新编英语教程5英译汉

Unit1 1. Stories are told of scrupulous writers, like Flaubert, who spent days trying to get one or two sentences exactly right. 译文:据说一丝不苟的作家,比如福楼拜(Flaubert),为了把一两句句子完全写正确,会花上几天的时间。 2.Choosing words is part of the process of realization, of defining our thoughts and feelings for ourselves, as well as for those who hear or read our words. 译文:选择词语是领悟过程的一部分,是为自己、为读者和听众准确表达思想感情这个过程的一部分。 3.By using his dictionary, and above all by reading, a student can increase his sensitivity to these shades of difference and improve his ability to express his own meanings exactly. 译文:通过查阅词典,更重要的是通过阅读,学生可以增强辨别词语意思细微差别的能力,并提高准确表达自己意思的能力。 4.The foreign student of English may be discouraged and dismayed when he learns that there are over 400,000 words in the English language, without counting slang. But let him take courage. More than half of these words are dead. They are not in current use. Even Shakespeare used a vocabulary of only some 20,000 words. The average Englishman today probably has a vocabulary range of from 12,000 to 13,000 words. 译文:当得知不计俚语,英语单词总数超过40万个,学习英语的外国学生可能会灰心丧气。但是不要灰心,因为这些单词中的一大半已经死亡,不再通用了。即使是莎士比亚,使用的词汇量也不过2万。一般的现代英国人所掌握的词汇量大概是1.2万到1.3万。 Unit2 1.That the equipment of modern camping becomes yearly more sophisticated is an entertaining paradox for the cynic, a brighter promise for the hopeful traveler who has sworn to get away from it all. 译文:现代的露营装备一年比一年先进,这令挖苦者好不尴尬,看了真是有趣。对于信誓旦旦要远离闹市的满怀希望的旅行者,眼前则更加光明了。 2. Idealists have objected to the practice of camping, as to the packaged tours, that the traveler abroad thereby denies himself the opportunity of getting to know the people of the country visited. 译文:理想主义者反对露营,就像他们反对参团旅游那样,说这样一来,旅行者到了国外就没有机会了解当地人了。 3.Only good scouting is likely to preserve the freedoms so dear to the heart of the eternal Boy Scout. 译文:只有遵守良好的野营纪律,才有可能保留童子军般野营者所珍视的自由。 4.The contemporary phenomenon of motor-car worship is to be explained not least by the sense of independence and freedom that ownership entails. To this pleasure camping gives an exquisite refinement. 译文:拥有自己的汽车能带来独立和自由的感觉,但这根本无法解释当代的汽车崇拜现象。露营则为这种愉快的感觉平添了几分精致。 Unit3 1.This knack for going instinctively to the heart of a matter was the secret of his major scientific discoveries —this and his extraordinary feeling for beauty. 译文:他的重大科学发现的秘密就在于这种天生的一针见血的才能,还有他那非凡的美感。 2. Thus we got to know not merely the man and the friend, but also the professional. 译文:这样一来,我们不仅结识了爱因斯坦并与他成为朋友,而且还看到了其作为科学工作者的一面。 3.But the magic had been performed invisibly in the depths of Einstein’s mind, by a process we could not fathom.译文:但在无形中,爱因斯坦的思想深处施展出了魔法,这究竟是个怎样的过程,我们无法理解。 4.Political events upset the serenity of his life even more. When the Nazis came to power in Germany, his theories were officially declared false because they had been formulated by a Jew. His property was confiscated, and it is said a price was put on his head. 译文:政治事件在更大程度上扰乱了他平静的生活。纳粹在德国当权时,当局宣布他的理论是假的,因为这些理论是一个犹太人提出来的;他的财产被没收;据说还悬赏缉捕他。 Unit4 1. Their own motives were foreign to me: to beat the other fellows, stand high, represent the honor of the school. 译文:他们自己的学习动机却是我闻所未闻的:有人要击败其他同学,有人要出人头地,还有人要为学校争光。 2.School subjects which happened to bear on my outside interests I studied in school and out; I read more than was required, and I read for keeps, too. 译文:要是学校的科目正好与我的课外兴趣相吻合,我不仅在课上学,而且在课下学。在读完规定的书籍后还另外找书读,读了还能记住。 3.For those conversations, so brilliant, so scholarly, and so consciously unknowing, seemed to me, silent in the background, to reveal the truth that even college graduates did not know anything, really. 译文:因为在我看来,那些睿智、博学、而且“不知为不知”的谈话在潜移默化中揭示了这样一个真理:即使是大学毕业生也真的是一无所知。 4.I went exploring and dreaming alone around that city as I had the country around Sacramento, and the place I liked best was the ocean shore; there I lived over the lives of the Greek heroes and the Roman generals and all the poets of all the ages, sometimes with ecstasy, but never, as in my boyhood, with myself as the hero. 译文:由于住在萨克拉门托市郊,我会独自围绕这座城市,一边探寻,一边幻想。我最中意的地方是海滩,在那里,我的身边有希腊英雄、罗马将军和各个时代的诗人,与他们的邂逅有时令我欣喜不已,但年纪尚小的我从没将自己想象成英雄。 Unit5 1. Much of human existence consists of efforts aimed at making sure that things don’t go wrong, fall apart, break down, or stop running until a decent interval has elapsed after their manufacture. 译文:人类在很多时候都致力于确保东西不失灵、不散架、不损坏,在制造出来后的相当长一段时间内不会罢工。 2. A single visit to a museum which displays artifacts used by simple preindustrial societies is sufficient to dispel the notion that quality is dependent on technology. 译文:只要去一次博物馆,参观一下前工业时代的简单社会所使用的器具,就足以摈弃质量取决于技术这个观点了。 3.Although many items were obtained through barter and trade, the connection between producer and consumer still remained intimate, permanent, and caring. 译文:尽管很多物品是通过交易或买卖的途径获得的,生产者和消费者之间仍然保持着密切长久的联系,双方仍然相互体贴。 4. A man is not likely to fashion a spear for himself whose point will fall off in midflight; nor is a woman who weaves her own basket likely to make it out of rotted straw. Similarly, if one is sewing a parka for a husband who is about to go hunting for the family with the temperature at sixty below, all stitches will be perfect. 译文:男人不可能给自己做一支投出去就掉矛尖的长矛,女人则不可能给自己编一个烂草做的篮子。类似的,如果丈夫为了养家要在零下60度的天气下出门狩猎,给他缝制风雪大衣时,必须针针完美。 Unit6 1. Generally, it comes in bits and pieces, very little of it clearly visible at any given moment, but all of it involved in the making of historical change for the better. 译文:一般情况下,文明的进步是一点一滴的,每一点滴在任何某个时刻都难以清楚显现,但这些点滴作为一个整体却参与了历史的变迁,促进了社会的进步。 2. The result is that we are underinformed about positive developments and overinformed about disasters. 译文:结果就是,我们对积极事件了解得太少,对灾难事件了解得太多。 3. It had better be a true portrait —and not a caricature —for it is this picture on which we will base our decisions and around which we will plan our future. 译文:它最好是一张真正的肖像画,而不是一张漫画,因为它是我们决策的依据,也是我们筹划未来的基础。 4. The anchorman and the editor reacted as though they had been blamed for the existence of bad news. Newsmen and newswomen, they said, are only responsible for reporting the news, not for creating it or modifying it. 译文:主持人和编辑的反应就像是被指责有坏新闻。他们说,新闻从业者的职责是报道新闻,并不是制造新闻或篡改新闻。 Unit7 1.But increasingly, it is the technologically produced environment that matters for the individual. 译文:对个人产生影响的是技术产生的环境,这种趋势正愈演愈烈。 2.Nothing could be more dramatic than the difference between the new breed of little girls who cheerfully turn in their Barbies for the new improved model and those who, like their mothers and grandmothers before them, clutch lingeringly and lovingly to the same doll until it disintegrates from sheer age. 译文:新一代的小女孩欢天喜地地把她们旧的芭比娃娃拿去换来新改进版的芭比。昔日的女孩,比如她们的母亲和祖母,却对同一个娃娃恋恋不舍、百般眷爱,直到时间令娃娃支离破碎。没有什么比这种差别更有戏剧性了。 3.This mentality produces, among other things, a set of radically altered values with respect to property. 译文:这种心态产生的一个结果是,对于财产的价值观发生了根本的改变。 4.What Mattel did not announce was that by trading in her old doll for a technologically improved model, the little girl of today, citizen of tomorrow’s super-industrial world, would learn a fundamental lesson about the new society: that man’s relationships with things are increasingly temporary. 译文:马特尔公司没有公布的是,用旧娃娃换来一个技术上改进的新版娃娃后,今天的小女孩——即明天的超级工业化世界的公民——将学习一门关于新社会的基本课程:人和物的关系越来越不持久了。 Unit8 1.Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death. 译文:在广义上,人可以分成三类:辛苦劳作而死的、担心忧虑而死的、百无聊赖而死的。讲解:原文有一个明显的平行结构:those who are …those who are …those who are …。译成汉语时也应该使用效果对等的平行结构。 2. In vain they rush frantically round from place to place, trying to escape from avenging boredom by mere clatter and motion. 译文:当无聊感来报复时,他们疯狂地四处奔忙,企图就用喧哗和躁动来逃避。但这样做毫无用处。讲解:原文的结构比较紧凑,这是一个典型的需要拆译和调整顺序的句子。按照汉语的表达习惯,in vain适合放在最后,by mere clatter and motion适合提前,而avenging boredom硬译的话令人费解,不如用主谓结构译出并置于句首。 3. Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays when they come are grudged as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vocation.译文:每天都是放假,而真正的假日来临时,他们却抱怨说这强行中断了有趣的工作过程。讲解:这句话中的ordinary holidays是相对于each day is a holiday这个语境的,如果译成“平常的假日”或“普通的假日”容易引起误解。按照汉语的表达习惯,译成“真正的假日”更佳。此外,enforced interruptions转译成动词结构也更容易组织译文。 4.The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is therefore a policy of first importance to a public man. But this is not a business that can be undertaken in a day or swiftly improvised by a mere command of the will. The growth of alternative mental interests is a long process. 译文:因此,培养爱好和新的兴趣是一个公职人员的首要行动。但这不是一天就能做到的或是凭一时冲动就能迅速成就的。其他精神方面兴趣的培养更是一个漫长的过程。讲解:这一段话围绕兴趣爱好的培养,主题明确。翻译时也要注意抓住这个主题。另外,原句中某些因句法原因不可或缺的词语(例如a business)如果意思已经表达出来,是可以省去不译的。Unit9 1.Even television, which comes in for a lot of knocks as an image-builder that magnifies form over substance, doesn’t altogether obscure the qualities of leadership we recognize, or their absence. 译文:即使很多人指责电视善于营造表面形象,令表象夸张失实,也无法歪曲、掩盖或凭空捏造我们认识的领导者的气质。 2. Ronald Reagan’s training as an actor showed to good effect in the debate with Carter, when by his easy manner and apparent affability, he managed to convey the impression that in fact he was the president and Carter the challenger. 译文:罗纳德?里根曾经接受过演员的训练,这一点在他与卡特辩论时发挥了作用。在辩论时,他以轻松和蔼的形象让人感觉似乎他才是现任总统,卡特才是挑战者。 3. Americans wanted to climb out of the Depression and needed someone to tell them they could do it, and FDR did. 译文:美国人想爬出经济萧条的泥潭,需要有人告诉他们能做到这一 点,这个人就是罗斯福。 4. Leadership is as much a question of timing as anything else. The leader must appear on the scene at a moment when people are looking for leadership, as Churchill did in 1940, as Roosevelt did in 1933, as Lenin did in 1917. And when he comes, he must offer a simple, eloquent message. 译文:当领袖,掌握好时机很重要。领导者必须顺乎民心,应时上台。就像1940年上台的丘吉尔、1933年上台的罗斯福和1917年上台的列宁。一旦成为领袖,就必须发出简洁有力的信息。