2024年2月13日发(作者：)

新概念英语第四册课文翻译及学习笔记：Lesson4

【课文】

First listen and then answer the following question.

听录音，然后回答以下问题。

How does the writer like to treat young people?

People are always talking about 'the problem of youth'.

If there is one--which I take leave to doubt -- then it is

older people who create it, not the young themselves. Let us

get down to fundamentals and agree that the young are after

all human beings--people just like their elders. There is

only one difference between an old man and a young one： the

young man has a glorious future before him and the old one

has a splendid future behind him： and maybe that is where

the rub is.

When I was a teenager, I felt that I was just young and

uncertain--that I was a new boy in a huge school, and I would

have been very pleased to be regarded as something so

interesting as a problem. For one thing, being a problem

gives you a certain identity, and that is one of the things

the young are busily engaged in seeking.

I find young people exciting. They have an air of freedom,

and they have not a dreary commitment to mean ambitions or

love of comfort. They are not anxious social climbers, and

they have no devotion to material things. All this seems to

me to link them with life, and the origins of things. It's as

if they were, in some sense, cosmic beings in violent and

lovely contrast with us suburban creatures. All that is in my

mind when I meet a young person. He may be conceited, ill-mannered, presumptuous or fatuous, but I do not turn for

protection to dreary cliches about respect for elders -- as

if mere age were a reason for respect. I accept that we are

equals, and I will argue with him, as an equal, if I think he

is wrong.

FIELDEN HUGHES from Out of the Air, The Listene

【New words and expressions 生词和短语】

leave n. 允许

fundamentals n. 基本原则

glorious adj. 光辉灿烂的

splendid adj. 灿烂的

rub n. 难题

identity n. 身份

dreary adj. 沉郁的

commitment n. 信奉

mean adj. 吝啬，小气

social climber 追求更高社会地位的，向上爬的人

devotion n. 热爱

cosmic adj. 宇宙的

suburban adj. 见识不广的，偏狭的

conceited adj. 自高自大的

presumptuous adj. 自以为是的，放肆的

fatuous adj. 愚蠢的

cliche n. 陈词滥调

【课文注释】

1. which I take leave to doubt，这是一个插入成分，用两个破折号与句子的主要部分分开。

take leave to do sth.是“擅自做”、“冒昧去做”的意思。

2. get down to，认真处理，认真研究;开始做某事。

例句：He got down to his work after the holidays.

度假之后他开始专心工作。

3....that is where the rub is. There's the rub.= That's

the problem.这就是问题所在。

①rub作动词，擦，磨，揉，搓。

例句：He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

他抚摩着下巴, 陷入沉思。

②rub salt into the wound/sb's wounds在某人的伤口上撒盐，给某人雪上加霜。

例句：Don't rub salt into her wounds, she's already so

miserable.

别在往她伤口上撒盐了，她已经够惨了。

③rub shoulders with sb与某人作社交上或职业上的来往。

例句：In his job he's rubbing shoulders with film stars

all the time.

他在工作中一直与电影明星有来往。