新视野大学英语(第二版)泛读教程2 Unit1 课文翻译及课前课后答案

UNIT 1

PASSAGE A

Polar Differences Between Chinese and American Cultures Americans wear black for mourning. Chinese wear white. Westerners think of dragons as monsters. Chinese honor them as representations of God. The polarities between Chinese civilization and the West often make it seem as though each stands at extreme ends of the earth. Now a University of California, Berkeley, psychologist has discovered deeper polarities between Chinese and American cultures-polarities that go to the heart of how we reason and discover truth.

在丧礼上，美国人穿黑色丧服，而中国人穿白色。西方人认为龙是怪物，而中国人把龙当成神明。中国与西方的文明差异使它们看起来像分别站在地球的极端。最近加利福尼亚的一所大学的心理学家伯克利发现中国和美国文化差异的更深极性，那是关于内心深处的如何理性和发现真理的极性。

His findings go far toward explaining many of the differences between Chinese and American cultures, when compared to each other. More importantly, the research opens the door for the peoples of the East and the West to learn from each other in basic ways. The Chinese would learn much from Western methods for determining scientific truth, said Kaiping Peng, a former Beijing scholar, who is now a UC Berkeley assistant professor of psychology, and Americans could profit from Chinese ways of accepting contradictions in social and personal life.

他的研究结果对于解释许多中美文化比照的差异有很大的奉献。更重要的是，这项研究为东西方民族相互学习的根本途径开启了大门。“中国人从西方方法中学到许多关于如何确定科学真理的知识，〞前北京的学者，现为伯克利大学的心理学助理教授的彭开平说，“同时美国人可以从中国式的接受社会和个人生活的矛盾中得到启示。〞

“Americans have a terrible need to find out who is right in an argument,〞 said Peng. “The problem is that at the interpersonal level, you really don’t need to find the truth, or maybe there isn’t any.〞 Chinese people, said Peng, are far more content to think that both sides have good and bad points, because they have a holistic understanding that life is full of contradiction. They do far less blaming of the individual than Americans do, he added.

“美国人迫切地要找出谁是一场辩论中正确的人，〞彭说。“但问题是在人际关系方面，你真的不需要找到确切的真相，或者根本就没有所谓的真相。〞彭说，“中国人对一件事物有一个较为全面的了解，认为生命是充满了矛盾的，因此认为凡事都有好坏两面。他们一般会比美国人更少去指责一个个体的错误。〞他补充说。

In studies of interpersonal argument, for example, when subjects were asked to deal with contradictory information resulting from conflict between a mother and a daughter or a student and a school, Peng found that Americans were “non-compromising, blaming one side—usually the mother—for the causes of the problems, demanding changes from one side to find a solution, and offering no middle ground〞 in dealing with the conflict.

在研究人际关系的争论中，例如，当受试者被要求处理母女或学生与学校之间的矛盾时，彭发现，美国人是“毫不妥协地指责其中一方——通常母亲被认为是问题的引起者，他们只从其中一方寻找解决方法，而不是在两者的中间地带寻找〞来解决矛盾。

By contrast, the Chinese were able to find fault on both sides and look for solutions that moved both sides to the middle.

相反的是，中国人会认为双方都有过错而从两方之间寻找解决方案，使双方都向中间靠。“It can hardly be right to move to the middle when you have just read evidence for a less reasonable view. Yet that is what the Chinese subjects did,〞 said Peng.

“当你只知道一点真相，缺少合理的看法时，是很难以从中间去判断对错的，然而这就是中国人的做法。〞彭说。

He believes that this practice of finding the middle way has made it difficult for the Chinese to seek scientific truth through aggressive argumentation, the classic Western Method for forging a path through contradictory information, which results in identifying right and wrong answers.

他认为这种从中庸寻找答案的方式使得中国人很难通过积极热烈的讨论这种方法寻找科学真理，而西方经典方法是将信息分为对立的两面，这使得他们的到得答案是确切的，毫不模棱两可的。

Dialectical thinking also has a Western version, which Americans often consider the highest form of reasoning, said Peng. This type of reasoning allows people to go from thesis to antithesis, to synthesis.

辩证的思维也有属于西方的方式，这就是美国人经常用到的最高形式的推理，彭说，这种方式使得人们能够从一个论题思考到它的对立面，然后综合起来分析。

To compare, Chinese people do not attempt to work through contradictions, following a cultural tradition which holds that reality is “multi-layered, unpredictable, and contradictory,〞 and is in an unending state of change, Peng