身临其境练一练

Touch,《触摸未来》

A:Do you know anything about The Invisible Prince?

甲:你知道隐形王子吗？

B:The Invisible Prince was a character in a bedtime story that my father used to tell my brother Walt and me.The Invisible Prince did good deeds in secret. Otherwise, they wouldn't count.

乙:隐形王子是我爸曾给我和弟弟沃尔特讲过的一个床头故事里的人物。隐形王子秘 密地做了很多好事，否则，也不会这么有意义了。

A:Tell me about your brother.

甲:跟我说说你的弟弟。

B:He was genius with numbers. He was just a shy little kid, but he grew up to be an accountant with Morton-Starling, and eventually developed a financial product that made that company billions. I,I didn't understand it.I'm not a numbers guy.

乙:他对数字很有天分，他只是个害羞的小孩，但是他想成为和莫顿斯塔林一样的会计师，甚至想设计出为企业赚取几十亿的金融产品。我，我不太明白，我对数字不在行。

A:Do you have any records from this time? Press clippings, anything?

甲:你有这段时间的记录吗？剪报或是其他东西？

B:I threw all that stuff out. You can get it all online. Just search “Morton-Starling”，”“fraud”.

乙:我把这些东西都扔了，你可以在网上查到。只要搜索“Morton-Stariing”或是“欺诈”就出来了。

A:Can we do that here? Now?

甲:我们能在这儿查吗？现在。

B:I need the computer, Matt.

乙:我需要电脑，马特。

A:Dad,no. I'm about to play a guy in California.

甲:爸爸，不。我正和一个在加州的家伙玩儿呢。

B:It's a game，Matt. Let's log out now.

乙:这是个游戏，马特，退出吧。

社交美语

I often shoot the bull on the Internet.

我常在网上闲聊。

That's a good way to kill time.

这是个消磨时间的好方式。

重点讲解:

I often chat on the Internet.

I often shoot the bull on the Internet.

闲聊对应的英语表达是chat，然而老美更喜欢用shoot the bull来表达纯粹的 “闲聊”，也就是说谈的不是什么正经事儿。其中bull是bullshit的缩写，而 bullshit有“胡说，大话”的意思。