新标准大学英语综合教程4unit1-5+9课后翻译

Unit 1

If you ask me, real life is not all it’s cracked up to be. Twelve years at school and three years at university, teachers banging on about opportunities in the big wide world beyond our sheltered life as students, and what do I find?

Try as I might to stay cheerful, all I ever get is hassle, sometimes with people (especially boys, god, when will they grow up?), but mostly with money. It’s just so expensive out here! Everyone wants a slice off you. The Inland Revenue wants to deduct income tax, the bank

manager wants repayments on my student loan, the landlord wants the rent, gas, water, electricity and my mobile bills keep coming in, and all that’s before I have had anything to eat. And then some bright spark calls me out of the blue, asking if I’m interested in buying a pension. At this rate, I won’t even last till the end of the year, let alone till I’m 60.

依我看，现实生活与人们想象的不一样。我们上了12年的中、小学，又上了3年的大学，这期间老师们一直在没完没了地谈论在安宁的学生生活之外那个广阔天地里的各种机会，可我遇到的又是什么呢？

无论我怎么想保持心情愉快，麻烦事总是接踵而来：有时是跟人争吵（尤其是跟男孩，天哪！他们什么时候才能长大？），但通常是为钱发愁。这个地方什么东西都很贵！人人都想从我身上拿点钱去：国税局要收个人所得税，银行经理要我偿清学生贷款，房东催我交房租、燃气费、水费、电费，手机账单也不断地寄来。所有这些还没算上吃饭的钱。更可气的是，不知从哪里冒出一个自作聪明的家伙冷不丁地给我打电话，问我要不要买养老金。照这样下去，我连今年都活不过去了，更别提活到60岁领养老金了。

我认为，选修第二专业并不适合每一位本科生。我大学本科主修英语专业，大一时就开始辅修经济学了。无疑，我是班里最用功的学生。我竭尽全力想同时达到两个不同专业的要求，但还是有不及格的时候。因为经济学需要良好的数学基础，我不得不花大量时间钻研数学，因而忽略了英语学习。

第二学期,《英国文学》及《宏观经济学》两门课不及格给我敲响了警钟，这可是我一生中第一次考试不及格，这大大打击了我的自信心。虽然我不是一个容易向命运低头的人，在暑假结束的时候，我还是决定放弃经济学，以免两个专业都难以完成。当我只需修一个专业的时候，一切似乎又回到了正轨。 (if you ask me; odds; try as … might; sap one’s confidence; given that; bow to fate; come to a close; for fear that; now that)

If you ask me, taking a second major isn’t good for every undergraduate. In my freshman year as an English major, I took economics as my minor. By all odds, I was the most hardworking student in my class. But try as I might to meet the requirements of the two different subjects, I still could not do well enough to pass all the exams. Given that the study of economics required a good command of mathematics, I had to spend so much time on math that I neglected my English major.

Failing English Literature and Macroeconomics in the second semester sounded the alarm for me. This was the first time I did

not pass a course in my life, which had greatly sapped my

confidence. Although I was not a man who would easily bow to fate, as the summer break came to a close, I decided to give up

economics for fear that I would fail in both subjects. Now that I had only one subject to attend to, everything seemed to be on the right track again. Unit 2

Indubitably the vast majority of books overlap one another. Few indeed are those which give the impression of originality, either in style or in content. Rare are the unique books – less than 50, perhaps, out of the whole storehouse of literature. In one of his recent autobiographical novels, Blaise Cendrars points out that Rémy de Gourmont, because of his knowledge and awareness of this repetitive quality in books, was able to select and read all that is worthwhile in the entire realm of literature. Cendrars himself – who would suspect it? – is a prodigious reader. He reads most authors in their original tongue. Not only that, but when he likes an author he reads every last book the man has written, as well as his letters and all the books that have been written about him. In our day his case is almost unparalleled, I imagine. For, not only has he read widely and deeply, but he has himself written a great many books. All on the side, as it were. For, if he is anything, Cendrars, he is a man of action, an adventurer and explorer, a man who has known how to ―waste‖ his time royally. He is, in a sense, the Julius Caesar of literature. （几处倒装句应灵活处理，以体现原文语气。every last book the man has written 等于 all the books he has written。注意这段话的逻辑关系。If he is anything, he is a man of…一句中的 if 从句起强调作 用，说明他不是一个书生或思想家，而是一个行动家。此处需灵活翻译。）

不容置疑的是，大多数书都互相重复，在文体或内容上让人感到具有独创性的书实在是少之又少。在整个文学库藏中，或许只有极少数作品——不到50本——是独具一格的。在最近出版的一部自传体小说中，布莱斯·桑德拉尔指出，雷米·德·古尔蒙之所以能够选择并通读文学领域中一切值得读的书籍，就是因为他知识渊博，了解书的这种重复性。没有人会怀疑桑德拉尔本人就是一个博览群书的人，他阅读了大部分独具个性的作家的作品。不仅如此，一旦他喜欢上一个作家，就会阅读这个人写的每一本书，包括他的书信以及所有有关他的书籍。我猜想，在当今世上，像他这样的情况是绝无仅有的，他不仅读得广，读得深，而且本人还著述颇丰。这一切似乎都是在业余时间完成的。因为从本质上讲，他是一个十足的行动家，一个四处跋涉的冒险家和探险家，一个懂得如何大量“浪费”时间的人。从某种意义上说，他是文学届的凯撒大帝。

张磊是在毕业工作后才开始意识到读书的乐趣的。反思自己的大学教育时，他感慨不已：他的一些同学都沉浸于从图书馆或书店找到的各种有趣的书籍，而他却只读了一些教科书，其中连一本真正能让他爱不释手、值得一读的书都没有。他可以说是被剥夺了通过书了解作家奇妙世界的特权。

如今，他嗜书如命，废寝忘食，好像要把大学期间没机会读的好书全都读一遍。到目前为止他已经利用业余时间读了几百本小说、传记和游记。他意识到书

不仅能向他展示一个充满希望的前景，帮他消除现实生活中的压力和疲劳，而且能够帮他澄清一些误解，找到生活的真谛。(reflect on; in one sitting; lay hands on; immerse in; worthwhile; privilege; withstand; vista)

It was not until after he had graduated from university and started to work that Zhang Lei became aware of the pleasure of reading. Reflecting on his undergraduate studies, he lamented that he, unlike his classmates who had immersed themselves in various interesting books they were able to lay hands on from the library or bookshop, had only read textbooks, none of which was really

worthwhile, or could be read in one sitting. He was deprived of the privilege of gaining access to the writers’ fantastic worlds through the windows their books have opened, so to speak.

Now he has become an avid and omnivorous reader. It is as if he wants to make up for those marvelous books he hadn’t had a

chance to read in his university days. By now, in his spare time, he has read several hundreds of books, including novels, biographies and travel notes. He realizes that books can not only reveal to him the vista of a hopeful future and help him withstand stresses and strains, they can also help him clear up some misconceptions and discover the true meaning of life. Unit 3

Sometimes the hemline indicator, as it’s called, can even precede and predict a change in the mood of the stock market long before it actually happens. In September 2007, at the New York fashion shows, which were displaying their styles for spring 2008, the trend was for much longer dresses and skirts, many to mid-calf or even down to the ankles. Some people felt this showed that the hemline indicator was no longer reliable, and that designers no longer dictated what people would wear. During the London and New York fashion shows in September 2008, hemlines continued to drop. But sure enough, in the fall of 2008, the stock market indexes fell dramatically when the banking crisis hit the US, Europe and then the rest of the world. Hemlines were no longer following the stock market – they were showing the way and indicating future economic trends.（第一句原文复杂，但译成中文较简单。最后一句译文加词，加上―被动‖可起强调作用，让本句的意思更明确）

有时候，所谓的裙摆指标甚至能事先早早就预告股市的变化。2007年9月，纽约时装展展示了2008年春季流行风格，潮流转向了长衣、长裙，许多裙摆降至小腿中线，甚至到了脚踝。有人觉得，这表明裙摆指标靠不住了，或者服装设计师不再左右着装的趋势了。在2008年9月的伦敦和纽约时装展中，裙摆继续下降。果然，2008年秋天金融危机袭击美欧，波及全球，股指急跌。此时，裙摆不再被动追随股市升跌，而是引领潮流，预示未来的经济趋势了。

一个人的穿着似乎能影响他的行为方式。譬如，在校内要穿校服是中小学生所必须严格遵守的规矩之一。倘若在学生着装整齐划一和行为的统一规范之间不存在一种象征性关联的话，校服便不可能如此盛行。

然而，多年的学校生活让学生在内心里对随处可见的校服产生了抵触情绪，校服毕竟压制了个性的表达。为了弥补这种损失，学生常常会在周末穿流行的休闲装。直到上了大学，他们才会享受真正的着装自由，而服装上的无序与大学培养创造力、鼓励自由表达思想及展露才华密切相关。可惜这样的好景不会太长，经过一段相对短暂的自由之后，他们在毕业工作之后将再次经历着装规范的压力。(hard and fast; there is no doubt that; currency; correlation; backlash; ubiquitous; compensate for; anarchy; obtain; revive)

What you wear seems to dictate your behavior. Take primary school and high school students for example. One of the hard and fast rules they have to observe is that they must wear uniforms at school. There is no doubt that school uniforms would not have achieved their currency without a symbolic correlation between the uniformity of clothes and the students’ conformity to some common code of conduct.

However, after years of school life, there is always a backlash secretly nursed in the students’ mind against the ubiquitous uniform which suppresses the expression of individuality. To compensate for this loss, students usually wear more casual and popular clothes on weekends. It is not until they start university, however, that they can really enjoy the freedom of dress, an anarchy associated with the cultivation of creativity and the encouragement of free expression of ideas and talents. But this situation won’t obtain for long. After a relatively short time of liberty, they may experience again the revived pressure of dress code as soon as they become professional. Unit 4

Today, while most of us marry for romantic reasons, marriage at its core is still a financial union. So much of what we want – or don’t want – out of life boils down to dollars and cents, whether it’s how hard we choose to work, how much we consume or how much we save. For some people, it’s working 80-hour weeks to finance a third home and country club membership; for others, it means cutting back on office hours to spend more time with the family.

―A lot of the debates people have about money are code for how we want to live our lives,‖ said Betsey Stevenson, assistant professor of business and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, who researches the economics of marriage and divorce. ―A lot of the choices we make in how we want to live our lives involve how we spend our money.‖

Making those choices as a team is one of the most important ways to preserve your marital assets, and your union, experts say. But it’s that much easier when you already share similar outlooks on money matters – or when you can, at the very least, find some middle ground.（注意灵活翻译某些名词，如romantic reasons, dollars and cents, code,

union, as a team等。适当调整原文某些句子的语序以使译文更通顺。）

如今，尽管我们大多数人是因相爱而结婚，婚姻从根本上讲仍然是金钱上的结合。不管是选择工作的努力程度，还是决定消费多少或储蓄多少，我们生活中想要得到的——或不想得到的——许多东西归根结底都跟钱有关。对一些人来说，就是一周工作80小时来支付第三套房的房款和乡村俱乐部的会员费；对另一些人来说，意味着缩短上班时间，花更多的时间陪伴家人。

“有关钱的许多争论都事关生活方式的原则问题，而生活方式的许多选择则与如何花钱密切相关。”宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院的商业及公共政策助理教授贝齐·史蒂文森如是说，他研究婚姻和离婚经济学。

专家们说，夫妻一起共同做出这些选择是维护婚姻资产及婚姻关系的最重要的方法之一。当然，如果夫妻双方一开始就在钱的问题上看法相似，或者至少能够在钱的问题上相互妥协，那么事情就好办多了。

谈及目前经济萧条所带来的影响，学生活动的减少就是一个很好的例证。为了活跃校园生活，大学愿意划拨一部分资金来资助学生社团活动，但由于今年学校的预算大幅减少，对社团的资助也相应缩减了不少。显然，学生社团要恢复以前的活力就必须想办法克服自身的经济困难。有人主张招募更多会员，因为会员费的增加可以帮助他们度过难关。

当然，如果有更多的会员交年费，而且缩减一些日常开支，我们还是能省下一些钱来组织活动的。但是，问题的关键在于社团活动的费用与参加活动的人数是成正比的，因此这种方法恐怕不太可行。要推进社团活动，同时又不使经费超支，我们必须群策群力，拿出别的筹钱方法，而不是仅仅依赖学校拨款和会员费。(when it comes to; carve out; pare down; cut back on; bottom line; go into the red; pool; in lieu of)

When it comes to the effects of the current economic downturn, the decrease of student activities is a good case in point. To enliven campus life, the university is always willing to carve out money for activities organized by student clubs and societies, but such sponsorships have been pared down this year because of huge budget cut. Apparently, student organizations need to weather their own financial crisis if they want to recover from their current state of inactiveness. Some suggest enrolling more club members, on the ground that the consequent increase of membership fees may help them get out of the difficulty.

No doubt, if we have more members paying the annual fee, and if we cut back on our daily expenses, we can spare some money for organizing activities. But the bottom line is that the expenses of these activities are in proportion to the number of participants. I’m afraid this won’t be of much help. To boost student activities and to avoid going into the red, we still need to pool our ideas and come up with some other ways of raising money, in lieu of relying only on university grants and membership fees. Unit 5

Women can't even fill out a form without telling stories about

themselves. Most application forms now give four choices for titles. Men

have one to choose —\—so their choice carries no meaning other than to say they are male. But women must choose among three, each of them marked. A woman who checks the box for \

communicates not only whether she has been married but also that she has conservative tastes in forms of address, and probably other conservative values as well. Checking \marriage (whereas \it also marks the woman who checks it on her form as either liberated or rebellious, depending on the attitudes and assumptions of the one making the judgment.

I sometimes try to duck these variously marked choices by giving my title as \—and thereby risk marking myself as either uppity (hence sarcastic responses like \

(hence reactions of congratulatory surprise, like \（ 翻译时注意原文的语气，否则就可能不准确。第二段是一个长句，翻译时应注意按中文习惯断句。）

女人一填表就会暴露自己的个人经历。现在大多数的申请表会给出四种称谓选择，男人只有一种选择，即“先生”，他们的选择除了表明他们是男性之外没有其他含义。但女人要从三种称谓中选一个，其中的任何一种都是带标记的。如果勾选“太太”（Mrs.）或者“小姐”（Miss）的方框，她不仅暴露了自己的婚姻状况，而且表明她在称谓上很保守，而且在价值观方面可能也很保守。如果选“女士”（Ms.），说明她拒绝透露自己的婚姻状况（而男人选“先生”时则没有拒绝透露任何事情，因为他本来就没有被要求透露婚姻信息）。另外，在表格中勾选“女士”的人会被标记为“平权者”或“叛逆者”，这就要看评判她的人持什么样的态度和看法了。

我有时填上“博士”头衔，以避开这几种带标记的称谓选项。这么做又会给自己带来风险，标明自己要么骄傲自大（于是乎招来讥讽的反应，比如“拜托！”），要么是一个读书读过头的人（那么对方的反应就是祝贺式的惊奇，比如“真行！”）。

我们对理想丈夫或理想妻子的假设显示出我们的性别期待以及我们对性别期待的反应。如果大多数年轻姑娘希望她们的未婚夫强悍、能干、可靠，那么小伙子们也就别无选择，只能把自己训练得强悍、能干、可靠，这样才能赢得女孩子的芳心。如果他们的做法与性别期待背道而驰，那么他们很可能会在悲叹自己的光棍生涯中度过下半辈子。根据同样的不成文法则，如果多数年轻男子希望他们的未婚妻温柔体贴、耐心、忠贞，认为这些比什么都重要，那么姑娘即便不是这种人，也会假装自己将来会成为贤妻良母。

深入研究一下这种性别期待，我们就会发现这是受生理和社会因素制约的。无疑，女性为孕育婴儿做好了生理准备，而男人则完全不适合这项工作。男人只有努力挣钱养家，才能让一家人过上好日子。(presumption; option; other than; bemoan; unwritten rule; to be prone to; let on; goes without saying)

Our presumptions about what ideal husbands or wives are like reveal a lot about our gender expectations as well as our responses to them. If most girls want their fiancés to be tough, capable and

reliable, there is no more option left for young men other than to be trained as tough, capable and reliable if they want to win girls’ heart. If they act to the contrary, they will most probably bemoan their bachelor’s status for the rest of their lives. Following the

same unwritten rule, if most boys expect their fiancées to be caring, patient and faithful more than anything else, girls are prone to let on that they will become faithful wives and loving mothers even if they are not the type.

Looking into such gender expectations, we may find that they are based on both physiological and social factors. It goes without saying that women are physically prepared to bear children, whereas men are utterly unfit for the job. Therefore, a family is better-off when its male members devote their time to providing food and other necessities for it. Unit 9

You've heard of the Long March? Well, that is a stroll in the park, compared to what it's like to learn Chinese. So, if 1.3 billion Chinese don't have a problem with their own language, why do dumb foreigners like me find it so hard to learn?

First of all, learning thousands of characters is a chore, and there's nothing for it but to learn them by heart. Even using a dictionary has its own set of problems. For example, how do you look up the meaning of a character? I've spent hours trying to match what I think is the radical with the list in the middle of my Chinese-English dictionary, then

hunting down the character matched with its pinyin (Roman alphabet) equivalent, then turning to the dictionary entry itself, and looking for the character and eliminating all those with inappropriate meanings until I find the right one. It takes a lot of patience, it can be very

disappointing, and my disgraceful strike rate is scarcely 20 characters an hour.

Language experts estimate that you \characters to be literate. (I just love that \desirable to see and revise a character about seven times in different contexts in order to retain it and use it productively.

So you do the math.

你听说过万里长征吗？和学汉语相比，那简直就是在公园里漫步，不值一提。那么，既然13亿中国人在学汉语时没有什么问题，为什么像我这样的笨老外会觉得汉语这么难学呢？

首先，学习几千个汉字就是一件苦差事，除了把它们牢记在心之外，没有别的办法。甚至在查字典的时候也会碰到一堆问题。

比如说，你怎么才能在字典里查到一个字的意思呢？为此我曾经花了很多时间。首先我要确定这个字的偏旁部首，然后在我的汉英词典中的部首表里找到这个部首，然后再按照偏旁部首找到标有拼音（罗马字母）的这个字，然后再查找字典的词条找那个字，把那些意思不对的统统排除，直到找到那个正确

的字为止。这个过程需要很大的耐心，会让人灰心丧气。说起来很丢人，我自己查汉字的速度每小时还不到20个字。

语言专家估计，你“只”需要掌握5,000个汉字就能读写汉语了。（我太喜欢这个“只”字了！）他们还说要记住一个字并且能够灵活运用，最好要在不同的语境下看到并温习这个字大概7次。

要花多少时间，你自己算吧。

近20年来，一直有人认为简体字是激进的汉语改革的产物，不能保留传统文化的精华。在他们看来，那么多中国人读不懂繁体字是一件可耻的事。有些人甚至认为简体字是一个有缺陷的语言系统，用简体字使中国人变笨了，中华文明已经到了紧要关头，必须用繁体字才能拯救我们的民族文化。

但是这些提倡恢复繁体字的人并不能提出足够的理由来支持他们的观点。他们还忘记了重要的一点：繁体字太复杂，在中国古代，这在受过良好教育和没受过教育的人之间造成了巨大的鸿沟，而简体字则让上亿的中国人识了字，并在一定程度上模糊了受过教育的精英和普通大众之间的界限。如果我们重新启用繁体字，可能会侵害到大多数人受教育的权利，破坏中国社会的团结。(retain;

disgraceful; defective; reach a / the stage where; rift; literate; blur; elite; infringe on）

In the last couple of decades, there have always been people who believe that simplified characters are a product of the radical reform of Chinese language, and fail to retain the essence of our traditional culture. From their point of view, it's disgraceful that so many Chinese cannot read traditional characters. Some even argue that simplified characters are a defective system of language and using them makes Chinese people dumb, and that our civilization has reached a critical stage where we have to go back to traditional Chinese characters to save our national culture.

But those in favor of traditional characters are unable to

provide sufficient evidence for their assertions. They also forget an important point: In ancient China the complexity of traditional characters created a rift between the educated and the uneducated, while the simplified characters had helped hundreds of millions of people become literate, and to a certain extent blurred the

boundaries between the educated elite and the ordinary public. If we went back to traditional characters, it would be very likely to infringe on the majority's right to education and damage the unity of Chinese society.

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