But then a few days later Mr. Sawyer came to Mother, his face beaming, and said they’d be leaving for Michigan the next day. And Mrs. Sawyer looked radiant, too, and for the first time gobbled up her dinner like a little pig.Afterward she took Mother into her room for a long talk.“What do you suppose struck them?” Father asked Mother when they went to bed. “All this time they couldn’t leave, just had to stay here, and now they’re off in this awful hurry, it sure is a mystery.”“No, it isn’t,” said Mother, “She told me why. She’s going to have a baby.”“Oh, she is. Well, that’s good. That’ll cheer her up. But it’s still no reason for this hasty exit.”“I think she’s a little crazy,” said Mother. “She told me she had to stay here until she got pregnant, that if she went away before, she knew she would not get pregnant.”“Of all the loony ideas!” snorted Father. “Couldn’t she get pregnant back in Michigan? Any particular magic in this house?”Maybe,” said Mother.Father pondered on that. “What do you mean by ‘maybe’?”“Well… Rose Kane is going to have one.”“Oh, well, that’s fine.”“And,” added Mother, “We are, too.”“Great Jumping grasshoppers!” cried Father. “Why don’t you tell a fellow?”Leisure Will Kill YouThis country is producing so much leisure equipment for the home that nobody has any leisure time anymore to enjoy it. A few months ago I bought a television tape recorder to make copies of programs when I was out of the house.Last week I recorded the Nebraska-Oklahoma football game. When I came home in the evening, I decided to play it back. But my son wanted to play “Baseball” on the TV screen with his Atari Computer. We finished four innings when my wife came in the room and asked me if I would like to listen to the Vienna Opera on our hi-fi stereo set. I told her I was waiting to finish the baseball match so I could watch the football game I had recorded.She said if I watched the football game for three hours, I would miss Love Boat.I told her I would record Love Boat and we could watch it later in the evening. She protested that Casablanca was showing on Channel 5 at 11:30 and she wanted to see it again.“Don’t worry,” I assured her, “we can watch Love Boat late Saturday and Casablanca on Sunday morning when we get up.”“But if we watch Casablanca tomorrow morning when can we see the instant Polaroid movies you took of Ben yesterday afternoon?”“We’ll see them after we play backgammon on the new table.”“If we do that,” my daughter said, “we won’t be able to see the Washington Redskins-New York Giants football game.”“I’ll record the Redskins-Giants football game and we’ll watch it while 60 Minutes is on the air. We can see 60 Minutes at 11 o’clock.”“But,” my son said, “you promised to play the pinball machine with me at 11.”“Okay, we’ll play pinball at 11 and watch 60 Minutes at midnight.”My wife said, “why don’t we listen to the Vienna Opera while we’re eating and then we can save an hour to play computer golf?”“That’s good thinking,” I said. “The only problem is I’ve rent ed a TV tape for Cleopatra and that runs for three hours.”“You could show it on Monday night,” she suggested.“I can’t do that. I have to return the tape Monday afternoon or be charged for it another week. I have an idea. I won’t go to work Monday morning and we’ll watch it then.”“I was hoping to use our Jacuzzi Monday morning,” my wife said.“Okay, then I’ll tape Cleopatra and you can see it Monday afternoon.”“I’m using the set Monday afternoon,” my son said, “to play digital hockey on the TV screen.”“You can’t do that,” I said. “I have to watch the Today show in the afternoon if I’m going to watch Cleopatra in the morning.”“Why can’t you watch the Today show at dinnertime?” my wife asked.“Because the Wolfingtons are coming over to hear me play ‘Tea for Two’ on the electric organ.”“I thought we might play computer bridge at dinner,” my wife said.“We’ll play it after my encore,” I assured her.“Then when will we see Monday Night Football?” my son wanted to know.“Tuesday,” I said.“Does that mean you’re not going to work on Tuesday?” my wife asked.“How can I go to work,” I yelled, “When I’ve got so much leisure time on myDo-it-yourselfSome people would say that the Englishman’s home is no longer his castle; that it has become his workshop. This is partly because the average English is keen on working with his own hands and partly because he feels, for one reason or another, that he must do for himself many household jobs for which, some years ago, he would have hired professional help. The main reason for this is a financial one: the high cost of labour has meant that the builders’ and decorators’ costs have reached a level which makes them prohibitive for house-proud English people of modest means. So, if they wish to keep their houses looking bright and smart, they have to tackle some of the repairs and decorating themselves. As a result, there has grown up in the post-war years what is sometimes referred to as the “Do-it-yourself Movement.”The “Do-it-yourself Movement” began wi th home decorating but has since spread into a much wider field. Nowadays there seem to be very few things that cannot be made by the “do-it-yourself” method. A number of magazines and handbooks exist to show hopeful handy-men of all ages just how easy it is to build anything from a coffee table to a fifteen foot (4.5 meters) sailing dinghy. All you need, it seems, is a hammer and a few nails. You follow the simple instructions step by step and, before you know where you are, the finished article stands before you, complete in every detail.Unfortunately, alas, it is not always quite as simple as it sounds! Many a budding “do-it-yourself” has found to his cost that one cannot learn a skilled craftsman’s job overnight. How quickly one realizes, when doing it oneself, that a job overnight. How quickly one realizes, when doing it oneself, that a job which takes the skilled man an hour or so to complete takes the amateur handyman five to six at least. And then there is the question of tools. The first thing the amateur learns is that he must have the right tools for the job. But tools cost money. There is also the wear and tear on the nerves. It is not surprising when that many people have come to the conclusion that the expense of paying professionals to do the work is, in the long run, more economical than “do-it-yourself”.The Difficulty of TranslationSince translating is a skill which requires considerable practice, most people assume that it can be taught, and to some extent this is true. But it is also true that really exceptional translators are born, not made. Potential translators must have a high level of aptitude for the creative use of language, or they are not likely to be outstanding in their profession. Perhaps the greatest benefit from instruction in translating is to become aware of one’s own limitations, something which a translator of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men into Chinese should have learned. Then he would not have translated English mule-skinner into a Chinese phrase meaning “a person who skins the hide of a mule”.For many people the need for human translation seems paradoxical in this age of computers. Some modern computers can be loaded with dictionaries and grammars, why not let computers do the work? Computers can perform certain very simple interlingual tasks, providing there is sufficient pre-editing and post-editing. But neither advertising brochures nor lyric poetry can ever be reduced to the kind of logic required of computer programs. Computer printouts of translations can often be understood, if the persons involved already know what the text is supposed to say. But the results of machine translating are usually in an unnatural form of language and sometimes just plain weird. Furthermore, real improvements will not come from merely doctoring the program or adding rules. The human brain is not only digital and analogic, but it also has a built-in system of values which gives it a componentially incalculable advantage over machines. Human translators will always be necessary for any text that is stylistically appealing and semantically complex--- which includes most of what is worth communicating in another language.The most difficult texts to translate are not, however, highly literary productions, but rather those texts which say nothing, the type of language often used by politicians and delegates to international forums. In fact, a group of professional translators at the United Nations headquarters in New York City have insisted that the most difficult text to translate is one in which the speaker or writer has attempted to say nothing. The next most difficult type of text is one filled with irony and sarcasm, since in a written text the paralinguistic clues to the meaning are usually much more difficult to detect than when someone is speaking. And perhaps the third most difficult type of text is a book or article on translating in which the illustrative examples rarely match.Some people imagine that the greatest problem in translating is to find the right words and constructions in the receptor or target language. On the contrary, the most difficult task for the translator is to understand thoroughly the designative and associative meanings of the text to be translated. This involves not only knowing the meanings of the words and the syntactic relations, but also being sensitive to all the nuances of the stylistic device. As one struggling translator summed up his problem, “If I really understood what the text means, I could easily translate it.”Child Labors in a CountryIn a certain country, millions of working-class children are forced to work as child laborers. Child labor is mostly used in agriculture. It is reported that more than eight hundred thousand children are hired on plantations and farms. They are cruelly exploited by the monopoly capitalists.Child laborers are badly treated by the big farmers. They are made to do what is usually done by grown-ups, but they are paid very much less. In one country in a state of that country, as many as 4,000 children are forced every summer to go and work for the capitalists. They are made to work in the burning sun from seven o’clock in the morning until four in the afternoon.In recent years monopoly capitalism has been hit harder and harder by economic crises. More and more children have been hired to work in factories and on farms, because the monopoly capitalists are trying very hard to keep the wages low.Tax EvasionTax evasion in the United States is considered “fraud” and is looked upon as a serious offence. When rich evaders are caught, they are subject to the same penalty rates that apply to the poor. The action is featured as front-page scandal by newspapers when a wealthy, highly placed person or a corporation is found evading the tax. Since tax evasion is regarded as affecting the welfare of the entire community and nation, it is looked upon as a major offence--- not worth trying.某商人有女新婚，与丈夫失和。
