全新版大学英语第二版综合教程第四册Unit 8Go TravelingIn the Jungle.docx

1、全新版大学英语第二版综合教程第四册Unit 8 Go TravelingIn the Jungle Annie Dillard tells of her visit to the Napo River in the heart of the Ecuadorian jungle, one of natures most unspoiled places. She describes the beauty of the forest and her admiration for the people who live there. 安妮?迪拉德讲述了自己游览厄瓜多尔丛林深处的纳波河的经历。那是大自

2、然遭受人为破坏最少的地区之一。她描述了森林之美以及对生活在那里的土著人的歆慕之情。In the Jungle在丛林中Annie Dillard安妮?迪拉德1 Like any out-of-the-way place, the Napo River in the Ecuadorian jungle seems real enough when you are there, even central. Out of the way of what? I was sitting on a stump at the edge of a bankside palm-thatch village, in

3、 the middle of the night, on the headwaters of the Amazon. Out of the way of human life, tenderness, or the glance of heaven? 如同所有僻远之地，当你身临其境时，厄瓜多尔丛林深处的纳波河就显得那么真实，甚至有中心要地的感觉。那么僻远之地远离什么呢?夜半时分，在亚马逊河的源头，我坐在一个树墩上，身后是傍水的棕榈叶作屋顶的小村落。远离人类活动，远离脉脉温情。或者说远离天堂的扫视?2 A nightjar in deep-leaved shadow called three l

4、ong notes, and hushed. The men with me talked softly: three North Americans, four Ecuadorians who were showing us the jungle. We were holding cool drinks and idly watching a hand-sized tarantula seize moths that came to the lone bulb on the generator shed beside us. 一只欧夜鹰在密密的树叶间发出三声长啼，旋即静默无声。和我一起的那些

5、男人轻声交谈着：3个北美人，4个为我们在丛林中带路的厄瓜多尔人。我们手里拿着清凉的饮料，悠闲地看着一只有手那么大小的狼蛛捕捉纷纷扑向我们身旁发电机棚屋上一个灯泡的飞虫3 It was February, the middle of summer. Green fireflies spattered lights across the air and illumined for seconds, now here, now there, the pale trunks of enormous, solitary trees. Beneath us the brown Napo River was

6、 rising, in all silence; it coiled up the sandy bank and tangled its foam in vines that trailed from the forest and roots that looped the shore. 时值2月，正当仲夏。绿莹莹的萤火虫在空中闪出光亮，一会儿这里照亮一下、一会儿那里照亮一下幽木巨树暗淡的树干。在我们下方，褐黄色的纳波河水正在涨潮。万籁俱寂：唯见河水沿着沙岸婉蜒流过，水沫裹挟在蔓生在森林里的藤蔓间以及盘绕岸边的树根上4 Each breath of night smelled sweet. E

7、ach star in Orion seemed to tremble and stir with my breath. All at once, in the thatch house across the clearing behind us came the sound of a recorder, playing a tune that twined over the village clearing, muted our talk on the bankside, and wandered over the river, dissolving downstream. 夜晚吸入的每口气

8、都沁人心脾。猎户星座里的每一颗星星似乎都因了我的呼吸而颤动。突然，我们身后空地旁的茅屋里，传出了录音机的声音，一首乐曲在村子空地之上缭绕，减弱了我们在河畔谈话的声音，然后又传至河面，顺流飘去。5 This will do, I thought. This will do, for a weekend, or a season, or a home. 人生遇此情景足矣，我暗想。在此度过周末足矣，在此小住数月足矣，在此安家足矣。6 Later that night I loosed my hair from its braids and combed it smooth not for mysel

9、f, but so the village girls could play with it in the morning. 夜半时分，我散开辫子，把头发梳理得平平整整不是为我自己，而是为了村里那些姑娘早上可以玩我的头发7 We had disembarked at the village that afternoon, and I had slumped on some shaded steps, wishing I knew some Spanish or some Quechua so I could speak with the ring of little girls who wer

10、e alternately staring at me and smiling at their toes. I spoke anyway, and fooled with my hair, which they were obviously dying to get their hands on, and laughed, and soon they were all braiding my hair, all five of them, all fifty fingers, all my hair, even my bangs. And then they took it apart an

11、d did it again, laughing, and teaching me Spanish nouns, and meeting my eyes and each others with open delight, while their small brothers in blue jeans climbed down from the trees and began kicking a volleyball around with one of the North American men. 我们是那天下午在这个小村卜岸的，我垂着头坐在树荫下的踏级上，真希望自己会说几句西班牙语或盖

12、丘亚语，好跟围成一圈的小女孩说说话，她们一会儿看看我，一会儿又低头看着自己的脚趾窃笑。我还是开口了，笑着抚弄自己的头发，她们显然也都非常想碰碰我的头发。没过一会儿，她们就给我编辫子了，她们5个人，50个手指，我是一头辫子，连留海也编成了辫子。她们拆了编，编了拆，一边笑一边教我西班牙语单词，望望我，又相互对望，个个喜形于色。她们那些穿着牛仔服的小弟弟们都爬下树来，跟一个北美人踢排球玩耍。8 Now, as I combed my hair in the little tent, another of the men, a free-lance writer from Manhattan, was

13、 talking quietly. He was telling us the tale of his life, describing his work in Hollywood, his apartment in Manhattan, his house in Paris. It makes me wonder, he said, what Im doing in a tent under a tree in the village of Pompeya, on the Napo River, in the jungle of Ecuador. After a pause he added

14、, It makes me wonder why Im going back. 此刻，我在低矮的帐篷里梳理着头发，另一个北美人，一位来自曼哈顿的自由作家，正在轻声说话。他在向我们讲述他人生的故事，讲述他在好莱坞的工作、在曼哈顿的公寓、在巴黎的家“我不由纳闷，”他说，“在厄瓜多尔的丛林里，在纳波河上，在庞培亚小村，在树下的帐篷里，自己在干什么。”他顿了顿，接着说：“我不由寻思， 自己为什么要回去。”9 The point of going somewhere like the Napo River in Ecuador is not to see the most spectacular any

15、thing. It is simply to see what is there. We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place. We might as well get a feel for the fringes and hollows in which life is lived, for the Amazon basin, which covers half a continent, and for the life that - there, like anywhere

16、 else - is always and necessarily lived in detail: on the tributaries, in the riverside villages, sucking this particular white-fleshed guava in this particular pattern of shade. 去厄瓜多尔纳波河这种地方不是为了观赏什么世界奇观，而只是去看一看那里有些什么。人生在世，唯有一次，我们不妨去感受一下那个地方。我们不妨去感受一下有生命生活其间的远方水乡山谷，去感受覆盖了半个大陆的亚马逊河流域，去感受那样一种生活在那里，一如在

17、别的地方那种必定总是琐碎的生活：在各条支流上，在临水的村落里，在有着独特形状的阴凉处吮吸着有白色浆果的独特的番石榴。10 What is there is interesting. The Napo River itself is wide and brown, opaque, and smeared with floating foam and logs and branches from the jungle. Parrots in flocks dart in and out of the light. Under the water in the river, unseen, are

18、anacondas - which are reputed to take a few village toddlers every year - and water boas, crocodiles, and sweet-meated fish. 那里的一切都趣味盎然。纳波河河面宽阔，河水混浊，呈褐黄色，浮沫以及丛林里来的木段和树枝翻浮其上。成群的鹦鹉忽而飞进树荫里，忽而飞入阳光里。水下潜伏着南美蟒蛇据说每年都要吞吃几名村童还有水蟒、鳄鱼，以及肉质鲜美的鱼类。11 Low water bares gray strips of sandbar on which the natives buil

19、d tiny palm-thatch shelters for overnight fishing trips. You see these extraordinarily clean people (who bathe twice a day in the river, and whose straight black hair is always freshly washed) paddling down the river in dugout canoes, hugging the banks. 水浅的地方露出灰茫茫的狭长沙洲，土著人在沙洲上为过夜的渔夫搭建了小小的棕榈茅舍。你能见到这些

20、清洁得出奇的人(他们在河里一天沐浴两次，满头直挺的黑发更是刚刚洗过)在独木舟里紧贴着河岸荡桨。12 Some of the Indians of this region, earlier in the century, used to sleep naked in hammocks. The nights are cold. Gordon Mac reach, an American explorer in these Amazon tributaries, reported that he was startled to hear the Indians get up at three in

21、 the morning. He was even more startled, night after night, to hear them walk down to the river slowly, half asleep, and bathe in the water. Only later did he learn what they were doing: they were getting warm. The cold woke them; they warmed their skins in the river, which was always ninety degrees

22、; then they returned to their hammocks and slept through the rest of the night. 在本世纪早期，这一地区的一些印第安人常常赤身睡在昂床里。夜晚颇凉。勘测亚马逊河支流的美国探险家戈登?麦克里奇曾记述说，他凌晨3点就听见印第安人起身，深感愕然。更令他惊奇的是，夜复一夜，他都听见他们半睡半醒地缓步走向河边，膛到河里洗起澡来。后来他才弄明白他们是在干什么：他们在取暖。凉意把他们冻醒，他们便到河里暖暖身子，因为河水保持90(华氏)度不变；随后他们再回到吊床上，睡到天亮。13 When you are inside the ju

23、ngle, away from the river, the trees vault out of sight. Butterflies, bright blue, striped, or clear-winged, thread the jungle paths at eye level. And at your feet is a swath of ants bearing triangular bits of green leaf. The ants with their leaves look like a wide fleet of sailing dinghies - but th

24、ey dont quit. In either direction they wobble over the jungle floor as far as the eye can see. 当你离开大河，深入丛林，满眼树木高耸入云。一眼望去，成群的蝴蝶穿过丛林小径，有宝蓝的，有条纹的，有纯色翅膀的。在脚下，则有一长列蚂蚁背负着三角形的绿叶碎片。负叶爬行的蚂蚁就像一支规模庞大、扬帆行驶的船队只是它们不会停歇。无论什么方向，都能看到它们在丛林的地面上摇摇摆摆地爬行。14 Long lakes shine in the jungle. We traveled one of these in dugo

25、ut canoes, canoes paddled with machete-hewn oars, or poled in the shallows with bamboo. Our part-Indian guide had cleared the path to the lake the day before; when we walked the path we saw where he had impaled the lopped head of a boa, open-mouthed, on a pointed stick by the canoes, for decoration.

26、 丛林中狭长的湖泊上波光闪闪。我们荡舟其上，划着用大砍刀砍削而成的木桨，在浅水处则以竹当篙。有着一半印第安血统的向导前一天已经辟出了通往湖泊的小路；我们在小路上行走时，看见他砍下作为装饰的蟒蛇头，张开大口，钉在独木舟边尖头枝条上。15 This lake was wonderful. Herons plodded the shores, kingfishers and cuckoos clattered from sunlight to shade, great turkeylike birds fussed in dead branches, and hawks hung overhead.

27、 There was all the time in the world. A turtle slid into the water. The boy in the bow of my canoe slapped stones at birds with a simple sling, a rubber thong and leather pad. He aimed brilliantly at moving targets, always, and always missed; the birds were out of range. He stuffed his sling back in

28、 his shirt. I looked around. 湖泊奇妙无比。苍鹭在岸边缓缓地迈着步子，翠鸟和杜鹃欢叫着从阳光里飞入树荫，火鸡模样的大鸟在枯枝间忙碌，鹰在头上盘旋。我们毋庸为时间担忧，可以从容地欣赏周围的一切。一只乌龟滑入水中。我乘坐的独木舟船头坐着个男孩，他用简陋的弹弓橡皮弹架和皮索发射石弹击打飞鸟。他摆出漂亮的架势瞄准飞鸟，却一次又一次地偏离目标：鸟总是飞出他的射程。他把弹弓塞回进衬衣内。我移开目光。16 The lake and river waters are as opaque as rainforest leaves; they are veils, blinds, pa

29、inted screens. You see things only by their effects. I saw the shoreline water heave above a thrashing paichi, an enormous black fish of these waters; one had been caught the previous week weighing 430 pounds. Piranha fish live in the lakes, and electric eels. I dangled my fingers in the water, figu

30、ring it would be worth it. 湖水与河水都如热带雨林中的树叶那样乳浊：那水是面纱，是窗帘，是画屏。你只能从表象看事物。我看到近岸的河水在起伏，上面翻腾着一条巨滑舌鱼，那是这一带水域出产的一种奇大的黑鱼；上一个星期捕获一条，重达430磅。湖里有水虎鱼，还有电鳗。我用手指在水里划着，心想即使被鱼咬一口也值得。17 We would eat chicken that night in the village, together with rice, onions and heaps of fruit. The sun would ring down, pulling dark

31、ness after it like a curtain. Twilight is short, and the unseen birds of twilight wistful, catching the heart. The two nuns in their dazzling white habits - the beautiful-boned young nun and the warm-faced old - would glide to the open cane-and-thatch schoolroom in darkness, and start the children s

32、inging. The children would sing in piping Spanish, high-pitched and pure; they would sing Nearer My God to Thee in Quechua, very fast. As the children became excited by their own singing, they left their log benches and swarmed around the nuns, hopping, smiling at us, everyone smiling, the nuns faces bursting in their cowls, and the clear-voiced children still singing, and the palm-leafed roofing stirred. The Napo River: it is not out of the way. It is in the way, catching sunlight the way a cup catches poured water; it is a bowl of sweet air, a basin of greenness,