Unit10TheJeaningofAmerica课文翻译综合教程二.doc

Unit 10 The Jeaning of AmericaThis is the story of a sturdy American symbol which has now spread throughout most of the world. The symbol is not the dollar. It is not even Coca-Cola. It is a simple pair of pants called blue jeans, and what the pants symbolize is what Alexis de Tocqueville called a manly and legitimate passion for equality- Blue jeans are favored equally by bureaucrats and cowboys; bankers and deadbeats; fashion designers and beer drinkers. They draw no distinctions and recognize no classes; they are merely American. Yet they are sought after almost everywhere in the world - including Russia, where authorities recently broke up a teen-aged gang that was selling them on the black market for two hundred dollars a pair. They have been around for a long time, and it seems likely that they will outlive even the necktie. This ubiquitous American symbol was the invention of a Bavarian-born Jew. His name was Levi Strauss. He was born in Bad Ocheim, Germany, in 1829, and during the European political turmoil of 1848 decided to take his chances in New York, to which his two brothers already had emigrated. Upon arrival, Levi soon found that his two brothers had exaggerated their tales of an easy life in the land of the main chance. They were landowners, they had told him; instead, he found them pushing needles, thread, pots, pans, ribbons, yam, scissors and buttons to housewives. For two years he was a lowly peddler, hauling some 180 pounds of sundries door-to-door to eke out a marginal living. When a married sister in San Francisco offered to pay his way West in 1850, he jumped at the opportunity, taking with him bolts of canvas he hoped to sell for tenting. It was the wrong kind of canvas for that purpose, but while talking with a miner down from the mother lode, he learned that pants - sturdy pants that would stand up to the rigors of the digging - were almost impossible to find. Opportunity beckoned.On the spot, Strauss measured the mans girth and inseam with a piece of string and, for six dollars in gold dust, had the canvas tailored into a pair of stiff but rugged pants. The miner was delighted with the result, word got around about those pants of Levis, and Strauss was in business. The company has been in business ever since.When Strauss ran out of canvas, he wrote his two brothers to send more. He received instead a tough, brown cotton cloth made in Nimes, France - called serge de Nimes and swiftly shortened to denim (the word jeans derives from Genes, the French word for Genoa, where a similar cloth was produced). Almost from the first, Strauss had his cloth dyed the distinctive indigo that gave blue jeans their name, but it was not until the 1870s that he added the copper rivets which have long since become a company trademark. The rivets were the idea of a Virginia City, Nevada, tailor, Jacob W. Davis, who added them to pacify a mean-tempered miner called Alkali Ike. Alkali, the story goes, complained that the pockets of his jeans always tore when he stuffed them with ore samples and demanded that Davis do something about it. As a kind of joke, Davis took the pants to a blacksmith and had the pockets riveted; once again, the idea worked so well that word got around; in 1873 Strauss appropriated and patented the gimmick - and hired Davis as a regional manager.By this time, Strauss had taken both his brothers and two brothers-in-law into the company and was ready for his third San Francisco store. Over the ensuing years the company prospered locally, and by the time of his death in 1902, Strauss had become a man of prominence in California. For three decades thereafter the business remained profitable though small, with sales largely confined to the working people of the Westcowboys, lumberjacks, railroad workers, and the like. Levis jeans were first introduced to the East, apparently, during the dude-ranch craze of the 1930s, when vacationing Easterners returned and spread the word about the wonderful pants with rivets. Another boost came in World War II, when blue jeans were declared an essential commodity and were sold only to people engaged in defense work. From a company with fifteen salespeople, two plants, and almost no business east of the Mississippi in 1946, the organization grew in thirty years to include a sales force of more than twenty-two thousand, with fifty plants and offices in thirty five countries. Each year, more than 250,000,000 items of Levis clothing are sold - including more than 83,000,000 pairs of riveted blue jeans. They have become, through marketing, word of mouth, and demonstrable reliability, the common pants of America. They can be purchased pre-wash-ed, pre-faded, and pre-shrunk for the suitably proletarian look. They adapt themselves to any sort of idiosyncratic use; women slit them at the inseams and convert them into long skirts, men chop them off above the knees and turn them into something to be worn while challenging the surf. Decorations and ornamentations abound.The pants have become a tradition, and along the way have acquired a history of their own - so much so that the company has opened a museum in San Francisco. There was, for example, the turn-of-the-century trainman who replaced a faulty coupling with a pair of jeans; the Wyoming man who used his jeans as a towrope to haul his car out of a ditch; the Californian who found several pairs in an abandoned mine, wore them, then discovered they were sixty-three years old and still as good as new and turned them over to the Smithsonian as a tribute to their toughness. And then there is the particularly terrifying story of the careless construction worker who dangled fifty-two stories above the street until rescued, his sole support the Levi s belt loop through which his rope was hooked.美国的牛仔裤之路本文讲述了美国一个坚实的象征物，如今已经遍及世界大部分地区。这个象征并不是美元。也不是可口可乐。而是一条被称作蓝色牛仔裤的普通裤子。这种裤子所象征的，正如亚克力西德托儿所谓的对“平等的果断的正当的追求”。无论是官员还是牛仔，银行家还是赖账徒，时尚设计师还是酗酒者都同样青睐蓝色牛仔裤。这种裤子不分高低贵贱，只要是美国人都可以穿。可是牛仔裤几乎在世界的任何地方都广受欢迎 - 包括俄罗斯，其当局最近刚刚粉碎了一个在黑市贩卖牛仔裤的团伙，他们的牛仔裤卖到了200美元一条。牛仔裤已经流行了很长时间了，看起来其生命力已经超过了领带。这种无处不在的美国象征是一个出生在巴伐利亚的犹太人发明的。 他与1982年出生于德国的巴德奥且姆。 1848年欧洲政局动荡期间，他决定去纽约试试运气，他的两个哥哥已经移民到了那里。到了纽约，里维发现他的两个哥哥广域他们在这片充满机遇的土地上生活的比较安逸的说法有点言过其实。他们说他们拥有土地。可他发现他们正向家庭主妇推销针线、锅罐、缎带、见到和纽扣。里维做了两年寒酸的小贩，拉着180磅的杂货挨家挨户的叫卖，勉强维持生计。他的一个嫁到旧金山的姐姐为他提供西行路费，他急忙抓住这个机会，带着几个帆布卷，他打算卖给别人做帐篷。岂料这些帆布并不适合做帐篷，不过里维与自主矿脉的矿工交谈后了解到，人们买不到耐得起采矿磨损的坚实耐穿的裤子。机会在向他招手。施特劳斯当场用一根带子量了那人的腰围和裤长，用帆布做成了一条粗硬的耐穿的裤子，卖了六美元的沙金。矿工觉得很满意，于是有关里维斯的裤子一词不胫而走。他的公司一直在运转。当施特莱斯用完了那些帆布料，他写信给他的两个哥哥，让他们在送点过来。没想到却受到了法国尼姆产的一种坚韧的棕色的棉布。称作“尼姆哔叽”（serge de Nimes），很快就简称为“劳动布”（英语词jeans牛仔裤）源自于法语的Genes，即英语的Genoa（热那亚）此地盛产一种类似的棉布）。从一开始，斯特赖斯将他的布料染成了湛蓝色。蓝牛仔裤因此而得名。不过，知道19世纪70年代，他才在牛仔裤上加了铜柳钉。长期以来，这铜柳丁成；公司的标志。给裤子加上柳丁是内华达州的一名名叫雅各布W戴维斯的裁缝所想出的主意。他这样做是为了安抚一个名叫叫阿尔克利.艾可的脾气暴躁的矿工。这名矿工抱怨他往牛仔裤里放矿石标本时，牛仔裤的口袋那里总是被撕破，他要求戴维斯想想办法。戴维斯有点像开玩笑，把裤子拿到了铁匠铺，给口袋打上柳丁。这一招果然奏效，消息不胫而走。1873年，施特莱斯采纳了这一小发明，出资为其申请了专利，并雇用了戴维斯去做地区经理。这时候，斯特赖斯把他的两位哥哥和两个姐夫带进了公司，并准备在旧金山开办他第三家商店。此后的几十年，公司在当地生意兴隆。直到1902年施特劳斯去世时，他已经成为加利福尼亚的知名人士。在此后的30年，生意虽然小，但一直在盈利。主要的销售对象是西部劳工阶层-诸如牛仔、伐木工、铁路工之类的人。里维斯的牛仔第一次被引进到东部，显然，20世纪30年代农场热，在西部度假的东部人回家后，到处宣扬带着柳丁的奇妙的裤子。二战期间，蓝色牛仔裤再一次走俏，被宣布为紧要商品，只卖给从事防务工作的人，从1946年，只有15名销售人员，两家工厂，以及在密西西比东部没有任何业务的公司，在30年间，发展成一个拥有2万2千人的销售团队，并在35个国家开设了55个工厂和办事处。每年，里维斯服装的销售量都超过了两千五百万件，其中拥有830万件是钉有柳丁的蓝色牛仔裤。通过市场营销，口口相传，以及显而易见的可靠性，牛仔裤成了美国的寻常裤装。人们可以买到进行过水洗的、褪色和缩水处理的牛仔裤，以符合无产阶级的形象。牛仔裤几经改造还可以供各种癖好的人使用。妇女们将裤管拆开，将裤子改成裙装。男人们将其从膝盖下方截下来，变成冲浪用的短裤。人们还给牛仔裤装上各式各样的装饰。牛仔裤已经成为一种传统。在其发展过程中叶谱写了自己的历史 - 这历史丰富多彩的公司，在旧金山开设了一家博物馆。馆中的展品有，例如：一位列车员用一条牛仔裤代替一条失灵的联轴器。；怀俄明州的一个男子用牛仔裤把汽车从沟里拖出来，：一个加利福尼亚人在一个废弃的矿井里捡到几条牛仔裤，穿上的时候才发现这些裤子有63岁年历史了，但却和新的一样好，变将他们捐赠给史密斯学会，以表彰他们的坚实耐用。还有一个特别惊心动魄的故事：一个粗心的建筑工人悬挂在52层楼上，直至获救，他的唯一支撑点就是李维牛仔裤的裤带扣，他的安全绳就扣着这裤带扣。