新世纪大学英语综合教程4unit4课文逐段翻译

Unit 4

Text A

|工作、劳动和玩耍Work, Labor, and Play

威斯坦·H·奥登

Preface

We go to work every day and we think we are workers. However, after reading Auden's discussion about work, labor, and play, the majority of us may find that we are no longer "workers". What are we then?

就我所知，汉娜·阿伦特小姐是界定工作和劳动之间本质区别的第一人。一个人要想快乐，

第一要有自由感，第二要确信自己有价值。如果社会迫使一个人去做他自己不喜欢的事，或者说，他所喜欢做的事被社会忽视，看作没有价值或不重要，那他就不会真正快乐。在一个

严格意义上已废除奴隶制的社会里，一个人做的事情是否具有社会价值取决于他是否为完成

此项工作得到了报酬。然而，今天的劳动者可以被称为名副其实的工资奴隶。如果社会给一个人提供一份他本人不感兴趣的工作，他出于养家糊口的需要不得已才从事这项工作，那这个人就是一个劳动者。

So far as I know, Miss Hannah Arendt was the first person to define the essential difference between work and labor. To be happy, a man must feel, firstly, free and, secondly, important. He cannot be really happy if he is compelled by society to do what he does not enjoy doing, or if what he enjoys doing is ignored by society as of no value or importance. In a society where slavery in

the strict sense has been abolished , whether what a man does has social value depends on whether he is paid money to do it, but a laborer today can rightly be called a wage slave. A man is a laborer if the job society offers him is of no interest to himself but he is compelled to take it by the necessity of earning a living and supporting his family.

与劳动相对的是玩耍。玩游戏时，我们能从中得到乐趣，否则就不会玩这个游戏。但这完

全是一种私人的活动，我们玩不玩这个游戏社会是不会关注的。

The opposite to labor is play. When we play a game, we enjoy what we are doing, otherwise we should not play it, but it is a purely private activity; society could not care less whether we play it

or not.

处在劳动和玩耍之间的是工作。如果一个人对社会为他支付报酬的工作感兴趣，他就是一个工作者。从社会角度看是必需的劳动在他自己看来却是自愿的玩耍。一个职位是劳动还是工作，并不取决于这个职位本身，而是取决于占据这个职位的个人自己的情趣。这种差异与体力劳动和脑力劳动之间的差异并不吻合。譬如，一个园丁或者鞋匠也许就是一个工作者，而一个银行职员则可能是一个劳动者。一个人是工作者还是劳动者可以从他对闲暇的态度上看

出来。对于一个工作者来说，闲暇不过是他需要放松、休息从而进行有效工作的几个小时，

所以，他可能只有少量的闲暇，而不会有大量的空闲。工作者可能会死于心脏病，并会忘记自己妻子的生日。而对于劳动者来说，闲暇就意味着摆脱强制，所以，他自然会想象：他

不得不花费在劳动上的时间越少，而自由自在地玩耍的时间越多，那才越好。

Between labor and play stands work. A man is a worker if he is personally interested in the job which society pays him to do; what from the point of view of society is necessary labor is from his own point

of view voluntary play . Whether a job is to be classified as labor or work depends, not on the job itself, but on the tastes of the individual who undertakes it. The difference does not, for example, coincide with the difference between a manual and a mental job; a gardener or a cobbler

may be a worker, a bank clerk a laborer. Which a man is can be seen from his attitude toward leisure. To a worker, leisure means simply the hours he needs to relax and rest in order to work efficiently. He is therefore more likely to take too little leisure than too much; workers die of heart attacks and forget their wives' birthdays. To the laborer, on the other hand, leisure means freedom from compulsion , so that it is natural for him to imagine that the fewer hours he has to spend laboring, and the more hours he is free to play, the better.

在一个现代化的技术社会里，总人口中有多大比例的人能够像我一样有幸成为工作者呢？我

估计大概有 16％，而且，我认为这个数字将来也不会增加。

What percentage of the population in a modern technological society are, like myself, in the fortunate position of being workers? At a guess I would say sixteen per cent, and I do not think

that figure is likely to get bigger in the future.

技术和劳动的分工成就了两件事：通过在许多领域取消了特别才能和技术的需要，把过去本来令人愉快的大量受雇职业的工作变成了令人厌倦的劳动；通过提高生产力，缩短了劳动所需的时间。已经可以想象出这样一个社会：其人口的大多数，也就是其中的劳动者们，将会享受到早期贵族们才能享受到的几乎同样多的休闲。当人们回想起过去贵族们的举止行为

时，前景并非乐观。的确，在未来这样一个大众社会里，人们要解决“无聊”这个问题，也许比过去的贵族们要困难得多。后者（贵族们）把他们的时间都仪式化了，譬如，有打松鸡的

季节，有在城镇消磨的季节等等。广大民众更有可能以时尚来取代一成不变的仪式，而时尚将会为了某些人的经济利益频繁地变化。再者，广大民众也不会再去狩猎，因为，要不了多久可供猎取的动物就没有了。至于贵族们其他的消遣项目，比如赌博、决斗和战争，人们可以轻而易举地从危险驾驶、吸食毒品和毫无理性的暴力行为中找到同样的乐趣。工作者很少从事暴力活动，他们可以把自己的“敌对心理”用在工作上，不管是工匠的体力活，还是科学家、艺术家的脑力活。“敌对心理”在脑力劳动中的作用可以在“紧紧咬住问题”这个短语里得到恰如其分的表达。

Technology and the division of labor have done two things: by eliminating in many fields the need for special strength or skill, they have made a very large number of paid occupations which formerly were enjoyable work into boring labor, and by increasing productivity they have reduced the number of necessary laboring hours. It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy . When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful. Indeed, the problem of dealing with boredom may be even more difficult for such a future mass society than it was for aristocracies. The latter, for example, ritualized their time; there was a season to shoot grouse , a season to spend in town, etc. The masses are more likely to replace an unchanging ritual by fashion which changes as often as possible in the economic interest of certain people. Again, the masses cannot go in for hunting ,

for very soon there would be no animals left to hunt. For other aristocratic amusements like gambling , dueling , and warfare , it may be only too easy to find equivalents in dangerous driving, drug-taking, and senseless acts of violence. Workers seldom commit acts of violence, because they can put their aggression into their work, be it physical like the work of a smith , or mental like the work of a scientist or an artist. The role of aggression in mental work is aptly expressed by the phrase " getting one's teeth into a problem ".

Text B