新标准大学英语综合教程2课文翻译U6R1

1、Can bad luck be explained?生活中的倒霉事能解释吗？1 Toast always lands butter side down. It always rains on bank holidays. You never win the lottery, but other people you know seem to . Do you ever get the impression that you were born unlucky? Even the most rational person can be convinced at times that there

2、is a force out there making mishaps occur at the worst possible time. We all like to believe that Murphys Law is true (if it can go wrong, it will).每次吐司掉到地上总是抹了黄油的那一面贴地。每逢公假日必定下雨。你买彩票从来没中过大奖,但是你认识的人里似乎有人你有没有觉得自己生来就是个倒霉蛋？即使是最理智的人有时候也会对此深信不疑，认为冥冥之中有一种力量让他们在最糟糕的时期里灾祸连连。我们都愿意相信墨菲法则是对的（“该出错的，终将出错”）。2 Par

3、t of the explanation for bad luck is mathematical, but part is psychological. Indeed there is a very close connection between peoples perception of bad luck and interesting coincidences.人之所以走背运，部分是概率的问题 , 部分是心理上的问题。的确，人们对背运的感知和一些有意思的巧合之间有着紧密的联系。3 For example, take the belief that bad things always h

4、appen in threes (just like buses .!) This popular notion would be unlikely to stand the scrutiny of any scientific study, but it must have some basis in experience, otherwise the phrase would never have arisen in the first place. What might be the rational explanation?就拿“坏事成三”这种想法来说吧（就像等公交车一样，要么不来，要

5、么一下来三辆！）。这种流传甚广的观念可能根本经不起科学的检验，但是它必定有一些现实的依据 , 不然的话也不会有这样的说法了。那么，什么样的解释才是合理的呢？4 The first question is what is bad?我们要考虑的第一个问题是“什么是坏事？”5 Some things are only marginally bad, for example the train arriving five minutes late. Some are extremely bad, such as failing an exam or being sacked. So badness i

6、s much better represented as being on a spectrum rather than something which is there or not there.有些事情只是稍稍有点不好，比如火车晚点五分钟。有些事情则是糟糕透顶，比如考试不及格，或是被炒了鱿鱼。所以我们更应该把事情的好坏看成是一个程度的问题，而不是非好即坏。6 A particular event may only be a misfortune because of the circumstances around it. The train arriving five minutes l

7、ate is a neutral event if you are in no hurry and reading an interesting newspaper article while you wait. It is bad if you are late for an important meeting.某件事情有可能因为相关的一些因素而变成了不幸的事。火车晚点五分钟，如果你边读着报纸上一篇有趣的文章边等车，并不赶时间，那么这就是一件无关紧要的事。但是如果你要去参加一个重要会议，而且马上要迟到了，那火车晚点就变成坏事了。7 When it comes to bad things ha

8、ppening in threes, what may be most important of all is the duration and memorability of the first event. Take a burst pipe while you are away on holiday, for example. It may take less than an hour to flood the house, but this one bad event can remain alive and kicking for many months, with the clea

9、ning up operation and the debate with your insurers acting as constant reminders of the original event.谈到坏事成三的问题，其中最关键的因素是第一件倒霉事持续的时间有多长以及给人的印象深不深。比如说，你外出度假期间家里的水管爆裂了。也许不到一个小时你的家就变成了一片汪洋，而在接下来的几个月中你的脑子会不停地想起这桩倒霉事，因为你要把房子清理干净，还要和保险公司就赔偿问题讨价还价，这些都会让你不断地想起这件事。8 The longer the first bad event sticks in

10、the front of your mind, the more opportunities you will have to experience two more bad events. A month later someone bumps the back of your car and a week after that you lose your wedding ring. The mind which is already on a low from the first event will quickly leap to connect the subsequent misfo

11、rtunes as part of the series. It wouldnt matter that there could be a two-month timescale over which everything happened. By the time you have recovered from the water damage you are actively looking out for the next disaster. The timescale has been extended as long as is necessary to confirm the or

12、iginal prophecy.第一件倒霉事困扰你的时间越长，你遇到两件倒霉事的几率就越大。说不定一个月之后，有人开车追尾撞了你的车。又过了一个星期，你的结婚戒指不见了。出了第一件倒霉事，你的情绪本来就很低落，这时你会很快地把后来发生的事情联系到一起，把它们看作是有关联的一连串事件。即使这几件事情的时间跨度可能长达两个月之久，那也不会改变你的看法。等你从浸水事件中平复过来的时候，你已经在积极地等待下一个灾难的发生了。这个时间跨度已经被拉长了，直至能够证明 你之前的预言是对的。9 As with coincidences, in bad luck there is a tendency to l

13、ook for the examples which confirm the theory, and ignore those which dont (because they are less interesting). Single bad events happen all the time. That alone should be enough to disprove the theory. Bad things also come in twos. But it is more likely that a friend will tell you three bad things

14、have happened to me, isnt that typical than only two bad things have happened to me, which just proves that the theory doesnt work. After all, the latter is tempting fate! 人们碰上倒霉事的时候会像遇到巧合的时候一样，去寻找一些事例来验证他们先入为主的想法，而忽略掉与这种想法有出入的事情（因为那些事情不是那么有趣）。孤立的倒霉事每时每刻都在发生。光凭这一点就可以推翻“坏事成三”的理论了。坏事也可以是成双的。但是你的朋友很可能会

15、对你说：“我一连碰到了三件倒霉事，可真是应了那句俗话！”，而不是说：“我只碰上了两件倒霉事，这不正好证明了坏事成三这个说法不成立吗？”毕竟，说后一种话是要冒风险的！10 There is, however, at least one rational reason why bad events might cluster together. It is related to probability and independence. Unlucky events are not always independent of each other. Anybody who is made redu

16、ndant is bound to suffer some depression. That will lower the bodys defences, making the person vulnerable to illness, and also making them less alert and responsive (so they may be more likely to drop a precious vase, for example). So while the probability of being made redundant on any particular

17、day and the probability of being sick may both be small, the chance of both occurring is almost certainly higher than the product of the two probabilities.但是，至少有一个合理的解释可以说明为什么坏事会扎堆。这涉及到概率和独立性的问题。并不是所有的倒霉事都互无关联。任何一个人在被解雇之后都会心情抑郁，这会降低他们身体的抵抗力，使他们更容易得病，而身体反应也不像以前那么警觉灵敏（所以他们就更有可能遇上打碎贵重的花瓶这样的事）。因此，虽然人们在某

18、一天被裁员和在某一天生病的概率都很小，但是这两件事同 时发生的概率肯定要高于它们分别发生的概率。Map reading misfortunes看地图时碰到的倒霉事11 So much for the general incidents of bad luck which crop up in life. Lets get on to a specific one that everyone has encountered.关于日常生活中突发的普通倒霉事我们就说到这里。下面让我们来看一个每个人都会碰到的事情。12 You are off to visit a friend who lives a

19、t the other end of the city. You look up the road in the street atlas, and discover that it is right on the edge of the page. This means that finding the precise route becomes a chore of flicking backwards and forwards from one page to the next. Either the road is half on one page and half on the ot

20、her, or its spread across the fold in the middle of the book. And if its an ordnance survey map, then your destination is at just the point where you folded the map over.你要去拜访一个朋友，他住在城市的另一头。你在街道地图册上寻找去他家的路线，结果发现这条路线恰恰就在这页地图的边上。这意味着要找到一条精确的路线，你就必须从这一页翻到下一页，不停地翻来翻去，很是麻烦。这条路线不是一半在这一页一半在下一页，就是被地图中间的书脊夹着

21、。如果你手里拿的是全国地形测量局的地图，那么你的目的地可能正好就在地图册的折合处。13 It doesnt seem fair. After all a map only has a tiny bit of edge but plenty of middle in which your destination could be situated. Or has it? In fact the chance of picking a destination which is close to the edge of the map is a lot higher than you might e

22、xpect.这似乎很不公平。毕竟一个地图的“边缘”只有那么一点儿，而“中间”的地方那么大，你要去的地方完全可以在中间啊！事实果真如此吗？实际上，你随便挑一个地方，它出现在靠近地图边 缘的几率比你想象的要大得多。14 Take a look at the map in the diagram. You will have a problem if your destination is anywhere in the shaded area marked on the map. This shaded area is just 1 cm into the page all the way aro

23、und. It looks insignificant. However, the shaded area adds up to 56 cm. That represents 28 per cent of the area of the whole page of the map, which means that any specific point that you are seeking on this map has a 28 per cent chance (thats nearly one in three) of being in an awkward position with

24、in 1 cm of the edge of the page. And if you regard being within 2 cm of the edge of the page as being awkward, the chance of ill-fortune climbs to 52 per cent. In other words, you might expect this misfortune to occur on almost every other journey.看一看下面的地图。如果你的目的地在地图上标出的那个阴影区域里，你就遇到麻烦了。这个阴影区域离地图四周的边

25、缘处只有一厘米的距离，这似乎微不足道。但是这些阴影区域的面积加起来有56平方厘米。差不多占了整页地图面积的28%，这意味着任何一个你要找的地方都有28%（差不多是三分之一）的几率出现在离页边不到一厘米的尴尬的地方。假如你设定离页边两厘米为阅读不便的话，那你遇上坏运气的几率就攀升到了52%。换句话说，差不多每隔一次你就会碰到这样的倒霉事。15 As in most bad luck stories, you forget about the number of times the road doesnt land awkwardly and remember the times it does,

26、 and in this case the chance of a bad result is so high that before long you are bound to be cursing your misfortune, or the maps printer, or both. This, incidentally, is why many modern road maps allow significant overlaps between adjacent map pages. In a good road atlas, at least 30 per cent of th

27、e page is duplicated elsewhere. 在大多数有关倒霉事的故事中，你会忘掉路线好找的次数，只记得路线不好找的次数，在这种情况下，你倒霉的几率肯定会很高，以致于过不了多久你就又会诅咒自己的运气，诅咒地图的出版商，或者两个一起诅咒。顺便说一下，这正是现在许多地图允许相邻的两页有很大重合部分的原因。一份制作精良的地图册，每页至少有30%的部分会在其他页上重复出现。The lights are always red when Im in a hurry我赶时间的时候总是碰上红灯16 One of the best examples of selective memory wh

28、ere an unfair comparison is made between good and bad is in the relative frequency of red and green lights on a journey. For once, the perception of I always seem to get red lights when Im in a hurry is true and verifiable. To simplify the situation, think of a traffic light as being like tossing a

29、coin, with a 50 per cent chance of being red, and 50 per cent of being green. (In fact most traffic lights spend more time on red.) If you encounter six traffic lights on a journey, then you are no more likely to escape a red light than you are to toss six consecutive heads, the chance of which is 1 in 64.关于选择性记忆，即人们对好运气和坏运气所做的不公正的比较，最好的一个例子就是路上红绿灯的相对频率问题。至少有一次，“我赶时间的时候，总是碰上红灯”这种说法是真实可靠的。为了便于理解，我们可以把红绿灯看作是投掷一枚硬币，出现红灯