考研论坛 2014-01-07
汉译英出自钱钟书散文集《写在人生边上》中的《窗》一文。试题：窗子许里面人看出去，同时也许外面人看进来，所以在热闹地方住的人要用窗帘子，替他们私生活做个保障。晚上访人，只要看窗里有无灯光，就约略可以清到主人在不在家，不必打开了门再问，好比不等人开口，从眼睛里看出他的心思。关窗的作用等于闭眼。天地间有许多景象是要闭了眼才看得见的，譬如梦。假使窗外的人声物态太嘈杂了，关了窗好让灵魂自由地去探胜，安静地默想。有时，关窗和闭眼也有连带关系，你觉得窗外的世界不过尔尔，并不能给与你什么满足，你想回到故乡，你要看见跟你分离的亲友，你只有睡觉，闭了眼向梦里寻去，于是你起来先关了窗。因为只是春天，还留着残冷，窗子也不能整天整夜不关的。
英译汉是2001年专八翻译原题，只不过少了最后一段。
Possession forits own sake or in competition with the rest of the neighborhood would havebeen Thoreau’s idea of the low levels. The active discipline of heighteningone’s perception of what is enduring in nature would have been his idea of thehigh. What he saved from the low was time and effort he could spend on thehigh. Thoreau certainly disapproved of starvation, but he would put intofeeding himself only as much effort as would keep him functioning for moreimportant efforts.
Effort is thegist of it. There is no happiness except as we take on life-engagingdifficulties. Short of the impossible, as Yeats put it, the satisfaction we getfrom a lifetime depends on how high we choose our difficulties. Robert Frostwas thinking in something like the same terms when he spoke of “The pleasure oftaking pains”. The mortal flaw in the advertised version of happiness is in thefact that it purports to be effortless.
We demanddifficulty even in our games. We demand it because without difficulty there canbe no game. A game is a way of making something hard for the fun of it. Therules of the game are an arbitrary imposition of difficulty. When someone ruinsthe fun, he always does so by refusing to play by the rules. It is easier towin at chess if you are free, at your pleasure, to change the wholly arbitraryrules, but the fun is in winning within the rules. No difficulty, no fun.（这一段是专八原题）。
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