新概念美音版第四冊 Lesson 5 Youth 青年

 

Lesson 5   Youth 青年

First listen and then answer the following question:

聽錄音，然後回答以下問題。

How does the writer like to treat young people?

    People are always talking about 'the problem of youth'. If there is one -- which I take leave to doubt -- then it is older people who create it, not the young themselves. Let us get down to fundamentals and agree that the young are after all human beings -- people just like their elders. There is only one difference between an old man and a young one: the young man has a glorious future before him and the old one has a splendid future behind him: and maybe that is where the rub is.

  When I was a teenager, I felt that I was just young and uncertain -- that I was a new boy in a huge school, and I would have been very pleased to be regarded as something so interesting as a problem. For one thing, being a problem gives you a certain identity, and that is one of the things the young are busily engaged in seeking.

I find young people exciting. They have an air of freedom, and they not a dreary commitment to mean ambitions or love of comfort. They are not anxious social climbers, and they have no devotion to material things. All this seems to me to link them with life, and the origins of things. It's as if they were, in some sense, cosmic beings in violent and lovely contrast with us suburban creatures. All that is in my mind when I meet a young person. He may be conceited, ill-mannered, presumptuous or fatuous, but I do not turn for protection to dreary cliches about respect of elders -- as if mere age were a reason for respect. I accept that we are equals, and I will argue with him, as an equal, if I think he is wrong.

            FIELDEN HUGHES from Out of the Air, The Listener

New words and expression 生詞和短語

leave         n.  允許              fundamentals   n.  基本原則

glorious       adj. 光輝燦爛的       splendid       adj. 燦爛的

rub           n.  難題             identity       n.  身份

dreary        adj. 沉鬱的           commitment    n.  信奉

mean         adj. 吝嗇，小氣       social climber   追求更高社會地位的，向上爬的人

devotion       n.  熱愛             cosmic        adj. 宇宙的

suburban       adj. 見識不廣的，偏狹的  conceited   adj. 自高自大的

presumptuous    adj. 自以為是的，放肆的  fatuous    adj. 愚蠢的

cliché           n.  陳詞濫調

參考譯文

  人們總是在談論“青年問題”。如果這個問題存在的話 -- 請允許我對此持懷疑態度 -- 那麽，這個問題是由老年人而不是青年人造成的。讓我們來認真研究一些基本事實：承認青年人和他們的長輩一樣也是人。老年人和青年人隻有一個區別：青年人有光輝燦爛的前景，而老年人的輝煌已成為過去。 問題的症結恐怕就在這裏。

  我十幾歲時，總感到自己年輕，有些事拿不準 -- 我是一所大學裏的一名新生，如果我當時真的被看成像一個問題那樣有趣，我會感到很得意的。因為這至少使我得到了某種承認，這正是年輕人所熱衷追求的。

  我覺得年輕人令人振奮，無拘無束。他們既不追逐卑鄙的名利，也不貪圖生活的舒適。他們不熱衷於向上爬，也不一味追求物質享受。在我看來，所有這些使他們與生命和萬物之源聯係在了一起。從某種意義上講，他們似乎是宇宙人，同我們這些凡夫俗子形成了強烈而鮮明的對照。每逢我遇到年輕人，腦子裏就想到這些年輕人也許狂妄自負，舉止無理，傲慢放肆，愚昧無知，但我不會用應當尊重長者這一套陳詞濫調來為我自己辨護，似乎年長就是受人尊敬的理由。我認為我和他們是平等的。如果我認為他們錯了，我就以平等的身份和他們爭個明白。