创新大学英语4课文翻译
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创新大学英语4课文原文1
Annie Dillard tells of her visit to the Napo River in the heart of the Ecuadorian jungle, one of nature's most unspoiled places. She describes the beauty of the forest and her admiration for the people who live there.
In the Jungle
Annie Dillard
Like any out-of-the-way place, the Napo River in the Ecuadorian jungle seems real enough when you are there, even central. Out of the way of what? I was sitting on a stump at the edge of a bankside palm-thatch village, in the middle of the night, on the headwaters of the Amazon. Out of the way of human life, tenderness, or the glance of heaven?
A nightjar in deep-leaved shadow called three long notes, and hushed. The men with me talked softly: three North Americans, four Ecuadorians who were showing us the jungle. We were holding cool drinks and idly watching a hand-sized tarantula seize moths that came to the lone bulb on the generator shed beside us.
It was February, the middle of summer. Green fireflies spattered lights across the air and illumined for seconds, now here, now there, the pale trunks of enormous, solitary trees. Beneath us the brown Napo River was rising, in all silence; it coiled up the sandy bank and tangled its foam in vines that trailed from the forest and roots that looped the shore.
Each breath of night smelled sweet. Each star in Orion seemed to tremble and stir with my breath. All at once, in the thatch house across the clearing behind us came the sound of a recorder, playing a tune that twined over the village clearing, muted our talk on the bankside, and wandered over the river, dissolving downstream.
This will do, I thought. This will do, for a weekend, or a season, or a home.
Later that night I loosed my hair from its braids and combed it smooth -- not for myself, but so the village girls could play with it in the morning.
We had disembarked at the village that afternoon, and I had slumped on some shaded steps, wishing I knew some Spanish or some Quechua so I could speak with the ring of little girls who were alternately staring at me and smiling at their toes. I spoke anyway, and fooled with my hair, which they were obviously dying to get their hands on, and laughed, and soon they were all braiding my hair, all five of them, all fifty fingers, all my hair, even my bangs. And then they took it apart and did it again, laughing, and teaching me Spanish nouns, and meeting my eyes and each other's with open delight, while their small brothers in blue jeans climbed down from the trees and began kicking a volleyball around with one of the North American men.
Now, as I combed my hair in the little tent, another of the men, a free-lance writer from Manhattan, was talking quietly. He was telling us the tale of his life, describing his work in Hollywood, his apartment in Manhattan, his house in Paris.... "It makes me wonder," he said, "what I'm doing in a tent under a tree in the village of Pompeya, on the Napo River, in the jungle of Ecuador." After a pause he added, "It makes me wonder why I'm going back."
The point of going somewhere like the Napo River in Ecuador is not to see the most spectacular anything. It is simply to see what is there. We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place. We might as well get a feel for the fringes and hollows in which life is lived, for the Amazon basin, which covers half a continent, and for the life that -- there, like anywhere else -- is always and necessarily lived in detail: on the tributaries, in the riverside villages, sucking this particular white-fleshed guava in this particular pattern of shade.
What is there is interesting. The Napo River itself is wide and brown, opaque, and smeared with floating foam and logs and branches from the jungle. Parrots in flocks dart in and out of the light. Under the water in the river, unseen, are anacondas -- which are reputed to take a few village toddlers every year -- and water boas, crocodiles, and sweet-meated fish.
Low water bares gray strips of sandbar on which the natives build tiny palm-thatch shelters for overnight fishing trips. You see these extraordinarily clean people (who bathe twice a day in the river, and whose straight black hair is always freshly washed) paddling down the river in dugout canoes, hugging the banks.
Some of the Indians of this region, earlier in the century, used to sleep naked in hammocks. The nights are cold. Gordon MacCreach, an American explorer in these Amazon tributaries, reported that he was startled to hear the Indians get up at three in the morning. He was even more startled, night after night, to hear them walk down to the river slowly, half asleep, and bathe in the water. Only later did he learn what they were doing: they were getting warm. The cold woke them; they warmed their skins in the river, which was always ninety degrees; then they returned to their hammocks and slept through the rest of the night.
When you are inside the jungle, away from the river, the trees vault out of sight. Butterflies, bright blue, striped, or clear-winged, thread the jungle paths at eye level. And at your feet is a swath of ants bearing triangular bits of green leaf. The ants with their leaves look like a wide fleet of sailing dinghies -- but they don't quit. In either direction they wobble over the jungle floor as far as the eye can see.
Long lakes shine in the jungle. We traveled one of these in dugout canoes, canoes paddled with machete-hewn oars, or poled in the shallows with bamboo. Our part-Indian guide had cleared the path to the lake the day before; when we walked the path we saw where he had impaled the lopped head of a boa, open-mouthed, on a pointed stick by the canoes, for decoration.
This lake was wonderful. Herons plodded the shores, kingfishers and cuckoos clattered from sunlight to shade, great turkeylike birds fussed in dead branches, and hawks hung overhead. There was all the time in the world. A turtle slid into the water. The boy in the bow of my canoe slapped stones at birds with a simple sling, a rubber thong and leather pad. He aimed brilliantly at moving targets, always, and always missed; the birds were out of range. He stuffed his sling back in his shirt. I looked around.
The lake and river waters are as opaque as rainforest leaves; they are veils, blinds, painted screens. You see things only by their effects. I saw the shoreline water heave above a thrashing paichi, an enormous black fish of these waters; one had been caught the previous week weighing 430 pounds. Piranha fish live in the lakes, and electric eels. I dangled my fingers in the water, figuring it would be worth it.
We would eat chicken that night in the village, together with rice, onions and heaps of fruit. The sun would ring down, pulling darkness after it like a curtain. Twilight is short, and the unseen birds of twilight wistful, catching the heart. The two nuns in their dazzling white habits -- the beautiful-boned young nun and the warm-faced old -- would glide to the open cane-and-thatch schoolroom in darkness, and start the children singing. The children would sing in piping Spanish, high-pitched and pure; they would sing "Nearer My God to Thee" in Quechua, very fast. As the children became excited by their own singing, they left their log benches and swarmed around the nuns, hopping, smiling at us, everyone smiling, the nuns' faces bursting in their cowls, and the clear-voiced children still singing, and the palm-leafed roofing stirred.
The Napo River: it is not out of the way. It is in the way, catching sunlight the way a cup catches poured water; it is a bowl of sweet air, a basin of greenness, and of grace, and, it would seem, of peace.
创新大学英语4课文翻译
安妮·迪拉德讲述了自己游览厄瓜多尔丛林深处的纳波河的经历。那是大自然遭受人为破坏最少的地区之一。她描述了森林之美以及对生活在那里的土著人的歆慕之情。
在丛林中
安妮·迪拉德
如同所有僻远之地,当你身临其境时,厄瓜多尔丛林深处的纳波河就显得那么真实,甚至有中心要地的感觉。那么僻远之地远离什么呢?夜半时分,在亚马逊河的源头,我坐在一个树墩上,身后是傍水的棕榈叶作屋顶的小村落。远离人类活动,远离脉脉温情。或者说远离天堂的扫视?
一只欧夜鹰在密密的树叶间发出三声长啼,旋即静默无声。和我一起的那些男人轻声交谈着:3个北美人,4个为我们在丛林中带路的厄瓜多尔人。我们手里拿着清凉的饮料,悠闲地看着一只有手那么大小的狼蛛捕捉纷纷扑向我们身旁发电机棚屋上一个灯泡的飞虫。
时值2月,正当仲夏。绿莹莹的萤火虫在空中闪出光亮,一会儿这里照亮一下,一会儿那里照亮一下幽木巨树的暗淡的树干。在我们下方,褐黄色的纳波河水正在涨潮。万籁俱寂:惟见河水沿着沙岸蜿蜒流过,水沫裹挟在蔓生在森林里的藤蔓间以及盘绕岸边的树根上。
夜晚吸入的每口气都沁人心脾。猎户星座里的每一颗星星似乎都因了我的呼吸而颤动。突然,我们身后空地旁的茅屋里,传出了录音机的声音,一首乐曲在村子空地之上缭绕,减弱了我们在河畔谈话的声音,然后又传至河面,随流飘去。
人生遇此情景足矣,我暗想。在此度过周末足以,在此小住数月足以,在此安家足以。
夜半时分,我散开辫子,把头发梳理得平平整整--不是为我自己,而是为了村里那些姑娘早上可以玩我的头发。
我们是那天下午在这个小村上岸的,我垂着头坐在树阴下的踏级上,真希望自己会说几句西班牙语或盖丘亚语,好跟围成一圈的小女孩说说话,她们一会儿看看我,一会儿又低头看着自己的脚趾窃笑。我还是开口了,笑着抚弄自己的头发,她们显然也都非常想碰碰我的头发。没过一会儿,她们就给我编辫子了,她们5个人,50个手指,我是一头辫子,连留海也编成了辫子。她们拆了编,编了拆,一边笑一边教我西班牙语单词,望望我,又相互对望,个个喜形于色,她们那些穿着牛仔服的小弟弟们则纷纷下得树来,跟一个北美人踢排球玩耍。
此刻,我在低矮的帐篷里梳理着头发,另一个北美人,一位来自曼哈顿的自由作家,正在轻声说话。他在向我们讲述他人生的故事,讲述他在好莱坞的工作、在曼哈顿的公寓、在巴黎的家…… “我不由纳闷,”他说,“在厄瓜多尔的丛林里,在纳波河上,在蓬帕雅小村,在树下的帐篷里,自己在干什么。”他顿了顿,接着说:“我不由寻思,自己为什么要回去。”
去厄瓜多尔纳波河这种地方不是为了观赏什么世界奇观,而只是去看一看那里有些什么。人生在世,惟有一次,我们不妨去感受一下那个地方。我们不妨去感受一下有生命生活其间的远方水乡山谷,去感受覆盖了半个大陆的亚马逊河流域,去感受那样一种生活――在那里,一如在别的地方――那种必定总是琐碎的生活:在各条支流上,在临水的村落里,在有着独特形状的阴凉处吮吸着有白色浆果的独特的番石榴。
那里的一切都趣味盎然。纳波河河面宽阔,河水混浊,呈褐黄色,浮沫以及丛林里来的木段和树枝翻浮其上。成群的鹦鹉忽而飞进树荫里,忽而飞入阳光里。水下潜伏着南美蟒蛇――据说每年都要吞吃几名村童――还有水蟒、鳄鱼,以及肉质鲜美的鱼类。
水浅的地方露出灰茫茫的狭长沙洲,土著人在沙洲上为过夜的渔夫搭建了小小的棕榈茅舍。你能见到这些清洁得出奇的人(他们在河里一天沐浴两次,满头直挺的黑发更是刚刚洗过)在独木舟里紧贴着河岸荡桨。
在本世纪早期,这一地区的一些印第安人常常赤身睡在吊床里。夜晚颇凉。勘测亚马逊河支流的美国探险家戈登·麦克里奇曾记述说,他凌晨点就听见印第安人起身,深感愕然。更令他惊奇的是,夜复一夜,他都听见他们半睡半醒地缓步走向河边,趟到河里洗起澡来。后来他才弄明白他们是在干什么:他们在取暖。凉意把他们冻醒,他们便到河里暖暖身子,因为河水保持90(华氏)度不变;随后他们再回到吊床上,睡到天亮。
当你离开大河,深入丛林,满眼树木高耸入云。一眼望去,成群的蝴蝶穿过丛林小径,有宝蓝的,有条纹的,有纯色翅膀的。在脚下,则有一长列蚂蚁背负着三角形的绿叶碎片。负叶爬行的蚂蚁就像一支规模庞大、扬帆行驶的船队――只是它们不会停歇。无论什么方向,都能看到它们在丛林的地面上摇摇摆摆地爬行。
丛林中狭长的湖泊上波光闪闪。我们荡舟其上,划着用大砍刀砍削而成的木桨,在浅水处则以竹当篙。有着一半印第安血统的向导前一天已经辟出了通往湖泊的小路;我们在小路上行走时,看见他砍下作为装饰的蟒蛇头,张开大口,钉在独木舟边尖头枝条上。
湖泊奇妙无比。苍鹭在岸边缓缓地迈着步子,翠鸟和杜鹃欢叫着从阳光里飞入树荫,火鸡模样的大鸟在枯枝间忙碌,鹰在头上盘旋。我们毋庸为时间担忧,可以从容地欣赏周围的一切。一只乌龟滑入水中。我乘坐的独木舟船头坐着个男孩,他用简陋的弹弓――橡皮弹架和皮索――发射石弹击打飞鸟。他摆出漂亮的架势瞄准飞鸟,却一次又一次地偏离目标;鸟总是飞出他的射程。他把弹弓塞回进衬衣内。我移开目光。
湖水与河水都如热带雨林中的树叶那样乳浊;那水是面纱,是窗帘,是画屏。你只能从表象看事物。我看到近岸的河水在起伏,上面翻腾着一条巨滑舌鱼,那是这一带水域出产的一种奇大的黑鱼;上一个星期捕获一条,重达430磅。湖里有水虎鱼,还有电鳗。我用手指在水里划着,心想即使被鱼咬一口也值得。
那天夜晚在小村里,我们将吃鸡肉,还有米饭、洋葱和一大堆水果。夕阳会西下,像落幕似地把夜暮降下。黄昏短暂,暮色中,看不见的鸟儿在伤感似地啼鸣,声声动人。两位修女,身穿耀眼的白色道服――年轻的修女身材姣好,年长的那位慈眉善目――会在夜色中悄然来到开着门的用藤条茅草搭建的教室里,让孩子们唱歌。孩子们会用西班牙语放声歌唱,歌声又高又纯;他们会用盖丘亚语唱“上帝离你更近”,唱得非常快。孩子们唱着唱着兴奋起来,纷纷从木凳上站起,簇拥在两位修女身旁,又是跳,又是冲着我们笑。人人都在欢笑,穿戴头巾的修女满脸欢笑,声音清脆的孩子们还在歌唱,棕榈叶铺的屋顶也在颤动。
纳波河:那不是荒僻的地方。那是个有人烟的地域,像杯子盛载往里倒的水那样,纳波河接住照射下来的阳光;那是个充满清新空气的低洼地区,一片翠绿的盆地,环境优美的盆地,看来还是个平静的盆地。
创新大学英语4课文原文2
Come on, admit it -- you like living at breakneckspeed.
Life in the Fast Lane
James Gleick
We are in a rush. We are making haste. Acompression of time characterizes many of ourlives. As time-use researchers look around, they seea rushing and scurrying everywhere. Sometimesculture resembles "one big stomped anthill," sayJohn P. Robinson and Geoffrey Godbey in their bookTime for Life.
Instantaneity rules. Pollsters use electronic devices during political speeches to measureopinions on the wing, before they have been fully formed; fast-food restaurants add expresslanes. Even reading to children is under pressure. The volume One-Minute Bedtime Storiesconsists of traditional stories that can be read by a busy parent in only one minute.
There are places and objects that signify impatience. The door-close button in elevators, sooften a placebo used to distract riders to whom ten seconds seems an eternity. Speed-dialbuttons on telephones. Remote controls, which have caused an acceleration in the pace offilms and television commercials.
Time is a gentle deity, said Sophocles. Perhaps it was, for him. These days it cracks the whip.() We humans have chosen speed, and we thrive on it -- more than we generally admit. Ourability to work and play fast gives us power. It thrills us.
And if haste is the accelerator pedal, multitasking is overdrive. These days it is possible todrive, eat, listen to a book and talk on the phone -- all at once, if you dare. David Feldman, inNew York, schedules his tooth flossing to coincide with his regular browsing of onlinediscussion groups. He has learned to hit PageDown with his pinkie. Mike Holderness, in London, watches TV with captioning so that he can keep the sound off and listen to the unrelated musicof his choice. An entire class of technologies is dedicated to the furtherance of multitasking. Car phones. Bookstands on exercise machines. Waterproof shower radios.
Not so long ago, for most people, listening to the radio was a single task activity. Now it is rarefor a person to listen to the radio and do nothing else.
Even TV has lost its command of our foreground. In so many households the TV just stays on, like a noisy light bulb, while the life of the family passes back and forth in its shimmering glow.
A sense of well-being comes with this saturation of parallel pathways in the brain. We choosemania over boredom every time. "Humans have never, ever opted for slower," points out thehistorian Stephen Kern.
We catch the fever -- and the fever feels good. We live in the buzz. "It has gotten to the pointwhere my days, crammed with all sorts of activities, feel like an Olympic endurance event: theeverydayathon," confesses Jay Walljasper in the Utne Reader.
All humanity has not succumbed equally, of course. If you make haste, you probably make itin the technology-driven world. Sociologists have also found that increasing wealth andincreasing education bring a sense of tension about time. We believe that we possess too littleof it. No wonder Ivan Seidenberg, an American telecommunications executive, jokes about themythical DayDoubler program his customers seem to want: "Using sophisticated time-mapping and compression techniques, DayDoubler gives you access to hours each and everyday. At the higher numbers DayDoubler becomes less stable, and you run the risk of atemporal crash in which everything from the beginning of time to the present could crashdown around you, sucking you into a suspended time zone."
Our culture views time as a thing to hoard and protect. Timesaving is the subject to scores ofbooks with titles like Streamlining Your Life; Take Your Time; More Hours in My Day. Marketersanticipate our desire to save time, and respond with fast ovens, quick playback, quickfreezing and fast credit.
We have all these ways to "save time," but what does that concept really mean? Doestimesaving mean getting more done? If so, does talking on a cellular phone at the beach savetime or waste it? If you can choose between a 30-minute train ride, during which you can read, and a 20-minute drive, during which you cannot, does the drive save ten minutes? Does itmake sense to say that driving saves ten minutes from your travel budget while removing tenminutes from your reading budget?
These questions have no answer. They depend on a concept that is ill formed: the very idea oftimesaving. Some of us say we want to save time when really we just want to do more -- andfaster. It might be simplest to recognise that there is time and we make choices about how tospend it, how to spare it, how to use it and how to fill it.
Time is not a thing we have lost. It is not a thing we ever had. It is what we live in.
创新大学英语4课文翻译
好了,承认吧――你就喜欢忙得团团转。
人在快车道
詹姆斯·格利克
我们东奔西忙。我们急急匆匆。时间紧迫是我们许多人的生活特点。时间利用研究者环顾四周,只见人人忙乱,处处步履匆匆。有时文明就像是“一个被踩瘪的大蚁冢”,约翰·P·鲁宾逊和杰弗里·戈德比在《生活时间》一书中写道。
即时行为主宰着一切。人们发表政治演说时,听众尚未形成看法,民意调查人员就利用电子装置进行当场测定;快餐店增设了快速通道。甚至给孩子念故事也得赶时间。《一分钟临睡前的故事》一书收的都是让忙碌的家长仅用一分钟就能讲完的老故事。
许多场所和物件都表明人们有急躁情绪。电梯里的关门按钮常常起心理安慰作用,好让那些连秒钟都觉得漫长难捱的乘梯人分散注意力。还有电话机的快拨键。还有可使影片和电视广告快速播放的遥控器。
时间之神温雅从容,索福克勒斯如是说。他那时或许如此。当今社会时间扬鞭催人。我们人类选择了速度,凭借着速度而繁荣兴旺――其程度超过人们所普遍承认的那样。我们快节奏工作、娱乐的本领赋予我们力量。我们为此兴奋不已。
如果匆忙是加速器的踏板,一心多用就是超速档。如今,完全可能做到边开车边吃东西边听录音书籍边打电话--要是你敢这么做。纽约的大卫·费尔德曼把用洁牙线清洁牙缝安排在日常浏览网上讨论之时。他已经学会用小手指敲击下行键。伦敦的迈克·霍尔德内斯看带字幕的'电视节目,这样他就能把音量调低到听不见,好欣赏自己喜欢的与电视节目无关的音乐。有一整套的技术专门用来促进一心多用。如汽车电话。如健身器材上的搁书架。如防水的淋浴间收音机。
不久以前,对大多数人而言,听收音机是一项单一的活动。如今极少有人在听收音机时,别的什么也不干。
就连我们生活中占据重要地位的电视机也失去了控制力。在许多家庭里,电视机就一直开着,如同一个发出噪声的灯泡,人们在其微弱的闪光里日复一日地过着他们的家庭生活。
脑海中充斥的这种种并行不悖的情况带来的是一种幸福感。每次我们都宁可大干一番而不愿厌倦懈怠。“人类从未,也永远不会选择放慢速度,”历史学家斯蒂芬·克恩说。
我们染上了狂热――感觉竟然还不错。我们生活在忙乱中。“程度已经如此严重,我的生活排满了各种各样的活动,感觉就像是在进行奥运会耐力项目比赛:每日马拉松赛,”杰伊·沃加斯泼在《读者》上坦言。
当然,并非人人同染此病。如果你奔忙不停,很可能你是奔忙在由技术所驱动的社会中。社会学家也发现,富裕程度和教育程度的提高带来时间的紧迫感。我们认为自己时间太少。难怪美国一位电信公司经理伊凡·塞登伯格拿子虚乌有、用户们却似乎颇为心仪的"一天变两天"程序开玩笑:“‘一天变两天’运用先进的时间安排、压缩技术,使你天天拥有48小时。时间比较多了,该程序就不很稳定,你会面临时间崩溃的危险,从有时间起到当前所有的一切都会倾倒在你身旁,把你吞入一个暂时不起作用的时区。”
我们的文化把时间看做可囤积、保护之物。省时是众多书籍的主题,如《提高生活效率》、《悠着点》、《我的一天不止24小时》。商人预见到我们一心省时的欲望,于是推出快速烤炉、快速回放装置、快速解冻以及快速贷款作为应对。
我们有那么多“节省时间”的方法,可省时这个概念真正意味着什么呢?省时是否意味着做得更多?如果是这样,那么在海滩用手机通话是节省还是浪费时间?如果你有两个选择:乘坐30分钟火车,其间你可以看书;开车20分钟,其间你不能看书。那开车是否算是省下10分钟?
这些问题并没有答案。它们取决于一个很不明确的概念,即省时这一观念本身。有些人说想节约时间,其实是想多做些事,而且要做得更快。也许,最简单的是要认识到,时间就在这儿,我们可以选择如何花时间,如何节约时间,如何利用时间,如何填补时间。
时间不是我们遗失的东西。时间不是我们曾拥有的东西。我们生活在时间之中。
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