20100821翻译作业.docVIP

The lives of most men are determined by their environment. They accept the circumstances amid which fate has thrown them not only with resignation but even with good will. They are like streetcars running contentedly on their rails and they despise the sprightly flivver that dashes in and out of the traffic and speeds so jauntily across the open country. I respect them; they are good citizens, good husbands, and good fathers, and of course somebody has to pay the taxes; but I do not find them exciting. I am fascinated by the men, few enough in all conscience, who take life in their own hands and seem to mould it to their own liking. 大多数人的生活状况是由他们所处的环境所决定的。他们接受在这些环境之中。那里，命运不但听任顺从，甚至心甘情愿把他们抛弃。他们犹如在自己轨道上心满意足奔驰的汽车，鄙视那些富有活力的便宜车在往来的车辆中突进突出，扬扬得意的穿过开阔的城市。我尊重他们；他们是好市民，好丈夫，好父亲，诚然，有人不得不缴税；但是我没有发现他们十分兴奋。有种人十分吸引我，他们对于生活运筹帷幄，把生活塑造成自己喜欢的模样。的确，这样的人虽然极少，却也足够了。 It may be that we have no such thing as free will, but at all events we have the illusion of it. At a cross-road it does seem to us that we might go either to the right or the left and, the choice once made, it is difficult to see that the whole course of the world’s history obliged us to take the turning we did. 可能我们没有像自由意愿那样的东西，但不管怎样，我们拥有自由意愿的幻觉。在一个十字路口，对我们来说，看起来我们只能向右转或是向左转，一旦做出了选择，很难发现是整个世界历史道路强迫我们做出了转向。 I never met a more interesting man than Mayhew. He was a lawyer in Detroit. He was an able and a successful one. By the time he was thirty-five he had a large and a lucrative practice, he had amassed a competence, and he stood on the threshold of a distinguished career, he had an acute brain, an attractive personality, and uprightness. There was no reason why he should not become, financially, a power in the land. 我从没有遇见过比梅修更有趣的人了。他在底特律是一位有能力的成功律师。在35岁之时，他有了一份规模大，赚钱多的工作，同时已积累了能力，并站在了一个非凡事业的开端。他拥有敏锐的头脑，以及吸引人的个性和正直的品行。他没有理由不能在经济领域成为一股强劲势力。 One evening he was sitting in his club with a group of friends and they were perhaps a little worse (or the better) for liquor. One of them had recently come from Italy and he told them of