新标准大学英语综合教程课后习题英译汉专题

1 We all sensed we were coming to the end of our stay here, that we would never get a

chance like this again, and we became determined not to waste it. Most important of course were the final exams in April and May in the following year. No one wanted the humiliation of finishing last in class, so the peer group pressure to work hard was strong. Libraries which were once empty after five o’clock in the afternoon were standing room only until the early hours of the morning, and guys wore the bags under their eyes and their pale, sleepy faces with pride, like medals proving their diligence. 我们都觉得在校时间不多了，以后再也不会有这样的学习机会了，所以都下定决心不再虚度光阴。当然，下一年四五月份的期末考试最为重要。我们谁都不想考全班倒数第一，那也太丢人了，因此同学们之间的竞争压力特别大。以前每天下午五点以后，图书馆就空无一人了，现在却要等到天快亮时才会有空座，小伙子们熬夜熬出了眼袋，他们脸色苍白，睡眼惺忪，却很自豪，好像这些都是表彰他们勤奋好学的奖章。

2 Tomorrow? It’s all a lie; there isn’t a tomorrow. There’s only a promissory note that we are often not in a position to cash. It doesn’t even exist. When you wake up in the morning it’ll be today again and all the same rules will apply. Tomorrow is just another version of now, an empty field that will remain so unless we start planting some seeds. Your time, which is ticking away as we speak (at about 60 seconds a minute chronologically; a bit faster if you don’t invest your time wisely), will be gone and you’ll have nothing to show for it but regret and a rear-view mirror full of “could haves”, “should haves” and “would haves”.

明天行吗？明天只是个谎言；根本就没有什么明天，只有一张我们常常无法兑现的期票。明天甚至压根儿就不存在。你早上醒来时又是另一个今天了，同样的规则又可以全部套用。明天只是现在的另一种说法，是一块空地，除非我们开始在那里播种，否则它永远都是空地。你的时间会流逝（时间就在我们说话的当下嘀嗒嘀塔地走着，每分钟顺时针走60 秒，如果你不能很好地利用它，它会走得更快些），而你没有取得任何成就来证明它的存在，唯独留下遗憾，留下一面后视镜，上面写满了“本可以做”、“本应该做”、“本来会做”的事情。 1 My flying dreams were believable as a landscape by Dali, so real that I would awake with a sudden shock, a breathless sense of having tumbled like Icarus from the sky and caught

myself on the soft bed just in time. These nightly adventures in space began when Superman started invading my dreams and teaching me how to fly. He used to come roaring by in his shining blue suit with his cape whistling in the wind, looking remarkably like my Uncle Frank who was living with mother andme. In the magic whirling of his cape I could hear the wings of a hundred seagulls, the motors of athousand planes. 我的飞行梦像达利的风景画那么真实可信，以致于自己常常会在一阵惊吓中醒来，好像伊卡罗斯那样从空中摔下来，虽然发现自己刚好掉到软软的床上，但也被吓得喘不过气来。当超人开始侵入我的梦乡，并教给我飞行的技巧之后，我每夜的太空冒险便开始了。超人身着耀眼的蓝色衣服，肩披随风飕飕作响的斗篷，经常从我身边呼啸而过。他长得太像我的舅舅弗兰克了，舅舅那会儿正跟妈妈和我住在一起。当超人的斗篷神奇地旋转时，我好像能听见上百只海鸥的振翅声，上千架飞机的马达轰鸣声。

2 In contrast, children on the Pacific island of Tonga, studied by Helen Morton, are regularly beaten bytheir parents and older siblings. They are seen as being closer to mad people than adults because theylack the highly prized quality of social competence (or poto as the

Tongans call it). They are regularlytold off for being clumsy and a child who falls over may be laughed at, shouted at, or beaten. Children are thought of as mischievous; they cry or want to feed simply because they are naughty, and beatings are at their most severe between the

ages of three and five when children are seen asparticularly wilful. Parents believe that social competence can only be achieved through disciplineand physical punishment, and treat their children in ways that have seemed very harsh to outsiders. 相反，根据海伦·莫顿的研究，太平洋岛国汤加的儿童经常挨父母和哥哥姐姐的打。人们认为儿童和成年人相比更像疯子，因为他们缺乏被大家看重的社会能力（汤加人称之为poto）。小孩子经常因为笨手笨脚而挨骂，他们连摔跤都会被嘲笑、呵斥，甚至被打。人们认为儿童很顽皮，都是因为淘气他们才哭闹，或者要东西吃。在大人看来，三至五岁的儿童尤其任性，因此他们打这个年龄段的孩子也打得最狠。父母们相信，只有靠训导和体罚才能使孩子获得社会能力，所以他们用一种在

外人看来非常严厉的方式对待孩子。

1 Listen, if you can, to the 48 fugue themes of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavichord. Listen to each theme, one after another. You will soon realize that each theme mirrors a different world of feeling. You willalso soon realize that the more beautiful a theme seems to you the harder it is to find any word that willdescribe it to your complete satisfaction. Yes, you will certainly know whether it is a gay theme or a sadone. You will be able, in other words, in your own mind, to draw a frame of emotional feeling aroundyour theme. Now study the sad one a little closer. Try to pin down the exact quality of its sadness. Is it pessimistically sad or resignedly sad; is it fatefully sad or smilingly sad?

可能的话，你不妨听听巴赫的《平均律钢琴曲集》中的48个赋格主题。依次地、一个个地听听其中的每一个主题，你很快就会意识到每个主题都反映了一个不同的情感世界，你很快也会意识到你越觉得某个主题美妙，就越难找到令你完全满意的字眼来描述它。是的，你当然知道那个主题是欢快的还是悲伤的。换句话说，你能够在脑海中勾勒出那个主题的情感框架。那么就更仔细地听一下这个悲伤的主题吧，要明确悲伤的性质。是悲观厌世的悲伤，还是无可奈何的悲伤？是时运不济的悲伤，还是强颜欢笑的悲伤？

2 We know less about the Girl with the Pearl Earring than any of Vermeer’s works. Indeed, theunexplainable lack of background information may even contribute to the worldwide popularity thepainting enjoys. With so much mystery, the painting has been the theme of first, a novel and later, a film, both of whichattempt to answer some of the questions about the painting, as well as one, which is immediately moreappropriate to the medium of the novel or the film: Are her wide eyes and enigmatic half-smile innocentor seductive?

我们对《戴珍珠耳环的少女》的了解比对维梅尔的其他作品都少。实际上，这种无法解释的背景资料的缺失甚至会使得该画更受欢迎。正因为如此神秘，这幅画先是成了一部小说的主题，而后又被一部电影所采纳。它们都试图揭开有关这幅画的一些谜题，其中一个是：女孩那双睁得大大的眼睛，以及那一丝神秘的微笑，到底是天真还是诱惑？像小说或电影这类媒介更适合作出回答。

1 Even grown men who do market research have trouble visualizing what a public relations man doeswith his day, and it is a safe bet that the average systems analyst is as baffled about what a spacesalesman does at the shop as the average space salesman is about the tools needed to analyze a system.

即使是那些从事市场研究工作的成年人也难很想象公关部的人每天都在做些什么。一名普通的系统分析师肯定不知道空间推销员在店里都干些什么，就好像空间推销员对分析系统的工具也一窍不通一样。

2 So run the clichés, anyway. But it is only our obsession with novelty, ignorance of deeper historicalpatterns and arrogant insistence on our own importance that leads us into this kind

of talk. Hopingto prove our superiority over the generations that preceded us, we boast that we live in a period ofunprecedented change. Yet there is a good case that we do not, in fact, live in very interesting times at all.

不管怎么说，这就是那耳熟能详的套话。可是，让我们有这种论调的正是缘自我们对新奇事物的过度迷恋，对深层次历史模式的无知，以及我们的狂妄自大。为了证明相比于先辈们的优越性，我们夸耀说自己生活在一个前所未有的变革期。但是，有一个很好的例子可以用来证明，实际上我们并没有生活在多么有趣的时代。

1 Josh shivered as he checked the address on the slip of paper in his hand. He’d never been to Joanne’s, but knew it by reputation, not because of its food, which had often been

maligned, or its jazz orchestra, which had a guest slot for a well-known movie director who played trumpet, but because of the stellarquality of its sophisticated guests: politicians, diplomats, movie actors, hall-of-fame athletes, journalists, writers, rock stars and Nobel Prize winners – in short, anyone who was anyone in this city of powerbrokers.

乔希打了个冷战，他打开手里的纸条核对了一下地址。之前他没来过乔安妮餐厅，但对于它的鼎鼎大名却早有耳闻，倒不是因为这里的饭菜有多美味，其实这里的菜品屡遭恶评，也不是因为这里的爵士管弦乐队有一位知名电影导演客串吹小号，而是因为这里汇集了有头有脸的宾客，可以说是星光璀璨，他们中有政客、外交家、电影明星、载入名人堂的体育明星、记者、作家、摇滚明星、诺贝尔奖得主等等——总之，这里的每一位客人都是这座权力之城里的一个人物。

2 The Swedes and the Saudis in this true story have different concepts of the role of

personal relationshipsin business. For the Swedes, business is done with a company; for the Saudis, with a person whom onehas learned to know and trust. As long as one does not know another person well enough it is convenientto have present an intermediary or go-between, someone who knows and is trusted by both parties. Atthe root of the

difference between these cultures is a fundamental issue in human societies: the role ofthe individual versus the role of the group. 在这个真实的故事里，瑞典人和沙特人对人际关系在商业中的作用有着不同的理解。对瑞典人来说，他们是在和一个公司做生意；但对沙特人来说，他们是在和一个他们了解并且信任的人做生意。只要他们对某个人还不够了解，就会让一位双方都认识并信任的中间人或介绍人在场，这样做会比较方便。这两种文化的差异源于人类社会的一个根本问题：即个人角色与集体角色的问题。

1 I thought how we firemen were always saying to each other, “I’ll see you at the big one.” Or, “We’ll allmeet at the big one.” I never knew how it started, or when I’d picked up on it myself, but it was part ofour shorthand. Meaning, no matter how big this fire is, there’ll be another one bigger, somewhere downthe road. We’ll make it through this one, and we’ll make it through that one, too. I always said it, at bigfires, and I always heard it back, and here I was, thinking I would never say or hear these words again, because there would never be another fire as big as this. This was the big one we had all talked about, all our lives, and if I hadn’t known this before – just before these chilling moments – this sick, blacknoise now confirmed it.

我想起我们消防员平常总互相打趣说：“在大火中见吧。”或者是“我们肯定会在大火中碰面的。”我不知道这种说法是怎么来的，或者我自己是从什么时候开始说起这种话来的，但这就是我们的暗语。意思是不管这场火有多大，以后在别处还会有比这更大的。我们能安然无恙地度过这场火，也会安然无恙地度过下一场火。遇到一场大火时，我总是这么说，也总听

别人这么说，可现在，我呆在这儿，想着自己再也不会说这样的话了，也不会再听到别人这么说了，因为再也不会有比这更大的火了。这会是我们大家一辈子都在说的那场大火，如果以前——就在这一个个令人胆战心惊的瞬间之前——我没有认识到这一点的话，现在这浑厚的、不祥的响声印证了这一点。

2 Named as the first chairman of the UN Human Rights Commission, Roosevelt oversaw the two-yearprocess of drafting and securing passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Additionallyher clashes with representatives of the Soviet Union led one Republican to lean forward in his chair andstate – he wouldn’t allow his name to be used for fear of

being labeled as a Democratic supporter – “Now, if you want to know what I think about Mrs Roosevelt, she is tuh-riffic! Mrs Roosevelt is unique in hercapacity to create an understanding of our position in the minds of the delegates of other countries.

Herperformance is so superlative that it is rather unexpected to be asked to evaluate her in ordinary terms.”

作为联合国人权委员会的首任主席，罗斯福监督了《世界人权宣言》历时两年的起草和通过的全过程。此外, 她和苏联代表的交锋让一位共和党人从椅子上朝前探过身来，说出了下面一番话——因为怕被当成是民主党的支持者，他不愿意透露自己的姓名——“如果你想知道我对罗斯福夫人的看法，那我会说她真是了不起! 罗斯福夫人有一种独特的能力，能让其他国家的代表清楚地了解我们的立场。要用平常的语言来评价她高超的外交手腕，一时间还真不知道该怎么说。”

1 Red lights come up just as often when the driver is not in a hurry; it’s just that the

disadvantage of thered light is considerably less if time is not critical. The false part of the perception is that red lightshappen more than green lights. The reason for this is simply that a driver has more time to think about ared light than a green light, because while the latter is gone in seconds – and indeed is an experience nodifferent from just driving along the

open road – the red light forces a change of behaviour, a momentof exertion and stress, and then a deprivation of freedom for a minute or so. Red lights stick in the mind, while green lights are instantly forgotten.

司机不赶时间的时候碰到的红灯其实和赶时间的时候一样多；只是如果时间不紧急，红灯带来的不便要小得多。认为红灯出现的次数比绿灯多其实是一种错觉。产生这种错觉的原因很简单，因为司机有更多的时间去想红灯，而绿灯的时候，车子几秒钟之内就疾驰而过了——这其实和在畅通的公路上开车没有任何区别——而红灯却迫使司机改变行为，一小会儿的时间里要强迫自己努力一下承受点压力，还要失去一两分钟的自由。所以红灯会深深地印在司机的脑海里，而绿灯转瞬间就被抛到脑后了。

2 Can anyone learn to sing? It’s a question that haunted me as I was writing my most recent book TheSinging Neanderthals. My research had rsuaded me that musicality is deeply embedded in the humangenome, with far more ancient evolutionary roots than spoken language. Yet here I was, unable to carrya tune or match a rhythm. Friends and academic colleagues claimed this was simply because I had been “turned off” from music as a child and if only I took a few lessons I would find my voice. Maybe theywere right. So humiliated was I by music teachers who made me “sing” alone in front of the class thatI dropped music at the first opportunity and haven’t participated in anything musical for over 35 years. Perhaps I could learn to sing.

人人都能学会唱歌吗？在撰写我最新出版的《唱着歌的尼安德特人》一书时，这个问题就一直萦绕在我的心头。我做的研究让我相信音乐才能是深深植根于人类基因中的，从进化史的

角度来说，它比人类的口头语言都要古老得多。可是我本人一唱起歌来不是跑调，就是跟不上节奏。朋友们和学术同僚们都说，那都是因为我小时候对音乐失去了兴趣，只要上几节音乐课，我一定能放声歌唱。也许他们是对的。记得小时候，音乐老师们让我在全班同学面前独“唱”，让我觉得很丢脸。所以后来一有机会，我就躲开音乐，35 年来从来没有参加过任何音乐活动。说不定学一学我也能唱得不错。

1 On International Women’s Day, Soviet women bask in their menfolk’slove and gratitude. In themorning, as it is a holiday, they lounge in bed instead of going out to work. Their husbands, with muchcursing and clattering of pans, cook breakfast for the family; by ten o’clock they proudly serve theirHigh days and holidayswives a charred and shrivelled egg. Beside the woman’s plate will be a bunch of flowers and a little gift, a bottle of scent perhaps, or a pair of tights, which she will exclaim over until the children, scarlet withfury, insist that their mother makes them their proper breakfast.

在国际妇女节那一天, 苏联的妇女们沐浴在男性所给予的爱意和感激之中。因为这一天是假日，早上她们不用去上班，可以懒洋洋地躺在床上。而她们的丈夫们则要为全家人做早饭，虽然嘴里骂骂咧咧的，还弄得锅碗瓢盆叮当乱响；到了十点，丈夫颇为自豪地把煎得焦糊糊、皱巴巴的鸡蛋端到妻子跟前。盘子边上还放着一束鲜花，一份小礼物，可能是一瓶香水或者一双裤袜，妻子会高兴得大叫起来，激动好一会儿，直到孩子们怒气冲冲地跑过来，小脸涨得通红，闹着要妈妈给他们做一顿像样的早餐。

2 For good or bad, the world has possibly undergone more changes in the past two decades than it didin the past two centuries. We have used more resources, burnt more fuel, caused more pollution andkilled off more animals and plants as we have come closer to each other to form a truly global village. Television, we thought, was the last uniting factor till we got a feel for the Internet. All these changes have made us take a different look at the world

beyond and our home within. Nothingcomes without a rider in this global market. If we want to be part of the dazzle and comfort that theWest is known for, we had better accept some of its anomalies, too. This is not to say that festivals meansomething else to the West.

不管是好是坏, 世界在过去二十多年间所经历的变化可能比过去两百年间所经历的还要多。为了让彼此间联系得更紧密，营造出一个真正的地球村，我们消耗了更多的资源，烧掉了更多的能源，造成了更多的污染，灭杀了更多的动植物。过去，我们一直把电视看作是连接全世界的终极手段，直到我们了解了互联网，才发现事实并非如此。所有这些变化都让我们用另外一种眼光来看待外面的世界以及我们自己的家园。在这个全球市场中，得到任何东西都是要付出代价的。如果我们想拥有西方世界那着名的眩目而舒适的生活，我们也必须接受西方文化中的一些异常事物。当然，这并不是说节日对于西方人来说有着不同的意义。