英汉翻译练习之句子翻译

1、精选优质文档-倾情为你奉上2.1When you walk through a town like this-two hundred thousand inhabitants of whom at least twenty thousand own literally nothing except the rags they stand up in-when you see how the people live, and still more how easily they die, it is always difficult to believe that you are walking

2、 among human beings. All colonial empires are in reality founded upon this fact. The people have brown faces besides, there are so many of them! Are they really the same flesh as your self? Do they even have names? Or are they merely a kind of undifferentiated brown stuff, about as individual as bee

3、s or coral insects? They rise out of the earth, they sweat and starve for a few years, and then they sink back into then they are gone. And even the graves themselves soon fade back into the soil. Sometimes, out for a walk as you break your way through the prickly pear, you notice that it is rather

4、bumpy underfoot, and only a certain regularity in the bumps tells you that you are walking over skeletons.2.2 All people who work with their hands are partly invisible, and the more important the work they do, the less visible they are, Still, a white skin is always fairly conspicuous. In northern E

5、urope, when you see a labourer ploughing a field, you probably give him a second glance. In a hot country, anywhere south of Gibraltar or east of Suez, the chances are that you dont even see him, I have noticed this again and again. In a tropical landscape ones eye takes in everything except the hum

6、an beings, It takes in the dried-up soil, the prickly pear, the palm tree and the distant mountain, but it always misses the peasant hoeing at his patch. He is the same colour as the earth, and a great deal less interesting to look at.2.3But what is strange about these people is their invisibility.

7、For several weeks, always at about the same time of day, the file kg old women had hobbled past the house with their firewood, and though they had registered themselves on my eyeballs I cannot truly say that I had seen them. Firewood was passing - that was how I saw it. It was only that one day I ha

8、ppened to be walking behind them, and the curious up-and-down motion of a load of wood drew my attention to the human being beneath it. Then for the first time I noticed the poor old earth coloured bodies, bodies reduced to bones and leathery skin, bent double under the crushing weight. Yet I suppos

9、e I had not been five minutes on Moroccan soil before I noticed the overloading of the donkeys and was infuriated by it. There is no question that the donkeys are damnably treated. The Moroccan donkey is hardly bigger than a St. Bernard dog, it carries a load which in the British Army would be consi

10、dered too much for a fifteen-hands mule, and very often its packsaddle is mot taken off its back for weeks together. But what is peculiarl y pitiful is that it is the most willing creature on earth, it follows its master like a dog and does mot need either bridle or halter. After a dozen years of de

11、voted work it suddenly drops dead, whereupon its master tips it into the ditch and the village dogs have torn its guts out before it is cold. 2.4 It was curious really. Every white man there had this thought stowed somewhere or other in his mind. I had it, so had the other onlookers, so had the offi

12、cers on their sweating chargers and the white N. C. Os marching in the ranks. It was a kind of secret which we all knew and were too clever to tell; only the Negroes didnt know it. And really it was like watching a flock of cattle to see the long column, a mile or two miles of armed men, flowing pea

13、cefully up the road, while the great white birds drifted over them in the opposite direction, glittering like scraps of paper.3.4The charm of conversation is that it does mot really start from anywhere, and no one has any idea where it will go as it meanders or leaps and sparkles or just glows. The

14、enemy of good conversation is the person who has “something to say.” Conversation is not for making a point. Argument may often be a part of it, but the purpose of the argument is mot to convince. There is no winning in conversation. In fact, the best conversationalists are those who are prepared to

15、 lose. Suddenly they see the moment for one of their best anecdotes, but in a flash the conversation has moved on and opportunity is lost. They are ready to let it go.3.5So we may return to my beginning. Even with the most educated and the most literate, the Kings English slips and slides in convers

16、ation. There is mo worse conversationalist than the one who punctuates his words as he speaks as if he were writing, or even who tries to use words as if he were composing a piece of prose for print. When E. M. Forster writes of “the sinister corridor of our age,” we sit up at the vividness of the p

17、hrase, the force and even terror in the image. But if E. M. Forster sat in our living room and said, “We are all following each other down the sinister corridor of our age,” we would be justified in asking him to leave.4.6We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom, symboliz

18、ing an end as well as a beginning, signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all form

19、s of human poverty and all forms of human life. A nd yet the same revolutionary belief for which our forebears fought is still at issue around the globe, the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of god.4.7To our sister republics south of our borde

20、r, we offer a special pledge: to convert our good words into good deeds, in a new alliance for progress, to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers. Let all our neighbors know that we sha

21、ll join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.4.8So let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is mot a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject

22、 to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms, and

23、 bring the absolute control lf all nations.Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths and encourage the arts and commerce.Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of t

24、he earth the command of Isaiah to “undo the heavy burdens (and) let the oppressed go free”.4.9In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility; I welcome it. I do mot belie

25、ve that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it, and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.And so ,my fellow Anericans ask not what your

26、country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you , but what together we can do for the freedom of man.5.10Gracious she was. By gracious mean full of graces. She had an erectness of carriage, an ease of bearing, a poise

27、 that clearly indicated the best of breeding. At table her manners were exquisite. I had seen her at the Kozy Kampus Korner eating the specialty of the house a sandwich that contained scraps of pot roast, gravy, chopped nuts, and a dipper of sauerkraut-without even getting her fingers moist. Intelli

28、gent she was not .In fact, she veered in the opposite direction. But I believed that under my guidance she would smarten up. At any rate, it was worth a try. It is, after all, easier to make a beautiful dumb girl smart than to make an ugly smart girl beautiful. 5.11Heartened by the knowledge that Po

29、lly was not altogether a cretin, I began a long, patient review of all I had told her. Over and over and over again I cited instances, pointed out flaws, kept hammering away without let-up. It was like digging a tunnel. At first everything was work, sweat, and darkness. I had no idea when I would re

30、ach the light, or even if I would. But I persisted. I pounded and clawed and scraped, and finally I was rewarded. I saw a chink of light. And then the chink got bigger and the sun came pouring in and all was bright.6.12Science is committed to the universal. A sign of this is that the more successful

31、 a science becomes, the broader the agreement about its basic concepts: there is not a separate Chinese or American or soviet thermodynamics, for example; there is simply thermodynamics. For several decades of the twentieth century there was a Western and a soviet genetics, the latter associated wit

32、h Lysenkos theory that environmental stress can produce genetic mutations. Today Lysenkos theory is discredited, and there is now only one genetics.6.13If man creates machines, machines in turn shape their creators. As the automobile is universalized, it universalizes those who use it. Like the Worl

33、d Car he drives, modern man is becoming universal. No longer quite an individual, no longer quite the product of a unique geography and culture, he moves from one climate-controlled shopping mall to another, from one airport to the next, from one Holiday lnn to its successor three hundred miles down

34、 the road; but somehow his location never changes. He is cosmopolitan. The price he pays is that he no longer has a home in the traditional sense of the word. The benefit is that he begins to suspect home in the traditional sense is another name for limitations, and that home in the modern sense is

35、everywhere and always surrounded by neighbors.6.14art is, in one definition, simply an effort to name the real world. Are machines “the real world” or only its surface? Is the real world that easy to find? Science has shown the insubstantiality of the world. It has thus undermined an article of fait

36、h: the thingliness of things. At the same time, it has produced images of orders of reality underlying the thingliness of things. Are images of cells or of molecules or of galaxies more or less real than images of machines? Science has also produced images that are pure artifacts. Are images of self

37、-squared dragons more or less real than images of molecules?6.15The playfulness of the modern aesthetic is, finally, its most striking-and also its most serious and, by corollary, its most disturbing-feature. The playfulness of science that produces game theory and virtual particles and black holes

38、and that, by introducing human growth genes into cows, forces students of ethics to reexamine the definition of cannibalism. The importance of play in the modern aesthetic should not come as a surprise. It is announced in every city in the developed world by the fantastic and playful buildings of po

39、stmodernism and neomodernism and by the fantastic juxtapositions of architectural styles that typify collage city and urban adhocism. 7.16I am not speaking of mere filth. One expects steel towns to be dirty. What I allude to is the unbroken and agonizing ugliness, the sheer revolting monstrousness,

40、of every house in sight. From East Liberty to Greensburg, a distance of twenty-five miles, there was not one in sight from the train that did not insult and lacerate the eye. Some were so bad, and they were among the most pretentious-churches, stores, warehouses, and the like - that they were downri

41、ght startling; one blinded before them as one blinks before a man with his face shot away. A few linger in memory, horrible even there: a crazy little church just west of Jeannette, set like a dormer-window on the side of a bare leprous hill; the headquarters of the Veterans of Foreign wars at anoth

42、er forlorn town, a steel stadium like a huge rattrap somewhere further down the line. But most of all I recall the general effect of hideousness without a break.7.17Here is something that the psychologists have so far neglected: the love of ugliness for its own sake, the lust to make the world intol

43、erable. Its habitat is the United States. Out of the melting pot emerges a race which hates beauty as it hates truth. The etiology of this madness deserves a great deal more study than it has got. There must be causes behind it; it arises and flourishes in obedience to biological laws, and not as a

44、mere act of God. What, precisely, are the terms of those laws? And why do they run stronger in America than elsewhere? Let some honest Privat Dozent in pathological sociology apply himself to the problem.9.18Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?They were not simp

45、le folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the words of cheer much any more. All smiles have become archaic. Given a description such as this one tends to make certain assumptions. Given a description such as this one tends to look next for the King, mounted on a splendid stallion a

46、nd surrounded by his noble knights, or perhaps in a Golan litter borne by great-muscled slaves. But there was no king. They did not use swords, or keep slaves. They were not barbarians. I do not know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that they were singularly few. As they did withou

47、t monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat that these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. They were not less complex than us. 9.19 This is usually explained to childre

48、n when they are between eight and twelve, whenever they seem capable of understanding; and most of those who come to see the child are young people, though often enough an adult comes, or comes back, to see the child. No matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators a

49、re always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sun

50、light out of the vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and bedestroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every

51、life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed. 10.20Actually, the revolt of the young people was a logical outcome of conditions in the age. First of all, it must

52、be remembered that the rebellion was not confined to the United States, but affected the entire Western world as a result of the aftermath of the first serious war in a century. Second, in the United States it was reluctantly realized by some-subconsciously if not openly-that our country was no long

53、er isolated in either politics or tradition and that we had reached an international stature that would forever prevent us from retreating behind the artificial walls of a provincial morality or the geographical protection of our two bordering oceans.10.21The rejection of Victorian gentility was, in

54、 any case, inevitable. The booming of American industry, With its gigantic, roaring factories, its corporate impersonality, and its largescale aggressiveness, no longer left any room for the code of polite behavior and well-bred morality fashioned in a quieter and less competitive and. War or no war

55、, as the generations passed, it became increasingly difficult for our young people to accept standards of behavior that bore no relationship to the bustling business medium in which they were expected to battle for success. The war acted merely as a catalytic agent in this breakdown of the Victorian

56、 social structure, and by precipitating our young people into a pattern of mass murder it released their inhibited violent energies which, after the shooting was over, were turned in both Europe and America to the destruction of an obsolescent nineteenth-century society.11.22To write about the Engli

57、sh in standard and cosmopolitan political terms, the usual Left-Centre-Right stuff, is almost always wasting time and trouble. The English are different. The English are even more different than they think they are, though not more different than they feel they are. And what they feel-Englishness ag

58、ain-ismore important than what they think. Lt is instinctive feeling and not rational thought that shapes and colours actual events in England.For example, although the English seem to be so sharply divided, always indulging in plenty of loud political abuse, there are nothing like so many Communist

59、s or neo-or potential Fascists in England as there are in most other countries.11.23The real English, who are different, who have inherited Englishness and have not yet thrown away their inheritance, cannot feel at home in the contemporary world, representing the accelerated development of our whole age. Lt demands bigness; and they are suspicious of bigness. (And there is now not only Industrial bigness; there is also