新标准大学英语3unit2CulturalChildhoods原文译文.doc

Cultural Childhoods 不同文化的童年 When I look back on my own childhood in the 1970s and 1980s and compare it with children today, it reminds me of that famous sentence The past is a foreign country: They do things differently there (from L. P. Hartleys novel The Go-Between). Even in a relatively short period of time, I can see the enormous transformations that have taken place in childrens lives and in the ways they are thought about and treated. 每当我回顾 20 世纪七八十年代我的童年时光，并将它与现在孩子的童年相比较时，就会想 起句名言：“往昔是异国他乡， 那里有着不同的习俗” （可参见 . 哈特利的小说 《传信人》 ） 。 甚至在相对短暂的一段时间内， 我也能够察觉到儿童的生活以及人们对待儿童的方式上所经 历的巨大变化。 further back I can see vast differences between contemporary and historical childhoods. Today, children have few responsibilities, their lives are characterized by play not work, school not paid labour, family rather than public life and consumption instead of production. Yet this is all relatively recent. A hundred years ago, a 12 year old working in a factory would have been perfectly acceptable. Now, it would cause social services intervention and the prosecution of both parents and factory owner. 回顾更久远的岁月， 我可以看到现在和古代童年生活的巨大差别。  如今的儿童责任很少，  他 们生活的主要内容是玩耍而非工作，  上学而非劳动， 在家里呆着而不是和外界交往，  消费而 非生产。这种变化也是最近才显现出来的。一百年前，  12 岁的孩子在工厂打工是完全可以 接受的事情，而现在，这会招来社会服务机构的介入，其父母和工厂主会被起诉。 3. The differences between the expectations placed on children today and those placed on them in the past are neatly summedup by two American writers, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English. Comparing childhoods in America today with those of the American colonial period (1600 – 1776), they have written: Today, a four year old who can tie his or her shoes is impressive. In colonial times, four-year-old girls knitted stockings and mittens and could produce intricate embroidery: At age six they spun wool. A good, industrious little girl was called Mrs ‘ instead of Miss in appreciation of her contribution to the family economy: She was not, strictly speaking, a child. 有两位美国作家，芭芭拉·埃伦里奇和迪尔德丽· 英格利希， 她们简要地概括了过去和现在 人们对儿童的