that they cannot fly. There are farms where you breed chickens for breast meat. Those birds are kept in low, repressive cages, forced to be hunched over all the time, which makes the breast muscles very big. One loud noise and the chickens go mad, killing themselves by flying against the walls of their cages. Having to spend all their lives stooped over makes an unnatural, crazy, no-good bird. It also makes unnatural, detached, no-good human beings.
所有的野生鸟类都被你们改造成了鸡禽——一种翅膀退化、根本不会飞的生物。你们有许多农场，专门用来饲养鸡以提供鸡胸脯肉。这些鸡被关在狭窄压抑的笼子里，不得不一直弓着身体，这使它们的胸脯肌肉变得很大。如果突发一声巨响，鸡群会吓得发疯般乱跑，撞死在笼子壁上。一辈子都必须佝偻着背使得这些鸡变成了既不天然又不正常、毫无用处的禽类。同时，人类也变得很不自然、冷漠无情、残酷刻薄。
6 That's where you've fooled yourselves. You have not only altered, declawed, and deformed your winged and four-legged cousins; you have done it concurrently to yourselves. You inject Botox, or use plastic surgery, synthetic make-up and countless drugs. You have filtered and remolded humans into executives sitting in boardrooms, into office workers, into time-clock punchers. Your homes are filled with families disconnected from one another but tied to one great entity, television.
在这点上，你们愚弄了自己。你们对自己带翅膀的和长四条腿的近亲兄弟姐妹进行了改造，剪掉了它们的爪子，甚至让它们变得畸形。同时，你们也在对自己做这些事情。你们注射肉毒杆菌毒素，接受整容手术，使用人造化妆品和数不清的药物。你们把人类进行筛选和改造：有的人是坐董事会议室的高级管理人员，有的人是坐办公室的白领，有的人是每日要按考勤钟打卡的工人。在家里，每个家庭成员之间也没有联系，却都沉溺于一个大实体，那就是电视。
7 \your head against the wallpaper; your hair may be greasy. Don't spill liquor on that table: You'll peel off its delicate finish. You should have wiped your boots; the floor was just cleaned. Don't, don't, don't ?\prisons which you have built for yourselves, calling them \
“小心烟灰，不要抽烟，否则你会熏脏窗帘。小心金鱼缸。不要把头靠在墙纸上，你的头发也许很油。不要把饮料洒在桌子上，你会把它精美的涂层弄掉。你应该先擦擦靴子，地板刚刚才打扫过。不要做这个，不要做那个，不要??”这太荒谬了！人类生下来不是忍受这种压抑的。你们住在自己亲手打造的监狱里，只不过你们把它们称之为“家”、办公室或工厂而已。
8 Sometimes I think that even our pitiful small houses are better than your luxury mansions. Strolling a hundred feet to the outhouse on a clear wintry night, through mud or snow, that's one small link with nature. Or in the summer, in the back country, taking your time, listening to the humming of the insects or the flapping of birds' wings, the sun warming your bones through the nodding branches of trees; you don't even have that pleasure of coexistence with nature anymore.
有时，我认为我们的寒酸小屋也比你们的奢华大厦要好。在一个晴朗的冬夜，踏着泥土或积雪，漫步一百英尺去上厕所，这是我们与自然之间的一个小小的接触。抑或是在夏天，在一个偏僻的乡村，悠闲地听着昆虫的嗡鸣或鸟儿拍打翅膀的声音，感受太阳透过随风摇摆的树
枝暖暖地照在身上的感觉。可是你们却连体会那种与自然共处的快乐的机会都不再有。
9 You subscribe to the belief that everything must be germ free. No smells! Not even the good, natural man and woman odors. Eradicate the smell from under your armpits, from your skin. Rub it out, and then spray some botanical odor on yourself, stuff you can spend a lot of money on, ten dollars an ounce, so you know this has to smell good. Why do you keep such a distance from your bodies' functions, cavities and smells that you've alienated yourselves from the natural world, of which you are an integral part?
你们坚信任何东西都必须是无菌的。任何气味都不能有！包括男人、女人身上所散发的那些好闻的自然的体香。你们就是要除去腋窝下散发的气味，除去皮肤里散发的气味。味道去掉后，你们还要在身上洒上某种植物香水。这东西造价昂贵，一盎司十美元，所以你们相信它的气味肯定好。你们为什么要刻意远离自己身体的功能、体腔和气味，把自己从原本所属的自然世界疏离出去呢？
10 I think you are so afraid and intolerant of the world around you. You deplore the natural world; you don't want to see, feel, smell, or hear it. The feelings of rain and snow on your face, being numbed by an icy wind and warmed back up by a smoking fire, coming out of a hot sweat bath and plunging into a cold stream, these things are the spice of life, but you don't want them anymore.
我认为你们既十分害怕又不能容忍自己周围的世界。你们痛斥自然界，不愿看到、触到、闻到或听到关于它的任何点滴。雨或雪落在脸上的感觉，被刺骨的寒风冻僵后又在冒烟的火堆旁烤火暖和过来，洗一个热水澡后又跳入一条寒冷的小溪，所有这些都能给生活增添乐趣，但是你们却不再想要这些了。
11 You're cage dwellers, living in boxes which shut out the hot humidity of the summer and the chill of winter, living inside a body that no longer has a scent. You're hearing the noise from the hi-fi instead of listening to the sounds of nature. You're watching actors on TV having a make-believe experience when you no longer experience anything for yourself. That's your way. It's no good.
你们把自己困在牢笼中，生活在封闭的盒子里，隔绝了夏天的酷热与潮湿、冬天的寒冷与战栗，只活在一个不再有任何自然气息的躯壳里；你们听着音响中播放的噪音而不是自然的声音；你们看着电视上演员上演编造的经历，而自己却不去做任何亲身体验。这就是你们的方式。实在太糟糕了。
unit5 TextA
Speaking Chinese in America
在美国说中文
1 Once, at a dinner on the Monterey Peninsula, California, my mother whispered to me confidentially: \with such nominal courtesy? In the end, she always takes everything.\有一次，在加州蒙特雷半岛上用餐时，我母亲私下悄悄地对我说：“嫂嫂想做个彬彬有礼的
客人，但是装得太厉害了！何必费劲讲究形式上的客套呢？到最后她还是什么都要。”
2 My mother acted like a waixiao, an emigrant, no longer patient with old taboos and courtesies. To prove her point, she reached across the table to offer my elderly aunt from Beijing the last scallop from the garlic seafood dish, along with the flank steak and the cucumber salad.
我母亲行事像个“外侨”，即一个移民国外的侨民，因为她已经不耐烦老一套的禁忌和礼数了。为了证明她刚才的观点，她手伸过桌子，把蒜香海鲜拼盘里的最后一个扇贝，连同牛腩排及黄瓜沙拉一起，递给我从北京来的年长舅妈。
3 Sau-sau frowned. \really I don't.
嫂嫂皱起了眉头，“不要，真不要！”她一边大声说一边拍着自己已经吃得很饱的肚子。我不要了，真的不要了。
4 \
“拿去吧！拿去吧！”我母亲用中文责备道。预料到她就会这样，就像月亮盈亏周期似的。
5 \“饱了，我已经饱了，”嫂嫂低声嘀咕着，眼睛却瞟着扇贝。
6 \
“哎！”我母亲感叹着说，“没人愿意吃，只能让它坏掉了！”
7 Sau-sau sighed, acting as if she were doing my mother a favor by taking the scrap off the tray and sparing us the trouble of wrapping the leftovers in foil.
嫂嫂叹了口气，从碟子上拿去了那个扇贝，就好像是帮了我母亲一个大忙，并省去了我们用箔纸将剩菜打包的麻烦似的。
8 My mother turned to her brother, an experienced Chinese magistrate, visiting us for the first time. \etiquette and say you want it, they won't ask you again.\
我母亲转头看着她兄长——一位经验丰富的中国地方法官，这是他初次来看我们。她说：“在美国，一个中国人可能会饿死。要是你不打破老一套的礼数说你要吃，他们就不会再问你了。”
9 My uncle nodded and said he understood fully: Americans take things quickly because they have no time to be polite. 我舅舅点点头，说他完全理解：美国人待人接物快速迅捷，因为他们没有时间客气来客气去。
10 I read an article in The New York Times Magazine on changes in New York's little cultural colony of Chinatown, where the author mentioned that the interwoven configuration of Chinese language and culture renders its speech indirect and polite. Chinese people are so \modest\
我在《纽约时报杂志》上读到过一篇文章，描述的是纽约市内的中国城这一小块文化聚居地的变迁。作者在文章中提到，中国语言与文化错综交织，使中文十分委婉和客套。中国人是
如此“谨慎和谦虚”，文章开头写道，以至于他们都没有词语来表达“是”和“不是”。
11 Why do people keep fabricating these rumors? I thought. They describe us as though we were a tribe of those little dolls sold in Chinatown tourist shops, heads moving up and down in contented agreement!
我思索着，为什么人们会不断地编造这样的谣言呢？他们把我们描述得就像是唐人街旅游品商店里出售的一批小布娃娃。那些布娃娃的头不停地上下晃动，似乎对一切都心满意足，完全赞同。
12 As any child of immigrant parents knows, there is a special kind of double bind attached to knowing two languages. My parents, for example, spoke to me in both Chinese and English; I spoke back to them in English.
生于移民家庭的孩子都清楚，有一种特殊的两难境地与说两种语言的生活联系在一起。比如我父母，他们和我说话时中文和英文都用，但我和他们说话时只用英文。
13 \
“艾米啊！”他们会这样责备我。
14 \“怎么啦？”我会回问道。
15 \“我们叫你时，不要对我们反问，”他们会用中文训斥道“这是不礼貌的！”
16 \
“你们什么意思？”
17 \“哎！我们不是刚刚说过，叫你不要反问吗？”
18 If I consider my upbringing carefully, I find there was nothing discreet about the Chinese language I grew up with, no censorship for the sake of politeness. My parents made everything abundantly clear in their consecutive demands: \engineer,\仔细想想自己的成长过程，我发现，我从小到大所接触到的中文并不是什么特别谨慎的语言，也不存在出于客气而对所说的话进行仔细检查的现象。我父母向我提一连串的要求时，总是把一切都表述得清清楚楚：“你当然会成为著名的航空工程师，”他们会鼓励我说，“对了，你业余时间还要做音乐会的钢琴师。”
19 It seems that the more forceful proceedings always spilled over into Chinese: \You must wash rice so not a single grain is lost.\似乎更加强硬的事情总是通过中文倾泻出来：“不能那样！你淘米的时候，必须一粒都不漏。”
20 Having listened to both Chinese and English, I'm suspicious of comparisons between the two
languages, as I notice the reciprocal challenges they each present. English speakers say Chinese is extremely difficult because different words can be denoted by very subtle variations in tone. English is often bracketed with the label of inconsistency, a language of too many broken rules. 由于一直同时听着中英文两种语言，故而我对它们之间的任何对比总是心存怀疑，因为我注意到它们各自都有对方所没有的难点。说英文的人会认为中文极其难，因为中文用非常微妙的声调变化就可以表示不同的词语。而英文则常常被认为缺乏一致性，因为英文具有太多不合规则的用法。
21 Even more dangerous, in my view, is the temptation to view the gulf between different languages and behavior in translation. To listen to my mother speak English, an outside spectator might make the deduction that she has no concept of the temporal differences of past and future or that she is gender blind because she refers to my husband as \one might also generalize that all Chinese people take an indirect route to get to the point. It is, rather, my mother's individual tendency to ornament her language and wander around a bit. 在我看来，更危险的做法是，人们往往倾向于通过翻译来理解不同语言和行为之间的差异。如果一个旁观的外人听我母亲说英语，可能会得出结论，说她对过去和将来这样的时间区别没有概念，或者认为她对人的性别不加区分，因为她提到我丈夫时总是说“她”。如果一个人对此类现象不假思虑，他也许还会概括说，所有中国人都是通过委婉迂回的方式才能说到话题重点的。而实际上喜欢修饰和绕弯子只是我母亲个人的说话风格。
22 I worry that the dominant society may see Chinese people from a limited perspective, hedging us in with the stereotype. I worry that the seemingly innocent stereotype may lead to actual intolerance and be part of the reason why there are few Chinese in top management positions, or in the main judiciary or political sectors. I worry about the power of language: If one says anything enough times, it might become true, with or without malicious intent.
我担心主流社会可能会从一个狭隘的角度、以一种成见看待中国人。我担心这种看似无害的成见实际会导致人们对中国人难以容忍，并成为中国人在高层管理职位或主要的司法及政府部门寥寥无几的部分原因。我担心语言的力量，即如果一个人将一件事说了很多遍，无论其是否有恶意，这件事都会变成事实。
23 Could this be why the Chinese friends of my parents' generation are willing to accept the generalization?
这会不会就是我父母辈的中国朋友愿意接受那些对中国人的简单概括的原因呢？
24 \are you complaining?\one of them said to me. \people think we are modest and polite, let them think that. Wouldn't Americans appreciate such an honorary description?\“你为什么要抱怨呢？”他们中有人问我。“如果人们认为我们谦虚礼让，就让他们那样想好了。难道美国人不喜欢这种赞誉性的话吗？”
25 And I do believe that anyone would take the description as a compliment — at first. But after a while, it annoys, as if the only things that people heard one say were what had been filtered through the sieve of social niceties: I'm so pleased to meet you. I've heard many wonderful things about you.
我当然相信每个人在一开始都会把这种描述的话当成称赞。但过了一段时间，这种话就会让
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