全新版大学英语5(第二版)课文翻译

Prison Stu dies 1 Many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television, or those who read something I’ve said, will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade. This impression is due entirely to my prison studies. 狱 中 学 习 今天，许多在什么地方直接听我讲话的人，或在电视上听我讲话的人，或读过我写的东西的人，都会以为我上学远不止只读到8 年级。这一印象完全归之于我在监狱里的学习。 2 It had really begun back in the Charlestown Prison, when Bimbi first made me feel envy of his stock of knowledge. Bimbi had always taken charge of any conversation he was in, and I had tried to emulate him. But every book I picked up had few sentences which didn’t contain anywhere from one to nearly all of the words that might as well have been in Chinese[2 … the words that might as well have been in Chinese: … it would have made no difference if the English words had been in Chinese, because I didn’t have the slightest knowledge of either.]2. When I just skipped those words, of course, I really ended up with little idea of what the book said. So I had come to the Norfolk Prison Colony still going through only book-reading motions. Pretty soon, I would have quit even these motions, unless I had received the motivation that I did. 其实这事要从查尔斯顿监狱说起，一开始宾比就让我对他的知识渊博羡慕不已。宾比总是主宰谈话话题，我总想效仿他。可是，我随便打开一本书，几乎没有一个句子不是少则一两个字，多则差不多所有的字都不认识。我只好跳过这些字，结果自然是对书上说的几乎一无所知了。因此，我被解送到诺福克拘留所时，读书还只是为了摆摆样子而已。要不是我真的获得了学习动力，我恐怕没多久就会连读书的样子也懒得去摆了。 3 I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary— to study, to learn some words. I was lucky enough to reason also that...