高级英语第二册部分课文整理

Pub Talk and the King's English(酒吧闲谈与标准英语)
Henry Fairlie (亨利·费尔利)
1. Conversation is the most sociable of all human activities. And it is an activity only of humans. However intricate the way in which animals communicate with each other, they do not indulge in anything that deserves the name of conversation. 人类的一切活动中，闲谈是最具交际性的，也是人类特有的。

而动物之间的信息交流，无论其方式何等复杂，也是称不上交际的。

2. The charm of conversation is that it does not really start from anywhere, and no one has any id ea where it will go as it meanders or leaps and sparkles or just glows. The enemy of good conversa tion is the person who has ―something to say.‖ Conversation is not for making a point. Argument
ey see the moment for one of their best anecdotes, but in a flash the conversation has moved on an d the opportunity is lost. They are ready to let it go. 闲谈的引人入胜之处就在于它没有一个事
插话的机会随之丧失，它们也就听之任之了。

even that they got out of bed on the wrong side is simply not a concern. They are like the muskete ers of Dumas who, although they lived side by side with each other, did not delve into each other‘s
虽然朝夕相处，却从来不过问彼此的私事，也不去打探别人内心的秘密。

4. It was on such an occasion the other evening, as the conversation moved desultorily here and t here, from the most commonplace to thoughts of Jupiter, without any focus and with no need for o ne, that suddenly the alchemy of conversation took place, and all at once there was a focus. I do no t remember what made one of our companions say it – she clearly had not come into the bar to say it, it was not something that was pressing on her mind – but her remark fell quite naturally into th e talk. 有一天晚上的情形正是如此。

当时人们正在漫无边际地东拉西扯，从最普通的家常琐事聊得有关木星的科学趣闻。

完全没有一个特定的主题。

可突然间中心话题奇迹般地出现了，大伙的话题都集中到了一处。

我不记得其中一个伙伴的那句话是什么情况下说出来的–不过，显然她并没有特意地准备什么，那也算不上是什么非说不可的要紧话–那只不过是随着大伙儿的话题十分自然地脱口而出的。

5. ―Someone told me the other day that the phrasethe King‘s English,' was a term of criticism, that it means language which one should not properly use.‖
―就在前几天，有人告诉我说‗标准英语‘这个词是带贬义色彩的批评用语，指的是人们应该尽量避免使用的英语。

‖
6. The glow of the conversation burst into flames. There were affirmations and protests and denia
ls, and of course the promise, made in all such conversation, that we would look it up on the morni ng. That would settle it; but conversation does not need to be settled; it could still go ignorantly on . 此语一出，谈话氛围立即热烈起来。

有人表示赞成，也有人怒斥，还有人则不以为然。

最后，当然少不了像处理所有这种场合下的意见分歧一样，大家约好次日一早去查证一下。

问题就这样解决了。

不过，闲聊并不需要解决什么问题，大家仍旧可以糊里糊涂地继续闲扯下去。

7. It was an Australian who had given her such a definition of ―the king's English,‖ which produc ed some rather tart remarks about what one could expect from the descendants of convicts. We had traveled in five minutes to Australia. Of course, there would be resistance to the King's English in such a society. There is always resistance in the lower classes to any attempt by an upper class to l ay down rules for ―English as it should be spoken.‖告诉她―标准英语‖应做这种解释的原来是个澳大利亚人。

知道这个后，有些人便说起刻薄话来了，说什么囚犯的后代这样说倒也不足为奇。

就这样，不到5分钟，大家便扯到了澳大利亚。

在那个地方，―标准英语‖自然是不受欢迎的。

因为下层人民总是会抵制上流社会给―规范英语‖制定的条条框框。

8. Look at the language barrier between the Saxon churls and their Norman conquerors. The conve rsation had swung from Australian convicts of the 19th century to the English peasants of the 12th century. Who was right, who was wrong, did not matter. The conversation was on wings. 想想撒克逊农民与征服他们的诺曼统治者之间的语言隔阂吧。

于是闲聊的主题又从19世纪的澳大利亚囚犯转移到了12世纪的应该农民身上。

谁对谁错，并没有关系。

闲聊依旧热火朝天地进行着。

9. Someone took one of the best – known of examples, which is still always worth the reconsider ing. When we talk of meat on our tables we use French words; when we speak of the animals from which the meat comes we use Anglo – Saxon words. It is a pig in its sty; it is pork (porc) on the ta ble. They are cattle in the fields, but we sit down to beef (boeuf). Chickens become poultry (poulet ), and a calf becomes veal (veau ). Even if our menus were not written in French out of snobbery, t he English we used in them would still be Norman English. What all this tells us is of a deep class rift in the culture of English after the Norman Conquest. 有人举了一个众所周知但仍值得深思的例子。

在谈到饭桌上的肉食时我们用法语词，而谈到提供这些肉食的牲畜是则用盎格鲁-撒克逊词。

猪圈里的活猪叫pig，饭桌上吃的猪肉便成了pork（来自法语pore）；地里放养的牛叫cattle，而桌上吃的牛肉则叫beef（来自法语boeuf）；小鸡叫chicken，用作肉食则变成poultry（来自法语poulet）；calf（小牛）加工成肉则变成veal（来自法语vcau）。

即便我们的菜单没有为了装洋耍派头而写成法语，我们所用的英语仍然是诺曼式的英语。

这一切向我们昭示了被诺曼人征服之后的英国文化上所存在的深刻的阶级裂痕。

10. The Saxon peasants who tilled the land and reared the animals could not afford the meat, whi ch went to Norman tables. The peasants were allowed to eat the rabbits that scampered over their f ield and, since that meat was cheap, the Norman lords of course turned up their noses at it. So rabb it is still rabbit on our tables, and not changed into some rendering of lapin. 撒克逊农民种地养殖牲畜，自己出产的肉自己却吃不上，全部送到了诺曼人的餐桌上。

农民们只能吃在地里乱窜的兔子。

因为兔子的肉便宜，诺曼贵族自然不屑去吃它。

因此，活兔子和兔子肉共用rabbit 这个词表示，而没有换成由法语lapin转化而来的某个词。

11. As we listen today to the arguments about bilingual education, we ought to think ourselves ba ck into the shoes of the Saxon peasant. The new ruling class had built a cultural barrier against hi m by building their French against his own language. There must have been a great deal of cultura l humiliation felt by the English when they revolted under Saxon leaders like Hereward the Wake.
―The king's English‖-if the term had existed then-had become French. And here in America now, 9 00 years later, we are still the heirs to it. 如今，当我们听着有关双语教育问题的争论时，我们应该设身处地替当时的撒克逊农民想一想，新的统治阶级用法语来对抗撒克逊农民自己的语言，从而在农民周围筑起一道文化壁垒。

当英国人在像觉醒者赫里沃德这样的撒克逊领袖领导下起来造反时，他们一定深深地感受到了文化上的屈辱。

―标准英语‖-如果那时候有这个名词的话-已经变成法语了。

而九百年后我们在美国这个地方仍然继承了这种影响。

12. So the next morning, the conversation over, one looked it up. The phrase came into use some time in the 16th century. ―Queen's English‖ is found in Nashe's ―Strange News of the Intercepting of Certain Letters‖ in 1593, and in 1602, Dekker wrote of someone, ―thou clipst the King's Englis h.‖ Is the phrase in Shakespeare? That would be the confirmation that it was in general use. He use s it once, when Mistress Quickly in ―The Merry Wives of Windsor‖ says of her master coming ho me in a rage, ―…here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the King's English,‖ and it ring s true. 那晚闲聊过后的第二天一大早便有人去查阅了资料。

这个名词在16世纪已有人使用过了。

纳什作于1593年的《截获信函奇闻》中就有过―标准英语‖（Queen's English）的提法。

1602年德克写到某人时有句话说：―你把‗标准英语‘（King's English）简化了‖。

莎士比亚作品中是否也出现过这一提法呢？如出现过，那就证明这个词在当时既已通用。

他用过一次，在《温莎的风流娘们》中，女仆Quickly在讲到她家老爷回来后将会有的盛怒情形时说，―……少不了一通臭骂，骂得昏天暗地，―标准英语‖不知要给他糟蹋成个什么样子啦。

‖后来的事实果然被她说中了。

13. One could have expected that it would be about then that the phrase would be coined. After fi ve centuries of growth, of tussling with the French of the Normans and the Angevins and the Plant agenets and at last absorbing it, the conquered in the end conquering the conqueror, English had c ome royally into its own. 我们有理由认为这个词就是那个时候产生的。

经过前后五百年的发展和与诺曼人、安茹王朝及金雀花王朝的法语的竞争，英语最终同化了法语。

被统治者成了统治着，英语取得了国语的地位。

14. There was a King's (or Queen's)English to be proud of. The Elizabethans blew on it as on a d andelion clock, and its seeds multiplied, and floated to the ends of the earth. ―The King's English‖was no longer a form of what would now be regarded as racial discrimination. 这样便有了一种英国人值得引以为傲的―标准英语‖。

伊丽莎白时代的人没费吹灰之力便使其影响日盛，遍及全球。

―标准英语‖再也不带有今天所谓的种族歧视的性质了。

15. Yet there had been something in the remark of the Australian. The phrase has always been use
d a littl
e pejoratively and even facetiously by the lower classes. One feels that even Mistress Quic kly-a servant-is saying that Dr.Caius-her master-will lose his control and speak with the vigor o
f o rdinary folk. If the King's English is ―English as it should be spoken,‖ the claim is often mocked b y the underlings, when they say with a jeer ―English as it should be spoke.‖ The rebellion against a cultural dominance is still there.
不过，那个澳大利亚人的解释也有一定道理。

下层阶级在使用这一名词时总带着一点轻蔑、讥讽的味道。

我们会发现，就连Quickly这样一个婢女也会说她的主子凯厄斯大夫管不住自己的舌头，而讲起平民百姓们所讲的那种粗话。

如果说―标准英语‖就是所谓―规范英语‖，这种看法常常会受到下层人民的嘲笑讥讽，他们有时故意开玩笑地把它称做―规反英语‖。

下层人民对于文华上的专制还是颇有抵制心理的。

16. There is always s great danger, as Carlyle put it, that ―words will harden into things for us.‖Words are not themselves a reality, but only representations of it, and the King's English, like the Anglo-French of the Normans, is a class representation of reality. Perhaps it is worth trying to spea
现实，它不过是现实的一种反应形式而已。

标准英语和诺曼人的盎格鲁法语的性质一样，也只是一个阶段用来表达现实的一种形式。

让人们学着去讲也许不错，但既不应该把它作为法
en, plenty of paper and ―the best dictionaries he can afford‖-but I agree with the person who said t hat dictionaries are instruments of common sense. The King's English is a model-a rich and instruc tive one-but it ought not to be an ultimatum. 我一向对词典有着始终不渝的酷爱-奥登曾经说过，一支笔、够用的纸张―他所能弄到的最好的词典‖就是一个作家的全部所需-但其实上我更赞同另一种说法，即把词典看成是一种常识工具。

标准英语是一种范本-一种丰富而又指导作用的范本-但并不是一种绝对的权威。

18. So we may return to my beginning. Even with the most educated and the most literate, the Ki ng's English slips and slides in conversation.There is no worse conversation than the one who pun ctuates his words as he speaks as if he were writing, or even who tries to use words as if he were c omposing a piece of prose for print. When E. M. Forster writes of ―the sinister corridor of our age,‖ we sit up at the vividness of the phrase, the force and even terror in the image. But if E. M. Forst er sat in our living room and said, ―We are all following each other down the sinister corridor of o ur age,‖ we would be justified in asking him to leave. 由此我们可以回到我先前的话题上。

即便是那些学问再高、文学修养再好的人，他们所讲的标准英语在闲聊中也常常会离谱走调。

要是有谁闲聊时也像做文章一样句逗分明，或像写一篇要发表的散文般咬文嚼字的话，那他说的话就一定极为倒人胃口。

看到E.M.福斯特笔下写出―如今这个时代阴森恐怖的长廊‖时，我们可以深刻体会到语言的生动、比喻的张力。

但假若福斯特坐在我们的会客室里说―我们大家正一个接一个地步入这个时代阴森恐怖的长廊‖时，我们肯定会让他离开。

19. Great authors are constantly being asked by foolish people to talk as they write. Other people may celebrate the lofty conversations in which the great minds are supposed to have indulged in th e great salons of 18th century Paris, but one suspects that the great minds were gossiping and judgi ng the quality of the food and the wine. Henault, then the great president of the First Chamber of t he Paris Parlement, complained bitterly of the ―terrible sauces‖ at the salons of Mme. Deffand, an d went on to observe that the only difference between her cook and the supreme chef, Brinvilliers, lay in their intentions. 常常会有一些愚人要求大文豪们在交谈时也像写文章一样字字珠玑，也有人对18世纪巴黎的文艺沙龙里那些文人雅士的高谈阔论极表称羡。

可是，说不定那些文人雅士们在那里也只不过是闲谈，谈论酒食的好坏哩。

当时的巴黎大法院第一厅厅长亨奥尔特在德芳侯爵夫人家的沙龙作客时就曾大叫到―调料糟糕透了‖，接着还大发议论说侯爵夫人家的厨子和总厨师长布兰维利耶之间的唯一差别不过就是用心不一而已。

20. The one place not to have dictionaries is in a sitting room or at a dining table. Look the thing up the next morning, but not in the middle of the conversation. Otherwise one will bind the conver sation; one will not let it flow freely here and there. There would have been no conversation the ot her evening if we had been able to settle at once the meaning of ―the King's English.‖ We would n ever have gong to Australia, or leaped back in time to the Norman Conquest. 会客室和餐桌上是无须摆放词典的。

闲聊过程中遇到弄不明白而需要查实的问题可留待第二天在说，不要话说到一半却一边查起字典来了。

否则，谈话变会受到妨碍，不能如流水般无拘无束地进行了。

那晚，如果我们当场弄清了―标准英语‖的意义，也就不可能再有那场交谈辩论，我们也就不可能一会儿跳到澳大利亚去，一会儿又扯回到诺曼征服时代了。

21. And there would have been nothing to think about the next morning. Perhaps above all, one would not have been engaged by interest in the musketeer who raised the subject, wondering more about her. The bother about teaching chimpanzees how to talk is that they will probably try to talk sense and so ruin all conversation.
而且，我们也就没有什么可以留到第二天去思考了。

尤为重要的是，如果那个问题能做当场解决的话，人们就不会对于那位引出话题的―火枪手‖发生兴趣了，也不会想多了解她的情况了。

教黑猩猩说话之所以很困难，原因就在于它们往往可能尽是想着要讲出正经八百的话来，因而会使对话失去意趣。

Marrakech马拉喀什见闻
George Orwell
1 As the corpse went past the flies left the restaurant table in a cloud and rushed after it, but they came back a few minutes later.
一具尸体抬过，成群的苍蝇从饭馆的餐桌上瓮嗡嗡而起追逐过去，但几分钟过后又飞了回来。

2 The little crowd of mourners -- all men and boys, no women--threaded their way across the market place between the piles of pomegranates and the taxis and the camels, walling a short chant over and over again. What really appeals to the flies is that the corpses here are never put into coffins, they are merely wrapped in a piece of rag and carried on a rough wooden bier on the shoulders of four friends. When the friends get to the burying-ground they hack an oblong hole a foot or two deep, dump the body in it and fling over it a little of the dried-up, lumpy earth, which is like broken brick. No gravestone, no name, no identifying mark of any kind. The burying-ground is merely a huge waste of hummocky earth, like a derelict building-lot. After a month or two no one can even be certain where his own relatives are buried.
一支人数不多的送葬队伍--其中老少尽皆男性，没有一个女的--沿着集贸市场，从一堆堆石榴摊子以及出租汽车和骆驼中间挤道而行，一边走着一边悲痛地重复着一支短促的哀歌。

苍蝇之所以群起追逐是因为在这个地方死人的尸首从不装进棺木，只是用一块破布裹着放在一个草草做成的木头架子上，有四个朋友抬着送葬。

朋友们到了安葬场后，便在地上挖出一个一二英尺深的长方形坑，将尸首往坑里一倒。

再扔一些像碎砖头一样的日、干土块。

不立墓碑，不留姓名，什么识别标志都没有。

坟场只不过是一片土丘林立的荒野，恰似一片已废弃不用的建筑场地。

一两个月过后，就谁也说不准自己的亲人葬于何处了。

3 When you walk through a town like this -- two hundred thousand inhabitants of whom at least twenty thousand own literally nothing except the rags they stand up in-- when you see how the people live, and still more how easily they die, it is always difficult to believe that you are walking among human beings.All colonial empires are in reality founded upon this fact. The people have brown faces--besides, there are so many of them! Are they really the same flesh as your self? Do they even have names? Or are they merely a kind of undifferentiated brown stuff, about as individual as bees or coral insects? They rise out of the earth, they sweat and starve for a few years, and then they sink back into the nameless mounds of the graveyard and nobody notices that they are gone. And even the graves themselves soon fade back into the soil. Sometimes, out for a walk as you break your way through the prickly pear, you notice that it is rather bumpy underfoot, and only a certain regularity in the bumps tells you that you are walking over skeletons. 当你穿行也这样的城镇--其居民20万中至少有2万是除开一身聊以蔽体的破衣烂衫之外完
们只是像彼此之间难以区分的蜜蜂或珊瑚虫一样的东西。

他们从泥土里长出来，受哭受累，忍饥挨饿过上几年，然后又被埋在那一个个无名的小坟丘里。

谁也不会注意到他们的离去。

就是那些小坟丘本身也过不了很久便会变成平地。

有时当你外出散步，穿过仙人掌丛时，你会感觉到地上有些绊脚的东西，只是在经过多次以后，摸清了其一般规律时，你才会知道你脚下踩的是死人的骷髅。

4 I was feeding one of the gazelles in the public gardens.
我正在公园里给一只瞪羚喂食。

5Gazelles are almost the only animals that look good to eat when they are still alive, in fact, one can hardly look at their hindquarters without thinking of a mint sauce. The gazelle I was feeding seemed to know that this thought was in my mind, for though it took the piece of bread I was holding out it obviously did not like me. It nibbled rapidly at the bread, then lowered its head and tried to butt me, then took another nibble and then butted again. Probably its idea was that if it could drive me away the bread would somehow remain hanging in mid-air.
动物中也恐怕只有瞪羚还活着时就让人觉得是美味佳肴。

事实上，人们只要看到它们那两条后腿就会联想到薄荷酱。

我现在喂着的这只瞪羚好象已经看透了我的心思。

它虽然叼走了拿在手上的一块面包，但显然不喜欢我这个人。

它一面啃食着面包，一面头一低向我顶过来，再啃一下面包又顶过来一次。

它大概还因为把我赶开之后那块面包仍会悬在空中。

6 An Arab navvy working on the path nearby lowered his heavy hoe and sidled slowly towards us. He looked from the gazelle to the bread and from the bread to the gazelle, with a sort of quiet amazement, as though he had never seen anything quite like this before. Finally he said shyly in French: "I could eat some of that bread."
一个正在附近小道上干活的阿拉伯挖土工放下笨重的锄头，羞怯地侧着身子慢慢朝我们走过来。

他把目光从瞪羚身上移向面包，又从面包转回到瞪羚身上，带着一点惊讶的神色，似乎以前从未建国这种情景。

终于，他怯生生的用法语说道："那面包让我吃一点吧。

"
7 I tore off a piece and he stowed it gratefully in some secret place under his rags. This man is an employee of themunicipality.
我撕下一块面包，他感激地把面包放进破衣裳贴身的地方。

这人是市政当局的雇工。

were probably like. Under their Moorish rulers the Jews were only allowed to own land in certain restricted areas, and after centuries of this kind of treatment they have ceased to bother about
clouds of flies. Down the centre of the street there is generally running a little river of urine.
当你走过这儿的犹太人聚居区时，你就会知道中世纪犹太人区大概是个什么样子。

在摩尔人的统治下，犹太人只能在划定的一些地区内保有土地。

受这样的待遇经过了好几个世纪后，他们已经不再为拥挤不堪而烦扰了。

这儿很多街道的宽度远远不足六英尺，房屋根本没有窗户，眼睛红肿的孩子随处可见，多的像一群群苍蝇，数也数不清。

街上往往是尿流成河。

9 In the bazaar huge families of Jews, all dressed in the long black robe and little black skull-cap, are working in dark fly-infested booths that look like caves. A carpenter sits crosslegged at a prehistoric lathe, turning chairlegs at lightning speed. He works the lathe with a bow in his right hand and guides the chisel with his left foot, and thanks to a lifetime of sitting in this position his
left leg is warped out of shape. At his side his grandson, aged six, is already starting on the simpler parts of the job.
在集市上，一大家一大家的犹太人，全都身着黑色长袍，头戴黑色便帽，在看起来像洞窟一般阴暗无光，苍蝇麋集的摊篷里干活。

一个木匠两脚交叉坐在一架老掉牙的车床旁，正以飞快的速度旋制椅子腿。

他右手握弓开动车床，左脚引动旋刀。

由于长期保持着种姿势，左脚
groping in the air with his hand. In about a minute I had used up the whole packet. None of these people, I suppose, works less than twelve hours a day, and every one of them looks on a cigarette as a more or less impossible luxury.
我正要走过一个铜匠铺子时，突然有人发现我点着一支香烟。

这一下子那些犹太人从四面八方的一个个黑洞窟里发疯四地围上来，其中有很多白胡子老汉，都吵着要讨支烟抽。

甚至连一个盲人听到这讨烟的吵嚷声也从一个摊篷后面爬出来。

伸手在空中乱摸。

一分钟光景，我那一包香烟全分完了。

我想这些人一天的工时谁都不回少于十二小时，可是他们个个都把一支香烟看成是一见十分难得的奢侈品。

11 As the Jews live in self-contained communities they follow the same trades as the Arabs, except for agriculture. Fruitsellers, potters, silversmiths, blacksmiths, butchers, leather-workers, tailors, water-carriers, beggars, porters -- whichever way you look you see nothing but Jews. As a matter of fact there are thirteen thousand of them, all living in the space of a few acres. A good job Hitlet wasn't here. Perhaps he was on his way, however. You hear the usual dark rumours about Jews, not only from the Arabs but from the poorer Europeans.
犹太人生活在一个自给自足的社会里，他们从事阿拉伯人所从事的行业，只是没有农业。

他们中有买水果的，有陶工、银匠、铁匠、屠夫、皮匠、裁缝、运水工，还有乞丐、脚夫--放眼四顾，到处是犹太人。

事实上，在这不过几英亩的空间内居住着的犹太人就足足有一万三千之多。

也算这些犹太人好运气，希特勒未曾光顾这里。

不过，他也许曾经准备来的。

你常听到的有关犹太人的风言风语，不仅可以从阿拉伯人那里听到，而且还可以从较穷的欧洲人那里听到。

12 "Yes mon vieux, they took my job away from me and gave it to a Jew. The Jews! They' re the real rulers of this country, you know. They‘ve got all the money. They control the banks, finance -- everything."
"我的老兄啊，他们把我的饭碗夺走给了犹太人。

想必你也知道这些犹太人吧，他们才是这个国家真正的主宰。

我们的钱都进了他们的腰包。

银行、财政--一切都被他们控制住了。

"
13 "But", I said, "isn't it a fact that the average Jew is a labourer working for about a penny an hour?"
""
"噢！那不过是做出样子来给人看的。

事实上他们都是些放债获利的富豪。

这些犹太人就是鬼得很。

"
与此恰恰相似的是，几百年前，常常也有些苦命的老太婆被当成巫婆给活活烧死，然而事实
上她们就连为自己变出一顿象样饭菜的巫术都没有。

16 All people who work with their hands are partly invisible, and the more important the work they do, the less visible they are. Still, a white skin is always fairly conspicuous. In northern Europe, when you see a labourer ploughing a field, you probably give him a second glance. In a
and a great deal less interesting to look at.
所有靠自己的双手干活的人一般都有点不太引人注目，他们所干的活儿越是重要，就越不为人所注目。

不过，白皮肤总是比较显眼的。

在北欧，若是发现田里有一个工人在耕地，你多半会再看他一眼。

而在一个热带国家，直布罗陀以南或苏伊士运河以东的任何一个地方，你就可能看不到田里耕作的人。

这种情形我已经注意到多次了。

在热带的景色中，万物皆可一目了然，惟独看不见人。

那干巴巴的土壤、仙人掌、棕榈树和远方的山岭都可以尽收眼底，但那在地理耕作的农夫却往往没人看见。

他们的肤色就和地里的土壤颜色一样，而且远不及土壤中看。

17 It is only because of this that the starved countries of Asia and Africa are accepted as tourist resorts. No one would think of running cheap trips to the Distressed Areas. But where the human beings have brown skins their poverty is simply not noticed. What does Morocco mean to a Frenchman? An orange grove or a job in Government service. Or to an Englishman? Camels, castles, palm trees, Foreign Legionnaires, brass trays, and bandits. One could probably live there for years without noticing that for nine-tenths of the people the reality of life is an endless
back-breaking struggle to wring a little food out of an eroded soil.
正因如此，贫穷至极的亚非国家反倒成了旅游观光的胜地。

没有谁会有兴趣到本地的贫困地区去作依次毫无价值的旅行。

但在那些居住着褐色皮肤的人的地方，他们的贫困却根本没有人能注意大批。

摩洛哥对于一个法国人来说意味着什么呢？无非是一个能买到橘子圆或者谋取一份政府差使的地方。

对于一个英国人呢？不过是骆驼、城堡、棕榈树、外籍兵团、黄铜盘子和匪徒等富于浪漫色彩的字眼而已。

就算是在那儿呆过多年的人也未必会注意得到，对于当地百分之九十的居民来说，现实生活只意味着永无休止、劳累至极的斗争，其目的是从贫瘠的土壤中费力地弄出点吃的来。

18 Most of Morocco is so desolate that no wild animal bigger than a hare can live on it. Huge areas which were once covered with forest have turned into a treeless waste where the soil is exactly like broken-up brick. Nevertheless a good deal of it is cultivated, with frightful labour. Everything is done by hand. Long lines of women, bent double like inverted capital Ls, work their way slowly across the fields, tearing up the prickly weeds with their hands, and the peasant gathering lucerne for fodder pulls it up stalk by stalk instead of reaping it, thus saving an inch or two on each stalk. The plough is a wretched wooden thing, so frail that one can easily carry it on one's shoulder, and fitted underneath with a rough iron spike which stirs the soil to a depth of about four inches. This is as much as the strength of the animals is equal to. It is usual to plough with a cow and a donkey yoked together. Two donkeys would not be quite strong enough, but on the other hand two cows would cost a little more to feed. The peasants possess no harrows, they merely plough the soil several times over in different directions, finally leaving it in rough furrows, after which the whole field has to be shaped with hoes into small oblong patches to conserve water. Except for a day or two after the rare rainstorms there is never enough water. A long the edges of。