Unit9HowIFoundMyVoice课文翻译综合教程四.docVIP

Unit 9 How I Found My Voice James Earl Jones 1 Today I am known for my voice as much as for my acting. It has been my good fortune to receive jobs such as the speaking role of Darth Vader in George Lucas’s Star Wars trilogy and the voice-over announcer for CNN cable television. I also narrated Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait on a compact disc I recorded with the Seattle Symphony. Perhaps my greatest honor came when I was asked to read the New Testament on tape. 2 But it took a long time to believe such good things could happen to me. When I was a youngster I stuttered so badly I was completely unable to speak in public. 3 Since I was eight I’d had trouble speaking. It was so bad that whenever I stood up in class to read, the other kids snickered and laughed. I always sat down, my face burning with shame. 4 I’m not sure what caused my stuttering. Perhaps it was an emotional problem. I was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi, and when I was about five, I moved to live with my grandparents on their farm near Dublin in northern Michigan. It was traumatic moving from the warm, easy ways of catfish country to the harsh climate of the north, where people seemed so different. 5 Fortunately, my granddaddy was a gentleman, a farmer who taught me to love the land. He was short and he had a prodigious amount of energy. He even built a church to please grandmother, a fervent worshiper of the Lord. All sorts of people were invited to our little church; white, black and American Indian came together in a nondenominational fellowship. Granddad’s Irish heritage came out in his love for language; during the week he used “everyday talk”, but on Sunday he spoke only the finest English. 6 As much as I admired his fluency, I couldn’t come close to it. I finally quit Sunday school and church, not wanting to be humiliated any more. All through my grade school years, the only way the teacher could assess my progress was for me to write down ever