新标准大学英语3 UNIT1-We are all dying原文+译文

We are all dying我们都在走向死亡

1.I have some good news and some bad news for you (as the joke goes). The bad news – and I'm very sorry to be the bearer – is that we are all dying. It's true. I've checked it out. In fact, I've double – and triple-checked it. I've had it substantiated and, well, there's no easy way to say it. we are dying. It's something that I always kind of knew, but never really chose to think about too much. But the fact is, within the next 70 or 80 years – depending on how old you are and how long you last – we are all going to be either coffin dwellers or trampled ash in the rose garden of some local cemetery. We may not even last that long. After all, we never quite know when the hooded, scythe-carrying, bringer-of-the-last-breath might come-a-calling. It could be sooner than we'd like. I have watched death from the sidelines, quite recently in fact, and nothing underlines the uncertainty and absolute frailty of humanity like the untimely exit of a friend.

我给你带来一条好消息， 还有一条坏消息（正如笑话所说的） 。 坏消息是：我们都在走向死亡——很抱歉是我带来了这条坏消息。这可是真的，我已经核实过了，事实上我已经三番五次地核实过了。我也找到了证据，可是要说出这个事实实在是不容易，不过我们的确都在走向死亡。这件事我过去多少知道一点，但不愿过多地去想它。但事实是，再过70年或80年——这要取决于你现在年龄有多大，寿命有多长——我们都会躺到棺材里，或者变成某个地方公墓玫瑰园里的灰尘，被人践踏。我们甚至活不到这么老。毕竟，我们从来就不清楚那位戴着头巾、手持长柄镰刀、命人吐出最后一口气的死神什么时候会来召唤我们，有可能会比我们希望的要早。其实我最近就曾经从局外人的角度观察过死亡，没有什么比朋友的早逝更能表明人生的无常和生命的脆弱了。 2 Scary. 真可怕。

3 Now that I have depressed you, here's the good news. Knowing that we are all budding crypt-kickers takes away all the uncertainty of life. We already know how the story ends. The prologue and epilogue are already typed in. All that's left is the middle bit and that's down to us. We get to choose the meat of the story。 我已经让你够沮丧的了，现在告诉你那条好消息吧：知道了我们都在走向坟墓，我们就不再有人生无常的感觉了。我们已经知道故事的结局，开场白和尾声也都确定了，剩下的就是介于两者之间的那些事儿了，这些事是我们作得了主的。我们必须挑选故事情节。

4. So, all those plans that you have on the back burner, you know, the great things you're going to do with your life \"when the time is right\"? Well, the time is never quite right, I find. It needs to be brought forward and done now, this minute, pronto, in a hurry, as quick as your little legs will carry you. The novel that you want to write, the trip to the Grand Canyon you've always planned to take, your mind's-eye dream-job, the West End play you want to direct – you have to do them now. We're dying, see. It's official.

所以，那些被你搁置在一边的计划，即那些“当时机成熟时”你会用生命来完成的伟大事业怎么办呢？可我发现时机永远不会有成熟的时候。时间必须提前，必须马上行动，就在这一刻，不能拖延，必须赶紧，而且越快越好。不管是你想写的小说，还是你一直在筹划的去大峡谷的旅行，你心仪的工作，你想导演的伦敦西区话剧，你都必须现在就去做。知道吗？我们都在走向死亡。这是已经定了的。

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5 So putting your dreams on the back burner until the circumstances are right means that they'll probably never be realized. Our only regrets in life are the things we don't do. We owe it to ourselves to go out and do them now before it's too late. Tomorrow? It's all a lie; there isn't a tomorrow. There's only a promissory note that we are often not in a position to cash. It doesn't even exist. When you wake up in the morning it'll be today again and all the same rules will apply.

因此，把自己的梦想搁置起来，等到时机成熟之后才开始实现它，这就意味着梦想可能永远都不会实现。人生的遗憾莫过于还有事情没有做， 我们有必要现在就去做这些事， 不然就晚了。明天行吗？明天只是个谎言；根本就没有什么明天，只有一张我们常常无法兑现的期票。明天甚至压根儿就不存在。你早上醒来时又是另一个今天了，同样的规则又可以全部套用。

Tomorrow is just another version of now, an empty field that will remain so unless we start planting some seeds. Your time, which is ticking away as we speak (at about 60 seconds a minute chronologically; a bit faster if you don't invest your time wisely), will be gone and you'll have nothing to show for it but regret and a rear-view mirror full of \"could haves\

明天只是现在的另一种说法，是一块空地，除非我们开始在那里播种，否则它永远都是空地。你的时间会流逝（时间就在我们说话的当下嘀嗒嘀嗒地走着，每分钟顺时针走60秒，如果你不能很好地利用它，它会走得更快些），而你没有取得任何成就来证明它的存在，唯独留下遗憾，留下一面后视镜，上面写满了“本可以做”、“本应该做”、“本来会做”的事情。

6 Have you ever noticed when you go to a buffet restaurant how they give you a bowl the size of a saucer and then say, \"Have as much salad as you like but you can only go up once\"? Life is like that small salad bowl. Like the hungry people waiting for their main course, we can cram as much into that tiny bowl as we can carry. I love watching people ingeniously stack the cucumber around the side of the bowl – like they're filling a skip – and then cramming it so high that they have to hire a forklift truck to get it back to the table. They're not greedy. They just know that they only have one shot at it.

你是否注意过，自助餐馆里服务员会给你一个茶杯碟大小的碗，并告诉你：“你想盛多少沙拉都可以，但只能盛一次”？生活就像那只盛沙拉的碗，我们可以和那些饥肠辘辘等着主菜的人一样在那只小碗里装上尽可能多的沙拉。我喜欢看人们巧妙地把黄瓜片插在沙拉碗的四周——就像往废料桶里堆东西那样——把沙拉堆得老高老高，最后不得不雇个叉车把沙拉拉回餐桌。他们不是贪婪，而是明白自己只有一次机会。

7 Fill your bowl. We come this way but once so let's make the best of the short stay. Like the once-a-year holiday to Florida or Spain. Fit as much into the short time there as you can. Make sure that you go back home knackered because you got so much done.

把你的碗盛满吧，我们在这个世上只走一遭，既然来了就好好利用这短暂的一生，就像我们牢牢抓住一年一度去佛罗里达或西班牙度假的机会那样。在短暂的人生中填入尽可能多的内容吧。确保每天回家后你都会因为干了很多事而感到精疲力尽。

8 If you don't want to be a postman then don't be a postman. Give it up and be a

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painter, a writer, a tobogganist, whatever. Just don't be something that you patently do not want to be.

如果你不想当邮递员就别当邮递员，放弃这份工作去当个画家、作家、滑雪运动员，干什么都行。千万不要干自己明明就不喜欢的事情。

9 And now is the time, not tomorrow. There is no time like the present. If you can't have what you want this very second the least you can do is start the journey now, this minute, while the inspiration is high. We all have the same amount of minutes, we all get the same 24 hours as Branson and Gates. It's just what we do with our time, how we invest it, that determines where our lives may lead.

现在就开始行动吧，不要等到明天。没有比现在更好的时间了。如果在这一刻你不能得到你想得到的东西，你至少可以趁灵感还在的时候马上开始你的旅程，即刻起程。我们有同样多的时间，我们和布兰森以及盖茨一样，每天都有24个小时。决定我们这一生成败的是我们把时间花在什么事情上，是我们如何来分配时间。

10 So what I'm thinking is (and this is not molecular science) if we are dying and our allotted time is finite, why the hell aren't we doing all the things we want to do NOW? What's all this back-burner stuff? And why are we all waiting for the right time when we already know that the right time isn't going to show? The right time is the cheque that's permanently in the post, it never arrives. It's the girl who keeps us standing at the corner of the Co-op looking like a spanner. No amount of clock watching will change the inevitable. She's stood us up.

因此，我正在琢磨的是（这可不是分子科学） ：如果我们正在走向死亡，而且分配给我们的时间是有限的，那么我们到底有什么理由不现在就去做所有想做的事情呢？这些被暂时搁置的事情到底又是什么呢？为什么明明知道成熟的时机永远不会到来，而我们却都还在等待呢？成熟的时机是一张支票，它永远都在邮寄的路上，永远都不会到来。它就是那让我们在合作社旁边像桥墩那样站着傻等的女孩，我们再怎么看表也无济于事，她失约了。 11 We wait; the right time never arrives.

我们傻等着，而成熟的时机却永远不会到来。

12 So I say stop waiting and meet providence halfway. Start filling your life with the riches on offer so that when the reaper arrives, you'll have achieved so much, crammed your time so full that he'll fall asleep waiting for your life to flash before your eyes.

所以我要说，别再等待了，走到路上去迎接天意。开始给你的生活增添所有你能得到的财富，这样当死神到来时，你已经完成了那么多事，你的一生是那么的充实。当生命在你眼前回放时，死神等着等着就睡着了。

13 Act now or your time will elapse and you'll end up as a sepia-coloured relative that no one can put a name to in a dusty photo album. 现在就行动吧，不然你的时间会流逝的，而你最终将成为尘封的相册里的一位谁都叫不上名字的灰头土脸的穷亲戚。

14 Better to leave a biography as thick as a whale omelette than an epitaph.

还是给人间留下一本像大煎蛋饼那么厚的传记吧，那可比仅仅留下一块碑铭强。 15 \"Joe Smith ... hmmm. He didn't do much, did he?\" “乔 ·史密斯…… 嘿嘿，他没干过什么，对吧？”

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