英语三篇课文翻译和课后exercise.doc

2 The Roots Of My Ambition
“If there's one thing I can't stand, Russell, it's a quitter.”
罗素，假如有一件事我不能容忍的话，那就是做轻易放弃的人。
My mother,dead now to this world but still roaring free in my mind, wakes me some mornings before day-break. “If there's one thing I can't stand, Russell, it's a quitter.”
虽然她已离天人世，我母亲却依旧在我的脑子里大声嚷嚷，有时天还未破晓她就催我起床，罗素，假如有一件事情我不能容忍的话，那就是轻易放弃的人。
I have heard her say that all my life. Now, Lying in bed, coming awake in the dark, I feel the fury of her energy fighting the good-for-nothing idler within me who wants to go back to sleep instead of tackling the brave new day.
我一辈子都在听她讲这句话。而今躺在床上，在黑暗中睁开睡眼，我就能感觉到她和那个一无是处，游手好闲的人对歭的那股凶劲儿，那个人就在我心中，他宁可缩回被窝继续睡觉，她不愿意抓住新的美好的一天。
Silenty, I protest: I am not a child anymore. I have made something of myself. I am entitled to sleep late.
我在心里默默地抗议：我不再是个孩子，我已经做出了自己的成绩，有权晚点起床。
“Russell, you've got no more gumption than a bump on a log.”
罗素，你完全没有进取心了，只想当个无所事事的懒汉。
She has hounded me with these battle cries since I was a boy in short pants.
自从我还是穿着短裤整天乱跑的小男孩起她就用这种战场上的喊叫来鞭策我。
“Make something of yourself!”
你一定得弄出个名堂来！
“Don't be a quitter!”
绝不要轻易放弃的人！
“Have a little ambiton, Buddy.”
伙伴，得有点儿抱负吧
The civilized man of the world within me scoffs at materialism and strives after success. He has read the philosophers and social critics. He thinks it is vulgar and unworthy to spend one's life pursuing money, power, fame, and……
在我心目中这个世界上真的文明人嘲笑物质主义者和追名逐利的人。这种人饱读哲学大师和社会批评家的著作，他认为花费整个生命去追求金钱、权力、名誉是粗俗而不值的……
“Sometimes you act like you're not worth the powder and shot it would take to blow you up with.”
母亲还对我说：“有时你的行业显得自己还不如能置你于死地的那点火药或一粒子弹值钱。
Life had been hard for my mother ever since her father died, leaving nothing but debts, The family house was lost, the children scattered. My mother's mother, fatally ill with tubercular infection, fell into a suicide depression and was institutionalized. My mother, who had just started college, had to quit and look for work.。
自从外公死后母亲一直过着艰辛的生活，除了一大堆债务外公啥也没有留下。家里的房子成了别人的。孩子们四散各处。我那染上夺命结核病的外婆患了自杀抑郁症被送入医院。刚上大学的母亲不得不辍学去找工作。
Then ,after five years of marriage and three babies, her husband died in 1930, leaving my mother so poor that she had to give up her baby Audrey for adoption. Maybe the bravest thing she did was to give up Audrey, only ten months old, to my Uncle Tom and Aunt Goldie. Uncle Tom, one of my father's brothers, had a good job with the railroad and could give Audrey a comfortable life.
后来母亲在结婚后5年内生下连我在内3个孩子。但是，1930年我爸爸离开了人世，母亲一贫如洗，不得不将最小的孩子奥德丽送给别人收养。也许母亲做过的最勇敢的事就是让我叔叔汤姆和婶婶葛黛收养了10个月大的奥德丽。叔叔汤姆是爸爸的亲兄弟，他在铁路上有一份好工作，能够给奥德丽舒适的生活。
My mother headed off to New Jersey with my other sister and me to take shelter with with her brother Alen, poor relatives dependent on his goodness. She eventually found work pathching grocers'smocks at ten dollars a week in a laundry.
母亲带着我和另一个妹妹直奔新泽西州暂时寄居在她哥哥阿伦家里，成了投奔我那好舅舅的穷亲戚。母亲后来总算在一家洗衣店找到了一份周薪10美元，修补杂货商穿用的工作服的工作。
Mother would have liked it better if I could have grown up to be President or a rich businessman, but much as she loved me, she did not deceive herself. Before I was out of grade school, she could see I lacked the gifts for either making millions or winning the love of crowds. After that she began nudging me toward working with words.
假如我现在是总统或者是富有的商人，妈妈应该会更满意的。虽然母亲很爱我，但她并没有欺骗自己。在我高中毕业之时，她就意识到了我缺少那种日进斗金或博取群众爱戴的能力。从那以后她就开始把我往写作的道路上推。
Words ran in her family. There seemed to be a word gene that passed down from her maternal grandfather. He was a school teacher, his daughter Lulie wrote poetry, and his son Charlie became New York correspondent for the Bltimore Herald. In the turn-of-the –century South, still impoverished by the Civil War, words were a way out.
母亲的家族有从事写作的传统。从她的外公开始似乎就有一种语言基因代代相传。她的外公是一位教师，他的女儿露利是诗人，儿子查理后来成了《巴尔的摩先驱报》的通讯员。在世纪之交，南方还没有从因为内战而大伤气的状态下恢复过来，写作在当时是一条谋生之路。
The most spectacular proof was my mother's first cousin Edwin. He was a managing editor of the New York Times.He had traveled all over Europe, proving that words could take you to places so glorious and so far from the Virginia sticks that you own kon could only gape in wonder and envy. My mother often used Edwin as an example of how far a man could go without much talent.
最充分的证据要数我母亲的一位表兄艾德文。他是《纽约时代周刊》的执行主编。他曾经遍游欧洲，这证明文字可以将你带到那些远离弗吉尼亚边远山区无比美好的地方，令你的亲戚惊讶而又嫉妒。母亲常以艾德文为例，告诉我一个不是很有才气的男人能走多远。
“Edwin James was no smarter than anybody else, and look where he is today,”my mother said, and said again, so than I finally grew up thinking Edwin James was adill clod who had a lucky break. Maybe she felt didn't have to be brilliant to get where Edwin had got to, that the way to get to the top was to work, work, and work.
艾德文并不比任何一个孩子聪明，看看他今天已经在哪了？母亲总是这样遍又一遍地对我说，以至于我长大以后认为艾德文·詹姆士不过是碰上了好运气的平庸之辈。也许母亲也是那样看待他的，但她的话中应该有更深的含意。她是在告诉我不需要很聪明就能达到艾德文的高度，通往顶峰的路是努力、努力、再努力。
When my mother saw that I might have the word gift, she started trying to make it grow. Thought desperately poor, she signed up for a deal that supplied one volume of Worlds Greatest Literature every month at 39 cents a book.
当母亲看到我或多或少有些语言天赋的时候，她就开始努力要让这种天赋成长发挥出来，虽然家里穷得叮当响，她还是狠下心来给我订购了售价为39美分的月刊《世界最伟大的文学》
I respected those great writers,but what I read with joy were newpapers. I lapped up every word about monstrous crimes, dreadful accidents and hideous butcheries committed in faraway wars. Accounts of murderes dying in the electric chair fascinated me, and I kept close track of fast meals ordered by condemned men.
我很仰慕那些伟大的作家，但读起来使我最快乐的是报纸。我如饥似渴地读着报纸上关于犯罪、恐怖事件和发生在遥远他乡的骇人听闻的杀戮。关于那些死在电梯上的杀手的报道令我入迷，我甚至对死刑犯订的最后一顿快餐都特别留心。
In 1947 I graduated from John Hopkins and learned that the Baltimore Sun needed a police reporter. Two or there classmates at Hopkins also applied for the job. Why I was picked was a mystery. It paid $30 a week. When I complained that was insulting for a college man, my mother refused to sympathize.
1947年，我从约翰·霍普金斯大学毕业时到了解到《巴尔的摩太阳报》需要招募一名治安记者。另外有两三个霍普金斯的同班同学也在争取这个职位，为什么最后我被录用了是谜。这份工作的薪水是30美金一星期。当我在母亲面前抱怨这样的待遇对一个大学毕业生来说是一种耻辱的时候，她拒绝给我同情。
“If you work hard at this job,”she said, “maybe you can make something of it. Then they'll have to give you a raise.”
假如你在这个职位上好好干，她说，也许你是会有所作为的，到那时他们就不得不给你涨工资了
Seven years later I was assigned by the Sun to cover the White House. For most reporters, being White House correspondent was as close to heaven as you could get. I was 29 years old and puffed up with pride. I went to see my mother's delight while telling her about it. I should have known better.
7年之后，我被《巴尔的摩太阳报》任命为驻白宫记者。对于大多数记者而言，成为驻白宫记者被看成是离上天只有一步之遥。那时我29岁，踌躇满志。我回有对母亲讲自己晋升的事想看到她高兴。但结果却出乎我的预料。
“Well, Russ,”she said, “if you work hard at this White House job, you might be able to make something of yourself.”
嗯，罗素啊，母亲说，假如你把白宫记者当好了，你会有所作为的。
Onward and upward was the course she set. Small progress was no excuse for feeling satisfied with yourself. People who stopped to pat themselves on the back didn't last long. Even if you got to the top, you ‘d better not take it easy. “The bigger they come, the harder they fall” was one of her favorite maxims.
进取、进取、再进取，这是母亲给我设定的方向。小小的进步是不足以自我满足的。那些因成功而沾沾自喜停下来欣赏自己的人是不会持久的。即使你已经到达顶峰，你也最好不要放松。爬得越高，摔得越痛，是母亲的至理名言。
During my early years in the newspaper business, I began to entertain childish fantasies of revenge against Cousin Edwin. Wouldn't it be delightful it Ibecame such an outstanding reporter that the Times hired me without knowing I was related to the great Edwin? Wouldn't it be delicious if Edwin himself invited me into his huge office and said, “Tell me something about yourself, youngman?” What exquisist vengeance to reply, “I am the only son of your poor cousin Lucy Elizabeth Robinson.”
在我从事报业的头几年，我就不怀着幼稚的要报复地表兄艾德文的怪念头。假如我能成为非常杰出的记者，让《纽约时代周刊》在不知道我和艾德文关系的情况下雇用我，这难道不是件快乐无比的事情吗？如果艾德文将我请到他那宽敞的办公室，对我说：年轻人，能请你介绍一下自己吗？我是你的穷表妹露西·伊丽莎白·罗宾逊唯一的儿子。这回答是多么绝妙的复仇啊。
What would one day happen was right out of my wildest childhood fantasy. The TIMES did come knocking at my door, though Cousin Edwin had departed by the time I arrived. Eventually I would be offered one of the gaudiest prizes in American journalism: a column in the New York Times.
后来我的这种不着边际的少年狂想果真变成了现实。《纽约时代周刊》真的派人敲开了我的家门，尽管在我到达时，艾德文表兄已经有事离开了，美国新闻界还是给予了我一个炫丽的奖励—做《纽约时代周刊》的专栏作家。
It was not a column meant to convey news, but a writer's column commenting on the news by using different literary forms: essay devices, satire, burlesque, sometimes even fiction. It was proof that my mother had been absolutely right when she sized me up early in life and steered me toward literature.
那不是新闻报导专栏，而是一个用不同文学体裁评论新闻的专栏，如散文、讽刺、夸张的模仿、有时甚至是小说。这一切证明母亲早就看出是这块料并引导我走文学之路是完全正确的。
The column won its share of medals. Including a Pulitezer Prize in 1979. My mother never knew about that. The circuitry of her brain had collapsed the year before, and she was in a nursing home, out of touch with life forevermore.
我负责的专栏后来赢得了它该得到的所有奖项，包括1979年的普利策奖，但母亲却不得而知。她在前一年患了脑瘫住进疗养院，她从此与生活没有了接触。
I can only guess how she'd have responded to news of Pulitzer. I'm pretty sure she would have said, “That's nice, Buddy. It shows if you buckle down and work hard, you'll be able to make something of yourself one of these days.”
我只能去想象她得知我获得普利策奖的消息时的反应。她肯定又会说：好样的，伙计，这证明了只要你下定决心，埋头苦干，某一天你一定能有所成就。
In time there would be an attack on the values my mother preached and I have lived by. When the country began to pull apart in the 1960s and 70s, people who admitted to wanting to amount something were put down as materialists idiotically wasting their lives in the “rat race.” The word “gumption”vanished from the language.
母亲一直宣扬而且我一直遵循的价值观终于开始遭到攻击。二十世纪六七十年代，这个国家的价值观念开始分化。那些承认自己想要获得成功的人被鄙视为在“激烈竞争”的凡尘中愚蠢地浪费生命的物质主义者。“进取精神”这个词开始从我们的语言中消失。
I tried at first to roll with the new age. I decided not to drive my children, as my mother had driven me, with those corrupt old demands that they amount to something.
我也努力按新时代的标准行事，决心不再像母亲逼迫我那样逼迫自己的孩子们，不再用那些陈腐的苛求非要他们大有作为。
The new age exalted love, self-gratification and passive Asian philosopies that aimed at helping people resign themselves to the status quo. Much of this seemed preposterous to me, but I conceded that my mother might have turned me into a coarse materialist (one defect in her code was its emphasis on money and position ),so I kept my heretical suspicions to myself.
新时代崇尚关系和自我满足，崇尚消极的东方哲学要人安于现状的思想。这些思想对我来说显得荒谬，但是我也得承认也许母亲已经将我变成一个粗俗的物质主义者（她的信条中的一个缺陷就是对金钱和地位的强调），我在新时代一直对自己怀着异教徒般的怀疑。
And then, realizing I had failed to fire my own children with ambition, I broke. One evening at dinner, I heard myself shouting, “Don't you want to amount to something?”
当意识到自己未能使孩子们充满抱负的时候，我心碎了。一天晚上在用餐的时候，我听到自己大声吼道 ：“你们难道就不想有任何作为吗？
The children looked blank. Amount to something. What a strange expression. I could see their thought: That isn't Dad yelling. That was those martins he had before dinner.
孩子们满脸疑惑：有所作为？这对他们来说是多么奇怪的字眼啊。我能够清楚地分辨他们想法：这不是爸爸的吼叫，是他饭前喝下的马提尼酒在作怪。
It wasn't the gin that was shouting. It was my mother. The gin only gave me the courage to announce to them that yes, by God, I had always believed in success, had always believed that without hard work and self-discipline you could never amount to anything, and didn't deserve to.
其实不是杜松子酒在吼，是我的母亲在吼。酒只是借给了我勇气向他们宣布那个想法。是的，上帝可以作证，我一直相信成功，一直相信如果没有辛勤的劳动和严格的自律，一个人不可能有任何成就，也不配有成就。
It would turn out that the children's bleak report cards did not forebode failure, but a refusal to march to the drumbeat of the ordinary, which should have made me proud. Now they are grown people with children of their own, and we like one another and have good times when we are together.
事实最后证明，那些曾使我感到黯淡无望的成绩单并没有预示我的孩子们一败涂地，而预示了他们拒绝平庸，这令我应该感到欣慰。而今他们都已长大成人，也有了自己的孩子。我们彼此都怀着好感，家庭团聚时过得非常愉快。
So it is with a family. We carry the dead generations within us and pass them on to the future abroad our children. This keeps the people of the past alive long after we have taken them to the churchyard.
家庭就是如此，我们在自己身上承传去世的老一辈，并将他们传给自己将来四散在各地的后代，让已经去世安息在教堂墓地的人们很久以后仍然活在我们心中。
“If there's one thing I can't stand, Russell, its's quitter.”
罗素，假如有一件事我不能容忍的话，那就是做轻易放弃的人。
Lord, I can hear her still.
我的天啊！我听见我的母亲还在说。

4 What Is Happiness?
The right to pursue happiness is issued to Americans with their birth cetificates, but no one seems quite which way it ran. It may be we are issued a hunting license but offered no game. Jonathan Swift seemed to being welldeceived.” The felicty of being “a fool among knaves.” For Swift say society as Vanity Fair, the land of false goals.
自从呱呱坠地，美国人就被赋予了追求幸福的权利，但似乎没人确信幸福究竟在哪里。正如它发给我们狩猎证，却不给我们提供猎物。乔纳森•斯威福特似乎持此观点，他抨击幸福的想法是“鬼迷心窍的上当，”是“骗子堆中的傻瓜”的自鸣得意。因为他视社会为虚妄目标聚集的名利场。
It is, of course, un-American to think in terms of fools and knaves. We do, however, seem to be dedicated to the idea of buying our way to happiness. We shall all have made it to heaven when we possess enough.
当然用傻子、骗子这样的字眼来形容是不合美国的人的风俗习惯的，然后我们似乎确实沉溺于用金钱购买幸福的想法：只要有足够的钱，我们百年后就能上天堂。
And at the same time the forces of American commercialism are hugely dedicated to making us deliberately unhappy. Advertising is one of our major industries, and advertising is one of our major industries, and advertising exists not to satisfy desires but to create them-and to create them faster than any man's budget can satisfy them. For that matter, our whole economy is based on a dedicated insatiability. We are taught that to possess is to be happy, and then we are made to want. We are even told it is our duty to want. It was only a few years ago, to cite a single example, that car dealers across the country were flying banners that read “You Auto Buy Now.” There were calling upon Americans, as an act approaching patriotism, to buy at once, with money they did not have. Automobiles they did not really need, and which they would be required to grow tired of by the time the next year's models were released.
同时，美国的商业主义却又殚精竟虑故意使我们得不到幸福。广告是我们的支柱产业之一，其存在不是为了满足欲望。而是为了制造欲望——其制造速度之快，使我们的腰包应接不暇。就此而言，我们的整个经济是基于一种无法自拔的贪求无厌。我们受到的教育是“占有却为幸福”，然后我们就被迫产生贪欲。我们甚至被告知欲望是我们的义务。引用一个简单的例子为证：仅仅几年前，全国的汽车销售商还打着“你应该立即购买汽车”的横幅。他们号召美国人民：作为一种爱国主义行为，他们应该立即按揭购买他们并不真正需要的汽车，并且在次年新款汽车发布后他们会对原来这些汽车心生厌倦。
Or look at any of the women's magazines. There, as Bernard De Voto once pointed out, advertising begains as poetry in the front pages and ends as pharmacopoeia and therapy in the back page. The poetry of the front matter is the dream of perfect beauty. This is the baby skin that must be hers. These, the flawless teeth. This, the perfumed breath she must exhale. This, the sixteen-year-old figure she must display she must display at forty, at fifty, at sixty, and forever.
或者任意浏览一本女性杂志。正如伯尔纳德•德•渥托曾经指出的那样，这些杂志开头几页的广告诗情画意，而最后则以类似药典和治疗手册结尾。前者是完美美女的梦想：这该是她婴儿般的股肤，这些是她无瑕的牙齿，这该是她呼出的香气，这该是她能保持到40、50、60岁甚至永远的16岁少女般的身材。
Once past the vaguely uplifting fiction and feature articles, the reader finds the other face of the dream in the back matter. This is the harness into which Mother must strap herself in order to display that perfect figure. These, the chin straps she must sleep in. This is the slave that restores all, this is her laxative, these are the tablets that melt away fat, these are the hormones of perceptual youth, these are the stockings that hide varicose veins.
一旦读完这些隐约让人振奋的小说和专题文章，读者在杂志最后几页就