练习(一):
Mrs. Chambers sits comfortably in her armchair, enjoying a cup of coffee. She has had athe right to relax. She has had a long and very busy life.
Mrs. Chambers has retired now to a small house in Bangor, a popular seaside town not far from Belfast. But for most of her life she lived in the country. Her husband’s farm was on an island in the middle of Strangford Lake. There, Mrs. Chambers baked bread twice a week, made jam every summer, and put her husband’s dinner on the table at twelve 0’clock exactly every day. The island farm had been owned by the Chambers family for may years, passing on from father to son. It was a quiet and beautiful place to live. They grew potatoes and vegetables, and kept hens and cows. When Mr. Chambers died, his son took on the farm, Mrs. Chambers moved away.
She takes another sip of coffee, and smiles as she remembers people from the past. “The old lady down the road thought she had a ghost in the house,” she says, “but it was only old Tom MaAleer, frightening her for fun.” The memories come fast. “Twenty men, they had, only tem years ago, to bring in the potato crop. Young Hugh has a machine now. He only needs five.”
It’s time for the news on TV. Mrs. Chambers wants to see the racing results. She won quite a lot of money last week. Next month she’s going down to Tipperary in the Republic of Ireland. The horse-racing there is wonderful. She finds it hard to stay away. But before the racing results there’s another item of news. A bomb has exploded in Belfast. Several people have been killed. Mrs. Chambers shakes her head. “They’re all crazy,” she says. “It’s just a few who make all the trouble. The rest of us want to live in peace. We’ve all got life long friends from both sides. And most of the time we never talk about the trouble.”
The racing results come on. She leans forward to watch. For her, ordinary everyday life is the most important thing.
参考译文:
乔柏斯太太舒服地坐在扶手椅里，享受着一杯咖啡。她有权利放松，她已经过了很长时间的忙碌生活了。
现在乔柏斯太太已经退休了，住在班戈区的一所小房子里。班戈区是贝尔法斯特附近一个广受喜爱的海边小城。但是在生命中的大部分时间里，她都住在农村。她丈夫在斯福德湖中间的一座岛上有一个农场。乔柏斯太太每周都烤两次面包，每个夏天都要做果酱，每天12点准时把丈夫的午饭摆在桌上。岛上的那个农场属于乔柏斯家族已经很多年了，是从父辈传下来的。那是个安静美丽的地方。他们自己种土豆和蔬菜，还养母鸡和奶牛。乔柏斯先生去世后，他的儿子接管了农场，乔柏斯太太搬离了那里。
她喝了口咖啡。想起以前那些人的时候，她笑了。“住在路尽头的那个老太太以为自己房子里有鬼，”她说，“其实那只是老汤姆.麦艾里尔唬她逗她玩的。”记忆被快速的唤醒。“仅仅在十年前，他们请了二十个人来挖土豆。年轻的休现在有了自己的机器，他只需要五个人。”
现在到电视新闻时间了。乔柏斯太太想看看跑马比赛的结果。她上个礼拜赢了一大笔钱。她下个月要去爱尔兰的蒂帕雷里，那里的跑马比赛很精彩，她发现自己很难不参与进去。但是在比赛结果公布之前还有另外一则新闻：贝尔法斯特发生一起爆炸，几个人被炸死了。乔柏斯太太摇了摇头。“他们疯了”她说，“制造麻烦的只是少数人，我们其余的人都想过平静的生活。我们都有来自双方的终身朋友(双方指天主教徒和新教徒)，多数时候我们从不谈论烦心事。”
比赛结果出来了。她倾着身子去看。对她来说，普通平凡的日常生活才是最重要的。
练习(二):
I love reading novels, especially those classics. My favorite writer is Jane Austen, the one who wrote pride and prejudice. When BBC screened its latest adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel pride and prejudice, it was watched by a record 18 million British viewers. The series was then sold to 18 countries round the world, from America to Australia, from Iceland to Israel, there are Jane Austen fans in all corners of the globe, and even special Jane Austen discussion groups on the internet.
Jane Austen never once traveled aboard in her life time and she hardly ever left the south of England. When she died a spinster in 1817, only four of her six novels had been published, all anonymous and she eared a grand total of 648.65 pounds from her books. Now, nearly 200 years later, sales of her novels rival modern bestsellers, reaching 35,000 a week. There have been film and television productions of not only pride and prejudice, but also Emma, Persuasion, and the Oscar-winning Sense and Sensibility. Her house in Chawton in Hampshire is visited by 200 people a day.
She wad born in 1775, the seventh of eight children. Her father was the reverend George Austen. They were not well off, and lived in a village. By the time when she was 12, Jane was writing stories about heroines imprisoned in haunted castles, being rescued by glamorous heroes. In Jane’s own life there were three romantic attachments. The first was a handsome Irish law student called Tom Lefroy, who she met in 1795, but who had to return to Ireland a year later. The second, in 1801, was a young man called Samuel Blackall who she fell in love with when on holiday in Devon, but who tragically died suddenly soon after. The third was a large young man called Harries whose proposal she briefly accepted in 1802, “but he had nothing to recommend him but his size,” so she changed her mind.
In 1801 the family moved to Bath, where she was very unhappy. To make matters worse, in 1805 her father died, leaving his widow, Jane and her only sister Cassandra, also unmarried, even poorer than before. For four years they had to move from house to house, often staying with relatives. Finally in 1809 her brother Edward allowed them to live in a house on his estate in Chawton, only a few miles from Steventon where she had grown up. Here she was much happier, despite being the poor relation, dependent on charity. She not only revised her earlier novel but was able to write new ones, using her experiences to satirize and make fun of the social inequalities she saw around her. At last in 1811, Sense and Sensibility was the first of her novels to be published.
参考译文：
我喜欢看小说，特别是那些精典名著。我特别喜爱的一个作者是简.奥斯丁。她写过一部小说叫《傲慢与偏见》。当BBC(英国广播公司)上映简.奥斯丁的《傲慢与偏见》小说的最终改写本时，当时创下了1800万英国观众的收看记录。之后，一系列的丛书出售到全世界18个国家，从美国到澳大利亚，从冰岛到以色列，全世界到处到有简.奥斯丁的狂热书迷，甚至在互联网上还有专门的简.奥斯丁的讨论组。
简.奥斯丁在她的生活中没有出过一次国，甚至从末离开过英国的南部。在1987年她过世的时候，还是个末婚女子，她的六部小说只有四部已经出版，并且全部是匿名的，她只挣到了共648.65英镑，这就是她小说的`全部酬劳。如今，也就是此后将近200年后，她小说的销售商击败了当今的顶级推销员，每星期可达到35000英镑的收益。已经成为电影、电视出版物的不仅仅是《傲慢与偏见》，还有《埃玛》、《劝导》、还有奥斯卡获奖作品《理智与情感》。她在汉普郡Chawton的家，每天都不低于200人参观拜访。
简.奥斯丁出生于1775年，是家里八个孩子中的第七个。她的父亲是受人尊敬的牧师乔治. 奥斯丁。她们家不富裕，而且住在一个乡村里。直到她十二岁的那年，简.奥斯丁一直在写关于女主人公被关押在魔鬼城堡的故事，直到被魅力英雄拯救出来。在简的生命中，有三次浪漫的情感历程。第一次，是与一个英俊的爱尔兰法律系的学生，名叫Tom Lefroy，她是在1795年遇到他的，但他不得不在一年之后返回爱尔兰。第二次是在1801年，一个名叫Samuel Blackall的年青男子在德尔郡的假日里让她坠入爱河。但是那个男子没过多久，突然悲惨地死去了。第三次是与一个名叫Harries大个子年青人，在 1802年他向她未婚的时候，她暂且允诺了他，“但是他除了他的架码之外，一无所长”，于是她改变了主意。1801年，她们家搬迁到了巴思，她在那儿过得非常不幸。更为糟糕的是，她父亲在1805年撇下她们孤儿寡母撒手人鬟了，简和她同样未完婚的妹妹卡珊德娜比以前更加贫困。四年以来，他们到处搬家，经常在亲戚家逗留。终于在1809年，她的兄弟爱德华同意她们住进他在Chawton作为不动产的房子，只离她成长的Steventon这个地方几英里的距离。在这儿她生活幸福得多，尽管是由贫弱的亲戚关系和依靠他们的施舍维系。她不仅修正了她以前的小说，而且还创作出了新的作品。用她个人的经历和见闻来嘲讽社会的不平等。最终在1811年，《理智与情感》作为她的第一部小说被出版了。
书香门第
