新世纪大学英语-综合教程4-课文翻译 下载本文

one everyone talks about; to show family and friends you are more than they thought you were. Probably you can list some other reasons, but I think these are reasonably common.

那么为什么每个人都渴望拥有名誉呢?你渴望么?你渴望许多人都知道你,赞赏你么?你渴望那些伴随名誉而来的金钱么?你希望被媒体关注你做的每一件事么?不论是公共场合或者是私底下.你希望被他们不停地跟踪,不停地询问不停地骚扰么?很明显, 在美国政坛, 出名就会成为那些反对你人的目标,也会成为媒体的目标. 声誉给你带来所有的光环,同时赋予你权利和威望,也让你变得不像原来的自己.你必须成为公众心目中的你,而不是真实的你和可能的你.政治家也像表演者一样, 必须讨好自己的观众.这就意味着他们只能说一些不是他们本意或者他们也不完全相信的话. 所以相信政治家的人很少也就不足为奇了. 但是我们还没有回答本段开始提出的问题:为什么每个人都渴望名誉呢? 我突然想到几个原因: 为了在某些领域彰显卓越; 为了赢得别人的赞美和喜爱; 为了成为每个人谈到的话题; 又或者为了向亲人和朋友证明自己能够超乎他们的想象. 或许你也可列举其他的原因,但是我认为通常都是这些原因.

Is it possible to be famous and to remain true to yourself, the real you? Perhaps, but one is hard pressed to come up with the names of those who have done their thing their way and succeed in the fame game. Many political dissident around the world, in particular, Dawn Aung Suu Kyi of Burma, is a rare exception to the rule that says maintaining unpopular views or unpopular attitudes or approaches in any field will destroy you. The famous Irish writer Oscar Wilde, a very successful writer of stories, poems and plays, was known for his most unusual clothing and

eccentric behavior, social and sexual. This behavior him to the attention of the mother of a young man Oscar was intimate with and she accused him. He was furious about this and sued the young man’s mother which led to a trial and imprisonment for two years. He remained true to himself and paid a heavy price for it by being ostracized and defamed.

如果成名,是否还有可能保持最真实的自己呢? 也许可能, 但是一个人很难即能够以自己的方式做自己喜欢做的事,又在名利场上取得成功. 对于世界上很多持不同政见的的政界人员来说, 一直说一些在任何领域都不受欢迎的观点或者态度是一件违反政界规则的事情. 但是缅甸的黎明翁山苏姬是个罕见的例外. 著名的爱尔兰作家奥斯卡.王德尔是一个很成功的小说家/诗人和剧作家. 他因他最与众不同的服装/古怪的行为/反常的社会观和性观念而闻名. 但是他的举止让他好朋友的母亲感到反感,从而被告上了法庭. 他为此感到怒不可歇,并控告这位母亲. 如此一来,他也因此遭受了两年的审讯和关押. 他保持了最真实的自己,但是却为此付出了沉重的代价,受到社会排斥,声名尽毁.

Time magazine of June 17, 1996 devoted a good deal of its issue to discussing people(25 in

America) who are the most influential in the country in their opinion. They added a short essay on who are the most powerful people in America and no one on the first list appeared on the second list, and strangely enough, none of the people on either list was described as famous, although I think several surely are. Can we really distinguish influential people and powerful people from those who are famous? Maybe, but their list of influence people included Jerry Seinfeld the comedian and TV star, Courtney Love the singer and drug addict whose fame has come largely through her husband Kurt Cobain, the guitarist who committed suicide, and the list includes Oprah Winfrey the talk show host and Calvin Klein the clothing designer. All of these people are famous, but I believe, not very influential in the same that they change the way most of us think or act. In Time magazine’s list we find a Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, who is no more influential or powerful than any of the other 8justices. President Clinton is not considered

influential (?) but is considered powerful! You decide if you think famous and influential and powerful are closely related, or different.

.1996年6月17日, <时代>杂志投入了大量的版面来讨论谁是民众心里对美国最具影响力的人. 他们对那位美国最有影响力的人物补充了一篇小传记. 但是那些在第一份名单中出现的人没有一个出现在第二份名单里面. 不可思议的是出现在两份名单中的人没有一个可以称得上出名,尽管我认为其中有些人确有声誉. 但是我们真的能够区别出那些著名的人物谁是有影响力的人谁是有权力的人吗?也许,但他们那份有影响力的人的名单中包括喜剧演员和电视明星杰瑞?桑菲尔德以及科特尼.洛芙,她是一名歌手,也是一个吸毒者,并且她是因为她的丈夫而出名的.她的丈夫科特.柯本是一名吉他手, 死于自杀. 除此以外,这份名单也包括脱口秀节目的主持人奥普拉?温弗瑞,和服装设计师卡尔文.克莱恩. 所有的这些人物都是有名的,但是我相信,他们对改变我们的思维方式和行为习惯并没有多大影响力. 在<时代>杂志名单里面我们还发现一位高级法院的法官桑德拉.奥康纳. 他比不比其他法官影响力大,也并不比其他法官权力大. 别人并不认为克林顿总统有影响力,但是他们认为他有权力. 知名度/影响力和权力是联系紧密还是根本就不同,是由你来决定的.

I believe that fame and celebrity, influence and power, success and failure, reality and illusion are all somehow neatly woven into a seamless fabric we laughingly call reality. I say to those who desperately seek fame and fortune, celebrity: good luck. But what will you do when you have

caught your tail, your success, your fame? Keep chasing it? If you do catch it, hang on for dear life because falling is not as painful as landing. See you soon famous and almost famous, wayfarers on this unbright, nonlinear planet.

我相信声誉和名望, 影响和权力,成功与失败,真实和虚幻都以某种方式灵活的编织成一张细密的绸布, 我们笑称为”现实”的那张布. 我对那些拼命地寻求声誉/名望与财富的人说: 祝你好运. 但是当你抓住了你的尾巴,也就是你的成功和声望的时候,你将要怎么做? 如果你真的抓住了它, 就拼命地抓住吧,因为掉落并不像攀登一样痛苦. 希望很快看见你成名,或者是快要成名, 在这颗光明的行星上成句辉煌的旅程.

T Work, Labor, and Play

Wystan H. Auden

This text is taken from The Little, Brown Reader (Third Edition), edited by Marcia Stubbs and Sylvan Barnet. Little, Brown and Company. 1983.

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1RT So far as I know, Miss Hannah Arendt was the first person to

define the essential difference between work and labor. To be happy, a man must feel, firstly, free and, secondly, important. He cannot be really happy if he is compelled by society to do what he does not enjoy

doing, or if what he enjoys doing is ignored by society as of no value or importance. In a society where slavery in the strict sense has been abolished, whether what a man does has social value depends on whether he is paid money to do it, but a laborer today can rightly be called a wage slave. A man is a laborer if the job society offers him is of no interest to himself but he is compelled to take it by the necessity of earning a living and supporting his family.

工作、劳动和玩耍

威斯坦·H·奥登

就我所知,汉娜·阿伦特小姐是界定工作和劳动之间本质区别的第一人。一个人要想快乐,第一要有自由感,第二要确信自己有价值。如果社会迫使一个人去做他自己不喜欢的事,或者说,他所喜欢做的事被社会忽视,看作没有价值或不重要,那他就不会真正快乐。在一个严格意义上已废除奴隶制的社会里,一个人做的事情是否具有社会价值取决于他是否为完成此项工作得到了报酬。然而,今天的劳动者可以被称为名副其实的工资奴隶。如果社会给一个人提供一份他本人不感兴趣的工作,他出于养家糊口的需要不得已才从事这项工作,那这个人就是一个劳动者。close

2RT The opposite to labor is play. When we play a game, we enjoy

what we are doing, otherwise we should not play it, but it is a purely

private activity; society could not care less whether we play it or not.

与劳动相对的是玩耍。玩游戏时,我们能从中得到乐趣,否则就不会玩这个游戏。但这完全是一种私人的活动,我们玩不玩这个游戏社会是不会关注的。close

3RT Between labor and play stands work. A man is a worker if he is

personally interested in the job which society pays him to do; what from the point of view of society is necessary labor is from his own point of view voluntary play. Whether a job is to be classified as labor or work depends, not on the job itself, but on the tastes of the individual who undertakes it. The difference does not, for example, coincide with the difference between a manual and a mental job; a gardener or a cobbler may be a worker, a bank clerk a laborer. Which a man is can be seen from his attitude toward leisure. To a worker, leisure means simply the hours he needs to relax and rest in order to work efficiently. He is therefore more likely to take too little leisure than too much; workers die of heart attacks and forget their wives' birthdays. To the laborer, on the other hand, leisure means freedom from compulsion, so that it is natural for him to imagine that the fewer hours he has to spend laboring, and the more hours he is free to play, the better.

处在劳动和玩耍之间的是工作。如果一个人对社会为他支付报酬的工作感兴趣,他就是一个工作者。从社会角度看是必需的劳动在他自己看来却是自愿的玩耍。一个职位是劳动还是工作,并不取决于这个职位本身,而是取决于占据这个职位的个人自己的情趣。这种差异与体力劳动和脑力劳动之间的差异并不吻合。

譬如,一个园丁或者鞋匠也许就是一个工作者,而一个银行职员则可能是一个劳动者。一个人是工作者还是劳动者可以从他对闲暇的态度上看出来。对于一个工作者来说,闲暇不过是他需要放松、休息从而进行有效工作的几个小时,所以,他可能只有少量的闲暇,而不会有大量的空闲。工作者可能会死于心脏病,并会忘记自己妻子的生日。而对于劳动者来说,闲暇就意味着摆脱强制,所以,他自然会想象:他不得不花费在劳动上的时间越少,而自由自在地玩耍的时间越多,那才越好。close

4RT What percentage of the population in a modern technological

society are, like myself, in the fortunate position of being workers? At a guess I would say sixteen per cent, and I do not think that figure is likely to get bigger in the future.

在一个现代化的技术社会里,总人口中有多大比例的人能够像我一样有幸成为工作者呢?我估计大概有16%,而且,我认为这个数字将来也不会增加。close

5RT Technology and the division of labor have done two things: by

eliminating in many fields the need for special strength or skill, they have made a very large number of paid occupations which formerly were enjoyable work into boring labor, and by increasing productivity they have reduced the number of necessary laboring hours. It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the

population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful. Indeed, the problem of dealing with boredom may be even more difficult for such a future mass society than it was for

aristocracies. The latter, for example, ritualized their time; there was a season to shoot grouse, a season to spend in town, etc. The masses are more likely to replace an unchanging ritual by fashion which changes as often as possible in the economic interest of certain people. Again, the masses cannot go in for hunting, for very soon there would be no

animals left to hunt. For other aristocratic amusements like gambling, dueling, and warfare, it may be only too easy to find equivalents in dangerous driving, drug-taking, and senseless acts of violence.

Workers seldom commit acts of violence, because they can put their aggression into their work, be it physical like the work of a smith, or mental like the work of a scientist or an artist. The role of aggression in mental work is aptly expressed by the phrase \getting one's teeth into a problem\

技术和劳动的分工成就了两件事:通过在许多领域取消了特别才能和技术的需要,把过去本来令人愉快的大量受雇职业的工作变成了令人厌倦的劳动;通过提高生产力,缩短了劳动所需的时间。已经可以想象出这样一个社会:其人口的大多数,也就是其中的劳动者们,将会享受到早期贵族们才能享受到的几乎同样多的休闲。当人们回想起过去贵族们的举止行为时,前景并非乐观。的确,在未来这样一个大众社会里,人们要解决“无聊”这个问题,也许比过去的贵族们要困难得多。后者(贵族们)把他们的时间都仪式化了,譬如,有打松鸡的季节,有在城镇消磨的季节等等。广大民众更有可能以时尚来取代一成不变的仪式,而时尚将会为了某些人的经济利益频繁地变化。再者,广大民众也不会再去狩猎,因为,要不了多久可供猎