2024年3月11日发(作者：)

Unit 1

12. The possibility of a real market-style evolution of governance is at hand. In

cyberspace, we’ll be able to test and evolve rules governing what needs to be

governed — intellectual property, content and access control, rules about privacy

and free speech. Some communities will allow anyone in; others will restrict

access to members who qualify on one basis or another. Those communities that

prove self-sustaining will prosper (and perhaps grow and split into subsets with

ever-more-particular interests and identities). Those that can’t survive — either

because people lose interest or get scared off — will simply wither away.

一种真正的市场型管理模式很快成为可能。在信息空间，我们将能够检验并完善

所需要的管理制度——知识产权制度、服务内容与使用权的控制制度、个人隐私

权与自由言论制度等。有些群体允许任何人加入，而有些则只允许符合这样或那

样条件的人加入。能够自持的群体会兴旺发展（或许也会因为志趣与身份日趋特

殊，而发展成为几个分支）。有些群体或因为成员失去兴趣，或因为成员被吓跑

而不能幸存下来，它们将渐渐萎缩消亡。

Unit 2

the problem is understood, improvement comes naturally. Women who

feel abandoned and deprived when their husbands won’t listen to or report daily

news may be happy to discover their husbands trying to adapt once they

understand the place of small talk in women’s relationships. But if their

husbands don’t adapt, the women may still be comforted that for men, this is not

a failure of intimacy. Accepting the difference, the wives may look to their friends

or family for that kind of talk. And husbands who can’t provide it shouldn’t feel

their wives have made unreasonable demands. Some couples will still decide to

divorce, but at least their decisions will be based on realistic expectations.

一旦问题得到理解，情况自然有所改善。那些通常因丈夫不倾听或不谈论每天发

生的事情而感到被遗弃、感到丧失生活乐趣的女性会高兴地发现，她们的丈夫一

旦知道了不起眼的谈话在女性关系中的地位后，正努力地在适应。如果丈夫不适

应，妻子仍然能够得到安慰，因为她知道，对男人来说，这不是不亲密的表现。

当妻子接受了男女存在区别这一事实后，便会去找自己的朋友或家人说一说话。

那些不能够给予妻子谈话快乐的丈夫，也不应该觉得妻子提出了无理要求。仍然

会有一些夫妻决定离婚，但起码他们的决定是建立在比较现实的期望基础上的。

Unit 3

it first came into being, it very likely lacked what we would today call an

ocean and an atmosphere.

在形成的初期，地球上很可能没有我们今天称之为海洋和大气层之类的东西。

4. Between 2 billion and 3 billion years ago, portions of the surface water, bathed

by the energetic radiation from the Sun, developed complicated compounds in

organization sufficiently versatile to qualify as what we call “life”.

在20亿到30亿年前期间，一部分地球表面的水在太阳能的作用下，形成了结构

复杂的化合物，这些化合物灵活多变，足以形成我们称之为“生命”的东西。

7. The entire planet, plus solar energy, is one enormous intricately interrelated

system. The entire planet is a life form made up of nonliving portions and a large

variety of living portions (as our own body is made up of nonliving crystals in

bones and nonliving water in blood, as well as of a large variety of living

portions).

整个地球，加上太阳能，形成了一个错综复杂、相互联系的巨大系统。整个星球

是一种由无机部分和各种各样的有机生命构成的生命形式 (正如我们自己身体

那样，既是由各种各样的有机部分构成，又是由骨骼中的无机晶体和血液中的无

机水分所构成)。

9. In the same way, on a planetary scale, the chopping down of an entire forest

may not threaten Earth’s life in general, but it will produce serious changes in

the life forms of the region and even in the nature of the water runoff and,

therefore, in the details of geological structure.

同样，从全地球的规模考虑，砍掉一整片森林不会在总体上对地球生命构成威胁，

但是这样做会对该地区的生态形式造成严重的影响，甚至会造成水的流失，因此

引起地质结构的细微变化。

11. Barring interference from outside, the eaters and the eaten retain their

proper numbers, and both are the better for it.

如果排除外界的干扰，食肉动物和被吃动物都保持一个适当的数量，这样对双方

都有好处。

16. The present rate of increase of Earth’s swarming human population qualifies

Homo sapiens as an ecological cancer, which will destroy the ecology just as

surely as any ordinary cancer would destroy an organism.

目前世界人口的急剧增长率使人类可以被称为生态恶性肿瘤。这种恶性肿瘤肯定

会摧毁生态环境，正如普通的癌细胞会摧毁人的肌体一样。

Unit 4

9．The flow of novelties in vocabulary, in idiom, even in pronunciation, is now

overwhelmingly eastward. We seldom borrow an English word or phrase any

more, though we used to borrow many; but the English take in our inventions

almost as fast as we can launch them. The American movie, I suppose, is largely

responsible for this change, but there are unquestionably deeper causes too.

English is still a bit tight, a bit stiff, more than a little artificial. But American

has gone on developing with almost Elizabethan prodigality. All the processes of

word-formation that were in operation in Shakespeare’s England are still in

operation here, and they produce a steady stream of neologisms that he would

have relished as joyfully as he relished the novelties actually produced in his

time.

新词汇、新习语、甚至新发音都以无法抗拒的势力源源不断传入东方。从前我们常常借用很

多英语词或短语，但现在很少这样做。但英语却吸纳我们创造的词，我们创造有多快，其吸

纳的速度几乎就有多快。我认为，美国电影固然对这一变化起了很大作用，但毫无疑问，还

有更深刻的原因。英语依然有点太严格、有点僵硬，且过于矫揉造作。而美语的发展却像伊

丽莎白时代一样繁荣。所有那些在英国莎士比亚时代应用的构词方法，现在依然在美国应用

着，新词源源不断地产生。如果莎翁健在，这些新词一定会使他欣喜若狂，就像他所生活的

时代产生的新词曾使他欣喜若狂一样。