英语专八翻译

追忆往事
原文：
The old lady had always been proud of the great rose-tree in her garden, and was fond of telling how
it had grown from a cutting she had brought years before from Italy, when she was first married. She and
her husband had been travelling back in their carriage from Rome ( it was before the time of railways )
and on a bad piece of road south of Siena they had broken down, and had been forced to pass the night
in a little house by the road-side. The accommodation was wretched of course; she had spent a
sleepless night, and rising early had stood, wrapped up, at her window, with the cool air blowing on her
face, to watch the dawn. She could still, after all these years, remember the blue mountains with the
bright moon above them, and how a far-off town on one of the peaks had gradually grown whiter and
whiter, till the moon faded, the mountains were touched with the pink of the rising sun, and suddenly the
town was lit as by an illumination, one window after another catching and reflecting the sun’s beam, till at
last the whole little city twinkled and sparkled up in the sky like a nest of stars

译文：
老太太总以自家花园里那棵高大的玫瑰树为荣.她非常喜欢告诉别人,数年前她初次结婚时从罗马带回
来的枝条,是如何长成如今这般高大的.那时,她与丈夫乘马车从罗马旅行归来(那时还没有火车),途经锡耶那
南部的崎岖路段时,马车坏了,他们被迫就宿于路边的小屋里.住宿条件当然非常差;她一夜未能安眠,一早便
起身穿好衣服,立于窗前,感受着扑面而来的席席凉风,等待着黎明的到来.事隔多年,她仍然记得那情景.明月
高悬在青山群峦之上.远处山峰上的小镇逐渐明亮起来,月亮慢慢消退,晨曦把群山涂得粉红.突然之间,一束
阳光照亮了城镇.城里的窗户相继明亮起来,反射出耀眼的光芒.最后,整个小城宛若繁星,在天空中不停闪烁.




探讨死亡

原文：
世上只有一种愿望可以实现,也仅有一种事物绝对能得到,那便是死亡.但因身处境地的不同,没人能告
诉我们是否死得其所.
我们不停向着梦想前进,不肯稍作休息,这形成了一幅奇异的画面:不知疲倦,勇于冒险的先锋.的确,我们
永远不会达到目标,甚至目的地根本就不存在;即使活上几百年,被赋予神的力量,我们最终也不能接近目标多
少.啊辛劳的双手! 啊,不知疲倦的双脚,一直不停地奔走,却不知要到何方.不久,你便会发现,你必须登上某些
显著的山头,然而在不远处,在夕阳的照耀下,你会看到黄金国的尖顶.身处于幸福之中,你却没有觉察:旅行远
比抵达要充满乐趣;真正的成功就在于奋斗.

译文：

There is only one wish realisable on the earth; only one thing that can be perfectly attained: Death.
And from a variety of circumstanc

es we have no one to tell us whether it be worth attaining.
A strange picture we make on our way to our chimaeras, ceaselessly marching, grudging ourselves
the time for rest; indefatigable, adventurous pioneers. It is true that we shall never reach the goal; it is
even more than probable that there is no such place; and if we lived for centuries and were endowed with
the powers of a god, we should find ourselves not much nearer what we wanted at the end. O toiling
hands of mortals! O unwearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you
must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry
the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessednes; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.



成就的里程碑

原文：
A young fellow recently finished the works of Thomas Carlyle, winding up, if we remember aright,
with the ten note-books upon Frederick the Great. "What!" cried the young fellow, in consternation, "is
there no more Carlyle? Am I left to the daily papers?" A more celebrated instance is that of Alexander,
who wept bitterly because he had no more worlds to subdue. And when Gibbon had finished the
DECLINE AND FALL, he had only a few moments of joy; and it was with a "sober melancholy" that he
parted from his labours.

译文：
最近，一位年轻人读完了托马斯*卡莱尔的著作。如果我没记错的话，关于腓特列大帝的笔记他记了整
整十本。“什么？”这个年轻人惊恐地叫道：“没有卡莱尔的书可读了？那我只能看看日报了？” 最有名的例
子是亚历山大，他因为已没有国家供他征服而号啕大哭。 当吉本完成《罗马帝国衰亡史》，也只不过高兴
了一时，然后带着清醒而又抑郁的心情，他向往日的劳动成果挥手作别。


进取的幸福
原文：
正是因为不停地追求进取，我们才感到生活幸福。一件事完成后，另一件随之而来，如此连绵不绝，
永无止境。对于往前看的人来说，眼前总有一番新天地。虽然我们蜗居于这颗小行星上，整日忙于锁事且
生命短暂，但我们生来就有不尽的希望，如天上繁星，遥不可及。只要生命犹在，希望便会不止。真正的
幸福在于怎样开始，而不是如何结束，在于我们的希翼，而并非拥有。

译文：
We live in an ascending scale when we live happily, one thing leading to another in an endless series.
There is always a new horizon for onward-looking men, and although we dwell on a small planet,
immersed in petty business and not enduring beyond a brief period of years, we are so constituted that
our hopes are inaccessible, like stars, and the term of hoping is prolonged until the term of life. To be truly
happy is a question of how we begin and no

t of how we end, of what we want and not of what we have.

渴望

原文：
渴望是永远的乐趣，一笔如地产般真实稳固的财富，用之不尽，取之不竭。每年我们都会因为拥有渴
望而充满活力。一个人如有许多希望，精神便会富足。人生只不过是一场单调乏味且编导拙劣的戏，除非
我们对这戏有些兴趣;对于既没有艺术细胞也没有科学细胞的人来说，这个世界只不过是各种颜色的堆积，
或者是一条崎岖小路，一不小心就会摔伤小腿。
译文：
An aspiration is a joy for ever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can
never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity. To have many of these
is to be spiritually rich. Life is only a very dull and ill-directed theatre unless we have some interests in the piece; and to those who have neither art nor science, the world is a mere arrangement of colours, or a
rough footway where they may very well break their shins.

眼睛
原文：
It is in virtue of his own desires and curiosities that any man continues to exist with even patience,
that he is charmed by the look of things and people, and that he wakens every morning with a renewed
appetite for work and pleasure. Desire and curiosity are the two eyes through which he sees the world in
the most enchanted colours: it is they that make women beautiful or fossils interesting: and the man may
squander his estate and come to beggary, but if he keeps these two amulets he is still rich in the
possibilities of pleasure.

译文：
正是因为希望与好奇，我们才会以加倍的耐心继续生存，才会着迷于纷繁复杂、多姿多彩的人或事，
早晨醒来才会以崭新的热情投入新一天的工作和娱乐。希望和好奇是人观看这绚丽迷人的世界的一双眼睛：
正是这双眼睛使得女人美丽妩媚，又使顽石妙趣横生 。一个人可以倾家荡产，沦为乞丐，可是只要他还有
这两个“护身符”，他就仍然可能拥有无限的欢乐。


婚姻的旅程

原文：
当你步入婚姻的殿堂,你可能认为已经爬到了山顶,剩下的只是悠闲地沿着平缓的山坡下山.然而,这只是
恋爱的结束,婚姻的开始.拥有一颗骄傲而又叛逆的心,坠入爱河与赢得爱情都是难事;但维持爱情也很重要,
夫妻都应相敬如宾,互相关爱. 当真爱起始于圣坛之时, 夫妻之间便开始了一场智慧与慷慨的竞争,一场为了
一个不可能实现的理想而持续一生的奋斗. 不可能实现? 啊,当然不可能,因为他们不是一个人,而是两个呀.

译文：
Again, when you have married your wife, you would think you were got upon a hilltop, and might begin
to go downward by an easy slope. But you have only ended courting to begin marriage. Falling in love
and winning love are often

difficult tasks to overbearing and rebellious spirits; but to keep in love is also a
business of some importance, to which both man and wife must bring kindness and goodwill. The true
love story commences at the altar, when there lies before the married pair a most beautiful contest of
wisdom and generosity, and a life-long struggle towards an unattainable ideal. Unattainable? Ay, surely
unattainable, from the very fact that they are two instead of one.

独自生活

原文：
The Rewards of Living a Solitary Life
The other day an acquaintanceof mine, a gregarious and charming man, told me he had found
himself unexpectedly alone in New York for an hour or two between appointments. He went to the
Whitney and spent the "empty" time looking at things in solitary bliss. For him it proved to be a shock
nearly as great as falling in love to discover that he could enjoy himself so much alone.

译文：
独自生活的报偿
前些日子，我的一个熟人，一位热爱交际并很受欢迎的男士告诉我，他在纽约的两个约会之间偶然
有一两个小时的空闲，他便去了惠特尼博物馆，四处浏览着展品，无比幸福的度过了那些时光。发现自已
独自一人，也能如此的幸福，他感觉像坠入爱河那般震惊。