2010年12月大学英语四级考试翻译提高训练(31)
日期:2010-11-29 11:08

(单词翻译:单击)

1. He enjoys the liberties hard won over centuries by the alliance of philosophic genius and political heroism, consecrated by the blood of martyrs (烈士) ; he is provided with comport and leisure by the most productive economy ever known to mankind; science has penetrated the secrets of nature in order to provide him with the marvellous, life like electronic sound and image reproductions he is enjoying.
  2. Each highbrow did and does congratulate himself on being unique in his unlikeness to other men; and conversely each lowbrow now congratulate himself on being in some mystical way unique in his likeness—on being, so to say, outstandingly average and extraordinarily ordinary.
  3. As for the lowbrows’ claim to be specially “human”, I for one have never been able to understand why it should be “inhuman” to use the faculties that distinguish us from pigs and geese and “human” to use those which we share with the lower animals.
  4. There is no disputing, says the proverb, about taste—though, in fact, human beings spend at least half their leisure doing nothing else—and if highbrowism and lowbrowism were exclusively ( as it is certain that they are in great part) matters of individual taste, there would be no more to say about them than what I have said in the preceding lines.
  5. Thus I desire a great deal less pleasure from jazz and thrillers than from the music, let us say, of Beethoven(贝多芬) or the novels, for example, of Dostoievsky; and the sex appeal of the girls on the covers of magazines seems to me less thrilling than the more complicated appeal to a great variety of feelings made by a Rubens, an EI Greco, a Constable, a Seurat.
  
  1、他享受着数世纪来哲学天才和政治英雄们联合取得的自由,这是被烈士的鲜血神圣化了的自由;着人类有史以来最发达的经济提供的舒适与休闲;科学解开了自然的奥秘,使他能享受神奇逼真的音响和影像效果。
  2、每个有学问的人庆幸着自己与其他人的不一般;反过来没有学问的人则正庆幸着自己说不清的与别人的相似性——对于存在,这么说吧,杰出的大众化和非凡的普通。
  3、对于没学问者自称特殊的“人类”,有一点我一直搞不明白,为什么是“非人类”去使用那些设施来将我们和猪啊、鹅啊划分,而“人类”去使用那些我们与低等动物共享的东西。
  4、谚语中说对于口味来说,是没有争议的——尽管在事实上,人类一—至少在一半的休闲时间里什么也不做——并且如果阳春白雪和下里巴人对于个人口味的问题是排外(这一点在很大程度上是肯定的),那么对于他们来说,除了我在前面讲的,就没什么说的了。
  5、因此我从爵士乐和刺激性事物中找到的乐趣需比音乐里的少得多,比如说,贝多芬的或者是Dostoievsky的小说;杂志封面上的性感女郎比Rubens,Greco,Constablet Seurat所创造的精细复杂的情感对于我来说要逊色得多。

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重点单词
  • claimn. 要求,要求权;主张,断言,声称;要求物 vt. 要
  • appealn. 恳求,上诉,吸引力 n. 诉诸裁决 v. 求助,诉
  • exclusivelyadv. 排他地(独占地,专门地,仅仅,只)
  • geniusn. 天才,天赋
  • highbrown. 高知识分子,自以为文化修养很高的人 adj. 文化
  • complicatedadj. 复杂的,难懂的 动词complicate的过去
  • uniqueadj. 独一无二的,独特的,稀罕的
  • understandvt. 理解,懂,听说,获悉,将 ... 理解为,认为
  • congratulatevt. 祝贺
  • certainadj. 确定的,必然的,特定的 pron. 某几个,某