第一单元
In the fall of our final year, our mood changed. The relaxed atmosphere of the preceding summer semester, the impromptu ball games, the boating on the Charles River, the late-night parties had disappeared, and we all started to get our heads down, studying late, and attendance at classes rose steeply again. We all sensed we were coming to the end of our stay here, that we would never get a chance like this again, and we became determined not to waste it. Most important of course were the final exams in April and May in the following year. No one wanted the humiliation of finishing last in class, so the peer group pressure to work hard was strong. Libraries which were once empty after five o'clock in the afternoon were standing room only until the early hours of the morning, and guys wore the bags under their eyes and their pale, sleepy faces with pride, like medals proving their diligence.
大学最后一年的秋天，我们的心情变了。 刚刚过去的夏季学期的轻松氛围、即兴球赛、查尔斯河上的泛舟以及深夜晚会都不见了踪影，我们开始埋头学习，苦读到深夜，课堂出勤率再次急剧上升。 我们都觉得在校时间不多了，以后再也不会有这样的学习机会了，所以都下定决心不再虚度光阴。 当然，下一年四五月份的期末考试最为重要。 我们谁都不想考全班倒数第一，那也太丢人了，因此同学们之间的竞争压力特别大。 以前每天下午五点以后，图书馆就空无一人了，现在却要等到天快亮时才会有空座，小伙子们熬夜熬出了眼袋，他们脸色苍白，睡眼惺忪，却很自豪，好像这些都是表彰他们勤奋好学的奖章。
2 But there was something else. At the back of everyone's mind was what we would do next, when we left university in a few months' time. It wasn't always
the high flyers with the top grades who knew what they were going to do. Quite often it was the quieter, less impressive students who had the next stages of their life mapped out. One had landed a job in his brother's advertising firm in Madison Avenue, another had got a script under provisional acceptance in Hollywood. The most ambitious student among us was going to work as a party activist at a local level. We all saw him ending up in the Senate or in Congress one day. But most people were either looking to continue their studies, or to make a living with a white-collar job in a bank, local government, or anything which would pay them enough to have a comfortable time in their early twenties, and then settle down with a family, a mortgage and some hope of promotion.
还有别的事情让大家心情焦虑。 每个人都在心里盘算着过几个月毕业离校之后该找份什么样的工作。 并不总是那些心怀抱负、成绩拔尖的高材生才清楚自己将来要做什么，常常是那些平日里默默无闻的同学早早为自己下几个阶段的人生做好了规划。 有位同学在位于麦迪逊大道他哥哥的广告公司得到了一份工作，另一位同学写的电影脚本已经与好莱坞草签了合约。 我们当中野心最大的一位同学准备到地方上当一个政党活动家，我们都预料他最终会当上参议员或国会议员。 但大多数同学不是准备继续深造，就是想在银行、地方政府或其他单位当个白领，希望在20出头的时候能挣到足够多的薪水，过上舒适的生活，然后就娶妻生子，贷款买房，期望升职，过安稳日子。
第六单元
It's amazing, the kind of thing you think about when there should be no time
to think. I thought about my wife and my kids, but only fleetingly and not in any kind of life-flashing-before-my-eyes sort of way. I thought about the job, how close I was to making deputy. I thought about the bagels I had left on the kitchen counter back at the firehouse. I thought how we firemen were always saying to each other, \"I'll see you at the big one.\" Or, \"We'll all meet at the big one.\" I never knew how it started, or when I'd picked up on it myself, but it was part of our shorthand. Meaning, no matter how big this fire is, there'll be another one bigger, somewhere down the road. We'll make it through this one, and we'll make it through that one, too. I always said it, at big fires, and I always heard it back, and here I was, thinking I would never say or hear these words again, because there would never be another fire as big as this. This was the big one we had all talked about, all our lives, and if I hadn't known this before—just before these chilling moments—this sick, black noise now confirmed it.
真是奇怪，这种时候你应该是没有时间思考的，可是你满脑子都在想着那些事。 我想到了老婆和孩子，只是在脑海里一闪而过，并不是把自己的人生都回顾了一番那样。 我想到了工作，我离当上副队长只有一步之遥了。 我想到了放在消防队厨柜上的面包圈。 我想起我们消防员平常总互相打趣说：“在大火中见吧。” 或者是“我们肯定会在大火中碰面的。” 我不知道这种说法是怎么来的，或者我自己是从什么时候开始说起这种话来的，但这就是我们的暗语。 意思是不管这场火有多大，以后在别处还会有比这更大的。 我们能安然无恙地度过这场火，也会安然无恙地度过下一场火。 遇到一场大火时，我总是这么说，也总听别人这么说，可现在，我呆在这儿，想着自己再也不会说这样的话了，也不会再听到别人这么说了，因为再也不会有比这更大的火了。 这会是我们大家一辈子都在说的那场大火，如果以前——就在这一个个令人胆战心惊的瞬间之前——我没有认识到这一点的话，现在这浑厚的、不祥的响声印证了这一点。
5 I fumbled for some fix on the situation, thinking maybe if I understood what was happening I could steel myself against it. All of these thoughts were landing in my brain in a kind of flashpoint, one on top of the other and all at once, but there they were. And each thought landed fully formed, as if there might be time to act on each, when in truth there was no time at all.
我琢磨着有什么办法能改变我们的处境。我想如果搞明白了现在发生了什么事，也许就能应对了。 所有这些思绪在我脑子里一个连着一个地闪现，想完一个又是另一个，一时间都堆积在我的脑子里。 每个想法都是那么完整，好像我有足够的时间一个个地付诸行动似的，而事实上我根本没有时间。
第七单元
5 Some things are only marginally bad, for example the train arriving five minutes late. Some are extremely bad, such as failing an exam or being sacked. So badness is much better represented as being on a spectrum rather than something which is there or not there.
有些事情只是稍稍有点不好，比如火车要晚点五分钟。 有些事情则是糟糕透顶，比如考试不及格，或是被炒鱿鱼了。 所以我们更应该把事情的好坏看成是一个程度的问题，而不是非好即坏。
6 A particular event may only be a misfortune because of the circumstances around it. The train arriving five minutes late is a neutral event if you are in no hurry and reading an interesting newspaper article while you wait. It is bad if you
are late for an important meeting.
某件事情有可能因为相关的一些因素而变成了不幸的事。 火车要晚点五分钟，如果你边读着报纸上一篇有趣的文章边等车，并不赶时间，那么这就是一件无关紧要的事。 但是如果你要去参加一个重要会议，而且马上要迟到了，那火车晚点就变成坏事了。
7 When it comes to bad things happening in threes, what may be most important of all is the duration and memorability of the first event. Take a burst pipe while you are away on holiday, for example. It may take less than an hour to flood the house, but this one bad event can remain alive and kicking for many months, with the cleaning up operation and the debate with your insurers acting as constant reminders of the original event.
谈到坏事成三的问题，其中最关键的因素是第一件倒霉事持续的时间有多长以及给人的印象深不深。 比如说，你外出度假期间家里的水管爆裂了。 也许不到一个小时你的家就变成了一片汪洋，而在接下来的几个月中你的脑子会不停地想起这桩倒霉事，因为你要把房子清理干净，还要和保险公司就赔偿问题讨价还价，这些都会让你不断地想起这件事。
第八单元
Later the real celebrations begin. A Soviet woman's days are usually taken up with dressing the children and taking them to school, arriving at the office on time, nipping out of work at lunchtime to buy something for dinner, and again in the afternoon—if they can sneak away without being reprimanded—to try and find
cough medicine for the little one. They'll leave work on the dot of six so that they can pop into several more shops to check if there is anything good on offer, and into the market where they see some cheap eggs. They'll pay the electricity bill at the post office and collect the laundry, since they're passing; then they'll dump their shopping at home and pick up a bucket to fill up with those cheap eggs from the market. By the time their husbands have arrived home, they will have given the flat a vacuum, dusted, and put two lots of dirty clothes on to soak (always advisable if you're washing everything by hand). On International Women's Day, therefore, they go back to bed after breakfast and sleep like squirrels.
然后，真正的庆祝开始了。 苏联妇女的一天通常是这么度过的：帮孩子们穿衣起床，送他们上学，准时到办公室上班，午餐时间偷偷溜出去买晚餐要吃的东西，下午的时候再溜出去——如果能偷偷地，不会受到上司责骂的话——设法给最小的那个孩子买一些咳嗽药。 她们会在六点整准时下班，这样她们就可以再去逛几家商店，看看有什么打折的东西，然后去市场，在那儿买到一些便宜的鸡蛋。 她们还会顺便去邮局交电费，然后正好路过干洗店，取回洗好的衣服，回到家里她们就把买回来的东西随处一放，拿个篮子把从市场上买来的便宜鸡蛋装起来。 等她们的丈夫回来的时候，她们已经用吸尘器把家里吸了一遍，擦了一遍灰尘，把两堆脏衣服用洗衣粉泡了起来（如果都是手洗的话，最好能先泡一下）。 而在国际妇女节这一天，她们吃完早饭后会回去接着睡，睡得像松鼠那么沉。
4 Their husbands, meanwhile, meet up with friends and express their feelings for their wives in the simplest and most sincere way they know: by drinking themselves into a stupor with toasts \"to our beloved ladies—where would we be without them?\" Late at night they return home and tell their wives they love them. All in all, it's not a bad day for the women of the former Soviet Union.
在她们酣睡的同时，她们的丈夫们遇上了几个朋友，大家用最简单而又最诚挚的方式来表达对自己妻子的情感：在“为我们亲爱的女士们干杯，没有她们我们的日子就一团糟”的敬酒声中喝得酩酊大醉。深夜他们回到家里，对自己的妻子说爱她。 总之，对前苏联的广大妇女们来说，这一天过得不错。
第九单元
3 As communities grew, it became necessary to identify residents more specifically with a name which referred to a dominant feature such as a physical attribute, an occupation, or a place of origin. This led to names like John the Butcher, William the Short, Henry from Sutton, Mary of the Wood, and Roger, son of Richard.
随着社会人口的增长，用一个更加具体的姓氏来辨别居民的身份变得越来越有必要，这些名字通常能体现一个人的主要特征，比如身体特征、职业或是祖籍。 于是就出现了像屠夫约翰、矮子威廉、来自萨顿的亨利、树林里的玛丽、理查德的儿子罗杰这样的名字。
4 After the Norman Conquest of England, the new rulers (from Normandy in northern France) of the realm obliged people to adopt fixed surnames for administrative reasons, as a form of registration for the census and for taxation. Gradually, most Saxon and Celtic names vanished (Oslaf, Oswald, Oswin—Os meaning God), and we see names like Carpenter, Thatcher, Cook and Baker, Hill, Forest. Any man who left his home and moved to another part of the country would be called by the place where he came from, eg John of York, and other immigrants from Ireland, Highland Scotland and Wales (when it became part of
Great Britain in 1536) adopted the English system of surnames.
诺曼人征服英格兰之后，新的统治阶级（来自法国北部的诺曼底）出于管理上的需要，强制人们使用固定的姓氏，以备人口普查以及征税时登记之用。 渐渐地，大多数撒克逊和凯尔特姓氏消失了（奥斯拉夫、奥斯瓦尔德、 奥斯温——奥斯是“神”的意思），取而代之的是像卡朋特（木匠）、撒切尔（盖茅草屋顶的人）、库克（厨师）、贝克（面包师）、 希尔（山）、 福利斯特（森林）这类姓氏。 对于离乡背井，搬到另外一个地方居住的人，人们会以他的出生地来称呼他，比如约克郡的约翰，而其他从爱尔兰、苏格兰高地和威尔士来的移民（1536年威尔士成为英国的一部分）也采用了英格兰的姓氏体系。
第十单元
9 Similarly, traditional myths show people how to behave appropriately in their societies. Gods act in such a way as to set the people a good example. Human beings behave nobly and courageously. Sometimes a human hero may be based on a real person, but may become a god because of his noble actions.
同样，传统神话也告诉人们在各自的社会中应该如何恰当地为人处事。 在神话中，神之所以如此行事，是要为人类树立一个好榜样。 神话中人的行为高尚且勇敢。 有时候神话中的人类英雄在历史上可能确有其人，可能正因为他们的高尚行为而变成了神。
10 In recent years, we have seen the rise of the urban myths which are not circulated orally, but by email, in the form of messages, usually about a virus which can wipe out your hard drive. It's usually recognizable by the warnings of dire consequences if you don't pass on the message to others, and by the use of
CAPITAL LETTERS and exclamation marks!!! There are also web rumours which are based on the merest minor fact or speculation, and which passed around the Web, gathering further fictitious evidence to support them.
近年来， 越来越多的都市神话不是通过口口相传，而是通过电子邮件的形式广为流传的，这些邮件通常是告诉大家要小心某一种病毒，它会删除你硬盘里的文件。 通常只要看到那种“如果不把这封信转发给别人，就会有灾难性的后果”的警告，而且用了很多大写字母和惊叹号，你就知道这是一个都市神话。 还有很多网络传言，它们对一些微不足道的小细节添油加醋，或者是捕风捉影，在流传过程中加入了越来越多的虚假证据，以证明它们的真实性。
11 But is this a myth? No, not in the traditional sense. In fact, a more accurate word for it would be a hoax, something which appears true but turns out to be false and deliberately misleading. True myths are always benign in their intentions.
近年来， 越来越多的都市神话不是通过口口相传，而是通过电子邮件的形式广为流传的，这些邮件通常是告诉大家要小心某一种病毒，它会删除你硬盘里的文件。 通常只要看到那种“如果不把这封信转发给别人，就会有灾难性的后果”的警告，而且用了很多大写字母和惊叹号，你就知道这是一个都市神话。 还有很多网络传言，它们对一些微不足道的小细节添油加醋，或者是捕风捉影，在流传过程中加入了越来越多的虚假证据，以证明它们的真实性。
但这是神话吗？不是，不是传统意义上的神话。 事实上，有一个更为准确的词“骗局”，就是一些看上去是真的，而最终发现是假的，并且是用来故意误导人的东西。 真正
的神话其动机总是善意的。
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