发布时间 : 星期日 文章A Few Earthy Words翻译更新完毕开始阅读
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A Few Earthy Words
In a speech delivered in 1952, Rachel Carson warned, “Mankind has gone very far into an artificial world of his own creation. He has sought to insulate himself, in his cities of steel and concrete, from the realities of earth and water and the growing seed. Intoxicated with a sense of his own power, he seems to be going farther and farther into more experiments for the destruction of himself and his world.”
Carson voiced these worries before the triumph of television or shopping malls, before the advent of air-conditioning, personal computers, video games, the Internet, cell phones, cloning, genetic engineering, and a slew of other inventions that have made the artificial world ever more seductive. Unlike Earth, the artificial world is made for us. It feeds our bellies and minds with tasty pabulum; it shelters us from discomfort and sickness; it proclaims our ingenuity; it flatters our pride. Snug inside bubbles fashioned from concrete and steel, from silicon and plastic and words, we can pretend we are running the planet.
By contrast, the natural world was not made for our comfort or convenience. It precedes us by some billions of years, and it will outlast us; it mocks our pride, because it surpasses our understanding and control; it can be dangerous and demanding; it will eventually kill us and reclaim our bodies. We should not be surprised that increasing numbers of people choose to live entirely indoors, leaving buildings only to ride in airplanes or cars, viewing the great outside, if they view it at all, through sealed windows, but more often gazing into screens, listening to human chatter, cut off from “the realities of earth and water and the growing seed.”
乡土词新解
1952年蕾切尔·卡逊在一次演讲中警告人们说，“人类在自己创造的人造世界中走得太远了。他设法把自己孤立在钢筋和水泥的城市里，远离由泥土、水和生长的种子组成的现实世界。他沉迷在自己的力量中，似乎越来越热衷于进行更多毁灭自己和这个世界的实验。”
过去电视、商场还没这么普及，人们还没开始使用空调、个人电脑、电子游戏、因特网、手机、克隆、基因工程以及其他一大堆的发明，而正是这些东西使得这个人造世界更加具有诱惑力，那时卡逊便表达了她的忧虑。和地球不同的是，人造世界是为我们而造的。它用美味佳肴供我们充饥，以精神食粮益我们的心智。它使我们免于不适与疾病；它宣告我们的聪颖；它满足了我们的虚荣。我们蜷缩在由钢筋和水泥，金属硅、塑料和文字组成的气泡中，可以假装驾驭了整个星球。
与之相对照，自然世界不是为了我们的舒适与方便而生。它比我们要早数十亿年，寿命比我们的长得多；它嘲笑我们的虚荣，因为它超越了我们的理解与控制；它危险而严酷；将最终会置我们于死地且回收我们的遗骸。我们不应该觉得奇怪，现在越来越多的人喜欢蜗居在家，仅仅是在乘飞机或坐汽车时暂时离开他们的窝，透过密封的窗户，看到外面——如果是在看的话——他们常常是紧盯荧屏，听人闲聊，他们和“由泥土、水和生长的种子构成的现实”是隔绝的。
A little girl
Sitting on a grassy grave, beneath one of the windows of the church, was a little girl. With her head bent back she was gazing up at the sky and singing, while one of her little hands was pointing to a tiny cloud that hovered like a golden feather above her head. The sun, which had
suddenly become very bright, shining on her glossy hair, gave it a metallic luster, and it was difficult to say what was the color, dark or black.
So completely absorbed was she in watching the cloud to which her strange song or incantation seemed addressed, that she did not observe me when I rose and went towards her. Over her head, high up in the blue, a lark that was soaring towards the same gauzy cloud was singing, as if in rivalry. As I slowly approached the child, I could see by her forehead, which in the sunlight seemed like a globe of pearl, and especially by her complexion, that she was uncommonly lovely. Her eyes, which at one moment seemed blue-gray, at another violet, were shaded by long black lashes, curving backward in a most peculiar way, and these matched in hue her eyebrows, and the tresses that were tossed about her tender throat and were quivering in the sunlight. All this I did not take in at once, for at first I could see nothing but those quivering, glittering, changeful eyes turned up into my face. Gradually the other features, especially the sensitive full-lipped mouth, grew upon me as I stood silently gazing. Here seemed to me a more perfect beauty that had ever come to me in my loveliest dreams of beauty. Yet it was not her beauty so much as the look she gave me that fascinated me, melted me.
参考答案：
小女孩
在教堂的一扇窗下长满绿草的坟堆上，坐着个小女孩。她仰着头，望着天空，唱着歌。她的小手指点着一朵漂浮在她头顶的金色羽毛般的小彩云。突然间，阳光显得格外灿烂，照在她光亮的头发上，给它涂上了一层金属似的光彩，很难说出它究竟是什么颜色，是褐色还是黑色。她是那么全神贯注的望着彩云。她那奇妙的歌声或可说是喃喃自语似乎是对着那彩云而发的，因而她没有注意到我站起身来朝她走去。 在她上空高高的蓝天里，一只展翅飞向那朵轻盈透明的彩云的云雀也在歌唱，似乎在与她赛歌。我慢步向小女孩走去，她那在阳光下如同珍珠一样圆润的前额，特别是她那肤色，使我感到她真是异常可爱。她那黑黑的长睫毛非常别致地朝后弯曲着，掩映着一双一会儿像是蓝灰色，一会儿又像是紫罗兰色的眼睛。她的长睫毛同她的眉毛和头发色泽调和，披拂在她娇嫩的脖子上的发缕，在阳光里轻轻飘动。
我并没有马上领略到这一切，因为我一开始只注意了那双闪闪发光、富于表情、盯着我看的眼睛。我伫立在一边默默地注视着她，才渐渐地看清了她容貌的其他部分，特别是那张灵敏而又丰满的小嘴。呈现在我眼前的这一美得形象似乎比我在最美好的梦境中所见过的更美。然而，与其说是她的美丽，不如说是她朝着我看的那种眼神，更使我着迷，更使我陶醉。
The Scientific Method
Many believe that science is merely a collection of facts, that it develops by the gathering of these acts and slowly approaches the truth about nature. According to this view, the so-called scientific method is the basis for scientific development. The scientific method is said to have three steps. The first step is that careful observation —— often involved looking for relationships among different kinds of events. If a specific relationship seems to be true in a number of cases, without any exceptions, then it may be hypothesized that the relationship holds in general.
The second step of the scientific method may be the formulation of such a general hypothesis. Or it may be an attempt to explain phenomena by theorizing the existence of a deeper reality. Examples of the latter are the atomic theory of matter and the wave theory of light. No one had ever actually seen an atom with the eye nor seen light travel as a wave; that is why we call them
theories or hypotheses rather than facts. The value of such theories is that they can be used to explain many unobservable phenomena. A good theory then, results in a more unified view of nature. When a theory brings together many phenomena under a single concept, the hypothesized relationship is called a natural law.
The third step, the testing of the theory, may involve further experimental testing of hypothesized relationship. Or it may be experimental verification of new phenomena predicted by a new theory. For example, Einstein’s theory of relativity predicted that mass could be changed into energy; and energy into mass (that is the meaning for the famous equation E=mc2). That this change might be possible had not previously been thought of, but a few years after Einstein’s prediction it was experimentally verified.
科学方法
许多人认为，科学只是事实的积累，科学通过收集事实获得发展，并慢慢地接近自然真相。按照这种观点，所谓的科学方法就是科学发展的基础。人们认为科学方法有三个步骤。 第一是仔细观察——常常包括寻找各种事件之间的关系。如果某一特定关系在很多情况下均正确而无例外，则可以假定，该关系可以成立。 科学方法第二步可能是将这种一般的假设公式化，也可能是试图通过对更深刻的现实之存在进行推理来解释各种现象。深刻的现实例如物质的原子理论以及光的波动理论。没有人真正目睹过原子，也没有人见过光以波浪形式传播。因此，我们称之为理论或假设而不是事实。理论的价值在于它们可用来解释许多观察不到的现象。那么，一个好的理论可以使人们对自然的看法更加统一。当理论把许多现象归纳为一个概念时，这种假设得出的关系称为自然定律。
第三步，检验理论，包括进一步做实验检验所假设的关系，或者用实验证明一个新理论所预言的新现象。例如，爱因斯坦的相对论预言，质量可转化成能量，能量可转化成质量。(这就是著名的方程式E=mc2的含义)。以前从未想到过这种变化是可能的，在爱因斯坦提出这个预言之后，这一点就为实验所证明了。