\sight of himself as the Tramp on the screen.

当他第一次在银幕上看到自己扮演的“流浪汉”时，他说：“这不可能是我。那可能吗瞧这角色多么与众不同啊！”

But that shock roused his imagination.

这种震惊唤起了他的想象。

Chaplin didn't have his jokes written into a script in advance; he was the kind of comic who used his physical senses to invent his art as he went along.

卓别林并没有把他的笑料事先写成文字。他是那种边表演边根据感觉去创造艺术的喜剧演员。

Lifeless objects especially helped Chaplin make \with himself as an artist.

没有生命的物体特别有助于卓别林发挥自己艺术家的天赋。

He turned them into other kinds of objects.

他将这些物体想象成其他东西。

Thus, a broken alarm clock in the movie The Pawnbroker became a %undergoing surgery; boots were boiled in his film The Gold Rush and their soles eaten with salt and pepper like prime cuts of fish (the nails being removed like fish bones).

因此，在《当铺老板》中，一个坏闹钟变成了正在接受手术的“病人”；在《淘金记》中，靴子被放在锅里煮，靴底被蘸着盐和胡椒吃掉，就像上好的鱼片一样（鞋钉就像鱼骨那样被

剔除）。

This physical transformation, plus the skill with which he executed it again and again, is surely the secret of Chaplin's great comedy.

这种对事物的转化，以及他一次又一次做出这种转化的技巧，正是卓别林伟大喜剧的奥秘所在。

He also had a deep need to be loved—and a corresponding fear of being betrayed.

他也深切地渴望被爱，同时也害怕遭到背叛。 The two were hard to combine and sometimes—as in his early marriages—the collision between them resulted in disaster.

这两者很难结合在一起，有时这种冲突导致了灾难，就像他早期的几次婚姻那样。

Yet even this painfully-bought self-knowledge found its way into his comic creations.

然而即使是这种以沉重代价换来的自知之明也在他的喜剧创作中得到了表现。

The Tramp never loses his faith in the flower girl who'll be waiting to walk into the sunset with him; while the other side of Chaplin makes Monsieur Verdoux, the French wife killer, into a symbol of hatred for women.

“流浪汉”始终没有失去对卖花女的信心，相信她正等待着与自己共同走进夕阳之中；而卓别林的另一面使他的凡尔杜先生，一个杀了妻子的法国人，成为了仇恨女人的象征。

It's a relief to know that life eventually gave Charlie Chaplin the stability and happiness it had earlier denied him.

令人宽慰的是，生活最终把卓别林先前没能获得的稳定和幸福给了他。

In Oona O'Neill Chaplin, he found a partner whose stability and affection spanned the 37 years age difference between them, which had seemed so threatening, that when the official who was marrying them in 1942 turned to the beautiful girl of 17 who'd given notice of their wedding date, he said, \where is the young man \—Chaplin, then 54, had cautiously waited outside.

他找到了沃娜·奥尼尔·卓别林这个伴侣。她的沉稳和深情跨越了他们之间37岁的年龄差距。他们的年龄差别太大，以致当1942年他们要结婚时，新娘公布了他们的结婚日期后，为他们办理手续的官员问这位漂亮的17岁姑娘：“那个年轻人在哪儿”──当时已经54岁的卓别林小心翼翼在外面等候着。

As Oona herself was the child of a large family with its own problems, she was well prepared for the battle that Chaplin's life became as many unfounded rumors surrounded them both—and, later on, she was the center of calm in the quarrels that Chaplin sometimes sparked in his own large family of talented children.

由于沃娜本人出生在一个被各种麻烦困扰的大家庭，她对卓别林生活中将面临的挑战也做好了充分准备，因为当时关于他俩有很多毫无根据的流言。后来在他那个有那么多天才孩子的大家庭中，卓别林有时会引发争吵，而她则成了安宁的中心。

Chaplin died on Christmas Day 1977.

卓别林死于1977年圣诞节。

A few months later, a couple of almost comic body thieves stole his body from the family burial chamber and held it for money.

几个月后，几个近乎可笑的盗尸者从他的家庭墓室盗走了他的尸体以借此诈钱。

The police recovered it with more efficiency than Mack Sennett's clumsy Keystone Cops would have done, but one can't help feeling Chaplin would have regarded this strange incident as a fitting memorial—his way of having the last laugh on a world

to which he had given so many.

警方追回了他的尸体，其效率比麦克·塞纳特拍摄的启斯东喜剧片中的笨拙警察要高得多。但是人们不禁会感到，卓别林一定会把这一奇怪的事件看作是对他的十分恰当的纪念──他以这种方式给这个自己曾为之带去这么多笑声的世界留下最后的笑声。

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本单元完

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Unit 3

A welfare client is supposed to cheat. Everybody expects it.

人人都觉得福利救济对象是在骗人。

Faced with sharing a dinner of raw pet food with the cat, many people in wheelchairs I know bleed the system for a few extra dollars.

当我认识的许多坐轮椅的人面临与宠物猫分吃生猫食的窘境时，都会向福利机构多骗取几美元。为了能领到一点额外的福利款，

They tell the government that they are getting two hundred dollars less than their