Lesson Four: This Life
                                                Sidney pointier
看过《猜一猜谁来吃饭》或《炎热的夏夜里》的人人一定会对美国黑人悉尼波蒂的演技赞叹不已。可是你是否知道他在试图进入演艺圈时，曾被导演轰下舞台，因为他连台词都不会念----不认识的字太多。他又是怎样迈开第一步的呢？且听他娓娓道来。
1 It is the first time I have ever been on a stage — I don’t even know what a stage looks like — but I’m up there now and I open this” script,” but I don’t know what it is. The director tells me to read the part of “John.” Everywhere I see “John” I must read everything under that.
译：这是我第一次登上舞台  我甚至还不知道舞台是个什么样子  但是现在我已经站在上面了，并且展开了“台词稿”，但是，我还是不知道他是什么东西。导演叫我念“约翰”这个角。只要看到“约翰”这个名字，我就必须把下面的所有句子念出来。
2 Then I see him sitting in a front seat staring at me with the strangest look. He says. “Get off the stage” I say, “What do you mean?” He says, “Just come on down off that stage and s
top wasting my time. You’re no actor. You don’t even know how to read.”
译：接着我就看见他就坐在前排的椅子上以再奇怪的表情盯着我。他说：“下去！”我说：“你的意思是  ”他说：“就是走下舞台，别在浪费时间了。你就根本就不会演戏。你甚至不知道怎么念。”
3 I leave and walk off down 135th Street saying to my self,”You can hardly read. You can’t be an actor and you’re not able to read.” I begin to think about what he’s said to me. Now I Know I can’t read too well. Here I am eighteen years of age, and if I live to be eighty, for the next sixty-two years I’m going to be a dishwasher. I’m not going to be able to make people notice me.
译：我离开那儿，沿着135号大街，一边走一边对自已说：“你几呼不会念，你根本不可能成为一名演员，而且你不会阅读。”我开始考虑他对我说的话。现在，我非常清楚地知道我不能阅读。如今我已经18岁了，假如我能活到会80岁，我将做事60年的洗碗工。我不可能引起别人的注意。
4 During the next six month, I spent as much times possible reading. One of the restaurants I worked in during that period was in Astoria, long Island. The work was hard and heavy, but we would have most the dishes cleared away by 11:00 or 11: It was my custom to sit out near the kitchen door and read the newspaper.
译：在接下来的六个月里，只要一有时间，我就花在读书上。在那期间，我曾工作过的餐馆之一就是在长岛的阿斯托里亚。这项工作艰苦而繁重，但是，我们常常要在晚上下班11点或者说11点15分之前把绝大多数的碟子清洗干净。我习惯坐在厨房门外不远的地方阅读报纸。
5 At the waiters ’table there was a old Jewish man who used to watch me trying go read that paper. I asked him one night what a word meant and he told me. I thanked him and went back to my paper. He went on watching me for a few seconds and then said “Do you run across a lot of words you don’t understand?” I said “A lot-because I’m just beginning to learn to read well,” and he said, “I’ll sit with you here and work with you for a while.”
译：在侍者的座位上，通常有位犹太老人注视着我极力读懂那份报纸的样子。有一天晚上，
我问他一个单词的意思，他告诉了我。我对他表示了感谢，又回到原位继续阅读那份报纸。他又注视了我一会儿，接着说道：“你是不是碰到了许多不懂的单词？”我说：“有一些  因为我才刚刚开始认真地学习阅读。”他又说到：“我要和你在这里和你一起坐一坐，和你一起阅读一会儿。”
6 So at about eleven every night when he sat sown for his meal, I would come out of the kitchen and sit down next to him and read articles from the front page of the paper. When I ran into a word I didn’t know (and I didn’t know half of article, become any word longer than a couple of syllables gave me trouble) he explained the meaning of the word and gave me the pronunciation. Then he’d send me back to the sentence so I could understand the word in context.
idea是什么意思英语翻译
译：这样，在每晚期11点钟左右他坐下来用餐的时候，我就会从厨房里出来，坐在他的下手，阅读那份的头版文章。在我遇到不懂的字的时候（这篇文章中有一半的字我不认识，因为任何一个超过两个音节的词都会给我带来麻烦），他就向我解说该词的意义，并且教我如何发音。接着，他就会把我带回到句子中去，这样我就可以根据上下文来理解这个词的意思。
7 Then I would take the paper away with me, armed now with the meaning of those words, and reread and reread the article so that the meaning of those words would get locked into my memory. Every evening we did that.
译：然后，我把报纸带在身边。现在，我懂得了这此词的意思，将这篇文章反复地阅读，这样，这些词的意义就会铭刻在我的记忆中。我们每都如此。
8 I stayed there at that job for about five or six weeks and learned from him a way to study, and then I went off to other jobs. I have never been able to thank him properly because I never knew then what an enormous contribution he was making to my life. He was wonderful, and a little bit of him is in everything I do.
译：我呆在那里做那份工作大约有五六个星期的时间。从他那里，我学到了学习的方法，接着我就去干另一份工作。我一直未能对他表示恰当的感谢，因为当时根本没有意识到他对我一生起到的作用会如此巨大。他的作用是惊人的，我做的每一件事多少都有人世间影响。
9 After that, I always looked for the meaning of words, and when I ran into words I couldn’t pronounce and didn’t understand, I would work on them until I began to understand. I would keep going over and over the sentence they were in, and after a while I would begin to get an idea of what the word meant just by repeating the sentence. That became a habit, as did all the other things he left me with.
译：自那以后，我总是查单词的意思。在我碰到不会发音和不懂的词的时候，我就会想办法，直到弄懂为止。我会反复阅读这些词所在的句子，要不了一会儿，仅仅通过反复阅读这个句子，对该词的意义我就有了大致的理解。这成了一种习惯，正如他教给我做每件事都成了习惯一样
Word List（单词表）
script n.（戏剧、电影等）剧本，脚本
part n. （戏剧、电影等角的）台词
look n.样子，表情
no adj.完全不是，绝不是
dishwasher n.洗碟工；洗碗机
heavy adj.繁重的；费力的
p.m. abbr.（post meridiem的缩写）下午，午后
Jewish adj.犹太族的
syllable n.音节
context n.上下文
armed adj.具备……知识或技能的；有……装备的
reread v.重读，再读
enormous adj.巨大的，极大的
contribution n.贡献

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