2007年《高级英语》课文逐句翻译（9）

　　电视的毛病

　　The Trouble with Television

　　要摆脱电视的影响是困难的。

　　It is difficult to escape the influence of television.

　　假如统计的平均数字适用于你的话，那么你到20岁的时候就至少看过2万个小时的电视了，从那以后每生活10年就会增加1万小时。

　　If you fit the statistical averages， by the age of 20 you will have been exposed to at least 20，000 hours of television. You can add 10，000 hours for each decade you have lived after the age of 20.

　　笔起看电视，美国人只有在工作和睡眠上花时间更多。

　　The only things Americans do more than watch television are work and sleep.

　　稍微计算一下，使用这些时间的一部分能够做些什么。

　　Calculate for a moment what could be done with even a part of those hours.

　　听说一个大学生仅用5000小时就可以获得学士学位。

　　Five thousand hours， I am told， are what a typical college undergraduate spends working on a bachelor's degree.

　　在1万个小时内你能学成一个天文学家或工程师，流利掌握几门外语。

　　In 10，000 hours you could have learned enough to become an astronomer or engineer. You could have learned several languages fluently.

　　如果你感兴趣的话，你可能读希腊原文的荷马史诗或俄文版的陀思妥耶夫斯基的作品；如果对此不感兴趣，那你可以徒步周游世界，撰写一本游记。

　　If it appealed to you， you could be reading Homer in the original Greek or Dostoyevsky in Russian. If it didn't， you could have walked around the world and written a book about it.

　　电视的毛病在于它分散了人们的注意力。

　　The trouble with television is that it discourages concentration.

　　生活中几乎一切有趣的、能给人以满足的事都需要一定的建设性的、持之以恒的努力。

　　Almost anything interesting and rewarding in life requires some constructive， consistently applied effort.

　　即使是我们中间那些最迟钝、最没有天才的人也能做出一些事来，而这些事使那些从来不在任何事情上专心致志的人感到像是奇迹一般。

　　The dullest， the least gifted of us can achieve things that seem miraculous to those who never concentrate on anything.

　　但电视鼓励我们不做出任何努力，它向我们兜售即时的满足，它给我们提供娱乐，使我们只想娱乐，让时间在毫无痛苦中消磨掉。

　　But Television encourages us to apply no effort. It sel

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