Unit6AFrenchFourth課文翻譯綜合教程四

1、Unit 6A French FourthCharles Trueheart1 Along about this time every year, as Independence Day approaches, I pull anold American flag out of a bottom drawer where it is folded away folded in a square, I admit, not the regulation triangle. Iit a ld ng/tirhadand have alwaysflown it outside on July 4. H

2、ere in Paris it hangs from a fourth-floor balcony visible from the street. I ve never seen anyone look up, but in my mind s eye an Americantourist may notice it and smile, and a French passerby may be reminded of the date and the occasion that prompt its appearance. I hope so.2 For my expatriated fa

3、mily, too, the flag is meaningful, in part because we don tdo anything else to celebrate the Fourth. People don thave barbecues in Paris apartments, and most other Americans I know who have settled here suppress such outward signs of their heritage or they go back home for the summer to refuel.3 Our

4、 children think the flag-hanging is a cool thing, and I like it because it givesus a few moments of family Q&A about our citizenship. My wife and I have been away from the United States for nine years, and our children are eleven and nine, so American history is mostly something they have learned or

5、 haven t learned一from their parents. July 4 is one of the times when the American in me feels a twinge of unease about the great lacunae in our children understanding of who they are and is prompted to try to fill the gaps. It s also a time, one among many,when my thoughts turn more generally to the

6、 costs and benefits of raising children in a foreign culture.4 Louise and Henry speak French fluently; they are taught in French at school,and most of their friends are French. They move from language to language, seldom mixing them up, without effort or even awareness. This is a wonderful thing, of

7、 course. And our physical separation from our native land is not much of an issue.My wife and I are grateful every day for all that our children are not exposed to. American school shootings are a good object lesson for our children in the follies of the society we hold at a distance.5 Naturally, we

8、 also want to remind them of reasons to take pride in beingAmerican and to try to convey to them what that means. It is a difficult thing to do from afar, and the distance seems more than just a matter of miles. I sometimes think that the stories we tell them must seem like Aesop s (or La Fontaine s

9、) fables, myths with no fixed place in space or time. Still, connections can be made, lessons learned.6 Last summer we spent a week with my brother and his family, who live inConcord, Massachusetts, and we took the children to the North Bridge to give them a glimpse of the American Revolution. We ha

10、ppened to run across a reenactment of the skirmish that launched the war, with everyone dressed up in three-cornered hats and cotton bonnets. This probably only confirmed to our goggle-eyed kids the make-believe quality of American history.7 Six months later, when we were recalling the experience at

11、 the family dinnertable here, I asked Louise what the Revolution had been about. She thought that it had something to do with the man who rode his horse from town to town. Ah , Isaid, satisfactionswellingin my breast,“and what was thatman s name?“Gulliver? L6u isereplied.Henry, for hispart, knew tha

12、t theRevolution wasbetween the Britishand theAmericans, and thought that it wasprobably aboutslavery.8 As we pursued this conversation, though, we learned what the children knewinstead. Louise told us that the French Revolution came at the end of the Enlightenment, when people learned a lot of ideas

13、, and one was that they didn t need kings to tell them what to think or do. On another occasion, when Henry asked what makes a person a“junior or aIII ” ,drcajise helped me answerby bringing up kings like Louis Quatorze and Quinze and Seize; Henry riposted with Henry VIII.9 I can say I worry much ab

14、out our children Esropean frame of reference.There will be plenty of time for them to learn Am erica s pitifully brief history and to find out who Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Roosevelt were. Already they know a great deal more than I would have wished about Bill Clinton.10 If all of this resonates

15、 with me, it may be because my family moved to Paris in1954, when I was three, and I was enrolled in French schools for most of my grade- school years. I don tremember much instruction in American studies at school or at home. I do remember that my mother took me out of school one afternoon to see t

16、he movie Oklahoma ! I can recall what a faraway place it seemed: all that sunshine and square dancing and surreys with fringe on top. The sinister Jud Fry personified evil for quite some time afterward. Cowboys and Indians were an American clich that had already reached Paris through the movies, and

17、 I asked a grandparent to send me a Davy Crockett hat so that I could live out that fairy taleagainst the backdrop of gray postwar Montparnasse.11 Although my children are living in the same place at roughly thesame time intheir lives, their experience as expatriates is very different from mine. The

18、 particular narratives of American history aside, American culture is not theirs alonebut that of their French classmates, too. The music they listen to is either“American or European, “ but it is often hard to tell the difference. In my day littleFrench kids looked like nothing other than little Fr

19、ench kids; but Louise and Henryand their classmates dress much as their peers in the United States do, though with perhaps less Lands End fleeciness. When I returned to visit the United States in the 1950s, it was a five- day ocean crossing for a month s home leave every two years;now we fly over fo

20、r a week or two, although not very often. Virtually every imaginable pro duct available to my children s American cousins is now obtainablehere.12 If time and globalization have made France much more like the United States than it was in my youth, then I can conclude a couple of things. On the one h

21、and, our children are confronting a much less jarring cultural divide than I did, and theyhave more access to their native culture. Re-entry, when it comes, is likely to be smoother. On the other hand, they are less than fully immersed in a truly foreignworld. That experience no longer seems possibl

22、e in Western countries a sad development, in my view.在法國(guó)慶祝美國(guó)獨(dú)立日查爾斯特魯哈特1 每年差不多到了獨(dú)立日日益臨近的時(shí)候，我都會(huì)把一面折疊好的舊的美國(guó)國(guó)旗從底層抽屜里取出一一我承認(rèn)我折疊國(guó)旗不是官方規(guī)定的三角形，而是正方形。我擁有這面國(guó)旗很長(zhǎng)時(shí)間了，每年到了 7月4日我總是把它掛出來。身處巴黎的我把它掛在四樓的陽臺(tái)上，在馬路上都看得到。雖然我沒見過有人抬頭看它一眼，但在我腦海中，我想象著美國(guó)游客或許會(huì)注意到它并莞爾一笑，而法國(guó)路人會(huì)從中想起促使這面國(guó)旗出現(xiàn)的相關(guān)日期和原因。誠(chéng)愿如此。2 對(duì)我們這個(gè)旅居國(guó)外的家庭來說，這面國(guó)旗之所以意義深

23、遠(yuǎn)，部分是因?yàn)槲覀儧]有其他任何活動(dòng)來慶祝獨(dú)立日。 巴黎人不在公寓里燒烤， 我認(rèn)識(shí)的大多數(shù)在此定居的美國(guó)人并不張揚(yáng)他們的這種傳統(tǒng)，他們寧可回國(guó)消夏來為自己加油打氣。3 我的孩子們覺得懸掛國(guó)旗很酷，我也喜歡這種做法，因?yàn)樗屛覀兗矣袡C(jī)會(huì)就我們的公 民身份問答一番。我們夫妻離開美國(guó)長(zhǎng)達(dá)9年，兩個(gè)孩子一個(gè) 11歲一個(gè)9歲，所以美國(guó)歷史對(duì)他們來說，很大程度上要么是從父母那里已經(jīng)學(xué)到的知識(shí)，要么是還沒學(xué)到的知識(shí)。 每到類似7月4日這樣的日子，我的美國(guó)心便感到忐忑不安，因?yàn)楹⒆觽儗?duì)他們身份的認(rèn)同 存在巨大的空白，所以我想盡力填補(bǔ)這些空白。這也是很多場(chǎng)合中的一個(gè)，讓我的思想更全面地考慮在異國(guó)文化氛圍中養(yǎng)育子女

24、的利與弊。4 路易絲和亨利法語都說得很流利。學(xué)校里使用法語教學(xué)，他們的朋友大多數(shù)是法國(guó)人。 他們?cè)诜ㄕZ和英語之間切換自如，不費(fèi)吹灰之力，極少把兩種語言搞混。這當(dāng)然很棒。我們遠(yuǎn)離故國(guó)，相隔千山萬水，也不是什么問題。每天我們夫妻倆都為兒女不用面對(duì)的一切壞事 而心懷感激。美國(guó)校園槍戰(zhàn)對(duì)我們孩子來說是避之不及的社會(huì)愚蠢行為的極好反面教材。5 當(dāng)然了，我們也希望能提醒他們身為美國(guó)人而自豪的原因，想方設(shè)法告訴他們這樣做意義何在。在遠(yuǎn)離祖國(guó)的情況下這樣做不容易，距離并不是和祖國(guó)相隔有多遠(yuǎn)的問題。有時(shí)我想我們給孩子們講的故事聽起來一定很像伊索寓言或拉封丹寓言，都是些沒有確鑿時(shí)間地點(diǎn)的神話。但無論如何，畢竟還能

25、做點(diǎn)聯(lián)系，學(xué)點(diǎn)東西。6 去年夏天，我們和我弟弟一家在一起度過了一周，他們住在馬薩諸塞州的康科德城。我們帶孩子們參觀北橋，讓他們看一眼美國(guó)獨(dú)立戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)的遺址。我們碰巧趕上了一個(gè)表演，表演重現(xiàn)了觸發(fā)大戰(zhàn)的小規(guī)模戰(zhàn)斗的情景。演出中男士都戴著三角帽， 而女士戴著有帶子的帽子。這也許恰恰讓這些瞪大眼睛的孩子們加深了美國(guó)歷史虛幻性的印象。7 6個(gè)月后，我們吃飯時(shí)在飯桌上回憶起參觀的情景，我問路易絲美國(guó)獨(dú)立戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)是怎么一回事。她認(rèn)為這和一個(gè)人騎著馬從一個(gè)鎮(zhèn)子跑到另一個(gè)鎮(zhèn)子有關(guān)?！鞍?，”我回答道，滿意之情在心中油然而生，接著問道：“這個(gè)人叫什么名字？” “格列佛？”路易絲答道。至于亨利， 他知道獨(dú)立戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)是英國(guó)人和美國(guó)人打仗，而且打仗也許是為了奴隸制。8 然而當(dāng)我們進(jìn)一步討論這個(gè)話題，我們知道小孩子們都掌握了哪些知識(shí)。路易絲告訴 我們法國(guó)大革命發(fā)生在啟蒙運(yùn)動(dòng)末期，那時(shí)人們已經(jīng)懂得很多道理，其中一個(gè)道理就是人們不需要國(guó)王告訴大家該想什么、該做什么。還有一次，亨利問為什么要在一個(gè)人名字后面加上“小”，或者加上 上世”，或者 豈世，路易絲幫我回答了這個(gè)問題，舉了路易十四、路 易十五和路易十六幾位國(guó)王的例子，亨利立刻機(jī)敏地回以亨利八世的例子。9 我不能說我很擔(dān)心對(duì)孩子們凡事都