新标准大学英语综合3课文翻译(1-10单元30篇)概要

Unit 1-1

Catching crabs

1 In the fall of our final year, our mood changed. The relaxed atmosphere of the preceding summer semester, the impromptu ball games, the boating on the Charles River, the late-night parties had disappeared, and we all started to get our heads down, studying late, and attendance at classes rose steeply again. We all sensed we were coming to the end of our stay here, that we would never get a chance like this again, and we became determined not to waste it. Most important of course were the final exams in April and May in the following year. No one wanted the humiliation of finishing last in class, so the peer group pressure to work hard was strong. Libraries which were once empty after five o'clock in the afternoon were standing room only until the early hours of the morning, and guys wore the bags under their eyes and their pale, sleepy faces with pride, like medals proving their diligence.

2 But there was something else. At the back of everyone's mind was what we would do next, when we left university in a few months' time. It wasn't always the high flyers with the top grades who knew what they were going to do. Quite often it was the quieter, less impressive students who had the next stages of their life mapped out. One had landed a job in his brother's advertising firm in Madison Avenue, another had got a script under provisional acceptance in Hollywood. The most ambitious student among us was going to work as a party activist at a local level. We all saw him ending up in the Senate or in Congress one day. But most people were either looking to continue their studies, or to make a living with a white-collar job in a bank, local government, or anything which would pay them enough to have a comfortable time in their early twenties, and then settle down with a family, a mortgage and some hope of promotion.

3 I went home at Thanksgiving, and inevitably, my brothers and sisters kept asking me what I was planning to do. I didn't know what to say. Actually, I did know what to say, but I thought they'd probably criticize me, so I told them what everyone else was thinking of doing.

4 My father was watching me but saying nothing. Late in the evening, he invited me to his study. We sat down and he poured 抓螃蟹

1.大学最后一年的秋天，我们的心情变了。刚

刚过去的夏季学期的轻松氛围、即兴球赛、

查尔斯河上的泛舟以及深夜晚会都不见了踪

影，我们开始埋头学习，苦读到深夜，课堂

出勤率再次急剧上升。我们都觉得在校时间

不多了，以后再也不会有这样的学习机会了，所以都下定决心不再虚度光阴。当然，下一

年四五月份的期末考试最为重要。我们谁都

不想考全班倒数第一，那也太丢人了，因此

同学们之间的竞争压力特别大。以前每天下

午五点以后，图书馆就空无一人了，现在却

要等到天快亮时才会有空座，小伙子们熬夜

熬出了眼袋，他们脸色苍白，睡眼惺忪，却

很自豪，好像这些都是表彰他们勤奋好学的

奖章。

2.还有别的事情让大家心情焦虑。每个人都在

心里盘算着过几个月毕业离校之后该找份什

么样的工作。并不总是那些心怀抱负、成绩

拔尖的高材生才清楚自己将来要做什么，常

常是那些平日里默默无闻的同学早早为自己

下几个阶段的人生做好了规划。有位同学在

位于麦迪逊大道他哥哥的广告公司得到了一

份工作，另一位同学写的电影脚本已经与好

莱坞草签了合约。我们当中野心最大的一位

同学准备到地方上当一个政党活动家，我们

都预料他最终会当上参议员或国会议员。但

大多数同学不是准备继续深造，就是想在银

行、地方政府或其他单位当个白领，希望在

20出头的时候能挣到足够多的薪水，过上舒

适的生活，然后就娶妻生子，贷款买房，期

望升职，过安稳日子。

3.感恩节的时候我回了一趟家，兄弟姐妹们免

不了不停地问我毕业后有什么打算，我不知

道该说什么。实际上，我知道该说什么，但

我怕他们批评我，所以只对他们说了别人都

准备干什么。

4.父亲看着我，什么也没说。夜深时，他叫我

去他的书房。我们坐了下来，他给我们俩各

us a drink.

5 "So?" he said.

6 "Er ... so what?"

7 "So what do you really want to do?" he asked.

8 My father was a lawyer, and I had always assumed he wanted me to go to law school, and follow his path through life. So I hesitated.

9 Then I replied, "I want to travel, and I want to be a writer."

10 This was not the answer I thought he would expect. Travel? Where? A writer? About what? I braced myself for some resistance to the idea.

11 There was a long silence.

12 "Interesting idea," he said finally.

13 There was another long silence.

14 "I kind of wish I'd done that when I was your age."

15 I waited.

16 "You have plenty of time. You don't need to go into a career which pays well just at the moment. You need to find out what you really enjoy now, because if you don't, you won't be successful later."

17 "So how do I do this?"

18 He thought for a moment. Then he said, "Look, it's late. Let's take the boat out tomorrow morning, just you and me. Maybe we can catch some crabs for dinner, and we can talk more."

19 It was a small motor boat, moored ten minutes away, and my father had owned it for years. Early next morning we set off along the estuary. We didn't talk much, but enjoyed the sound of the seagulls and the sight of the estuary coastline and the sea beyond.

20 There was no surf on the coastal waters at that time of day, so it was a smooth half-hour ride until my father switched off the motor. "Let's see if we get lucky," he said, picked up a rusty,

倒了杯饮料。

5.“怎么样？”他问。

6.“啊，什么怎么样？”

7.“你毕业后到底想做什么？”他问道。

8.父亲是一名律师，我一直都认为他想让我去

法学院深造，追随他的人生足迹，所以我有

点儿犹豫。

9.过了会儿我回答说：“我想旅行，我想当个作

家。”

10.我想这不是他所期待的答案。旅行？去哪儿

旅行？当作家？写什么呀？我做好了遭到他

反对的心理准备。

11.接着是一段长长的沉默。

12.“这想法有点意思，”他最后说。

13.接着又是一段长长的沉默。

14.“我真有点希望自己在你这个年纪时能做这

些事儿。”

15.我在等他把话说完。

16.“你还有很多时间，不必急于进入一个暂时报

酬高的行业。你现在要搞清楚自己真正喜欢

什么，如果你弄不清楚，以后就不可能成功。”

17.“那我该怎么办？”

18.他想了一会儿。然后他说道：“瞧，现在太

晚了。我们明天早晨乘船出海去，就我们两

个。也许我们能抓点螃蟹当晚餐，我们还可

以再谈谈。”

19.那是一艘小小的机动船，停泊在离我们家约

十分钟路程的地方，是好些年前父亲买的。

次日清晨，我们沿着港湾出发，一路上没说

多少话，只是默默地欣赏着海鸥的叫声，还

有港湾沿岸和远处大海的景色。

20.在这个时候沿海水域没什么风浪，船平稳地

航行了半个小时之后父亲把船停了下来。他

mesh basket with a rope attached and threw it into the sea.

21 We waited a while, then my father stood up and said, "Give me a hand with this," and we hauled up the crab cage onto the deck.

22 Crabs fascinated me. They were so easy to catch. It wasn't just that they crawled into such an obvious trap, through a small hole in the lid of the basket, but it seemed as if they couldn't be bothered to crawl out again even when you took the lid off. They just sat there, waving their claws at you.

23 The cage was brimming with dozens of soft shell crabs, piled high on top of each other. "Why don't they try to escape?"

I wondered aloud to my father.

24 "Just watch them for a moment. Look at that one, there! He's trying to climb out, but every time the other crabs pull him back in," said my father.

25 And we watched. The crab climbed up the mesh towards the lid, and sure enough, just as it reached the top, one of its fellow crabs reached out, clamped its claw onto any available leg, and pulled it back. Several times the crab tried to defy his fellow captives, without luck.

26 "Now watch!" said my father. "He's starting to get bored with this game."

27 Not only did the crab give up its lengthy struggle to escape, but it actually began to help stop other crabs trying to escape. He'd finally chosen an easy way of life.

28 Suddenly I understood why my father had suggested catching crabs that morning. He looked at me. "Don't get pulled back by the others," he said. "Spend some time figuring out who you are and what you want in life. Look back at the classes you're taking, and think about which ones were most productive for you personally. Then think about what's really important to you, what really interests you, what skills you have. Try to figure out where you want to live, where you want to go, what you want to earn, how you want to work. And if you can't answer these questions now, then take some time to find out. Because if you don't, you'll never be happy."

29 He paused.

说：“咱们在这儿试试运气吧，”然后抓起一

个系上绳子的生了锈的网状篓子抛到海里。

21.我们等了一会儿，父亲站起来对我说，“来帮

我一把。” 于是我们一起将蟹篓子拽上了甲

板。

22.螃蟹让我着迷，它们太容易抓了。不仅仅是

因为它们顺着篓盖上的小孔爬进一个再明显

不过的陷阱，更因为即便盖子打开了，它们

似乎也懒得从里面爬出来，只会趴在那儿冲

你挥动着蟹钳。

23.篓子里挤满了几十只软壳螃蟹，一只压着一

只，堆得老高。“它们为什么不逃走啊？”我

满腹狐疑地问父亲。

24.“你先观察一下，看那只螃蟹，那儿！它想爬

出去，但每次都被同伴拽了回去，”父亲说。

25.我们接着观察。那只螃蟹顺着网眼向顶盖攀

援，每当它爬到顶盖时，果然就会有另一只

螃蟹举起蟹钳夹住它的腿把它拽下来。这只

螃蟹尝试了好几次想挣脱它的狱中同伴，但

都没能成功。

26.“快看！”父亲说。“它开始对这种游戏感到

不耐烦了。”

27.那只螃蟹不仅放弃了漫长的逃亡之战，而且

还帮着把其他想逃跑的螃蟹拽下来。它最终

选择了一种轻松的活法。

28.我忽然明白了父亲为什么提议早上来抓螃

蟹。他看着我说：“你可别被别人拽下来哦。

花点时间想想你是哪一类人，你这一生希望

得到什么，回顾一下你在大学修的课程，想

想有哪些课对你个人来说最有益。然后再想

想什么对你最重要，什么最使你感兴趣，你

有什么技能。琢磨一下你想在哪里生活，你

想去哪里，想挣多少钱，想做什么样的工作。

如果你现在不能回答这些问题，你就得花点

时间去找出答案。你不这样做的话，永远都

不会幸福的。”

29.他停顿了一下。

35 My father started the motor and we set off back home.

know, the great things you're going to do with your life "when the time is right"? Well, the time is never quite right, I find. It needs to be brought forward and done now, this minute, pronto, in a hurry, as quick as your little legs will carry you. The novel that you want to write, the trip to the Grand Canyon you've always planned to take, your mind's-eye dream-job, the West End play you want to direct—you have to do them now. We're dying, see. It's official.

5 So putting your dreams on the back burner until the circumstances are right means that they'll probably never be realized. Our only regrets in life are the things we don't do. We owe it to ourselves to go out and do them now before it's too late. Tomorrow? It's all a lie; there isn't a tomorrow. There's only a promissory note that we are often not in a position to cash. It doesn't even exist. When you wake up in the morning it'll be today again and all the same rules will apply. Tomorrow is just another version of now, an empty field that will remain so unless we start planting some seeds. Your time, which is ticking away as we speak (at about 60 seconds a minute chronologically; a bit faster if you don't invest your time wisely), will be gone and you'll have nothing to show for it but regret and a rear-view mirror full of "could haves", "should haves" and "would haves".

6 Have you ever noticed when you go to a buffet restaurant how they give you a bowl the size of a saucer and then say, "Have as much salad as you like but you can only go up once"? Life is like that small salad bowl. Like the hungry people waiting for their main course, we can cram as much into that tiny bowl as we can carry. I love watching people ingeniously stack the cucumber around the side of the bowl—like they're filling a skip—and then cramming it so high that they have to hire a forklift truck to get it back to the table. They're not greedy. They just know that they only have one shot at it.

7 Fill your bowl. We come this way but once so let's make the best of the short stay. Like the once-a-year holiday to Florida or Spain. Fit as much into the short time there as you can. Make sure that you go back home knackered because you got so much done.

8 If you don't want to be a postman then don't be a postman. Give it up and be a painter, a writer, a tobogganist, whatever. Just don't be something that you patently do not want to be.

9 And now is the time, not tomorrow. There is no time like the present. If you can't have what you want this very second the least 怎么办呢？可我发现时机永远不会有成熟的时候。时间必须提前，必须马上行动，就在这一刻，不能拖延，必须赶紧，而且越快越好。不管是你想写的小说，还是你一直在筹划的去大峡谷的旅行，你心仪的工作，你想导演的伦敦西区话剧，你都必须现在就去做。知道吗？我们都在走向死亡。这是已经定了的。

5.因此，把自己的梦想搁置起来，等到时机成熟之后才开始实现它，这就意味着梦想可能永远都不会实现。人生的遗憾莫过于还有事情没有做，我们有必要现在就去做这些事，不然就晚了。明天行吗？明天只是个谎言；根本就没有什么明天，只有一张我们常常无法兑现的期票。明天甚至压根儿就不存在。你早上醒来时又是另一个今天了，同样的规则又可以全部套用。明天只是现在的另一种说法，是一块空地，除非我们开始在那里播种，否则它永远都是空地。你的时间会流逝（时间就在我们说话的当下嘀嗒嘀嗒地走着，每分钟顺时针走60秒，如果你不能很好地利用它，它会走得更快些），而你没有取得任何成就来证明它的存在，唯独留下遗憾，留下一面后视镜，上面写满了“本可以做”、“本应该做”、“本来会做”的事情。

6.你是否注意过，自助餐馆里服务员会给你一个茶杯碟大小的碗，并告诉你：“你想盛多少沙拉都可以，但只能盛一次”？生活就像那只盛沙拉的碗，我们可以和那些饥肠辘辘等着主菜的人一样在那只小碗里装上尽可能多的沙拉。我喜欢看人们巧妙地把黄瓜片插在沙拉碗的四周——就像往废料桶里堆东西那样——把沙拉堆得老高老高，最后不得不雇个叉车把沙拉拉回餐桌。他们不是贪婪，而是明白自己只有一次机会。

7.把你的碗盛满吧，我们在这个世上只走一遭，既然来了就好好利用这短暂的一生，就像我们牢牢抓住一年一度去佛罗里达或西班牙度假的机会那样。在短暂的人生中填入尽可能多的内容吧。确保每天回家后你都会因为干了很多事而感到精疲力尽。

8.如果你不想当邮递员就别当邮递员，放弃这份工作去当个画家、作家、滑雪运动员，干什么都行。千万不要干自己明明就不喜欢的事情。

9.现在就开始行动吧，不要等到明天。没有比现在更好的时间了。如果在这一刻你不能得

worth at certain crucial stages of their lives? 2 The sad clown Jacques in Shakespeare's play As You Like It suggests that there are "seven ages" to a person's existence, and the phenomenon of rites of passage in almost every society confirms that we prefer to think of life in terms of these stages, such as childhood, middle age and old age. 3 A rite of passage is a formal recognition of change, imposed by society, of a move from one stage to another, the most universally recognized one being the transition between childhood and adulthood . This can take very different forms. For example, in Jewish tradition one of the most important moments in a person's life, marked by a religious ceremony and a family feast , is the Bar Mitzvah , when children become responsible for their actions —at the age of 13. This is roughly the same age that children can be held legally responsible in many countries. 4 A very different rite of passage is the tradition of the prom at the end of American high school. This is a dance with a difference. Students have to wear formal clothes —many for the first time in their lives —and it is usual to hire an expensive limousine to arrive at the prom. It is as if, for one night, they behave like adults twice their age —

or at least look older than they really are.

5 Perhaps one of the most interesting rites of passage is the

walkabout of Australian aborigines, when adolescents would be required to spend about six months walking alone through the wilderness, following the paths of their ancestors along the age-old "songlines" which mapped out the country. In so doing they penetrated the heart of aboriginal culture —the oldest continuous culture in the world —and, in the process, discovered themselves too. 的价值？

2.

莎士比亚的戏剧《皆大欢喜》中那个悲伤的小丑雅克认为，人的一生要经历“七个年龄段”，几乎每个社会都有的通过仪式也证明，我们往往是把生命分为这几个阶段来看待的，比如童年、中年和老年。

3.

通过仪式是社会对个人从一个阶段走向另一阶段的正式的认可，其中被广泛认同的是由少年步入成年时举行的成年礼。 成年礼有多种形式。 例如，在犹太传统中，人生最重要的时刻之一就是“犹太男孩成人仪式”，人们为年满13岁的孩子举办宗教仪式和家宴，这标志着从此以后这个孩子要对自己的行为负责了。 13岁也恰恰是许多国家规定开始承担法律责任的年龄。

4.

美国中学生活结束前的毕业舞会是另一种截然不同的通过仪式。 这次舞会非同寻常，学生们不仅穿着正式（许多学生平生第一次这么穿），他们通常还乘坐着一辆租来的豪华轿车到达舞会现场。 就在那一天晚上，他们似乎要表现得和年龄是他们两倍的成年人一样，至少是看上去要比自己的实际年龄老。

5. 世界上最有趣的通过仪式之一或许就是澳洲原住民的“徒步旅行”了，还处于青春期的少年必须在野外独自行走六个月，沿着划定国土疆域的“歌之版图”追寻祖先的足迹。 通过这样的仪式，他们深入到土著文化这一世界上最古老而持久的文化的精髓之中，并在这一过程中发现自我。

those days, clear and definite as a pattern seen through a kaleidoscope.

2 I lived on the bay side of town, on Johnson Avenue, opposite the Logan Airport, and before I went to bed each night, I used to kneel by the west window of my room and look over the lights of Boston that blazed and blinked far off across the darkening water. The sunset flaunted its pink flag above the airport, and the sound of waves was lost in the perpetual droning of the planes. I marveled at the moving beacons on the runway and watched, until it grew completely dark, the flashing red and green lights that rose and set in the sky like shooting stars. The airport was my Mecca, my Jerusalem. All night I dreamed of flying.

3 Those were the days of my technicolor dreams. Mother believed that I should have an enormous amount of sleep, and so I was never really tired when I went to bed. This was the best time of the day, when I could lie in the vague twilight, drifting off to sleep, making up dreams inside my head the way they should go. My flying dreams were believable as a landscape by Dali, so real that I would awake with a sudden shock, a breathless sense of having tumbled like Icarus from the sky and caught myself on the soft bed just in time. These nightly adventures in space began when Superman started invading my dreams and teaching me how to fly. He used to come roaring by in his shining blue suit with his cape whistling in the wind, looking remarkably like my Uncle Frank who was living with mother and me. In the magic whirling of his cape I could hear the wings of a hundred seagulls, the motors of a thousand planes.

4 I was not the only worshipper of Superman in our block. David Stirling, a pale, bookish boy who lived down the street, shared my love for the sheer poetry of flight. Before supper every night, we listened to Superman together on the radio, and during the day we made up our own adventures on the way to school.

5 The Annie F. Warren Grammar School was a red-brick building, set back from the main highway on a black tar street, surrounded by barren gravel playgrounds. Out by the parking lot David and I found the perfect alcove for our Superman dramas. The dingy back entrance to the school was deep-set in a long passageway which was an excellent place for surprise captures 子，它们历历在目，犹如万花筒里看到的图案那样色彩斑斓。

2.我的家位于城里靠海湾的一侧，在洛根机场对面的约翰逊大道上。每天晚上睡觉前，我都会跪在卧室朝西的窗户旁，眺望黑幽幽的海水那边波士顿城明亮闪烁的灯光。夕阳将粉色的余晖洒在机场上空，浪涛的声音永远淹没在一架架飞机永无休止的嗡嗡声中。我惊奇地望着跑道上的移动信标，看着那些闪烁的红灯、绿灯像流星般升起、降落，直到机场变得一片漆黑为止。机场就是我的麦加，我的耶路撒冷。我整夜都在做梦，梦见自己在空中飞行。

3.那正是我梦想斑斓的岁月。妈妈认为我需要大量的睡眠，所以我每天上床睡觉时一点儿都不觉得累。那是一天中最美好的时光，我可以躺下，在昏暗的暮色中慢慢进入梦乡，脑子里制造出许多奇异的梦来。我的飞行梦像达利的风景画那么真实可信，以致于自己常常会在一阵惊吓中醒来，好像伊卡罗斯那样从天空中摔下来，虽然发现自己刚好掉到软软的床上，但也被吓得喘不过气来。当超人开始侵入我的梦乡，并教给我飞行的技巧之后，我每夜的太空冒险便开始了。超人身着耀眼的蓝色衣服，肩披随风飕飕作响的斗篷，经常从我身边呼啸而过。他长得太像我的舅舅弗兰克了，舅舅那会儿正跟妈妈和我住在一起。当超人的斗篷神奇地旋转时，我好像能听见上百只海鸥的振翅声，上千架飞机的马达轰鸣声。

4.我不是这个街区里唯一的超人崇拜者，在街的另一头，那个脸色苍白、有点书呆子气的男孩儿戴维?斯特令和我一样，热爱飞行的纯粹的诗意。每天晚饭前，我们一起收听电台的超人故事，白天在上学的路上，我们自己设计出各种各样的冒险活动。

5.安妮? F. 沃伦文法学校是一座红砖楼，座落在远离主干道的一条黑色柏油街道上，学校四周是光秃秃的铺着碎石的操场。戴维和我发现学校外面停车场附近有一个角落，那里是我们玩超人游戏的绝佳场所。那条长长的过道通向学校又黑又脏的后门，非常适合玩意外抓捕和快速解救的游戏。

and sudden rescues. 6 During recess , David and I came into our own. We ignored the boys playing baseball on the gravel court and the girls giggling at dodge-ball in the dell . Our Superman games made us outlaws , yet gave us a sense of windy superiority . We even found a stand-in for a villain in Sheldon Fein , the sallow mamma's boy on our block who was left out of the boys' games because he cried whenever anybody tagged him and always managed to fall down and skin his fat knees.

7 At first, we had to prompt Sheldon in his part, but after a while he became an expert on inventing tortures and even carried them out in private, beyond the game. He used to pull the wings from flies and the legs off grasshoppers , and keep the broken insects captive in a jar hidden under his bed where he could take them out in secret and watch them struggling. David and I never played with Sheldon except at recess. After school we left him to his mamma and his bonbons and his helpless insects.

8 At the time my Uncle Frank was living with us while waiting to be drafted , and I was sure that he bore an extraordinary resemblance to Superman incognito . David couldn't see the likeness as clearly as I did, but he admitted that Uncle Frank was the

strongest man he had ever known, and could do lots of tricks like making caramels disappear under

napkins and walking on his hands.

6. 课间休息时，我和戴维可以大展身手了。 我

们对在碎石操场上打棒球的男孩儿们视而不见，

也不搭理那些在小山谷里一边玩躲球游戏一边咯咯傻笑的女孩儿们。 超人游戏让我们变得像两个逃犯似的，但也给了我们一种虚幻的优越感，我们甚至找谢尔登 ? 费恩来充当恶棍。他是街区里一个脸色苍白、胆小怕事的孩子，没有男孩儿愿意和他玩，因为一有人追他他就哭，而且老是自己摔倒在地，擦伤他那胖胖的膝盖。 7. 一开始我们还得教谢尔登怎么扮演他的角

色，可没过多久他就变成了一位发明虐刑的专家，甚至私下里悄悄实施他的刑罚。 他常常扯下苍蝇的翅膀，揪掉蚱蜢的腿，并把这些残废了的昆虫囚禁在瓶子里，藏到床底下，这样他就可以偷偷把它们拿出来，看着它们痛苦挣扎的样子。 戴维和我只在课间休息的时候和谢尔登玩，放学后我们就让他回家跟他的妈妈、棒棒糖以及那些无助的昆虫为伴。

8. 那时候，弗兰克舅舅住在我们家，等着参军。

我肯定他和隐姓埋名的超人长得特别像。 戴维却看不出我舅舅和超人有多么相像，但他承认弗兰克舅舅是他这辈子所见过的最强壮的人，而且他会变很多戏法，比如用餐巾一盖上糖果，糖就没了，他还能倒立行走。

responsibilities, their lives are characterized by play not work, school not paid labour, family rather than public life and consumption instead of production. Yet this is all relatively recent. A hundred years ago, a 12 year old working in a factory would have been perfectly acceptable. Now, it would cause social services' intervention and the prosecution of both parents and factory owner.

3 The differences between the expectations placed on children today and those placed on them in the past are neatly summed up by two American writers, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English. Comparing childhoods in America today with those of the American colonial period (1600–1776), they have written: "Today, a four year old who can tie his or her shoes is impressive. In colonial times, four-year-old girls knitted stockings and mittens and could produce intricate embroidery: At age six they spun wool. A good, industrious little girl was called 'Mrs instead of 'Miss' in appreciation of her contribution to the family economy: She was not, strictly speaking, a child."

4 These changing ideas about children have led many social scientists to claim that childhood is a "social construction". They use this term to mean that understandings of childhood are not the same everywhere and that while all societies acknowledge that children are different from adults, how they are different and what expectations are placed on them, change according to the society in which they live.

5 Social anthropologists have shown this in their studies of peoples with very different understandings of the world to Western ones. Jean Briggs has worked with the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic and has described how, within these commUnit ies, growing up is largely seen as a process of acquiring thought, reason and understanding (known in Inuit as ihuma). Young children don't possess these qualities and are easily angered, cry frequently and are incapable of understanding the external difficulties facing the commUnit y, such as shortages of food. Because they can't be reasoned with, and don't understand, parents treat them with a great deal of tolerance and leniency. It's only when they are older and begin to acquire thought that parents attempt to teach them or discipline them.

6 In contrast, children on the Pacific island of Tonga, studied by Helen Morton, are regularly beaten by their parents and older siblings. They are seen as being closer to mad people than adults because they lack the highly prized quality of social competence (or poto as the Tongans call it). They are regularly told off for being 很少，他们生活的主要内容是玩耍而非工作，上学而非劳动，在家里呆着而不是和外界交往，消费而非生产。这种变化也是最近才显现出来的。一百年前，12 岁的孩子在工厂打工是完全可以接受的事情，而现在，这会招来社会服务机构的介入，其父母和工厂主会被起诉。

3.有两位美国作家，芭芭拉·埃伦里奇和迪尔德丽·英格利希，她们简要地概括了过去和现在人们对儿童的期待的差异。在比较美国现在的儿童和殖民地时期（1600–1776）的儿童时，她们写道：“今天，如果一个四岁的孩子能自己系鞋带就很了不起了。而在殖民地时期，四岁的女孩会织长筒袜和连指手套，能做复杂的刺绣，六岁就能纺毛线了。一个善良勤快的女孩被称为‘夫人’而不是‘小姐’，这是为了表彰她对家庭经济的贡献，严格说来她不是一个孩子了。

4.对儿童的看法不断变化着，这使得许多社会科学家宣称童年是一种“社会建构”。他们用这个术语来说明不同的地区对童年的理解是不一样的，虽然所有社会都承认儿童与成年人有区别，至于他们之间有何不同，人们对儿童又有何期待，不同的社会给出了不一样的答案。

5.社会人类学家在研究那些跟西方国家持有不同世界观的民族时也表明了这个观点。琼·布里格斯研究过加拿大北极地区的伊努伊特人，她描述了在这些社会群落中成长是怎样大体上被看成是一个获得思想、理性和理解力（伊努伊特人称之为ihuma）的过程。小孩子不具备这些素质，所有才容易生气，常常会哭，无法理解群落所面临的诸如食物短缺之类的外在困难。由于无法跟他们讲理，即便讲了他们也不明白，父母对他们很宽容、很温和。一直要等到他们年龄大一点，并开始有自己的思想时，父母才会尝试着去管教他们，约束他们。

6.相反，根据海伦·莫顿的研究，太平洋岛国汤加的儿童经常挨父母和哥哥姐姐的打。人们认为儿童和成年人相比更像疯子，因为他们缺乏被大家看重的社会能力（汤加人称

clumsy and a child who falls over may be laughed at, shouted at, or beaten. Children are thought of as mischievous; they cry or want to feed simply because they are naughty, and beatings are at their most severe betweenthe ages of three and five when children are seen as particularly wilful. Parents believe that social competence can only be achieved through discipline and physical punishment, and treat their children in ways that have seemed very harsh to outsiders.

7 In other cases, ideas about children are radically different. For example, the Beng, a small ethnic group in West Africa, assume that very young children know and understand everything that is said to them, in whatever language they are addressed. The Beng, who've been extensively studied by another anthropologist, Alma Gottlieb, believe in a spirit world where children live before they are born and where they know all human languages and understand all cultures. Life in the spirit world is very pleasant and the children have many friends there and are often very reluctant to leave it for an earthly family (a fictional account of a spirit child's journey between the spirit and the earthly world is given in Ben Okri's novel, The Famished Road). When they are born, they remain in contact with this other world for several years, and may decide to return there if they are not properly looked after. So parents treat young children with great care so that they're not tempted to return, and also with some reverence, because they're in contact with the spirit world in a way that adults aren't.

8 There's a tendency to view children in the UK, and in the Western world in general, as incompetent and dependent. But this isn't the case throughout the world. In many societies children work and contribute to the family in whatever way they can from a very early age. A good example of this is childcare. In the UK, it is illegal for a child under the age of 14 to look after another child unsupervised, because they're deemed incompetent and irresponsible. In other cultures, this is not the case. Michelle Johnson has written about the Fulani of West Africa describing how by the age of four, girls are expected to be able to care for their younger siblings, fetch water and firewood and by the age of six will be pounding grain, producing milk and butter and selling these alongside their mothers in the market.

9 Across the world, among the Yanamam?of the Amazonian rainforest, another anthropologist, Napoleon Chagnon, has shown how different these children's childhoods are from Western ones, and also how differently boys and girls grow up in comparison with other parts of the world. He has written how a Yanamam?girl is expected to help her mother from a young age and by the age of ten 之为poto）。小孩子经常因为笨手笨脚而挨骂，他们连摔跤都会被嘲笑、呵斥，甚至被打。人们认为儿童很顽皮，都是因为淘气他们才哭闹，或者要东西吃。在大人看来，三至五岁的儿童尤其任性，因此他们打这个年龄段的孩子也打得最狠。父母们相信，只有靠训导和体罚才能使孩子获得社会能力，所以他们用一种在外人看来非常严厉的方式对待孩子。

7.在其他的例子中，有关儿童的观念则截然不同。例如，西非的一个叫孟加拉的很小的族群认为，不管说什么、用什么语言说，小孩子都能听明白，并且能理解。另一位人类学家阿尔玛·戈特利布对孟加拉族进行了广泛的研究，孟加拉族人认为小孩子出生前居住在灵界，在那里他们通晓人类所有的语言，能理解所有的文化。灵界的生活很惬意，小孩子在那里有很多朋友，他们通常极不愿意离开那儿，来到地球上的家庭中（本·奥克雷的小说《饥饿之路》就描述了一个小孩在灵界和人世之间往返的故事）。他们出生后仍然与那个世界保持长达数年的联系，如果没有得到良好的照顾，他们就可能要返回灵界。因此，父母们悉心照料孩子，以免他们受到诱惑，回归灵界，而且对他们也有几分敬畏，因为他们具备大人所不具备的通灵的本领。

8.在英国及其他西方国家，越来越多的人认为儿童缺乏能力，依赖性强。但也不是全世界的人都持这种看法。在很多社会里孩子从小就开始工作，寻找各种机会为家里挣钱。以看管孩子为例，在英国，14岁以下的儿童在没有成人监督的情况下照看其他孩子是非法的，因为人们认为他们缺少看孩子的能力和责任心。而在其他文化里，情况并非如此。米歇尔·约翰逊曾写过西非的富拉尼族女孩四岁就得照看年幼的弟弟妹妹，要打水、拾柴，六岁就得舂米、挤奶、做黄油，并和妈妈一起到市场上去贩卖这些东西。

9.另一位人类学家拿破仑·沙尼翁证实了在世界的另一端，地处亚马逊雨林的亚那马莫族孩子的童年与西方孩子的童年有什么不同，以及那里的男孩儿女孩儿们跟世界其他地方的男孩儿女孩儿的成长方式的差异。他

will be running a house. By the age of 12 or 13 she is probably married and will have started to have babies. Boys on the other hand, have far fewer responsibilities. They don't marry until later than girls and are allowed to play well into their teens. Western notions of childhood simply do not "fit" in these cases, where children's competence and responsibilities are understood very differently.

10 Social anthropologists ask questions about how childhood,

and the role of children, is seen within the commUnit ies they study,

rather than how it fits into Western ideas about childhood. By doing this they seek to avoid imposing outside ideas onto people with very different understandings of the world or of making value judgments on other people's ways of raising their children. While Westerners might take exception to eight- year-old girls working or to 12-year-old girls marrying, within their own commUnit ies such activities are seen as a normal and positive part of childhood. Indeed, seen through the eyes of non-Westerners, many "normal" Western childcare practices are seen as extremely bizarre and possibly harmful to children. Placing children in rooms of their own, refusing to feed them on demand, or letting them cry rather than immediately tending to them, are viewed very negatively in many societies and lead some to think that Westerners don't know how to look after children properly.

11 Childhood is a changing social phenomenon, of continual

fascination and concern. Looking at it from a cross-cultural perspective shows the wide variety of childhoods that exist across the world and warns against interfering in or criticizing people whose lives, and understandings of the world, are very different to our own. All societies recognize that children are different to adults and have particular qualities and needs; what anthropologists and other social scientists are interested in are the ideas that each society has about the nature of childhood and the impact these views have on children's lives. 写道，亚那马莫族女孩儿很小就得帮妈妈做家务，到十岁就开始管家。到十二、三岁时可能就结婚生子了。男孩儿的责任则要少得多，他们比女孩儿晚结婚，可以玩到十八九岁。西方的童年观在这里根本不适用，因为这里的人们对儿童的能力和责任有着完全不同的理解。

10. 社会人类学家探寻的是在他们所研究的族群里人们是如何看待童年，以及儿童扮演的角色问题，而不是研究那些地区的童年观是否符合西方的观念。他们这么做是为了避免把外界的观念强加给那些持不同世界观的人身上，或者是为了避免对其他民族养育孩子的方式作价值观方面的判断。西方人可能会反对八岁的女孩儿打工，反对12岁的女孩结婚，但在他们自己的族群里，这些事情被视为童年生活的一个积极的常态。的确，在非西方人看来，许多“正常的”西方育儿方式极其怪异，可能对孩子是有害的。让孩子在自己的屋里呆着，想吃东西的时候不给他们吃，或者任由他们哭闹而不赶快去安抚他们，这些在很多社会里都是不对的事情，会让人觉得西方人根本不懂得如何照看孩子。 11. 童年是一种处于变化之中的社会现象，具有持续的吸引力，并且不断受到关注。从跨文化角度来看待这个问题能展示出世界上各种各样的童年生活，并警示我们不要随意干涉或指责那些生活方式及世界观跟我们不一样的人。所有的社会都承认儿童和成年人是不同的，他们有自己独特的品性和需求；人类学家和社会科学家感兴趣的是每个社会对儿童的天性都有什么样的看法，以及这些

看法又如何影响儿童的生活。