英译汉原文：
Are We There Yet?
America’s recovery will be much slower than that from most recessions; but the government can help a bit.
“WHITHER goest thou, America?” That question, posed by Jack Kerouac on behalf of the Beat generation half a century ago, is the biggest uncertainty hanging over the world economy. And it reflects the foremost worry for American voters, who go to the polls for the congressional mid-term elections on November 2nd with the country’s unemployment rate stubbornly stuck at nearly one in ten. They should prepare themselves for a long, hard ride.
The most wrenching recession since the 1930s ended a year ago. But the recovery—none too powerful to begin with—slowed sharply earlier this year. GDP grew by a feeble 1.6% at an annual pace in the second quarter, and seems to have been stuck somewhere similar since. The housing market slumped after temporary tax incentives to buy a home expired. So few private jobs were being created that unemployment looked more likely to rise than fall. Fears grew over the summer that if this deceleration continued, America’s economy would slip back into recession.
Fortunately, those worries now seem exaggerated. Part of the weakness of second-quarter GDP was probably because of a temporary surge in imports from China. The latest statistics, from reasonably good retail sales in August to falling claims for unemployment benefits, point to an economy that, though still weak, is not slumping further. And history suggests that although nascent recoveries often wobble for a quarter or two, they rarely relapse into recession. For now, it is most likely that America’s economy will crawl along with growth at perhaps 2.5%: above stall speed, but far too slow to make much difference to the jobless rate.
Why, given that America usually rebounds from recession, are the prospects so bleak? That’s because most past recessions have been caused by tight monetary policy. When policy is loosened, demand rebounds. This recession was the result of a financial crisis. Recoveries after financial crises are normally weak and slow as banking systems are repaired and balance-sheets rebuilt. Typically, this period of debt reduction lasts around seven years, which means America would emerge from it in 2014. By some measures, households are reducing their debt burdens unusually fast, but even optimistic seers do not think the process is much more than half over.
Battling on the bus
America’s biggest problem is that its poli ticians have yet to acknowledge that the economy is in for such a long, slow haul, let alone prepare for the consequences.
A few brave officials are beginning to sound warnings that the jobless rate is likely to “stay high”. But the political debate is mor e about assigning blame for the recession than about suggesting imaginative ways to give more oomph to the recovery. Republicans argue that Barack Obama’s shift towards “big government” explains
the economy’s weakness, and that high unemployment is proof t hat fiscal stimulus was a bad idea. In fact, most of the growth in government to date has been temporary and unavoidable; the longer-run growth in government is more modest, and reflects the policies of both Mr Obama and his predecessor. And the notion that high joblessness “proves” that stimulus failed is simply wrong. The mechanics of a financial bust suggest that without a fiscal boost the recession would have been much worse.
Democrats have their own class-warfare version of the blame game, in which Wall Street’s excesses caused the problem and higher taxes on high-earners are part of the solution. That is why Mr. Obama’s legislative priority before the mid-terms is to ensure that the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year for households earning more than $250,000 but are extended for everyone else.
This takes an unnecessary risk with the short-term recovery. America’s experience in 1937 and Japan’s in 1997 are powerful evidence that ill-timed tax rises can tip weak economies back into recession. Higher taxes at the top, along with the waning of fiscal stimulus and belt-tightening by the states, will make a weak growth rate weaker still. Less noticed is that Mr. Obama’s fiscal plan will also worsen the medium-term budget mess, by making tax cuts for the middle class permanent.
Ways to overhaul the engine
In an ideal world America would commit itself now to the medium-term tax reforms and spending cuts needed to get a grip on the budget, while leaving room to keep fiscal policy loose for the moment. But in febrile, partisan Washington that is a pipe-dream. Today’s goals can only be more modest: to nurture the weak economy, minimize uncertainty and prepare the ground for tomorrow’s fiscal debate. To that end, Congress ought to extend all the Bush tax cuts until 2013. Then they should all expire—prompting a serious fiscal overhaul, at a time when the economy is stronger.
A broader set of policies could help to work off the hangover faster. One priority is to encourage more write-downs of mortgage debt. Almost a quarter of all Americans with mortgages owe more than their houses are worth. Until that changes the vicious cycle of rising foreclosures and falling prices will continue. There are plenty of ideas on offer, from changing the bankruptcy law so that judges can restructure mortgage debt to empowering special trustees to write down loans. They all have drawbacks, but a fetid pool of underwater mortgages will, much like Japan’s loans to zombie firms, corrode the financial system and harm the recovery.
C leaning up the housing market would help cut America’s unemployment rate, by making it easier for people to move to where jobs are. But more must be done to stop high joblessness becoming entrenched. Payroll-tax cuts and credits to reduce the cost of hiring would help. (The health-care reform, alas, does the opposite, at least for small businesses.) Politicians will also have to think harder about training schemes, because some workers lack the skills that new jobs require.
Americans are used to great distances. The sooner they, and their politicians, accept
that the road to recovery will be a long one, the faster they will get there.
译文：
我们到达目的地了吗？
与大多数衰退之后的复苏相比，这次美国经济的复苏会慢得多。不过政府还是可以有些许作为的。
“美国，你将去往何方？”半个世纪前，杰克?凯鲁亚克代表垮掉的一代提出了这个问题。它表明了当今世界经济的最不确定性，也反映了美国选民们的最大担忧。11月2日选民们要去投票站进行国会中期选举投票，而此时美国的失业率顽固地保持在将近十分之一上。摆在他们面前的将是一次漫长而艰难的跋涉，对此他们应该有所准备。
20世纪30年代以来最让人揪心的一次经济衰退于一年前结束。可是，一开始就不太强劲的复苏于今年早些时候急速放缓。今年第二季度国内生产总值同比只增长了可怜巴巴的1.6％，而且此后似乎就停留在这一速度上下了。房市也随着买房临时税收优惠政策的过期而暴跌。私营企业创造的就业机会太少，失业率很可能不降反升。整个夏天人们越来越担心，如果此次减速持续下去，美国经济将重陷衰退。
幸好，这些担心现在看来是被夸大了。第二季度国内生产总值增长较弱的部分原因可能是从中国的进口临时激增所致。最新的统计数据——从八月份相当不错的零售业绩到领取失业救济金人数的下降——表明，虽然经济仍然疲弱，但已经不再继续下滑。而历史经验表明，初期一两个季度的恢复往往是处于摆动状态，但很少重新陷入衰退。目前看来，美国经济最有可能将以约2.5％的增速缓慢爬行——不再停滞，但要明显降低失业率，这样的增速显得太慢。
既然美国经济通常都会从衰退中反弹，那么这次的前景为什么又是如此黯淡？这是因为以前的大多数经济衰退都是由从紧的货币政策造成的。一旦政策松动，需求就会反弹。而此次衰退是由金融危机引发的。金融危机之后的恢复通常缓慢、疲弱，因为银行系统需要修复、资产负债表需要重建。通常情况下，减债期要持续七年左右。这意味着美国将在2014年走出减债期。家家户户都在采取措施非常快地减少债务负担，但是，即使乐观的预言家也认为这一过程还远未过半。
旅途对决
美国最大的问题是，政治家们还不承认其经济正处于一个漫长而缓慢的恢复期，更不用说对其后果有所准备了。一些勇敢的官员已经开始警告说，失业率很可能“居高不下”。但是，政治辩论更多的还是纠缠于为经济衰退诘责，而不是提出有建设性的办法来给经济的恢复增加活力。
共和党人称，经济疲软的原因是巴拉克?奥巴马要推行“大政府”，而高失业率证明了财政刺激是一个糟糕的主意。事实上，迄今为止，大部分的政府开支增长都是暂时性的、不可避免的；政府开支的长期性增长还是比较温和、适度的，这反映了奥巴马及其前任的政策。那种认为高失业率“证明了”刺激是失败的观念是完全错误的。金融萧条的规律表明，如果没有财政刺激，经济衰退会更加严重。
对于是非曲直，民主党人有自己的论调。他们认为是华尔街的无度贪婪导致了这场危机；其解决方案就包括对高收入者征收高额税金。中期选举前奥巴马的立法工作重点是务必使年收入超过25万美元的家庭不再享受布什政府的减税政策，而该政策对其他人继续有效，其原因就在于此。
对于短期复苏来说，这是在冒不必要的风险。1937的美国和1997的日本都强有力地证明，不合时宜的增税会使疲软的经济重新陷入衰退。高税赋外加逐渐减弱的财政刺激和州政府的紧缩政策将使本来就微弱的增速变得更加缓慢。很少有人注意到，奥巴马先生为中产阶级永
久减税的财政计划也将使混乱的中期预算变得更加严峻。
如何检修引擎
理想情况下，为了控制预算，美国现在应致力于中期税制改革和削减开支，同时又要留有余地，暂时维持宽松的财政政策。然而，在党争激烈的华盛顿，这只能是空想。眼下的目标只能是保守一些：呵护疲软的经济、最大限度地减少不确定性以及为下一轮的财政辩论做准备。为此，国会应该将布什政府的全部减税政策延续到2013年。到那时，趁经济比现在强劲时，减税政策应全部失效。此时，美国的财政政策也需要认真地做一次大调整了。
实行一套更宽泛的政策有助于快速解决遗留问题。其中的一个重点就是要进一步鼓励减免抵押贷款债务。在全部有抵押贷款的美国人当中，差不多有四分之一的人欠债超过了他们的房产价值。在此情况改变之前，越来越多的回赎权被取消和价格下跌的恶性循环将继续下去。解决的办法有很多，包括修改破产法，从而允许法官调整抵押贷款债务数额，以及授权特别受托人减免还款额等。这些办法都有缺点，但是，与日本的僵尸企业贷款一样，价值缩了水的抵押物如同一潭臭水，会腐蚀金融体系，危害经济复苏。
清理房市会降低人们搬家寻找工作的难度，因而有助于降低美国的失业率。但要防止失业率长期居高不下，还有好多事情要做。减免工资税能够降低雇佣成本，从而有助于减少失业。（可惜，医疗改革的影响恰恰相反——至少对小企业而言如是。）政治家们还需要认真考虑培训方案，因为有些劳动者缺乏新工作所需要的技能。
美国人早已习惯了长途跋涉。眼前的复苏之路是漫长的，美国人及其政治家们越早承认这一点，就能越快地到达目的地。
英译汉原文：
Are We There Yet?
America’s recovery will be much slower than that from most recessions; but the government can help a bit.
“WHITHER goest thou, America?” That question, posed by Jack Kerouac on behalf of the Beat generation half a century ago, is the biggest uncertainty hanging over the world economy. And it reflects the foremost worry for American voters, who go to the polls for the congressional mid-term elections on November 2nd with the country’s unemployment rate stubbornly stuck at nearly one in ten. They should prepare themselves for a long, hard ride.
The most wrenching recession since the 1930s ended a year ago. But the recovery—none too powerful to begin with—slowed sharply earlier this year. GDP grew by a feeble 1.6% at an annual pace in the second quarter, and seems to have been stuck somewhere similar since. The housing market slumped after temporary tax incentives to buy a home expired. So few private jobs were being created that unemployment looked more likely to rise than fall. Fears grew over the summer that if this deceleration continued, America’s economy would slip back into recession.
Fortunately, those worries now seem exaggerated. Part of the weakness of second-quarter GDP was probably because of a temporary surge in imports from China. The latest statistics, from reasonably good retail sales in August to falling claims for unemployment benefits, point to an economy that, though still weak, is not slumping further. And history suggests that although nascent recoveries often wobble for a quarter or two, they rarely relapse into recession. For now, it is most likely
that America’s economy will crawl along with growth at perhaps 2.5%: above stall speed, but far too slow to make much difference to the jobless rate.
Why, given that America usually rebounds from recession, are the prospects so bleak? That’s because most past recessions have been caused by tight monetary policy. When policy is loosened, demand rebounds. This recession was the result of a financial crisis. Recoveries after financial crises are normally weak and slow as banking systems are repaired and balance-sheets rebuilt. Typically, this period of debt reduction lasts around seven years, which means America would emerge from it in 2014. By some measures, households are reducing their debt burdens unusually fast, but even optimistic seers do not think the process is much more than half over.
Battling on the bus
Ameri ca’s biggest problem is that its politicians have yet to acknowledge that the economy is in for such a long, slow haul, let alone prepare for the consequences.
A few brave officials are beginning to sound warnings that the jobless rate is likely to “stay high”. But the political debate is more about assigning blame for the recession than about suggesting imaginative ways to give more oomph to the recovery. Republicans argue that Barack Obama’s shift towards “big government” explains the economy’s weakness, and that high unemployment is proof that fiscal stimulus was a bad idea. In fact, most of the growth in government to date has been temporary and unavoidable; the longer-run growth in government is more modest, and reflects the policies of both Mr Obama and his predecessor. And the notion that high joblessness “proves” that stimulus failed is simply wrong. The mechanics of a financial bust suggest that without a fiscal boost the recession would have been much worse.
Democrats have their own class-warfare version of the blame game, in which Wall Street’s excesses caused the problem and higher taxes on high-earners are part of the solution. That is why Mr. Obama’s legislative priority before the mid-terms is to ensure that the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year for households earning more than $250,000 but are extended for everyone else.
This takes an unnecessary risk with the short-term recovery. America’s experience in 1937 and Japan’s in 1997 are powerful evidence that ill-timed tax rises can tip weak economies back into recession. Higher taxes at the top, along with the waning of fiscal stimulus and belt-tightening by the states, will make a weak growth rate weaker still. Less noticed is that Mr. Obama’s fiscal plan will also worsen the medium-term budget mess, by making tax cuts for the middle class permanent.
Ways to overhaul the engine
In an ideal world America would commit itself now to the medium-term tax reforms and spending cuts needed to get a grip on the budget, while leaving room to keep fiscal policy loose for the moment. But in febrile, partisan Washington that is a pipe-dream. Today’s goals can only be more modest: to nurture the weak economy,
minimize uncertainty and prepare the ground for tomorrow’s fiscal debate. To that end, Congress ought to extend all the Bush tax cuts until 2013. Then they should all expire—prompting a serious fiscal overhaul, at a time when the economy is stronger.
A broader set of policies could help to work off the hangover faster. One priority is to encourage more write-downs of mortgage debt. Almost a quarter of all Americans with mortgages owe more than their houses are worth. Until that changes the vicious cycle of rising foreclosures and falling prices will continue. There are plenty of ideas on offer, from changing the bankruptcy law so that judges can restructure mortgage debt to empowering special trustees to write down loans. They all have drawbacks, but a fetid pool of underwater mortgages will, much like Japan’s loans to zombie firms, corrode the financial system and harm the recovery.
Cleaning up the housing market would help cut America’s unemployment rate, by making it easier for people to move to where jobs are. But more must be done to stop high joblessness becoming entrenched. Payroll-tax cuts and credits to reduce the cost of hiring would help. (The health-care reform, alas, does the opposite, at least for small businesses.) Politicians will also have to think harder about training schemes, because some workers lack the skills that new jobs require.
Americans are used to great distances. The sooner they, and their politicians, accept that the road to recovery will be a long one, the faster they will get there.
译文：
我们到达目的地了吗？
与大多数衰退之后的复苏相比，这次美国经济的复苏会慢得多。不过政府还是可以有些许作为的。
“美国，你将去往何方？”半个世纪前，杰克?凯鲁亚克代表垮掉的一代提出了这个问题。它表明了当今世界经济的最不确定性，也反映了美国选民们的最大担忧。11月2日选民们要去投票站进行国会中期选举投票，而此时美国的失业率顽固地保持在将近十分之一上。摆在他们面前的将是一次漫长而艰难的跋涉，对此他们应该有所准备。
20世纪30年代以来最让人揪心的一次经济衰退于一年前结束。可是，一开始就不太强劲的复苏于今年早些时候急速放缓。今年第二季度国内生产总值同比只增长了可怜巴巴的1.6％，而且此后似乎就停留在这一速度上下了。房市也随着买房临时税收优惠政策的过期而暴跌。私营企业创造的就业机会太少，失业率很可能不降反升。整个夏天人们越来越担心，如果此次减速持续下去，美国经济将重陷衰退。
幸好，这些担心现在看来是被夸大了。第二季度国内生产总值增长较弱的部分原因可能是从中国的进口临时激增所致。最新的统计数据——从八月份相当不错的零售业绩到领取失业救济金人数的下降——表明，虽然经济仍然疲弱，但已经不再继续下滑。而历史经验表明，初期一两个季度的恢复往往是处于摆动状态，但很少重新陷入衰退。目前看来，美国经济最有可能将以约2.5％的增速缓慢爬行——不再停滞，但要明显降低失业率，这样的增速显得太慢。
既然美国经济通常都会从衰退中反弹，那么这次的前景为什么又是如此黯淡？这是因为以前的大多数经济衰退都是由从紧的货币政策造成的。一旦政策松动，需求就会反弹。而此次衰退是由金融危机引发的。金融危机之后的恢复通常缓慢、疲弱，因为银行系统需要修复、资产负债表需要重建。通常情况下，减债期要持续七年左右。这意味着美国将在2014年走出
减债期。家家户户都在采取措施非常快地减少债务负担，但是，即使乐观的预言家也认为这一过程还远未过半。
旅途对决
美国最大的问题是，政治家们还不承认其经济正处于一个漫长而缓慢的恢复期，更不用说对其后果有所准备了。一些勇敢的官员已经开始警告说，失业率很可能“居高不下”。但是，政治辩论更多的还是纠缠于为经济衰退诘责，而不是提出有建设性的办法来给经济的恢复增加活力。
共和党人称，经济疲软的原因是巴拉克?奥巴马要推行“大政府”，而高失业率证明了财政刺激是一个糟糕的主意。事实上，迄今为止，大部分的政府开支增长都是暂时性的、不可避免的；政府开支的长期性增长还是比较温和、适度的，这反映了奥巴马及其前任的政策。那种认为高失业率“证明了”刺激是失败的观念是完全错误的。金融萧条的规律表明，如果没有财政刺激，经济衰退会更加严重。
对于是非曲直，民主党人有自己的论调。他们认为是华尔街的无度贪婪导致了这场危机；其解决方案就包括对高收入者征收高额税金。中期选举前奥巴马的立法工作重点是务必使年收入超过25万美元的家庭不再享受布什政府的减税政策，而该政策对其他人继续有效，其原因就在于此。
对于短期复苏来说，这是在冒不必要的风险。1937的美国和1997的日本都强有力地证明，不合时宜的增税会使疲软的经济重新陷入衰退。高税赋外加逐渐减弱的财政刺激和州政府的紧缩政策将使本来就微弱的增速变得更加缓慢。很少有人注意到，奥巴马先生为中产阶级永久减税的财政计划也将使混乱的中期预算变得更加严峻。
如何检修引擎
理想情况下，为了控制预算，美国现在应致力于中期税制改革和削减开支，同时又要留有余地，暂时维持宽松的财政政策。然而，在党争激烈的华盛顿，这只能是空想。眼下的目标只能是保守一些：呵护疲软的经济、最大限度地减少不确定性以及为下一轮的财政辩论做准备。为此，国会应该将布什政府的全部减税政策延续到2013年。到那时，趁经济比现在强劲时，减税政策应全部失效。此时，美国的财政政策也需要认真地做一次大调整了。
实行一套更宽泛的政策有助于快速解决遗留问题。其中的一个重点就是要进一步鼓励减免抵押贷款债务。在全部有抵押贷款的美国人当中，差不多有四分之一的人欠债超过了他们的房产价值。在此情况改变之前，越来越多的回赎权被取消和价格下跌的恶性循环将继续下去。解决的办法有很多，包括修改破产法，从而允许法官调整抵押贷款债务数额，以及授权特别受托人减免还款额等。这些办法都有缺点，但是，与日本的僵尸企业贷款一样，价值缩了水的抵押物如同一潭臭水，会腐蚀金融体系，危害经济复苏。
清理房市会降低人们搬家寻找工作的难度，因而有助于降低美国的失业率。但要防止失业率长期居高不下，还有好多事情要做。减免工资税能够降低雇佣成本，从而有助于减少失业。（可惜，医疗改革的影响恰恰相反——至少对小企业而言如是。）政治家们还需要认真考虑培训方案，因为有些劳动者缺乏新工作所需要的技能。
美国人早已习惯了长途跋涉。眼前的复苏之路是漫长的，美国人及其政治家们越早承认这一点，就能越快地到达目的地。
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
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
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
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
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经。 但歌德与但丁莎士比亚不同的地方，就是他不单是由作品里启示我们人生真相，尤其在他自己的人格与生活中表现了人生广大精微的义谛。
“CATTI杯”第二十七届韩素音青年翻译奖竞赛 英译汉竞赛原文： 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 blasécollege-aged literati of which I was so self-consciously one. According to my textbook, the problem with defining postmodernism is that it’s impossible. 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 popular culture of today, of the other jaded sophomores sitting around me who had grown up in a postmodern world. In many ways, as a college-aged generation, we are also extremely post: post-Cold War, post-industrial, post-baby boom, post-9/11...at one point in his famous essay, “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” literary critic Frederic Jameson even calls us “post-literate.” We are a generation that is riding on the tail-end of a century of war and revolution that toppled civilizations, overturned repressive social orders, and left us with more privilege and opportunity than any other society in history. Ours could be an era to accomplish anything. And yet do we take to the streets and the airwaves and say “here we are, and this is what we demand”? Do we plant our flag of youthful rebellion on the mall in Washington and say “we are not leaving until we see change! Our eyes have been opened by our education and our conception of what is possible has been expanded by our privilege and we demand a better world because it is our right”? It would seem we do the opposite. We go to war without so much as questioning the rationale, we sign away our civil liberties, we say nothing when the Supreme Court uses Brown v. Board of Education to outlaw desegregation, and we sit back to watch the carnage on the evening news. On campus, we sign petitions, join organizations, put our names on mailing lists, make small-money contributions, volunteer a spare hour to tutor, and sport an entire wardrobe’s worth of Live Strong bracelets advertising our moderately priced opposition to everything from breast cancer to global warming. But what do we really stand for? Like a true postmodern generation we refuse to weave together an overarching narrative to our own political consciousness, to present a cast of inspirational or revolutionary characters on our public stage, or to define a specific philosophy. We are a story seemingly without direction or theme, structure or meaning – a generation defined negatively against what came before us. When Al Gore once said “It’s the combination of narcissism and nihilism that really defines postmodernism,” he might as well have been echoing his entire generation’s critique of our own. We are a generation for whom even revolution seems trite, and therefore as fair a target for bland imitation as anything else. We are the generation of the Che Geuvera tee-shirt.