外研版选修四册第一单元阅读讲解

Unit 1 Looking forwards

第2页阅读讲解

Facing the Future
面对未来

1 For many of us, it's something we already have experienced. One moment, we are lying comfortably in bed, about to fall into a deep sleep. The next, our eyes are open and we find ourselves wondering or even worrying about possibly the most important issue of our lives – the future. Will we get into the school of our choice? What will we be doing in ten years' time? Can we become the person we really want to be? In the face of such questions, how should we approach the future? Can we take action to shape it, or should we just accept whatever comes our way?
我们许多人都有过这样的经历。前一刻，我们正惬意地躺在床上，即将进入深度睡眠。但下一刻，我们就睁开了双眼，发现自己在思考，甚至在担忧可能是人生中最重要的事情——未来。我们能进入心仪的学校吗？十年之后我们会在做什么？我们能够成为真正想成为的人吗？面对这些疑问，我们应该如何迎接未来呢？我们能否采取行动去影响未来，还是该全然接受现实给予我们的一切呢？

2 As many of us already know, having plans in place for the future is no guarantee that they will become reality. In this respect, some people are more fortunate than others, as can be illustrated by comparing the lives of two famous authors, born 40 years apart. Although they shared the same ambitious and energetic approach to life, their careers unfolded in contrasting ways.
正如我们许多人都知道的那样，对未来有计划并不能保证它们都会成为现实。就这一方面而言，一些人比别人更幸运，例如，有两位年龄相差40岁的著名作家，对比他们的人生就能证明这一点。虽然他们面对生活时都有远大的志向，而且精力充沛，但他们的职业生涯的发展却截然不同。

3 The American author, Ernest Hemingway, born in 1899, was from early boyhood single-minded in his ambition to write. On leaving high school, he joined a local Kansas newspaper as a trainee reporter. He went on to become foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and used his extraordinary experiences in Europe and later Cuba to inform his writing. In his words, “I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about.” Having set himself this goal, he wrote novels and short stories based on his personal experiences of the First World War, the Spanish Civil War, bullfighting and deep-sea fishing, amongst others. His novel The Old Man and the Sea, about the three-day epic struggle between an elderly fisherman and the biggest fish he had ever caught, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953. He would later go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
美国作家欧内斯特·海明威生于1899年，他从小立志，一心一意想要成为作家。高中毕业后，他进入堪萨斯当地的家报社做实习记者。此后，他又成为《多伦多星报》的一名驻外记者，根据在欧洲和后来在古巴的独特经历进行创作。他曾说：“我决定把我知道的每一件事都写成一个故事。”在立下这一目标后，他根据自己在第一次世界大战、西班牙内战、斗牛表演和深海捕鱼等的亲身经历，创作了许多长篇和短篇小说。他的短篇小说《老人与海》讲述了一位老渔民与条自己捕过的最大的鱼进行了三天艰苦卓绝搏斗的故事。这部小说于1953年获得普利策小说奖。海明威后来还荣获了诺贝尔文学奖。

4 By contrast, the young Arthur Conan Doyle, born in Scotland in 1859, had originally worked as a doctor. But Doyle's main ambition was to become a writer of historical novels. Although some of his historical novels were published, their success was nothing compared to the stories of his fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, which he is still best known for to this day.
相比而言， 1859年出生于苏格兰的亚瑟·柯南·道尔，原先是一名医生，但他最大的志向却是成为名历史小说作家。虽然他出版过一些历史小说，但与他虚构出来的侦探夏洛克幅尔摩斯的故事相比，所取得的成功不可同日而语。直到现在，道尔最广为人知的作品仍是夏洛克·福尔摩斯的故事。

5 Interestingly, Doyle wrote some of his early Holmes stories while he was waiting for patients in his medical practice in London. After Sherlock Holmes made him a household name, Doyle gave up medicine and devoted himself entirely to writing. He still longed to become known for his historical novels amongst other academic works. The public, however, couldn't get enough of Sherlock Holmes. In desperation, Doyle killed off the famous detective in a novel published in 1893 so that he could focus on his “serious” writing. However, fans of Holmes were so angry that Doyle, under immense pressure, was forced to bring Holmes back from the dead. Doyle's many historical novels, plays, poems and academic papers have remained largely forgotten, but Sherlock Holmes has been entertaining readers for well over a century.
有趣的是，一些早期的福尔摩斯故事是道尔在伦敦行医期间，在等候病人的时候创作的。在夏洛克，福尔摩斯让他变得家喻户晓后，道尔放弃了行医，全身心地投入创作。除了其他学术作品，他还是渴望自己能因历史小说而出名。然而，公众却对夏洛克·福尔摩斯的故事百读不厌。绝望之下，道尔在一部出版于1893年的小说中杀死了这位著名的侦探，以便专心创作他的“严肃”作品。然而，福尔摩斯迷们对此感到非常愤怒，这使得道尔在巨大压力之下，不得不让福尔摩斯起死同生。道尔的很多历史小说、戏剧、诗歌和学术论文几乎都被人遗忘了，但夏洛克·福尔摩斯却在一个多世纪以来一直吸引着读者。

6 Though both of these men were ultimately successful, their paths to success were very different, their futures not necessarily turning out exactly as they planned. So, whatever twists and turns you might encounter, take a leaf out of the books of these two authors and be prepared for the unexpected. As renowned tech innovator Steve Jobs once said, “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
虽然这两位作家最终都获得了成功，但他们的成功之路却截然不同，他们的未来也不一定完全如他们当初所计划的那样。因此，不管未来你会遇到怎样的坎坷和曲折，都应以这两位作者为榜样，做好应对意外的准备。正如著名的科技创新者史蒂夫·乔布斯所说：“你无法预见性地将生命中的点滴串联起来，只有在回头看时，你才会发现这些点滴之间的联系。所以你要坚信，你现在所经历的，将在你未来的生命中串联起来。”

第8页阅读讲解

The Road Not Taken
未选择的路

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
金黄色林中两条路各奔一方，
可惜我无法兼顾，
身在旅途，我久久伫立，
极目望向一条路的尽头，
它蜿蜒拐进远方的灌木丛；

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
但我却选了另外一条路，公正公平，
抑或有更佳理由，
它荒草萋萋，诱人涉足；
即便如此，旅人的足迹
让两条路看起来相差无几，

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
那天清晨落叶满地，
两条路都未经脚印污染。
啊，我留下第一条路改日再探！
明知道路径延绵，
我不确定是否还能回到这里。

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
也许多年之后在某个地方，
我会回顾往事轻声叹息：
树林中有两条路，
我选择了人迹较少的那一条，
从此，它为我带来了全新的人生轨迹。

1 Lines from the poem The Road Not Taken are often quoted in speeches of all kinds. The poem has been set to music by a number of artists and used in numerous television commercials. It has in fact become one of the most famous American poems of all time, not only because of its natural style, but also because of its thoughtful insights into human nature.
《未选择的路》这首诗中的诗句常常在各种演讲中被引用。许多艺术家为这首诗谱了曲，它还被运用于大量的电视广告之中。事实上，它已经成为美国历史上最著名的诗歌之一，这不仅是因为其自然的风格，还因为其对人性的深刻洞察。

2 When reading The Road Not Taken, one cannot help but see in one's mind images of a peaceful wood deep within the countryside. Paths in the woods are often used to symbolize how our lives progress and change. The lines “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / And sorry I could not travel both” give us a visual representation of the choices that we face and the decisions that we need to make. Life throws many alternatives at us on a daily basis. These range from the basic “What should I wear today?” to the key issues of what subject to study at university or what job to do after graduation. Of course, the greatest dilemmas arise from moral problems, when we are uncertain which choice results in doing the right thing.
阅读《未选择的路》总会让人脑海中不禁浮现出乡村深处静谧的树林。林间小路往往象征我们人生中的进步和变化。“金黄色林中两条路各奔一方，可惜我无法兼顾”这两句话生动地展现了我们面临的选择以及需要做出的决定。生活每天都会向我们抛出许多选择，不仅包括“我今天应该穿什么”这样的小问题，也包括大学应该学什么专业或者毕业后应该做什么工作这样的重大问题。当然，最大的困境往往源于道德问题，因为我们不确定哪个选择才是正确的。

3 Whether big or small, what all our choices have in common is that they lead to specific consequences. Once we make a decision, in most circumstances, there is no going back. Although the writer of the poem considers taking the other path another day, he knows it's unlikely that he will ever have the opportunity to do so. Like the writer, all we can do is look backwards “with a sigh” and imagine what could have been.
无论我们的选择是大是小，它们都有一个共同点，那就是它们都会带来某种结果。在大多数情况下，一旦我们做了选择，就没有退路。虽然这首诗的作者考虑改天再探索另一条路，但是他也知道获得这种机会的可能性微乎其微。就像作者样，我们能做的只有在回首往事时“轻声叹息”，幻想事情本可以成为什么样子。

4 This sigh, this wondering whether we made the right choice, is understandable. Although we may be free to choose which path to take, this choice isn't easy when those two paths look similar. Presented with two job offers, for instance, we may wonder exactly what it is we're choosing between. What if, in choosing one, we are unknowingly turning down other future opportunities? Will we ever even find out whether we made the right choice?
这一声叹息，以及我们对是否做出了正确选择的顾虑都是可以理解的。虽然我们可以自由地选择走哪一条路，但是当两条路看起来大同小异时，其实很难做选择。比如当我们同时面对两个工作机会时，我们可能会思索到底我们是在什么当中选择。如果我们选择了一份工作而在不知不觉中放弃了其他未来的机会，那该怎么办？而我们又甚至能否发现自己是否做出了正确的选择呢？

5 Ultimately, the road ahead – the road through our lives – is a mixture of choice and chance. And when we are approaching the end of that road, how will we remember the journey? How will we look back on our lives? In the poem, the writer doubts his choice, thinking that in the future “ages and ages hence”, he may claim that he took the “less traveled” road. Some of us do take a more unusual path through life, and while it may be a harder one to follow, it can also lead to new adventures and experiences. Nonetheless, part of the art of decision-making is learning to make the most of our decisions. Instead of looking back with regret, we should be facing our future with energy and optimism, for the choices are ours, and ours only.
最后，前方的路，也就是我们的人生之路，其实是由选择和机会交织而成的。当我们快走到尽头时，我们会如何铭记这段旅途？我们会如何回顾自己的一生？在这首诗中，作者质疑了自己的选择，在“多年之后”的未来，他可能会承认自已选择了一条“人迹较少”的路。生活中确实会有一些人选择不寻常的道路，虽然路途更加艰难，但也会带来新的奇遇和经历。尽管如此，就做决定的艺术而言，一部分就在于学会充分利用我们的决定。我们应该积极乐观地面对未来，而非带着遗憾回顾过去，因为选择在于我们自己，而且它们只属于我们自己。