精美英文欣赏:家是让你快乐的地方

Home is where You are Happy

家是让你快乐的地方

Every immigrant leads a double life.

每个移民都过着一种双重生活，

Every immigrant has a double identity and a double vision,being suspended between an old and a new home,an old and a new self.

每个移民也都拥有双重身份和双重视野，他们的心总是在故土和新家中徘徊，在过往的自己和崭新的自己之间找寻平衡。

The very notion of a new home, of course,is in a sense as impossible as the notion of new parents:

当然，从某种意义上来说，新家和新父母一样，这一说法本身就是不成立的。

parents are who they are; home is what it is.

父母就是父母，家乡就是家乡。

Yet home, like parentage, must be legitimized through love;otherwise, it is only a fact of geography or biology.

然而，有爱才能称其为真正的家乡，就像父母与子女之间一样，都需要用爱来使之成为可能；否则，家乡和父母就仅仅是一个地理或者生物上的概念了。

Most immigrants to America found their love of their old homes betrayed:

来到美国的大多数移民虽然曾热爱家乡，但家乡却背叛了他们的爱；

They did not really abandon their countries;

并不是他们抛弃了家乡而是家乡抛弃了他们；

their countries abandoned them,and in America, they found the possibility of a new love,the chance to nurture¹ new selves.

而在美国，他们却发现，对新家园也能产生热爱，塑造一个全新的自我不是没有可能。

Not uniformly, not without exceptions.

并不完全统一，也不无例外，

Every generation has its Know-Nothing movement.

每一代都有它不可知的运动。

Its understandable fear and hatred² of alien invasion is as true today as it always was,but in spite of all this,the American attitude remains³ unique.

这种对外族入境的担心和厌恶任何时候都存在，这是可以理解的，但尽管如此，美国人的态度却是独一无二的。

Throughout history, exile has been a calamity⁴;

纵观人类历史，流放异乡已经成为人类历史上的灾难之一，

America turned it into a triumph and placed its immigrants in the center of a national epic⁵.

而只有美国将此灾难转变成了胜利，移民成了美国民族史诗的中心组成部分。

The epic is possible because America is an idea as much as it is a country.

美国之所以能谱写这样的一首史诗，是与美国本身分不开的。

America has nothing to do with loyalty⁶ to a dynasty and very little to do with loyalty to a particular place,but everything to do with loyalty to a set of principles.

美国是一个国家，也是一种理念。王朝拥戴，圣地朝拜和美国都没有一丁点关系，美国人所尊崇的是一套原则。

To immigrants, those principles are especially real because so often they were absent or violated in their native lands.

对于移民来说，这些原则来得特别真切，因为在他们的故土上，这些原则不是被频繁践踏，就是已经不复存在。

It was no accident in the '60s and '70s,when alienation⁷ was in flower,that it often seemed to be "native" Americans who felt alienated,while aliens or the children of aliens upheld the native values.

因此，在六七十年代那个充斥着疏离感的时候，似乎感到疏离的往往是美国人，异乡人和他们的子女反而能够坚守其本土价值观—这也是在情理之中的。

"Home is where you are happy."

家就是能让你开心的地方。

Sentimental⁸, perhaps, and certainly not conventionally patriotic,but is appropriate for a country that wrote the pursuit of happiness into its founding document.

听起来也许有些伤感，但这句话里已不再含有缠头的爱国情结了。不过，这句话对于这个将追求幸福写入宪法的国家来说是再恰当不过了，

That pursuit continues for the immigrant in America,and it never stops, but it comes to rest at a certain moment.

美国的移民们继续着他们对幸福的追求，从不止步。

The moment occurs perhaps when the immigrant's double life and double vision converge⁹ toward a single state of mind,when the old life, the old home fade into a certain unreality:

也许，这一刻就是移民的双重身份和双重视野开始趋于专一心智之时，此时，他们对家乡以及家乡生活的怀念逐渐淡化，

places one merely visits, practicing the tourism of memory.

家乡已经成为某种幻影—仅仅是一个旅游目的地，借此追忆往事而已。

It occurs when the immigrant learns his ultimate lesson:above all countries, America, if loved, returns love.

这时，移民也学到了他们人生的终极一课：在所有国家中，美国—如果得到了爱，必定回报以爱。

1 nurture   

n.养育，照顾，教育；滋养，营养品；vt.养育，给与营养物，教养，扶持

参考例句：

• The tree grows well in his nurture.在他的培育下这棵树长得很好。
• The two sisters had received very different nurture.这俩个姊妹接受过极不同的教育。

2 hatred   

n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨

参考例句：

• He looked at me with hatred in his eyes.他以憎恨的眼光望着我。
• The old man was seized with burning hatred for the fascists.老人对法西斯主义者充满了仇恨。

3 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

4 calamity   

n.灾害，祸患，不幸事件

参考例句：

• Even a greater natural calamity cannot daunt us. 再大的自然灾害也压不垮我们。
• The attack on Pearl Harbor was a crushing calamity.偷袭珍珠港(对美军来说)是一场毁灭性的灾难。

5 epic   

n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的

参考例句：

• I gave up my epic and wrote this little tale instead.我放弃了写叙事诗，而写了这个小故事。
• They held a banquet of epic proportions.他们举行了盛大的宴会。

6 loyalty   

n.忠诚，忠心

参考例句：

• She told him the truth from a sense of loyalty.她告诉他真相是出于忠诚。
• His loyalty to his friends was never in doubt.他对朋友的一片忠心从来没受到怀疑。

7 alienation   

n.疏远；离间；异化

参考例句：

• The new policy resulted in the alienation of many voters.新政策导致许多选民疏远了。
• As almost every conceivable contact between human beings gets automated,the alienation index goes up.随着人与人之间几乎一切能想到的接触方式的自动化，感情疏远指数在不断上升。

8 sentimental   

adj.多愁善感的，感伤的

参考例句：

• She's a sentimental woman who believes marriage comes by destiny.她是多愁善感的人，她相信姻缘命中注定。
• We were deeply touched by the sentimental movie.我们深深被那感伤的电影所感动。

9 converge   

vi.会合；聚集，集中；(思想、观点等)趋近

参考例句：

• The results converge towards this truth.其结果趋近于这个真理。
• Parallel lines converge at infinity.平行线永不相交。