考博考研专八翻译短文.docx

A mountain 12,000 feet high would be a horrible monster here, as wrong as a plain 400 miles long, a river as broad as the Mississippi. In America the whole scale is too big, except for aviators. There is always too much of everything. There you find yourself in a region that is all mountains, then in another region that is merely part of one immense plain. You can spend a long, hard day in the Rockies simply traveling up or down one valley. You can wander across prairie country that has the desolating immensity of the ocean. Everything is too big; there is too much of it. 在这里，一座12000英尺高的大山会成为一个庞然大物，而连绵400英里的平原和密西西比河一样宽阔的河流也同样的不协调。在美国，一切景物的规模都太大了，只有飞行员才不会有这种感觉。所有的东西都太多。你会发现一个地区的周围全是高山，而另一个地方不过是辽阔平原的一隅而已。一整天艰难的跋涉仅能让你走完落基山脉中的一个山谷；若是穿越大平原，你会感觉这平原像是一片荒凉寂寞的海洋。美国的什么都太大，什么都太多。 And French friendships are divided into categories. A man may play chess with a friend for thirty years without knowing his political opinion, or he may talk politics with him for as long a time without knowing about his personal life. Different friends fill different niches in each person’s life. These friendships are not made part of family life. A friend is not expected to spend evenings being nice to children or courteous to a deaf grandmother. These duties, also serious and required, are primarily for relatives. Men who are friends may meet in a café. Intellectual friends may meet in larger groups for evenings of conversation. Working people may meet at the little bistro where they drink and talk, far from the family. Marriage does not affect such friendships; wives do not have to be taken into account. 法国人把友谊分为不同类型。一个人会跟他的棋友下30年棋却不知道他的政治观点，或跟一个朋友谈论30年的政治却丝毫不了解他的个人生活。不同的朋友在每个人的生活中有不同的作用。他们不介入家庭生活。朋友不需要花整晚整晚的时间对你的孩子表示关心或耳聋的祖母表示尊敬。这种责任的确是严肃而且必须的，但主要是针对亲戚而言的。男人们称兄道弟的朋友可以在咖啡馆里小聚；学术上的朋友可以多人聚在一起交谈上几晚；上班族可以在一个离家很远的小饭馆里喝酒、聊天，以上这些友谊不受婚姻的影响，不必考虑妻子的意见。 Another characteristic of our landscape is its exquisite moderation. It looks like the result of one of those happy compromises that make our social and poli