urban myths or urban legends课文翻译

Urbn myths or Urban legends课文翻译

都市神话还是都市传奇Urbn myths or Urban legends?

London has the most extensive netvork of underground tunnels in the world. But for | some inhabitants, the tunnels are moe than just convenient- they live in them. The London Subterrancans are a race of people who live ben eath the srees. They're human, but they don't speak English, and they have their own cutoms. Occasionally, a few of them come to the surface. They only appar at night through the drains in a dark backstee and if they hea r foseps, they hide in a dark llyway and only come out when it's quiet a gan. And before sunise, they go back under ground. Very few Londoners lave seen them, but the friend of a friend has seen them several times.伦敦有着世界上最为庞大的地下隧道网络。但是对某些伦敦居民来说，隧道不仅仅给他们的生活提供了便利一一他们还以此为家。伦牧地下人是生活在街道下面的一族。他们属于人类，却不会说英语，他们有自己的风俗习惯。他们中的个别人偶尔也会到地面上来。他们只有在晚上才会从一条黑魑魑的偏僻街道的下水道里钻出来，到地面上活动，而且一-听到脚步声，他们就会躲到黑暗的小巷子里藏身，直到没有了动静才出来。日出之前，他们又会回到地下。没有几个伦敦人真正见过他们，但是某人的朋友的朋友曾经见过他们好几次。

True story? Probably not. I's a classic example of what's called inmany languages an urban myth. An urban myth is a story you hear byword of mouth. It usually describes something which might havehappened, an apocr yphal, second-hand story told as if it were true, just

about plausible enough to be credible, about some event which hassupposedly happened to a real person. Factual or not, it's likely to rely onexpert st ortelling and on a trustworthy source, such as "It happened tomy brother's friend'smother".这是真事吗?很可能不是。这是在很多语言中被称为都市神话的一个典型例子。都市神话是你通过口口相传听来的故事，讲述的是一些可能发生过的事情，一个杜摸的，从别处听来的故事，却被当作真事来讲，听起来像真的似的。不论是真是假，都市神话依赖的是讲故事的技巧以及来源的可靠性，比如“这件事发生在我弟弟的朋友的母亲的身上。”

However, some academics claim that urban myths are not really myths. According to them, a myth is a story which held some religious orsp iritual significance for those who told it or listened in the past to it, and which contributed to the expression of shared beliefs and values.

However improbable a myth might be, it's always true for those w hobelong to that culture from which the myth comes.但是，有一些学者认为都市神话并非真正的神话。在他们看来，神话故事对于讲故事和过去听故事的人来说都有某种宗教或精神层面的意义，而且神话帮助人们表达共同的信仰和价值观。不管一一个神话看上去是多么匪夷所思，对于那些从属于这些文化的人来说，它们永远是真实可信的。

So should we use the term urban myths? Let's look at one of th emost durable of urban myths, The Vanishing Hitchhiker. The basic story

is that ofa driver alone at night on a dark, country road, who sees a yo ung

woman bitchhiking. The driver stops and offers her a lift. Soon the driverd rops the hitchiker off at her destination, and they say goodbye. But it'son ly when the driver stops later that he realizes the young woman has leftbe hind a coat with her wallet, or sometimes an old envelope in the pocket.