Unit-2-The-Struggle-to-Be-an-All-American-Girl-課文翻譯

1、UNIT 2THE STRUGGLE TO BE AN ALL-AMERICAN GIRLElizabeth Wong1. It's still there, the Chinese school on Yale Street where my brother and I used to go. Despite the new coat of paint and the high wire fence, the school I knew 10 years ago remains remarkably, stoically the same.2. Every day at 5 p.m.

2、, instead of playing with our fourth- and fifth-grade friends or sneaking out to the empty lot to hunt ghosts and animal bones, my brother and I had to go to Chinese school. No amount of kicking, screaming, or pleading could dissuade my mother, who was solidly determined to have us learn the languag

3、e of our heritage.3.Forcibly, she walked us the seven long, hilly blocks from our home to school, depositing our defiant tearful faces before the stern principal. My only memory of him is that he swayed on his heels like a palm tree, and he always clasped his impatient twitching hands behind his bac

4、k. I recognized him as a repressed maniacal child killer, and knew that if we ever saw his hands we'd be in big trouble.Detailed Reading4.We all sat in little chairs in an empty auditorium. The room smelled like Chinese medicine, an imported faraway mustiness. Like ancient mothballs or dirty clo

5、sets. I hated that smell. I favored crisp new scents, like the soft French perfume that my American teacher wore in public school.5.Although the emphasis at the school was mainly language speaking, reading, writing the lessons always began with an exercise in politeness. With the entrance of the tea

6、cher, the best student would tap a bell and everyone would get up, kowtow, and chant, "Sing san ho," the phonetic for "How are you, teacher?"Detailed Reading6.Being ten years old, I had better things to learn than ideographs copied painstakingly in lines that ran right to left fr

7、om the tip of a moc but, a real ink pen that had to be held in an awkward way if blotches were to be avoided. After all, I could do the multiplication tables, name the satellites of Mars, and write reports on Little Women and Black Beauty. Nancy Drew, my favorite book heroine, never spoke Chinese.De

8、tailed Reading7.The language was a source of embarrassment. More times than not, I had tried to disassociate myself from the nagging loud voice that followed me wherever I wandered in the nearby American supermarket outside Chinatown. The voice belonged to my grandmother, a fragile woman in her seve

9、nties who could outshout the best of the street vendors. Her humor was raunchy, her Chinese rhythmless and patternless. It was quick, it was loud, it was unbeautiful. It was not like the quiet, lilting romance of French or the gentle refinement of the American South. Chinese sounded pedestrian. Publ

10、ic.8.In Chinatown, the comings and goings of hundreds of Chinese on their daily tasks sounded chaotic and frenzied. I did not want to be thought of as mad, as talking gibberish. When I spoke English, people nodded at me, smiled sweetly, said encouraging words. Even the people in my culture would clu

11、ck and say that I'd do well in life. "My, doesn't she move her lips fast," they would say, meaning that I'd be able to keep up with the world outside Chinatown.9.My brother was even more fanatical than I about speaking English. He was especially hard on my mother, criticizing h

12、er, often cruelly, for her pidgin speech smatterings of Chinese scattered like chop suey in her conversation. "It's not 'What it is,' Mom," he would say in exasperation. "It's 'What is it, what is it, what is it!'" Sometimes Mom might leave out an occasion

13、al "the" or "a", or perhaps a verb of being. He would stop her in mid-sentence, "Say it again, Mom. Say it right." When he tripped over his own tongue, he'd blame it on her, "See, Mom, it's all your fault. You set a bad example."10.What infuriated my m

14、other most was when my brother cornered her on her consonants, especially "r". My father had played a cruel joke on Mom by assigning her an American name that her tongue wouldn't allow her to say. No matter how hard she tried, "Ruth" always ended up "Luth" or "

15、Roof".11.After two years of writing with a moc but and reciting words with multiples of meanings, I finally was granted a cultural divorce. I was permitted to stop Chinese school.12.I thought of myself as multicultural. I preferred tacos to egg rolls; I enjoyed Cinco de Mayo more than Chinese N

16、ew Year. 13.At last, I was one of you; I wasn't one of them.14.Sadly, I still am. 為成為一個完全徹底的美國女孩而努力1.我和弟弟小時候上的那所耶魯大街上的中文學(xué)校還在那兒。除了新刷的油漆和高高的電網(wǎng)，我10年前就認(rèn)識的這所學(xué)校依然一切如故。2.每天下午5點鐘，我和弟弟不能和四年級、五年級的伙伴們玩耍，也不能偷偷溜進(jìn)那片空地去尋找鬼魂和動物骨頭，而非得去中文學(xué)校上課。無論怎么跺腳踢腿、大喊大鬧、或者苦苦哀求，媽媽都無動于衷。她下定決心要讓我們學(xué)會祖?zhèn)鞯恼Z言。3.連拖帶拽，她帶著我們走過那長長的七個街區(qū)的陡坡

17、路來到學(xué)校，把我們?nèi)釉谀菬o比嚴(yán)酷的校長面前，我們滿臉都是倔強的淚水。我頭腦里只記得，那個校長像一棵棕櫚樹，雙腳站立，身體左右搖晃，雙手手指交叉放在背后總不耐煩地抽動著。在我眼里，他是個心情壓抑、行為狂躁的謀殺小孩的兇手，而且還知道，如果一旦看見他的手，我們就有大麻煩了。4.我們都坐在空空蕩蕩禮堂里的小椅子上。屋內(nèi)散發(fā)著像中藥似的氣味，一種來自遠(yuǎn)方的陳年霉味，像年代久遠(yuǎn)的樟腦丸或骯臟的小房間里的味道。我對那種味道深惡痛絕。我喜愛清新的香味，比如我的那位公立學(xué)校美國老師身上的那種溫馨的法國香水味。5.雖然在那所學(xué)校里主要是學(xué)習(xí)語言說話、閱讀、寫字，但是每堂課總是以操練禮貌開始。老師一走進(jìn)教室，最好

18、的那個學(xué)生就打鈴，于是大家全體起立、磕頭、并齊聲說，“先生好”，即“老師您好”的中文發(fā)音。6.那年我十歲，比起用毛筆從右至左一橫一豎、煞費苦心地寫方塊字，我有更好的東西去學(xué)習(xí)。毛筆是一支真正的墨水筆，要避免弄出墨點兒來，就得別別扭扭地握住筆。我畢竟背得出乘法口訣，說得出火星的衛(wèi)星名字，還寫過小婦人和黑美人的讀書報告。南希·德魯是我最喜歡的書籍里的女主人翁，她可從來不說中文。 7. 語言真給人帶來尷尬。很多次我去逛唐人街附近的美國超市時，就會從身后傳來喋喋不休的大聲喧嘩。我經(jīng)常要想方設(shè)法擺脫這個聲音。那是我奶奶的聲音，她已年逾七旬，身體脆弱，但是她的喉嚨超過街上最棒的小販。她有一種低俗的幽默，說的中文既缺乏節(jié)奏，又沒有句型。那聲音說得很快、很響、很不美；不像那細(xì)聲細(xì)氣、抑揚頓挫的浪漫法語，也不像溫柔上乘的美國南部的聲音。中文聽上去就是有市井氣，不登大雅之堂。8. 在唐人街，數(shù)以千計的華人為了生計來往忙碌，他們說起話的聲音雜亂無章。我可不想被