大学英语综合教程5课文翻译.pdf

One Writers Beginnings 1 I learned from the age of two or three that any room in our house, at any time of day, was there to read in, or to be read to. My mother read to me. Shed read to me in the big bedroom in the mornings, when we were in her rocker together, which ticked in rhythm as we rocked, as though we had a cricket accompanying the story. Shed read to me in the dining room on winter afternoons in front of the coal fire, with our cuckoo clock ending the story with Cuckoo, and at night when Id got in my own bed. I must have given her no peace. Sometimes she read to me in the kitchen while she sat churning, and the churning sobbed along with any story. It was my ambition to have her read to me while I churned; once she granted my wish, but she read off my story before I brought her butter. She was an expressive reader. When she was reading Puss in Boots, for instance, it was impossible not to know that she distrusted all cats. 作家起步时 我从两三岁起就知道，家中随便在哪个房间里，白天无论在什么时间，都可以念书或 听人念书。母亲念书给我听。上午她都在那间大卧室里给我念，两人一起坐在她那把摇椅 里，我们摇晃时，椅子发出有节奏的滴答声，好像有只唧唧鸣叫的蟋蟀在伴着读故事。冬 日午后，她常在餐厅里烧着煤炭的炉火前给我念，布谷鸟自鸣钟发出 “咕咕 ”声时，故事便 结束了；晚上我在自己床上睡下后她也给我念。想必我是不让她有一刻清静。有时她在厨 房里一边坐着搅制黄油一边给我念，故事情节就随着搅制黄油发出的抽抽搭搭的声响不断 展开。我的奢望是她念我来搅拌；有一次她满足了我的愿望，可是我要听的故事她念完了， 她要的黄油我却还没弄好。她念起故事来富有表情。比如，她念《穿靴子的猫》时，你就 没法不相信她对猫一概怀疑。 2 It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them — with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them. 当我得知故事书原来是人写出来的，书本原来不是什么大自然的奇迹，不像草那样自 生自长时，真是又震惊又失望。不过，姑且不论书本从何而来，我不记得自己有什么