Unit6AFrenchFourth課文翻譯綜合教程四

1、荽 Unit 6勘 A French Fourth» Charles Trueheart12 筮 Along about this time every year, as Independence Day approaches, I pull an old American flag out of a bottom drawer where it is folded away folded in a square, I admit, not the regulation triangle. I ve had it a long time and have always flown i

2、t outside on July 4. Here 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.3

3、4 菱For my expatriated family, too, the flag is meaningful,in part because wedon t do anything else to celebrate the Fourth. People don t have baisrbecues in Parapartments, and most other Americans I know who have settled here suppress such outward signs of their heritage or they go back home for the

4、 summer to refuel.56 蒙 Our children think the flag-hanging is a cool thing, and I like it because it gives us 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

5、 something they have learned or haven t learned 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 s understanding ofwho they are and is prompted to try to fill the gaps. It aslso a time, one among many, when my tho

6、ughts turn more generally to the costs and benefits of raising children in a foreign culture.78 蔽 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 awar

7、eness. This is a wonderful thing, ofcourse. 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

8、hold at a distance.Naturally, we 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 dofrom afar, and the distance seems more than just a matter of miles. I sometimesthink that the stories we tell them must seem

9、like Aesop s (or La Fontaine s) fables,myths with no fixed place in space or time. Still, connections can be made, lessons learned.Last summer we spent a week with my brother and his family, who live in Concord, Massachusetts, and we took the children to the North Bridge to give them a glimpse of th

10、e American Revolution. We happened 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.Six months later, when we were r

11、ecalling the experience at the family dinner table 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, satisfaction swelling in my breast, “ and what was that man s name?” “ Gulliver? Lo” ui

12、se replied. Henry, for his part, knew that the Revolution was between the British and the Americans, and thought that it was probably about slavery.91011121314151617As we pursued this conversation, though, we learned what the children knew instead. Louise told us that the French Revolution came at t

13、he end of the Enlightenment, when people learned a lot of ideas, 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 a “ II ” or a “ III ” , Louise helped me answer by bringing up kings like Louis Quatorz

14、e and Quinze and Seize; Henry riposted with Henry VIII.18 量 I can' S ay I worry much about our children 'Esropean frame of reference. There will be plenty of t ime for them to learn America s pitifully brief history and tofind out who Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Roosevelt were. Already the

15、y know a great deal more than I would have wished about Bill Clinton.1920 帔 If all of this resonates 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 stu

16、dies at school or at home. I do remember that my mother took me out of school one afternoon to see the 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 afterwar

17、d. Cowboys and Indians were an American clich that had already reached Paris through the movies, and I asked a grandparent to send me a Davy Crockett hat so that I could live out that fairy tale against the backdrop of gray postwar Montparnasse.2122 芍 Although my children are living in the same plac

18、e at roughly the same time in their lives, their experience as expatriates is very different from mine. The particular narratives of American history aside, American culture is not theirs alone but that of their French classmates, too. The music they listen to is either “ American ” or “ European, ”

19、 but it is often hard to tell the difference. In my day little French kids looked like nothing other than little French kids; but Louise and Henry and 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 Unite

20、d States in the 1950s, it was a five- day ocean crossing for a month s home leave every two years;now we fly over for a week or two, although not very often. Virtually every imaginable product available to my children s American cousins is now obtainablehere.2324 螂 If time and globalization have mad

21、e France much more like the United States than it was in my youth, then I can conclude a couple of things. On the one hand, our children are confronting a much less jarring cultural divide than I did, and they have more access to their native culture. Re-entry, when it comes, is likely to be smoothe

22、r. On the other hand, they are less than fully immersed in a truly foreign world. That experience no longer seems possible in Western countries a saddevelopment, in my view.妍在法國慶祝美國獨(dú)立日嵋查爾斯特魯哈特蚆 1 每年差不多到了獨(dú)立日日益臨近的時(shí)候，我都會把一面折疊好的舊的美國國旗從底層抽屜里取出 我承認(rèn)我折疊國旗不是官方規(guī)定的三角形，而是正方形。我擁有這面國旗很長時(shí)間了，每年到了7 月 4 日我總是把它掛出來。身處巴

23、黎的我把它掛在四樓的陽臺上，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，我想象著美國游客或許會注意到它并莞爾一笑，而法國路人會從中想起促使這面國旗出現(xiàn)的相關(guān)日期和原因。誠愿如此。蒄 2 對我們這個(gè)旅居國外的家庭來說，這面國旗之所以意義深遠(yuǎn)，部分是因?yàn)槲覀儧]有其他任何活動來慶祝獨(dú)立日。巴黎人不在公寓里燒烤，我認(rèn)識的大多數(shù)在此定居的美國人并不張揚(yáng)他們的這種傳統(tǒng)，他們寧可回國消夏來為自己加油打氣。腿3 我的孩子們覺得懸掛國旗很酷，我也喜歡這種做法，因?yàn)樗屛覀兗矣袡C(jī)會就我們的公民身份問答一番。我們夫妻離開美國長達(dá)9 年，兩個(gè)孩子一個(gè)11 歲一個(gè) 9 歲，所以美國歷史對他們來說，很大

24、程度上要么是從父母那里已經(jīng)學(xué)到的知識，要么是還沒學(xué)到的知識。每到類似7 月 4 日這樣的日子，我的美國心便感到忐忑不安，因?yàn)楹⒆觽儗λ麄兩矸莸恼J(rèn)同存在巨大的空白，所以我想盡力填補(bǔ)這些空白。這也是很多場合中的一個(gè)，讓我的思想更全面地考慮在異國文化氛圍中養(yǎng)育子女的利與弊。裊 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)是法國人。他們在法語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，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的一切壞事而心懷感激。美國校園槍戰(zhàn)對我們孩子來說是避之不及的社會愚蠢行為的極好反面教材。褻5 當(dāng)然

25、了，我們也希望能提醒他們身為美國人而自豪的原因，想方設(shè)法告訴他們這樣做意義何在。在遠(yuǎn)離祖國的情況下這樣做不容易，距離并不是和祖國相隔有多遠(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，畢竟還能做點(diǎn)聯(lián)系，學(xué)點(diǎn)東西。袂 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，讓他們看一眼美國獨(dú)立戰(zhàn)爭的遺址。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歷史虛幻性的印象。蔓76個(gè)月后，

26、我們吃飯時(shí)在飯桌上回憶起參觀的情景，我問路易絲美國獨(dú)立戰(zhàn)爭是怎么一回事。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)。 “啊， ” 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)爭是英國人和美國人打仗，而且打仗也許是為了奴隸制。箍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。路易絲告訴我們法國大革命發(fā)生在啟蒙運(yùn)動末期，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“二世 ”，或者 “三世 "，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)