2021年1月23日发(作者：ultrasonic)
Unit 1
If you ask me, real life is not all it’s cracked up to be. Twelve years at
school and three years at university, teachers banging on about
opportunities in the big wide world beyond our sheltered life as
students, and what do I find?
Try as I might to stay cheerful, all I ever get is hassle, sometimes
with people (especially boys, god, when will they grow up?), but mostly
with money. It’s just so expensive out here! Everyone wants a slice off
you. The Inland Revenue wants to deduct income tax, the bank
manager wants repayments on my student loan, the landlord wants the
rent, gas, water, electricity and my mobile bills keep coming in, and all
that’s before I
have had anything to eat. And then some bright spark
calls me out of the blue, asking if I’m in
terested in buying a pension. At
this rate, I won’t even last till the end of the year, let alone till I’m 60.

依我看，现实生活与 人们想象的不一样。我们上了
12
年的中、小学，又上
了
3
年的大学 ，这期间老师们一直在没完没了地谈论在安宁的学生生活之外那个
广阔天地里的各种机会，可我遇到的又 是什么呢？

无论我怎么想保持心情愉快，麻烦事总是接踵而来：有时是跟人争吵（尤
其是跟男孩，天哪！他们什么时候才能长大？），但通常是为钱发愁。这个地
方什么东西都很贵！人人都 想从我身上拿点钱去：国税局要收个人所得税，银
行经理要我偿清学生贷款，房东催我交房租、燃气费、 水费、电费，手机账单
也不断地寄来。所有这些还没算上吃饭的钱。更可气的是，不知从哪里冒出一个自作聪明的家伙冷不丁地给我打电话，问我要不要买养老金。照这样下去，
我连今年都活不过去了 ，更别提活到
60
岁领养老金了。

我认为，选修第二专业并不适合每一位本 科生。我大学本科主修英语专业，
大一时就开始辅修经济学了。
无疑，
我是班里最用功 的学生。
我竭尽全力想同时
达到两个不同专业的要求，
但还是有不及格的时候。
因为经济学需要良好的数学
基础，我不得不花大量时间钻研数学，因而忽略了英语学习。
< br>第二学期
,
《英国文学》及《宏观经济学》两门课不及格给我敲响了警钟，
这可 是我一生中第一次考试不及格，
这大大打击了我的自信心。
虽然我不是一个
容易向命运 低头的人，
在暑假结束的时候，
我还是决定放弃经济学，
以免两个专
业都难以 完成。当我只需修一个专业的时候，一切似乎又回到了正轨。

(if you
ask me; odds; try as … might; sap one’s confidence; given that;
bow to
fate; come to a close; for fear that; now that)
If you ask me, taking a second major isn’t good for every
undergraduate. In my freshman year as an English major, I took
economics as my minor. By all odds, I was the most hardworking
student in my class. But try as I might to meet the requirements of
the two different subjects, I still could not do well enough to pass
all the exams. Given that the study of economics required a good
command of mathematics, I had to spend so much time on math
that I neglected my English major.
Failing English Literature and Macroeconomics in the second
semester sounded the alarm for me. This was the first time I did
not pass a course in my life, which had greatly sapped my
confidence. Although I was not a man who would easily bow to fate,
as the summer break came to a close, I decided to give up
economics for fear that I would fail in both subjects. Now that I had
only one subject to attend to, everything seemed to be on the right
track again.
Unit 2
Indubitably the vast majority of books overlap one another. Few
indeed are those which give the impression of originality, either in style
or in content. Rare are the unique books
–
less than 50, perhaps, out of
the whole storehouse of literature. In one of his recent autobiographical
novels, Blaise Cendrars points out that Ré
my de Gourmont, because of
his knowledge and awareness of this repetitive quality in books, was
able to select and read all that is worthwhile in the entire realm of
literature. Cendrars himself
–
who would suspect it?
–
is a prodigious
reader. He reads most authors in their original tongue. Not only that,
but when he likes an author he reads every last book the man has
written, as well as his letters and all the books that have been written
about him. In our day his case is almost unparalleled, I imagine. For,
not only has he read widely and deeply, but he has himself written a
great many books. All on the side, as it were. For, if he is anything,
Cendrars, he is a man of action, an adventurer and explorer, a man who
has known how to ―waste‖ his time royally. He is, in a sense, the Julius
Caesar of literature.
（几处倒装句应灵活处理，以体现原文语气。
every last
book the man has written
等于

all the books he has written
。注意这段
话的逻辑关系。
If he is anything, he is a man of…
一句中的

if
从句起强调
作

用，说明他不是一个书生或思想家，而是一个行动家。此处需灵活翻译。）

不容置疑 的是，大多数书都互相重复，在文体或内容上让人感到具有独创
性的书实在是少之又少。在整个文学库藏 中，或许只有极少数作品
——
不到
50
本
——
是独具一格的 。
在最近出版的一部自传体小说中，
布莱斯
·
桑德拉尔指出，
雷米< br>·
德
·
古尔蒙之所以能够选择并通读文学领域中一切值得读的书籍，
就 是因为
他知识渊博，了解书的这种重复性。没有人会怀疑桑德拉尔本人就是一个博览
群书的人， 他阅读了大部分独具个性的作家的作品。不仅如此，一旦他喜欢上
一个作家，就会阅读这个人写的每一本 书，包括他的书信以及所有有关他的书
籍。我猜想，在当今世上，像他这样的情况是绝无仅有的，他不仅 读得广，读
得深，而且本人还著述颇丰。这一切似乎都是在业余时间完成的。因为从本质
上讲， 他是一个十足的行动家，一个四处跋涉的冒险家和探险家，一个懂得如
何大量
“
浪费< br>”
时间的人。从某种意义上说，他是文学届的凯撒大帝。

张磊是在毕业工作后 才开始意识到读书的乐趣的。反思自己的大学教育时，
他感慨不已：
他的一些同学都沉浸于从图 书馆或书店找到的各种有趣的书籍，
而
他却只读了一些教科书，
其中连一本真正能让他 爱不释手、
值得一读的书都没有。
他可以说是被剥夺了通过书了解作家奇妙世界的特权。

如今，
他嗜书如命，
废寝忘食，
好像要把大学期间没机会读的好书全都读 一
遍。
到目前为止他已经利用业余时间读了几百本小说、
传记和游记。
他意识 到书
不仅能向他展示一个充满希望的前景，
帮他消除现实生活中的压力和疲劳，
而且< br>能够帮他澄清一些误解，找到生活的真谛。
(reflect on; in one sitting; lay
hands on; immerse in; worthwhile; privilege; withstand; vista)
It was not until after he had graduated from university and
started to work that Zhang Lei became aware of the pleasure of
reading. Reflecting on his undergraduate studies, he lamented that
he, unlike his classmates who had immersed themselves in various
interesting books they were able to lay hands on from the library or
bookshop, had only read textbooks, none of which was really
worthwhile, or could be read in one sitting. He was deprived of the
privilege of gaining access to the writers’ fantastic worlds through
the windows their books have opened, so to speak.
Now he has become an avid and omnivorous reader. It is as if he
wants to make up for those marvelous books he hadn’t had a
chance to read in his university days. By now, in his spare time, he
has read several hundreds of books, including novels, biographies
and travel notes. He realizes that books can not only reveal to him
the vista of a hopeful future and help him withstand stresses and
strains, they can also help him clear up some misconceptions and
discover the true meaning of life.
Unit 3
Sometimes the hemline indicator, as it’s called, can even precede
and predict a change in the mood of the stock market long before it
actually happens. In September 2007, at the New York fashion shows,
which were displaying their styles for spring 2008, the trend was for
much longer dresses and skirts, many to mid-calf or even down to the
ankles. Some people felt this showed that the hemline indicator was no
longer reliable, and that designers no longer dictated what people would
wear. During the London and New York fashion shows in September
2008, hemlines continued to drop. But sure enough, in the fall of 2008,
the stock market indexes fell dramatically when the banking crisis hit
the US, Europe and then the rest of the world. Hemlines were no longer
following the stock market
–
they were showing the way and indicating
future economic trends.
（第一句原文复杂 ，但译成中文较简单。最后一句译
文加词，加上
―
被动
‖
可起强调作 用，让本句的意思更明确）

有时候，
所谓的裙摆指标甚至能事先早早就预告股市的变 化。
2007
年
9
月，
纽约时装展展示了
2008
年春季流行风格，潮流转向了长衣、长裙，许多裙摆降
至小腿中线，甚至到了脚踝。有人觉得，这表明裙 摆指标靠不住了，或者服装
设计师不再左右着装的趋势了。在
2008
年
9< br>月的伦敦和纽约时装展中，裙摆继
续下降。果然，
2008
年秋天金融危机袭击 美欧，波及全球，股指急跌。此时，
裙摆不再被动追随股市升跌，而是引领潮流，预示未来的经济趋势了 。

一个人的穿着似乎能影响他的行为方式。
譬如，
在校内要穿校服是中小学 生
所必须严格遵守的规矩之一。
倘若在学生着装整齐划一和行为的统一规范之间不
存在 一种象征性关联的话，校服便不可能如此盛行。


然而，多年的学校生活让学生在内 心里对随处可见的校服产生了抵触情绪，
校服毕竟压制了个性的表达。
为了弥补这种损失，学生常常会在周末穿流行的休
闲装。
直到上了大学，
他们才会享受真正的着装自由 ，
而服装上的无序与大学培
养创造力、鼓励自由表达思想及展露才华密切相关。可惜这样的好景 不会太长，
经过一段相对短暂的自由之后，他们在毕业工作之后将再次经历着装规范的压
力。< br>(hard and fast; there is no doubt that; currency; correlation;
backlash; ubiquitous; compensate for; anarchy; obtain; revive)
What you wear seems to dictate your behavior. Take primary
school and high school students for example. One of the hard and
fast rules they have to observe is that they must wear uniforms at
school. There is no doubt that school uniforms would not have
achieved their currency without a symbolic correlation between
the uniformity of clothes and the students’ conformity to some
common code of conduct.
However, after years of school life, there is always a backlash
secretly nursed in the students
’ mind against the ubiquitous
uniform which suppresses the expression of individuality. To
compensate for this loss, students usually wear more casual and
popular clothes on weekends. It is not until they start university,
however, that they can really enjoy the freedom of dress, an
anarchy associated with the cultivation of creativity and the
encouragement of free expression of ideas and talents. But this
situation won’t obtain for long. After a relatively short time of
liberty, they may experience again the revived pressure of dress
code as soon as they become professional.
Unit 4
Today, while most of us marry for romantic reasons, marriage at its
core is still a financial union. So much of what we want
–

or don’t want
–
out of life boils down to dollars a
nd cents, whether it’s how hard we
choose to work, how much we consume or how much we save. For some
people, it’s working 80
-hour weeks to finance a third home and country
club membership; for others, it means cutting back on office hours to
spend more time with the family.
―A lot of the debates people have about money are code for how we
want to live our lives,‖ said Betsey Stevenson, assistant professor of
business and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton
School, who researches the ec
onomics of marriage and divorce. ―A lot of
the choices we make in how we want to live our lives involve how we
spend our money.‖

Making those choices as a team is one of the most important ways
to preserve your marital assets, and your union, experts say.
But it’s
that much easier when you already share similar outlooks on money
matters
–
or when you can, at the very least, find some middle ground.
（注意灵活翻译某些名词，如
romantic reasons, dollars and cents, code,