(单词翻译:单击)
中英文本
Because face it: humans can often be terrible, making rash, selfish decisions at best and murdering one another at worst. Through most of 2020, to be locked inside and looking out was to feel peculiarly powerless. And even as we grew to feel more remote from the world as individuals, it also seemed that individual nations had begun to curl in on themselves, motivated by misguided notions of their own power and self-sufficiency. What does an "America first" agenda mean in a country that fails its own citizens when it comes to protecting them from a deadly virus? In the worst months of 2020, we were a nation that could barely take care of itself, let alone help anyone else through a crisis. Worse yet, we were on our way to becoming a nation that didn't want to help anyone else, even when it was in our own interest to do so. And democracy—not a badge you can earn, Scout-style, but a practice and a discipline that needs careful tending—came to seem wobbly and fragile even in places that have long professed to believe in it. As if it were a previously fashionable fad we'd all become tired of.
因为,面对现实吧:人类往往很可怕,最好的情况下他们会做出草率、自私的决定,最坏的情况下他们会互相残杀
The pages on this strange calendar just kept turning, with the menace of the pandemic bleeding through all of it. Public figures who meant a great deal to us— Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Lewis, Kobe Bryant, Chadwick Boseman—were wrested away. And in May, the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis ignited righteous anger not just across the country but around the world. The ruthlessness of that act revived attention to similar outrages earlier in the year, particularly the killings of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. It also reminded us how often, throughout history, Black people had suffered similar injustices, with no recourse, no means of changing the status quo. And then in August, even with the whole world watching, police in Kenosha, Wis., shot and partially paralyzed another Black man, Jacob Blake, as three of his children watched from the backseat of his car.
这台奇怪的日历一页一页地翻着,到处都是病毒的威胁
The toxic traditions of injustice and inequality in America are no secret. A sequence of tragic events finally caused more white people to wake up. Whether this heightened awareness of the racism that has plagued our country since its founding translates into actual change remains to be seen. That's just one of many question marks waiting for us in 2021 and beyond. After a year of so many changes, will we change radically too?
不平等和不公正是美国的一种有毒的传统,这已经不是什么秘密了
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重点讲解
1.self-sufficiency 自给自足
On the other hand, Europe's self-sufficiency in energy is sharply declining.
与此同时,欧洲的能源自给率却在急剧下降
2.a sequence of 一系列的
A string is just a sequence of characters.
一个字符串由一系列字母构成
3.status quo 现状
No party shall change the status quo of the land before the disputes over ownership and use right are settled.
在土地所有权和使用权争议解决前,任何一方不得改变土地利用现状
4.menace 威胁
Inflation remains the quiet menace that investors too often underestimate.
通货膨胀仍然是一个投资者常常低估的潜在威胁