英译汉练习短文6篇·
Passage 1
Satiric Literature1
  Perhaps the most striking quality of satiric literature is its freshness, its originality of perspective. Satire rarely offers original ideas. Instead, it presents the familiar in a new form. Satirists do not offer the world new philosophies. What they do is look at familiar conditions from a perspective that makes these conditions seem foolish, harmful, or affected. Satire jars us out of complacence into a pleasantly shocked realization that many of the values we unquestioningly accept are false. Don Quixote makes chivalry seem absurd; Brave New World ridicules the pretensions of science; A Modest Proposal dramatizes starvation by advocating cannibalism. None of these ideas is original. Chivalry was suspected before Cervantes2, humanists objected to the claims of pure science before Aldous Huxley3, and people were aware of famine before Swift4. It was not the originality of the idea that made these satires popular. It was the manner of expression,the satiric method, that made them int
eresting and entertaining. Satires are read because they are aesthetically satisfying works of art, not because they are morally wholesome or ethically instructive. They are stimulating and refreshing because with commonsense briskness5 they brush away illusions and secondhand opinions6. With spontaneous irreverence, satire rearranges perspectives, scrambles familiar objects into incongruous juxtaposition, and speaks in a personal idiom instead of abstract platitude.
  Satire exists because there is need for it. It has lived because readers appreciate a refreshing stimulus, an irreverent reminder that they live in a world of platitudinous thinking, cheap moralizing7, and foolish philosophy. Satire serves to prod people into an awareness of truth, though rarely to any action on behalf of truth. Satire tends to remind people that much of what they see, hear, and read in popular media is sanctimonious, sentimental, and only partially true. Life resembles in only a slight degree the popular image of it. Soldiers rarely hold the ideals that movies attribute to them, not do ordinary citizens devote their lives to unselfish service of humanity. Intelligent people know these things but tend to forget them when they do not hear them expressed8.
Notes
1．这篇文章用词正式,句式严谨、周密、冗长,文风较为华丽.翻译时选词要正式,可多用四字结构和铺排形式.
2．Cervantes: 塞万提斯1754-1616,西班牙伟大的作家、诗人、戏剧家.
3．Aldous Huxley:奥尔德斯·赫胥黎1825-1895,英国生物学家,作家.
values翻译4．Swift: 斯威夫特1667-1745,英国作家,擅长用讽刺和幽默揭露社会黑暗现象.
5．briskness：brisk意为keen or sharp in speech or manner.
6．secondhand opinions：不可翻译为“二手的观点”,应该是“人云亦云的的观点”.
7．cheap moralizing：这里cheap意思不是“便宜的”,而是vulgar, contemptible; moralizing不是“道德”,而是“说教”.
8．when they do not hear them expressed：当直译不方便时,我们可用视点转移法：但是当周围人不谈起时
Key
讽刺文学
  或许讽刺文学最突出的特点是它耳目一新、视角独创.讽刺文学很少给人以原创的思想,但是它却将人们熟悉的事情以全新的形式展现出来.讽刺作家并不给人以新的哲学理念.他们所做的只是从某一视角来看待一些为人熟知的事情,在这一视角下,这些事情显得愚蠢不堪、充满危害而又矫揉造作.讽刺作品将我们从自鸣得意中震醒,让我们既愉快又惊诧地看到,我们从未质疑、全盘接受的价值观中,有很多都是错误的.唐吉珂德使得骑士精神显得荒谬可笑；挑战新世界嘲笑了科学的自诩；一个小小的建议则建议食用人肉,使饥饿问题戏剧化.这些思想中没有一条是原创的：在塞万提斯之前就有人怀疑骑士精神；在赫胥黎之前人文主义者就反对宣称纯科学的至高无上；在斯威夫特之前人们就已经意识到饥荒问题.并不是思想的独创而使得讽刺文学受人欢迎,而是它的表述方式、嘲讽方法使得它趣味横生、有娱乐性.人们阅读讽刺文学只是因为在美学上它是让人心满意足的艺术品,而不是因为它在道德上有益或伦理上的教益.它激人兴奋、爽人身心,因为它只是运用常理通识、辛言辣语,便将各种幻想和人云亦云的观点一扫而光.讽刺文学自心而来不拘谦恭,它重新调整视角,将熟悉的事物紊杂地放置在一起,用个性化的语言而不是抽象的陈词滥语表述出来.
讽刺作品之所以存在是因为人们需要它.它存续至今,是因为读者欣赏爽身怡心的刺激和不拘谦恭的告诫,它提醒读者,他们生活的世界里充满了陈腐的思想意识、低俗的道德说教和愚蠢的哲学理念.讽刺作品虽然很少代表真理促成行动,但它却能使人们感悟到真理.讽刺作品常常告诉人们,他们在大众媒体中所看到的、听到的、读到的大多是伪装善良、多愁善感或只有部分真实.生活只在很小的程度上与大众对它的印象相符.士兵们很少拥有电影赋予他们的理想,而普通老百姓也决不会把自己的生命无私地奉献给人道主义服务.聪明人知道这些事实,但是当周围人不谈起时,他们常常会忘记掉.
Passage 2
American Folk Art
  What we today call American folk art was, art of, by, and for ordinary, everyday1 “folks” who, with increasing prosperity and leisure, created a market for art of all kinds, and especially for portraits. Citizens of prosperous, essentially middle-class republics—whether ancient Romans, seventeenth-century Dutch burghers, or nineteenth-century Americans—have always shown a marked taste for portraiture. Starting in the late eighteenth century, th
e United States contained increasing number of such people, and of the artists who could meet their demands.

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