We tend to treat persons like goods. We even speak of the children "belonging" to theirparents. But nobody "belongs" to anyone else. Each person belongs to himself, and to God. Children are entrusted to their parents, and if their parents do not treat them properly, thestate has a right to remove them from their parents' trusteeship.
我们往往待人如物。我们甚至说孩子“属于”父母。但是谁也不“属于”谁。人都属于自己和上帝。孩子是托付给父母的,如果父母不善待他们,州政府就有权取消父母对他们的托管身份。
Most of us, when young, had the experience of a sweetheart being taken from us by somebodymore attractive and more appealing. At the time, we may have resented this intruder---butas we grew older, we recognized that the sweetheart had never been ours to begin with. It wasnot the intruder that "caused" the break, but the lack of a real relationship.
我们多数人年轻时都有过恋人被某个更有诱惑力、更有吸引力的人夺去的经历。在当时,我们兴许怨恨这位不速之客---但是后来长大了,也就认识到了心上人本来就不属于我们。并不是不速之客“导致了”决裂,而是缺乏真实的关系。
On the surface, many marriages seem to break up because of a "third party". This is, however, apsychological illusion. The other woman or the other man merely serves as a pretext fordissolving a marriage that had already lost its essential integrity.
从表面上看,许多婚姻似乎是因为有了“第三者”才破裂的。然而这是一种心理上的幻觉。另外那个女人,或者另外那个男人,无非是作为借口,用来解除早就不是完好无损的婚姻罢了。
Nothing is more futile and more self-defeating than the bitterness of spurned love, thevengeful feeling that someone else has "come between" oneself and a beloved. This is always adistortion of reality, for people are not the captives or victims of others---they are free agents, working out their own destinies for good or for ill.
因失恋而痛苦,因别人“插足”于自己与心上人之间而图报复,是最没有出息、最自作自受的乐。这种事总是歪曲了事实真相,因为谁都不是给别人当俘虏或牺牲品——人都是自由行事的,不论命运是好是坏,都由自己来作主。
But the rejected lover or mate cannot afford to believe that his beloved has freely turned awayfrom him--- and so he ascribes sinister or magical properties to the interloper. He calls him ahypnotist or a thief or a home-breaker. In the vast majority of cases, however, when a home isbroken, the breaking has begun long before any "third party" has appeared on the scene.
但是,遭离弃的情人或配偶无法相信她的心上人是自由地背离他的——因而他归咎于插足者心术不正或迷人有招。他把他叫做催眠师、窃贼或破坏家庭的人。然而,从大多数事例看,一个家的破裂,是早在什么“第三者”出现之前就开始了的。
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