爱吃甜的小马
如果您认为我的回答对您有所帮助,就用实际行动来激励我为更多人更好地服务吧!以下是你需要的翻译:Unit 7PASSAGE I 永远不会听到的毕业典礼演说1 我们这些教师对于在你们身上取得的教育成就一点都不感到自豪。我们培养你们去适应的是一个根本不存在的世界——事实上也是不可能存在的。在这里度过的四年时间里,你们一直以为失败是不会留下任何记录的。要是学得不好,一个最省事的办法就是中途退出(不修这门课),在布朗大学你们学会了这一点。但是,从现在开始,在你们要涉足的世界里,失败是要给你留下疤痕的。知难而退也会使你变成另一个人。走出布朗,知难而退的人绝不是英雄。2 你们可以跟我们争辩,说服我们为什么你们的错误不是错误,为什么平庸的作业是优秀的,为什么你们会对普普通通并不出色的课堂报告感到骄傲。回想一下,毕竟你们中的大多数人在你们所学的大部分课程中都得了高分。因此,在这里分数并不能作为区分优秀学生与学业平平的学生的依据。但是,今后,在你们所要去的世界里,你们最好不要为自己的错误辩护,而应该从中吸取教训。假如你们要求得到你们不该得到的表扬,诋毁那些不给你们表扬的人,这是不明智的做法。3 多年来,我们创造了一个完全宽容的世界。这里所要求于你们的仅仅是一点微不足道的努力。当你们没有按约定的时间赴约时,我们就再约时间。当你们没有按期交作业时,我们装作不在乎。4 更糟糕的是,当你们的言谈枯燥无味时,我们却装作你们说的是重要的事情;当你们喋喋不休、不知所云时,我们认真倾听,似乎你们说的东西事关重大;当你们把根本没有花心思写的作业扔到我们桌上时,我们不仅拜读,甚至批改给评语,好像值得为你们这样做似的。当你们犯傻时,我们装作你们聪明过人;当你们老生常谈、毫无想象力、平平淡淡时,我们却装作像在听什么美妙绝伦的新鲜事情一样;当你们要不劳而获时,我们拱手奉上。所有这一切究竟是为了什么?5 对这一切尽管你们可以想入非非,但我们决不是因为想要讨你们的欢心,而是因为我们不想让你们来Ⅱ罗唆。一个简单的办法就是作假:微笑,让你们轻轻松松都得B。6 在这一类的演说中人们往往习惯于引用,在此让我来引用一个你们从来没有听说过的人的话,这个人是拉特格斯大学的卡特•A.丹尼尔教授。他说: “大学毁了你们,让你们阅读那些不值得一读的论文,听那些不值得一听的评 论,甚至要去尊重那些无所事事、孤陋寡闻、极不文明的人。为了教育,我们过 去不得不这样做,但是今后不会有人再这样做了。在过去的50年中,大学使你们 丧失了得到充分培养的机会。由于大学成了一个轻松、自由、包容、体贴、舒 适、充满乐趣、好玩的地方,它没有对你们尽到责任。但愿你们今后好运。”7 这就是为什么,在今天进行毕业典礼之际,我们没有任何可引以自豪的东西。8 哦,对了,还有一点。尽量不要像对待我们那样去对待你们的同事和老板。我的意思是,当他们把你们想要但不是你们应得的东西给了你们时,要善待他们,不要侮辱他们,不要在他们身上重演你们与父母之间的那种糟糕的关系。这一切,我们也都忍受了。正如我刚才所说的,这不是为了讨你们的欢心。有一些年轻人只能在同龄人的眼中找到自我,是一些愚昧无知的人,竟然肤浅到以为教授们关心的不是教育,而是自己的人缘。实际上,很少有教授在乎这类年轻人是否喜欢他们。我们容忍这一切,只是为了摆脱你们。摒弃我们在教学中给你们造成的这些假象,投身到真实的生活中去吧。PASSAGE II大学:一个宽恕一切的世界吗?l 在“永远不会听到的毕业典礼演说”中,雅各布•诺伊斯纳认为,大学经历使得我们认为:“失败不会留下任何记录”(第一段),而成绩是很容易取得的。在诺伊斯纳看来,大学并不是一所很好的着眼于将来生活的预备学校,因为它为一个“根本就不存在的世界”而培养我们(第一段)。2 毫无疑问,诺伊斯纳在发表这么强烈的论点之前,该对大学生活的实际情况做更进一步的审视。他完全无视学生们为了学业成功而经受的一切压力与艰辛。大学生活根本就不是他所描绘的那样。3 大学难道真的像诺伊斯纳所说的那样,没有让我们为现实生活作准备吗?我们所经历的一切难道无助于我们了解现实世界吗?这些问题都是在思考诺伊斯纳所说的话时涌现到我的脑海中的。我认为他完全错了。对我们许多人来说,大学时代正是我们开始独立,自己做重要决定,并对这些决定负责的时代。在大学里,我们必须学会计划时间(还包括计划用钱!),学会容忍(否则,住在一个拥挤的三人间里,我们会无法过下去的)。我们与来自世界各地的人相识,开阔了我们的视野,使我们彼此加深了解。如果这些对现实世界是没用的,那我可不知道什么才是有用的。 •4 诺伊斯纳认为,在大学里我们所接受的教育使我们认为“失败不会留下任何记录”,因为据称我们犯了错误可以轻而易举地不受惩罚。我要告诉他的是:要是你考试不及格,你就不能再考,或者即使老师明知你一辈子都会恨他,他也不会抹去你的成绩。要是你中途放弃了某一门课,下学期你就得多修课。要是你有几门课的成绩很低,就几乎不可能进入一个好的研究生院。要是你好几门课的平均积分点不够高,那你就得不到学位。期中考试、期末考试来临时,没有人能够逃避。当学习紧张时,本来刻苦学习的人也得更加努力学习,因为大学并不像诺伊斯纳所认为的那样,会给失误提供“省事的”解决办法(第一段)。大学不是一个“宽恕一切的世界”,当“最后期限”已过,或者没有按要求的时间完成作业时,老师们也绝不会“装作不在乎”(第三段)。5 对于我来说,生活在一个拥挤的三人间里,期末考试前只有一天时间看书,繁重的阅读任务,论文,还有集中在一个星期里进行的期中考试,这些可不是我心目中的“轻松、自由、包容、体贴、舒适、充满乐趣、好玩”(第六段)。
大猪头.
Those College Finals1 I was sitting around downtown the other night. The wind was blowing; the temperature was frigid; the atmosphere was depressing. I knew that the combination of these things reminded me of something, and soon enough I realized what that something was. Final exams.2 The most miserable moments of a college student's life come during final exam week during the winter. It is a horror that stays with a person for the rest of his life: the desperation, the frustration, the realization that one has to cough up mounds of knowledge that one does not even possess. And that one's future career may depend on how well one does the coughing.3 I checked the calendar. Sure enough, it was just about time for the end of the term at Northwestern University, just up the road from me. I knew that thousands of students were up there at that very moment, bending over textbooks and notes and trying against all odds to memorize arcane facts and figures that they really cared nothing about. I couldn't help myself. I headed for the campus. In the first building where I stopped, a light was burning brightly in a classroom. I walked in; two young men had papers spread all over the room. Class was not in session; the two were alone. "Hi, fellows," I said. They looked up. Their eyes were filled with pain. They appeared to have gone without sleep for three or four days.4 "What's up, guys?" I said.5 "Please leave us alone," one of them said softly.6 "Leave you alone?" I said.7 "Finals," the other one gasped.8 I walked out of the room and began a leisurely stroll around campus. Men and women looked as if they were about to sob as they staggered toward the library. They muttered to themselves. They lifted their eyes in silent prayer. They walked into trees, steadied their bodies, and kept walking. I felt great. I had been one of them, and now I wasn't. There probably is no feeling in this world more exhilarating than being on a college campus during final exams, and knowing that you don't have to take them.9 I spent most of the evening wandering from building to building, watching the students get ready for the next day's finals. It was all so familiar. They gathered around long tables, spiral-bound notebooks open, and they shot questions at one another. There were lengthy periods of silence, and then a series of tentative answers. Cursing was common. Moans broke out. They stomped on the floor, and gazed out the window, and seemed to be ready to weep. Once in a while they glanced over at me. Under normal circumstances they probably would have been curious about my presence, but on this night their eyes were so glazed over that they couldn't even think straight. I just read the sports section and winked at them.10 If I would have been in a charitable mood, I would have told them one of the great secrets of the real world. It is a secret that all of us who have been to college learned only after we got out; a secret that, if college students knew it, would ease their minds and make them calm. The secret is this: There are no final exams in real life.11 It's true. In the real world, you don't have to know anything. There are no cases in which you have to sit down in a crowded room, scrunch your eyes up in concentration and regurgitate obscure and ridiculous facts from memory. In real life, you get to bring the book along. Believe it, college students: Real life is an open-book test. If you've forgotten something, you get to go look it up, or ask someone who's smarter than you. It's easy; much easier than college.12 The only place you'll ever encounter something as bizarre and frightening as a final exam is at college. The college administrators fool the students by making them believe that final exams are only a mild precursor of what is going to happen every day in the big, mean' world. But it's not true. If the real world were as bizarre and rotten as final exams, you'd see everyone on the street walking around in the same demented, pathetic state as college students during exam week. No, it's all downhill after college finals. Real life is a coast, a glide. No one is ever going to ask you to compare and contrast the works of the Elizabethan authors no one is ever going to demand that you trace the battles of the Boer War. If someone did come up to you at work and ask you something like that, he'd soon be locked up in an institution somewhere.13 I could have told the students that. I could have soothed their minds and made things simple for them. I could have asked them to join me for a beer and forget about finals week. Look at the top executives of the Fortune 500 companies, I could have told them. Do you think anyone would ever dare ask them how they did on their college final exams? I could have filled the students' mind with comforting thoughts like that.14 But I didn't. And why should I have? I went through finals many times; finals made me crazy, and now it was time for these students to be made crazy. I watched them in their despair, and I smiled the smile of the truly contented. I stayed on campus until nearly midnight, and then I wandered off. On a path between some classroom buildings, something tumbled across the sidewalk, blowing in the wind. I knelt to pick it up. It was a blue book, the dreadful, chilling symbol of finals week. A blue book that some poor student had carried out of his exam and then discarded on the ground. I stuck it in my pocket and laughed a mechanical laugh. The lights still glowed in the campus building, as they would all night, but I got to go home.1那天晚上,我在市中心附近闲坐。风在呼啸,气温很低,这气氛让人感到压抑。我知道,所有这一切让我想起了什么,很快我就明白是什么了:期末考试。2大学生活最痛苦的时刻莫过于冬天期末考试那一周。这种恐惧刻骨铭心,一生都忘不了——是一种绝望、沮丧,是意识到自己不得不勉强应答一大堆并未掌握的知识,而且一个人的前途如何,就取决于这种勉强的应答。3我查了一下日历。果然,西北大学现在正好是学期快结束的时候——沿着我面前这条路走过去就是西北大学。我知道,就在此刻,就在那里,成千上万的大学生正埋头于课本和笔记,使出浑身解数去背那些晦涩难解的事实和数字,其实这些东西跟他们毫无关系。我按捺不住,径直朝校园走去。在我停下来的第一栋楼里,有一问教室灯火通明。我走了进去。两个年轻人将资料摊得满屋子都是。这会儿没课,只有他们俩。“嘿,伙计,”我说。他们抬起头,满眼的痛苦。他们看上去好像三四天没睡觉似的。4“怎么了,年轻人?”我问。5“请别打扰我们,”其中一个轻声道。6“别打扰你们?”我问。7“期末考试了,”另一人喘着粗气说。8我走出教室,开始在校园里悠闲地溜达。男生女生个个神情沮丧,摇摇晃晃地朝图书馆走去。他们有的自言自语,有的抬头默默祈祷,有的走进树林,站稳身子,然后继续往前走。我感觉好极了。我曾经是他们中的一员,但现在我不是了。也许,在这世上,期末考试时,置身大学校园而知道你不必参加考试,可能是世界上最令人兴奋的事了。9那晚大部分时问,我从一栋教学楼逛到另一栋教学楼,看着学生们为第二天的考试做准备。这一切是那么熟悉。他们围坐在长桌周围,前面摊开用螺旋线穿起来的笔记簿,连珠炮似地互相发问。一次次良久的沉默,接着是试探性地回答。咒骂声不绝于耳,时不时夹杂着哀叹。他们跺脚,凝视窗外,仿佛随时会哭出来。他们偶尔也朝我瞥一眼。在平时,他们可能会对我的出现感到好奇,但是,那天晚上,他们的目光呆滞无神,思维也不清晰了。我翻阅着体育版的消息,朝他们眨眨眼。10如果我当时善心大发,我就会告诉他们现实世界中一个最大的秘密。这是我们所有上过大学的人走出校园后才领悟到的秘密,如果让大学生领悟了这个秘密,他们就会轻松、平静。这就是:现实生活中没有期末考试。11确实如此。在现实生活中,你不必了解任何事情。没有任何情况需要你坐在拥挤不堪的教室里,为集中注意力而眯起眼睛,或者一字不漏地背出晦涩、荒唐的具体事实。在现实生活中,你可以把书带上。同学们,请相信:现实生活是开卷考,如果你忘了什么,你可以去查阅,或者请教比你聪明的人。很容易,比在大学里容易多了。12只有在大学里,你才会遇上像期末考试那样稀奇古怪、令人恐惧的事情。大学管理者们欺骗学生们,让他们相信与庞大的残酷无情的世界里每天所发生的事情相比,期末考试不过是温和的前驱。但这并不是事实。如果现实世界确如期末考试那样荒诞可笑、令人厌烦,你就会看到街上的每位行人都如同在考试那周里的学生一样焦躁不安、可怜之极。现实并非如此,熬过了大学的期末考试后,一切如履平地。现实生活如同靠惯性滑行。没有人会要求你说出伊丽莎白时期作品的异同,或者强令你描述布尔战争各大战役的来龙去脉。如果在你工作时真有人过来问你这类问题,那么他就会马上被关进某所精神病院。13我本来可以将这些告诉学生们,我本来可以安慰他们,让事情变得简单些。我本来可以请他们和我一起喝杯啤酒,忘了这期末考试周。我本来可以告诉他们:看看(《财富》前500强企业的总经理。你想会有人胆敢问他们的期末考试成绩吗?我本来可以灌输给他们这类令人宽慰的想法。14但是我没有。我为什么要告诉他们呢?我经历了许多次期末考试,期末考试让我几乎发疯,现在该轮到他们发疯了。我看着绝望中的他们,像一个真正心满意足的人那样笑了。我在校园里几乎呆到午夜,然后才悠闲地离开。在几栋教学楼之间的小径上,我看见有什么东西被风吹动,在人行道上翻滚,我跪下将它拾了起来。这是一本蓝皮答题册,是期末考试周恐怖的、令人心惊胆战的标志。这一定是某个可怜的学生带出考场后,丢在地上的。我把它插入口袋,机械地笑了笑。校园教学楼里的灯光依然闪烁着,而且会整夜这样,但是我得回家了。