2018年翻譯資格考試英語口譯初級模擬題：單身母親

　　英譯漢

　　It’s no surprise that Jennifer Senior’s insightful, provocative magazine cover story, “I love My Children, I Hate My Life,” is arousing much chatter – nothing gets people talking like the suggestion that child rearing is anything less than a completely fulfilling, life-enriching experience. Rather than concluding that children make parents either happy or miserable, Senior suggests we need to redefine happiness: instead of thinking of it as something that can be measured by moment-to-moment joy, we should consider being happy as a past-tense condition. Even though the day-to-day experience of raising kids can be soul-crushingly hard, Senior writes that “the very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification and delight。”

　　The magazine cover showing an attractive mother holding a cute baby is hardly the only Madonna-and-child image on newsstands this week. There are also stories about newly adoptive – and newly single – mom Sandra Bullock, as well as the usual “Jennifer Aniston is pregnant” news. Practically every week features at least one celebrity mom, or mom-to-be, smiling on the newsstands。

　　In a society that so persistently celebrates procreation, is it any wonder that admitting you regret having children is equivalent to admitting you support kitten-killing ? It doesn’t seem quite fair, then, to compare the regrets of parents to the regrets of the children. Unhappy parents rarely are provoked to wonder if they shouldn’t have had kids, but unhappy childless folks are bothered with the message that children are the single most important thing in the world: obviously their misery must be a direct result of the gaping baby-size holes in their lives。

　　Of course, the image of parenthood that celebrity magazines like Us Weekly and People present is hugely unrealistic, especially when the parents are single mothers like Bullock. According to several studies concluding that parents are less happy than childless couples, single parents are the least happy of all. No shock there, considering how much work it is to raise a kid without a partner to lean on; yet to hear Sandra and Britney tell it, raising a kid on their “own” (read: with round-the-clock help) is a piece of cake。

　　It’s hard to imagine that many people are dumb enough to want children just because Reese and Angelina make it look so glamorous: most adults understand that a baby is not a haircut. But it’s interesting to wonder if the images we see every week of stress-free, happiness-enhancing parenthood aren’t in some small, subconscious way contributing to our own dissatisfactions with the actual experience, in the same way that a small part of us hoped getting “ the Rachel” might make us look just a little bit like Jennifer Aniston。

　　參考譯文

　　毫無疑問，Jennifer Senior在有煸動意味的的雜志封面故事中表達了她的獨到見解， “我愛我的孩子們，我討厭我的生活”——這喚起了人們的談興。人們一談到養(yǎng)孩子就會覺得這是一件完全令人愉悅、生活充實的事情。Jennifer Senior沒有指出養(yǎng)孩子到底是使得父母快樂呢還是痛苦呢，她倒是認(rèn)為，我們需要重新定義幸福：幸福不應(yīng)該是一個個瞬間的快樂組合的可以被衡量的東西;我們應(yīng)該把幸福視為一種過去式的狀態(tài)。盡管撫養(yǎng)孩子的日子漫長難熬，令人筋疲力盡，但是Jennifer Senior認(rèn)為，正是那些心緒沉重的時刻，日后卻成為我們歡樂的源泉。

　　雜志封面上一位給力的母親抱著一個可愛的嬰兒，這種圣母與圣子(麥當(dāng)娜和孩子)的圖畫這周在雜志上多次出現(xiàn)。例如雜志上講到最近剛收養(yǎng)孩子的母親——有時是剛變成單身母親——桑德拉布魯克，以及那種很常見的“詹尼弗阿尼斯頓懷孕了”的新聞。實際上，每周都有至少一位名人母親、或者準(zhǔn)母親在雜志上笑迎讀者。

　　在一個不斷地慶祝生育的社會中，承認(rèn)自己后悔生育孩子就相當(dāng)于承認(rèn)自己支持殺小貓，這難道不值得反思嗎?把父母的后悔與孩子的后悔相比較，這顯然并不合理。沒有人會去讓不情愿養(yǎng)孩子的父母去反思自己是否不該養(yǎng)孩子，但是那不幸福的沒有孩子的人卻為類似這樣的信息所困擾：“孩子是世上唯一最可珍惜的東西”，顯然，你們的不幸必須通過生兒育女才能得以消除。

　　當(dāng)然，像美國周刊與人物這樣的雜志提供的名人父母的形象是非常不切實際的。特別是像Bullock這樣的單身母親時更是如此。多項研究表明，有孩子的父母很少比沒有孩子的夫婦更快樂，而單親家庭是最不快樂的。這并不奇怪，因為一個人養(yǎng)一個孩子實在太麻煩了，沒有人可以依靠。然而，你聽聽Sandra和Britney說的話：自己“一個人”養(yǎng)孩子，其實非常簡單。(她們當(dāng)然覺得簡單了，因為她們是在周圍有一幫人全天侯的侯著啊。)

　　很難想象有的人生孩子就只是很傻很天真因為Reese和Angelina這種名流使這種行為變的很光鮮，——多數(shù)成年人其實理解：養(yǎng)孩子可不是剪頭發(fā)那樣簡單。但這確實有趣：反思一下我們每周看到的無憂無慮，幸福誘人的為人父母的生活會不會從一種微小的，無意識的方面加劇我們對于現(xiàn)實生活的不滿。這種方式就好像：我們有那種想成為“ the Rachel”(老友記中的單身媽媽)的心理，這種心理，使得我們看上去有點像詹尼弗安尼斯頓(Rachel 的扮演者)。