旨付诸实践。 Message1. Control time from the beginning. 4 Time is today, not tomorrow or next week. Start your plan at the Beginning of the term. 译：抓紧时间就是抓紧当前的时间，不要把事情推到明天或是下周，在学期开始就开始计划。 Message2. Get the notebook habit. 5 Go and buy a notebook today, Use it to plan your study time each day. Once a weekly study plan is prepared, follow the same pattern every week with small changes. Sunday is a good day to make the Plan for the following week.
The Posteverything Generation I never expected to gain any new insight into the nature of my generation, or the changing landscape of American colleges, in Lit Theory. Lit Theory is supposed to be the class where you sit at the back of the room with every other jaded sophomore wearing skinny jeans, thick-framed glasses, an ironic tee-shirt and over-sized retro headphones, just waiting for lecture to be over so you can light up a Turkish Gold and walk to lunch while listening to Wilco. That’s pretty much the way I spent the course, too: through structuralism, formalism, gender theory, and post-colonialism, I was far too busy shuffling through my Ipod to see what the patriarchal world order of capitalist oppression had to do with Ethan Frome. But when we began to study postmodernism, something struck a chord with me and made me sit up and look anew at the seemingly blasé college-aged literati of which I was so self-consciously one. According to my textbook, the problem with defining postmodernism is that it’s i mpossible. The difficulty is that it is so...post. It defines itself so negatively against what came before it –naturalism, romanticism and the wild revolution of modernism –that it’s sometimes hard to see what it actually is. It denies that anything can be explained neatly or even at all. It is parodic, detached, strange, and sometimes menacing to traditionalists who do not understand it. Although it arose in the post-war west (the term was coined in 1949), the generation that has witnessed its ascendance has yet to come up with an explanation of what postmodern attitudes mean for the future of culture or society. The subject intrigued me because, in a class otherwise consumed by dead-letter theories, postmodernism remained an open book, tempting to the young and curious. But it also intrigued me because the question of what postmodernism –what a movement so post-everything, so reticent to define itself – is spoke to a larger question about the political and
第二十六届“韩素音青年翻译奖”竞赛原文 英译汉竞赛原文： How the News Got Less Mean The most read article of all time on BuzzFeed contains no photographs of celebrity nip slips and no inflammatory ranting. It’s a series of photos called “21 pictures that will restore your fait h in humanity,” which has pulled in nearly 14 million visits so far. At Upworthy too, hope is the major draw. “This kid just died. What he left behind is wondtacular,” an Upworthy post about a terminally ill teen singer, earned 15 million views this summer and has raised more than $300,000 for cancer research. The recipe for attracting visitors to stories online is changing. Bloggers have traditionally turned to sarcasm and snark to draw attention. But the success of sites like BuzzFeed and Upworthy, whose philosophies embrace the viral nature of upbeat stories, hints that the Web craves positivity. The reason: social media. Researchers are discovering that people want to create positive images of themselves online by sharing upbeat stories. And with more people turning to Facebook and Twitter to find out what’s happening in the world, news stories may need to cheer up in order to court an audience. If social is the future of media, then optimistic stories might be media’s future. “When we started, the prevailing wisdom was that snark ruled the Internet,” says Eli Pariser, a co-founder of Upworthy. “And we just had a really different sense of what works.” “You don’t want to be that guy at the party who’s crazy and angry and ranting in the c orner—it’s the same for Twitter or Facebook,” he says. “Part of what we’re trying to do with Upworthy is give people the tools to express a conscientious, thoughtful and positive identity in social media.” And the science appears to support Pariser’s philosophy. In a recent study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, researchers found that “up votes,” showing that a visitor liked a comment or story, begat more up votes on comments on the site, but “down votes” did not do the same. In fact, a single up vote increased the likelihood that someone else would like a comment by 32%, whereas a down vote had no effect. People don’t want to support the cranky commenter, the critic or the troll. Nor do they want to be that negative personality online. In another study published in 2012, Jonah Berger, author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On and professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, monitored the most e-mailed stories produced by the New York Times for six months and found that positive stories were more likely to make the list than negative ones. “What we share [or like] is almost like the car we drive or the clothes we wear,” he says. “It
Unit 1 1.他对这次面试中可能提到的问题作好了准备。（confront） He has prepared answers to the questions that he may confront during the interview. 2.他悲惨的遭遇深深打动了我们，使我们几乎哭出声来。（touch） His sad experience touched us so deeply that we nearly cried. 3.他们俩手挽着手沿着河边散步，有说有笑。(hand in hand) The two of them are walking hand in hand along the riverbank, chatting and laughing. 4.听到这令人激动的消息之后，他眼睛里涌出欢乐的泪水。(well up) When he heard the exciting news, tears of joy welled up in his eyes. 5.上海人容易听懂苏州话，因为上海话和苏州话有许多共同之处。(in common) People from Shanghai can understand Suzhou dialect with ease, for Shanghai dialect and Suzhou dialect have much in common. 6.亨利和妻子正在考虑能不能在3年内买一幢新房子。(look into) Henry and his wife are looking into the possibility of buying a new house within three years. 7.女儿再三请求到国外去深造，他最终让步了。（give in to） He finally gave in to his daughter’s repeated requests to further her education abroad. 8.我们在动身去度假之前把所有的贵重物品都锁好了。（lock away） We locked all our valuables away before we went on holiday. 9.虽然咱们分手了，但我希望咱们依然是好朋友，像以前一样互相关心，互相帮助。(part) Although we have parted from each other, I hope that we will remain good friends and that we will care for and help each other just as we used to. 10.在紧急关头，军长召集全体军官开会，制定新的克敌战略战术。（summon） At the critical moment, the army commander summoned all the officers to work out new strategies and tactics to conquer the enemy. Unit 2 1.一个由外交部长率领的政府代表团昨天抵达南非，开始对该国进行为期3天的友好访问。（head） A government delegation headed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs arrived in South Africa yesterday, starting a three-day friendly visit to the country. 2.看看这些讽刺社会弊端的漫画实在好笑。（awfully funny） It is awfully funny to look at these caricatures which satirize social ills. 3.计算机是最有用的教学工具之一，所有的功课以及所有的问题和答案都可在屏幕上显示出来。（show on a screen） Computers are one of the most useful teaching tools, for all your lessons as well as all the questions and all the answers can be shown on a screen. 4.张利的母亲前天突然病倒，他赶紧派人请来医生。（send for） Zhang Li’s mother fell ill the day before yesterday, so he sent for a doctor immediately.
汉译英原文： 居在巷陌的寻常幸福 隐逸的生活似乎在传统意识中一直被认为是幸福的至高境界。但这种孤傲遁世同时也是孤独的，纯粹的隐者实属少数，而少数者的满足不能用来解读普世的幸福模样。 有道是小隐隐于野，大隐隐于市。真正的幸福并不隐逸，可以在街市而不是丛林中去寻找。 晨光，透过古色古香的雕花窗棂，给庭院里精致的盆景慢慢地化上一抹金黄的淡妆。那煎鸡蛋的“刺啦”声袅袅升起，空气中开始充斥着稚嫩的童音、汽车 启动的节奏、夫妻间甜蜜的道别，还有邻居们简单朴素的问好。巷陌中的这一切，忙碌却不混乱，活泼却不嘈杂，平淡却不厌烦。 巷尾的绿地虽然没有山野的苍翠欲滴，但是空气中弥漫着荒野中所没有的 生机。微黄的路灯下，每一张长椅都写着不同的心情，甜蜜与快乐、悲伤与喜悦，交织在一起，在静谧中缓缓发酵。谁也不会知道在下一个转角中会是怎样的惊喜，会是一家风格独特食客不断的小吃店？是一家放着爵士乐的酒吧？还是一家摆着高脚木凳、连空气都闲散的小小咖啡馆？坐在户外撑着遮阳伞的木椅上， 和新认识的朋友一边喝茶，一边谈着自己小小的生活，或许也是一种惬意。 一切，被时间打磨，被时间沉淀，终于形成了一种习惯，一种默契，一种文化。 和来家中做客的邻居朋友用同一种腔调巧妙地笑谑着身边的琐事，大家眯起的眼睛都默契地着同一种狡黠；和家人一起围在饭桌前，衔满食物的嘴还发着 含糊的声音，有些聒噪，但没人厌烦。 小巷虽然狭窄，却拉不住快乐蔓延的速度…… 随着城市里那些密集而冰冷的高楼大厦拔地而起，在拥堵的车流中，在污 浊的空气里，人们的幸福正在一点点地破碎，飘零。大家住得越来越宽敞，越来越私密。自我，也被划进一个单独的空间里，小心地不去触碰别人的心灵，也 不容许他人轻易介入。可是，一个人安静下来时会觉得，曾经厌烦的那些嘈杂回想起来很温情很怀念。 比起高楼耸立的曼哈顿，人们更加喜欢佛罗伦萨红色穹顶下被阳光淹没的古老巷道；比起在夜晚光辉璀璨的陆家嘴，人们会更喜欢充满孩子们打闹嬉笑的万航渡路。就算已苍然老去，支撑起梦境的应该是老房子暗灰的安详，吴侬软语的叫卖声，那一方氤氲过温馨和回忆的小弄堂。 如果用一双细腻的眼眸去观照，其实每一片青苔和爬山虎占据的墙角，是 墨绿色的诗篇，不会飘逸，不会豪放，只是那种平淡的幸福，简简单单。 幸福是什么模样，或许并不难回答。幸福就是一本摊开的诗篇，关于在城市的天空下，那些寻常巷陌的诗。 夜幕笼罩，那散落一地的万家灯火中，有多少寻常的幸福正蜗居在巷陌……
第十三届“韩素音青年翻译奖”竞赛原文及参考译文（汉译英）2010-3-26 23:32|发布者: sisu04|查看: 881|评论: 0 摘要: 韩素音青年翻译奖 歌德之人生启示 宗白华 人生是什么？人生的真相如何？人生的意义何在？人生的目的是何？这些人生最重大最中心的问题，不只是古来一切大宗教家哲学家所殚精竭虑以求解答的。世界上第一流的大诗人凝神冥想，深入灵魂的幽邃，或纵身大化中，于一朵花中窥见天国，一滴露水参悟生命，然后用他们生花之笔，幻现层层世界，幕幕人生，归根也不外乎启示这生命的真相与意义。宗教家对这些问题的方法与态度是预言的说教的，哲学家是解释的说明的，诗人文豪是表现的启示的。荷马的长歌启示了希腊艺术文明幻美的人生与理想，但丁的神曲启示了中古基督教文化心灵的生活与信仰，莎士比亚的剧本表现了文艺复兴时人们的生活矛盾与权力意志。至于近代的，建筑于这三种文明精神之上而同时开展一个新时代，所谓近代人生，则由伟大的歌德以他的人格，生活，作品表现出它的特殊意义与内在的问题。 歌德对人生的启示有几层意义，几种方面。就人类全体讲，他的人格与生活可谓极尽了人类的可能性。他同时是诗人，科学家，政治家，思想家，他也是近代泛神论信仰的一个伟大的代表。他表现了西方文明自强不息的精神，又同时具有东方乐天知命宁静致远的智慧。德国哲学家息默尔（Simmel）说：“歌德的人生所以给我们以无穷兴奋与深沉的安慰的，就是他只是一个人，他只是极尽了人性，但却如此伟大，使我们对人类感到有希望，鼓动我们努力向前做一个人。“我们可以说歌德是世界一扇明窗，我们由他窥见了人生生命永恒幽邃奇丽广大的天空！ 再狭小范围，就欧洲文化的观点说，歌德确是代表文艺复兴以后近代人的心灵生活及其内在的问题。近代人失去了基督教对一超越上帝虔诚的信仰。人类精神上获得了解放，得到了自由；但也就同时失所依傍，彷徨摸索，苦闷，追求，欲在生活本身的努力中寻得人生的意义与价值。歌德是这时代精神伟大的代表，他的主著《浮士德》是这人生全部的反映与其问题的解决。歌德与其替身浮士德一生生活的内容就是尽量体验这近代人生特殊的精神意义，了解其悲剧而努力以解决其问题，指出解救之道。所以有人称他的浮士德是近代人的圣