微博:长颈鹿在瑞士
公众号:changjingluzairuishi
欢迎大家到这两个地方关注我,在那里可以跟长颈鹿有更直接的交流,并且有的时候长颈鹿会在那里送出小礼物哦~比如从瑞士寄给你的明信片,小礼物神马的~
----------------我是萌萌的正文分割线-------------------------------
Shakespeare with Chinese Characteristics
中国特色的莎士比亚
IN FULING I taught English and American literature. I also had classes in writing and speaking, but most of my time was spent teaching lit. There were two sections of third-year students, and I taught each of them four hours a week. Our textbooks started with Beowulf and continued through twelve centuries and across the ocean to William Faulkner’s 'A Rose for Emily.”
在涪陵我教英国和美国文学。我也会上写作和口语的课,但大多数时间花在了教文学上。这儿有两个班的的三年级学生,我每个星期各教四个小时。我们的课本从贝奥武夫开始,穿越十二个世纪和一个大洋,以福克纳的“献给艾米莉的一朵玫瑰”收梢。
lit literature的缩写,非正式用语
It was a great deal of ground to cover. The Peace Corps suggested that we should not be too ambitious with such courses, given our students’ backgrounds and the fact that many of them had relatively low levels of English comprehension.
有非常多的内容要覆盖。和平队给我的建议说不要对这类课程抱太多的雄心,考虑到我们的学生们的背景,他们的英文基础有限。
It was recommended that we use literature to introduce important grammatical points, but this was an idea I didn’t like. I knew that I was an uninspired teacher of the language’s technical aspects, and I also knew that Shakespeare is an even worse grammar instructor than me. And I had studied literature for too long to use it as a segue to the present perfect tense.
(和平队)建议说我们应当借用文学来做重要的语法知识练习,但这个主意我不喜欢。我知道在语言的文法方面,我不算一个很好的老师,而莎士比亚则会更糟。我学文学太久了,很难把当它当作引入现在完成时的工具。
segue [ˈsegweɪ] n.(用作指示语)继续, vi.[音乐]延续,不间断;连续,不停顿
But I still had some concerns. The students, after all, were from the countryside, and it was true that their English—and especially their spoken English—was sometimes poor. On the first day of class I asked them to jot down the titles of any English-language books they had read, either in the original or translation, and I asked what they would like to study in my course:
但我还是有一些担忧。这些学生毕竟是从乡下来的,而的确,他们的英语,尤其是口语,有时很不行。上课的头一天,我让他们写下所读过的英文书的标题,英文或翻译的都可,我还问了他们想从我的课
上学到些什么:
jot [dʒɒt] vt.匆忙记下;略记;摘要记载下来
I enjoyed Hai Ming Wei, The Old Man and the Sea. I mostly want to study Hai Ming Wei.
我喜欢海明威,老人与海。我最想学海明威。
I mostly want to study Helen Keller’s and Shakespeare’s work.
我最想学海伦凯勒和莎士比亚。
I’ve read Jack London and his The Call of Wild, Dickens and his The Tale of Two Cities, O. Henry and his The Last Leaf, Shakespeare and his King Lear(and that made me burst into tears).
我想读杰克伦敦和他的荒野的呼唤,狄更斯和他的双城记,欧亨利和他的最后的叶子,莎士比亚和他的李尔王(他让我哭了)。
I’m most interested in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I don’t know which periods it belonged to. I like Jane. I think she is a very common woman, but she has a uncommon seeking. She dared to resist wife of mother’s brother and brother of cousinship. She is a progressive lady.
我最感兴趣的是简爱,夏洛特布朗特作的。我不晓得那是哪个年代的作品。我喜欢简。她是个普通的女人,有着不普通的追求。她敢于反抗舅舅的老婆,反抗她的表哥。她是个进步的女性。
Shakespeare was the greatest of all English authors. I had read some of his works. Romeo and Juliet is a dire story. Romeo and Juliet love each other. But there was revengefulness between their families.
莎士比亚是最伟大的英文作家。我读过他的一些书。罗密欧与朱丽叶是一个可怕的故事。罗密欧和朱丽叶彼此相爱。但他们的家庭相互憎恨。
dire [ˈdaɪə(r)] adj.可怕的,恐怖的;悲惨的;迫切的,极端的
And I have read 'Farewell, Weapons,' which was written by Hemingway.
我还读过“永别了,武器”,海明威写的。
He was a tough man, but he killed himself.
他是个很坚强的人,但他自杀了。
I looked at their responses and thought: I can work with this. For the first week I assigned them Beowulf.
我看到这些回应,心想,我能行。第一个星期,我布置了贝奥武夫。
I TAUGHT on the fifth floor of the main teaching building. There were forty-five students to a class, all of them pressed close together behind old 25 wooden desks. The room was their responsibility. They washed the blackboards between classes, and twice a week they cleaned the floor and windows.
我在住教学楼的五楼上课。班上有四十五个学生,他们全都坐在木头的课桌后,相互紧紧挨着。教室乃是他们的责任。在课与课之间他们要清洁黑板,每两个星期要清洗地板和窗户。
If the cleaning wasn’t adequate, the class was fined. That was how everything worked at the college—students were fined for missing morning exercises, for skipping class, for failing examinations, for returning late to their dormitories at night. Very few of them had extra money to spend in this way, and so twice a week the classrooms were diligently and thoroughly cleaned.
如果清洁做得不够,整个班就要被罚款。这就是学校的方式——学生们错过了早操要罚款,旷课要罚款,考试没通过要罚,夜里归宿迟了要罚。很少人有闲钱花在这些方面,是以每两个星期,他们会很勤奋彻底地清洁教室。
Each room contained about fifteen more students than could comfortably fit, and it would have been claustrophobic if I hadn’t been able to teach with the door open. Fortunately, there was plenty of space outside—the classrooms were high above the Wu River, the same view that I had from my apartment’s balcony: the fast-running Wu, the jumbled city, the muddyYangtze and the dark shape of White Flat Mountain.
相对教室的空间而言,学生数量太多了,大约多了十五个以上,如果我上课时不把门打开的话,可能会感到幽闭恐惧症。幸好,外头有更多的空间——教室高高据于乌江之上,跟我从我的公寓阳台上所看到的一样:快速流淌的乌江,乱糟糟的城市,泥沙俱下的长江和白坪山的暗影。
claustrophobic [ˌklɔ:strəˈfəʊbɪk] adj.(患)幽闭恐怖症的,导致幽闭恐怖症的;令人不适地被关闭或被包围的; n.幽闭恐怖症患者
jumbled [ˈdʒʌmbəld] adj.混乱的,乱七八糟的; v.混杂( jumble的过去式和过去分词 );(使)混乱;使混乱;使杂乱
That was what I saw to my left as I taught, and at the beginning it was distracting. But there was always a good breeze coming off the rivers, which kept the room from becoming unbearably hot. If things got quiet—if I had the class doing a writing assignment, or if they were working smoothly in small groups—I’d gaze out the door at the traffic on the rivers: the little two-man fishing sampans, the crowded ferries crossing from one bank to the other, the barges bringing coal and gravel north from the upper Wu, the big white tourist boats slipping down the Yangtze toward the Gorges. There was something deeply satisfying about teaching with that view, and I liked watching the routines of the city in the same way that I liked listening to the routines of the college. During class I used to look down at the traffic teeming on the rivers, at all of the fishermen and barge captains and dockworkers, and I’d think: I’m working, too. The city was moving and I was a small part of it.
是以我上课时常往左边看,开始时这有点分心。但江上总有清风吹来,让教室里不至于热得难以忍受。在安静的时候——若我给班上安排了写作功课或他们小组学习时——我会透过门,望向江中的交通:那小小的两人渔船,两岸间挤慢了乘客的轮渡,从乌江的上游向北运送石砾和煤炭的平底货船,从长江顺流而下三峡的白色大客轮。边上课边欣赏这样的景致叫我深感满足,我喜欢观看城市的日常生活,就和我喜欢倾听学校的日常生活那样。上课时我往江上看去,看那渔夫,货船的船员,码头的工人,想道,我也在工作。城市在运行之中,我也是其中之一。
sampan [ˈsæmpæn] n.舢板,小船
barge [bɑ:dʒ] n.驳船;游艇;游览汽车
gravel [ˈgrævl] n.沙砾,碎石;砾石;[医]结石
teem [ti:m] vi.充满,富于;倾注
dockworker [‘dɒkwɜ:kə(r)] n.码头工人