专八翻译真题

The translation section in Band 8 Exam for English majors （一）题型
本题为两项：Section A及Section B。

考试时间共计60分钟。

Section A：
A项由一段300词左右的汉语短文所组成，其中有一段150词左右的段落被底线划出。

要求根据上下文将此段译成英语。

Section B：
B项由一段300词左右的短文所组成，其中有一段150词左右的段落被底线划出。

要求根据上下文将此段译成汉语。

（二）测试要求
汉译英项目要求应试者运用汉译英的理论与技巧，翻译我国报刊杂志上的论述文和国情介绍，以及一般文学作品的节录。

速度为每小时约250汉字。

译文必须忠实原意，语言通顺。

英译汉项目要求应试者运用英译汉的理论与技巧，翻译英、美报刊杂志上的有关政治、经济、历史、文化等方面的论述以及文学原著的节录。

速度为每小时约250词。

译文要求忠实原意，语言流畅。

（三）历年真题
2004
在人际关系问题上我们不要太浪漫主义。

人是很有趣的，往往在接触一个人时首先看到的都是他或她的优点。

这一点颇像是在餐馆里用餐的经验。

开始吃头盘或冷碟的时候，印象很好。

吃头两个主菜时，也是赞不绝口。

愈吃愈趋于冷静，吃完了这顿筵席，缺点就都找出来了。

于是转喜为怒，转赞美为责备挑剔，转首肯为摇头。

这是因为，第一，开始吃的时候你正处于饥饿状态，而饿了吃糠甜加蜜，饱了吃蜜也不甜。

第二，你初到一个餐馆，开始举筷时有新鲜感，新盖的茅房三天香，这也可以叫做“陌生化效应”。

For me the most interesting thing about a solitary life, and mine has been that for the last twenty years, is that it becomes increasingly rewarding. When I can wake up and watch the sun rise over the ocean, as I do most days, and know that I have an entire day ahead, uninterrupted, in which to write a few pages, take a walk with my dog, read and listen to music, I am flooded with happiness.
I am lonely only when I am overtired , when I have worked too long without a break, when for the time being I feel empty and need filling up. And I am lonely sometimes when I come back home after a lecture trip, when I have seen a lot of people and talked a lot, and am full to the brim with experience that needs to be sorted out.
Then for a little while the house feels huge and empty, and I wonder where my self is hiding. It has to be recaptured slowly by watering the plants and, perhaps, by looking again at each one as though it were a person.
It takes a while, as I watch the surf blowing up in fountains, but the moment comes when the world falls away, and the self emerges again from the deep unconscious, bring back all I have recently experienced to be explored and slowly understood.
2015
花茶（camellia）的自然花期在12月至翌年4月，以红色为主系，另有黄色系和白色系，花色艳丽。

本届花展充分展示了花茶的品种资源和科研水平，是近三年来本市规模最大的一届花茶。

为了使广大植物爱好者有更多与花茶亲密接触的机会，本届花茶展的布展范围延伸至整个园区，为赏花游客带来便利。

此次花展历时2个月，展期内200多个茶花品种将陆续亮相。

At its heart, psycholinguistic work consists of two questions. One is, What knowledge of language is needed for us to use language? In a sense, we must know a language to use it, but we are not fully aware of this knowledge. A distinction may be drawn between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge refers to the knowledge of how to perform various acts, whereas explicit knowledge refers to the knowledge of the processes or mechanisms used in these acts. We sometimes know how to do something without knowing how we do it. For instance, a baseball pitcher might know how to throw a baseball 90 miles an hour, but might have little or no explicit knowledge of the muscle groups that are involved in this act. Similarly, we may distinguish between knowing how to speak and knowing what processes are involved in producing speech. Generally speaking, much of our linguistic knowledge is tacit rather than explicit.
2014
当我小学毕业的时候，亲友一致地愿意我去学手艺，好帮助母亲。

我晓得我应当去找饭吃，以减轻母亲的困苦。

可是，我也愿意升学。

我偷偷地考入了师范学校——制服、饭食、书籍、住处，都由学校供给。

只有这样，我才敢对母亲说升学的话。

入学，要交十元的保证金。

这是一笔巨款！母亲作了半个月的难，把这巨款筹到，而后含泪把我送出门去。

当我由师范毕业，被派为小学校的校长，母亲与我都一夜不曾合眼。

我只说了句：“以后，您可以歇一歇了！”她的回答只有一串串的眼泪。

The physical distance between speakers can indicate a number of things and can also be used to consciously send messages about intent. Closeness, for example, indicates intimacy or threat to many speakers whilst distance may denote formality or a lack of interest. Proximity is also both a matter of personal style and is often culture-bound so that what may seem normal to a speaker from one culture may appear unnecessarily close or distant to a speaker from another. And standing close to someone may be quite appropriate in some situations such as an informal party, but completely out of place in others, such as meeting with a superior.
Posture can convey meaning too. Hunched shoulders and a hanging head give a powerful indication of mood. A lowered head when speaking to a superior (with or without eye contact) can convey the appropriate relationship in some cultures.
2013
生活像一杯红酒，热爱生活的人会从中品出无穷的美妙。

将它握在手中观察，它的暗红有血的感觉，那正是生命的痕迹。

抿一口留在口中回味，它的甘甜有一丝苦涩，如人生一般复杂迷离。

喝一口下肚，余香润人心肺，让人终受益。

红酒越陈越美味，生活越丰富越美好。

当人生走向晚年，就如一瓶待开封的好酒，
其色彩是沉静的，味道中充满慷慨于智慧。

The UN General Assembly, the central political forum, is composed of 193 members, includi ng virtually all the world’s nation-states. Two thirds of its members are developing countries, which account for about three-quarters of the world’s population.
Reaching decisions is difficult, especially since all agreements by custom must be reached by consensus. As a result, important agreements are often held hostage by narrow special interests, and most agreements are reached only by reducing them to their lowest common denominators. But the real question is whether the major countries of the world will allow democracy to function at the highest level.
The Security Council, which is responsible for peace and security, deals with issues of the greatest political importance. The Council has only 15 members so it can meet frequently and deal with crises. Once impotence due to Cold War rivalries, it has regained much of the authority accorded by the UN charter.
2012
《烛光盛宴》
泊珍看他第一眼，彷似一声雷劈头而来，令她晕头涨脑，这一岁的孩子脸型长相如此熟悉，她心里的第一道声音是，不能带回去！
痛苦纠聚心中，眉心发烫发热，胸口郁闷难展，胃里一股气冲喉而上。

院长说这孩子发育迟缓时，她更是心头无绪，她在育生所待的房里来回踱步，这房里还有其他小孩，每人一张围着栅栏的床，整个房间只有一扇窗，窗外树影婆娑，就让这孩子留下来吧，这里有善心的神父和修女，这里将来会扩充为有医疗作用的看护中心，这是留住孩子最好的地方。

这孩子是她的秘密，她将秘密留在这树林掩映的建筑里。

她将秘密留在心头。

她专心做生意，她觉得人生剩下的只有不断地赚钱养育孩子，和对往日某些美好时光的眷恋，即使这些时光如此短暂，但也因为短暂而弥足珍贵，她家乡的好山好水、她和桂花的姐妹情谊、留在心中的曾有过的感情，这些美好的部分就够安慰她的余生。

她心里也惦念留在家乡的那些人，她的两个孩子、她的父亲，他们都不再有音讯，他们随着时光的流逝，成为心里一个遥远的山水风景，成为眼里模糊的泪水。

In some cases, intelligent people implementing intelligent policies are responsible for producing a "boomerang effect"; they actually create more of whatever it is they seek to reduce in the first place.
The boomerang effect has been achieved many times in recent years by men and women of goodwill．State legislatures around the nation have recently raised the drinking age back to 21 in an effort to reduce the prevalence of violent deaths among our young people.
But such policies seem instead to have created the conditions for even more campus violence．Some college students who previously drank in bars and lounges under the watchful supervision of bouncers(夜总会,酒吧等保安人员) (not to mention owners ea—er to keep their liquor licenses) now retreat to the sanctuary of their fraternity houses and apartments, where
they no longer control their behaviour - or their drinking．The boomerang effect has also played a role in attempts to reduce the availability of illicit drugs．During recent years, the federal government has been quite successful in reducing the supply of street drugs．As fields are burned and contraband (违禁品）confiscated, the price of street drugs has skyrocketed to a point where cheap alternatives have begun to compete in the marketplace．Unfortunately, the cheap alternatives are even more harmful than the illicit drugs they replace.
boomerang: a curved flat piece of wood that can be thrown so as to return to the thrower
2010
朋友之间，情趣相投、脾气对味则合、则交，反之，则离、则绝。

朋友之间再熟悉、再亲密，也不能随便过头、不恭不敬，这样，默契和平衡将被打破，友好关系将不复存在。

每个人都希望拥有自己的一片私密空间，朋友之间过于随便，就容易侵入这片禁区，从而引起冲突，造成隔阂。

待友不敬，有时或许只是一件小事，却可能已埋下了破坏性的种子。

维持朋友亲密关系的最好办法是往来有节，互不干涉。

I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May; that it was Easter Sunday，and as yet very early in the morning. I was standing，as it seemed to me，at the door of my own cottage. Right before me lay the very scene which could really be commanded from that situation，but exalted, as was usual，and solemnized by the power of dreams. There were the same mountains，and the same lovely valley at their feet; but the mountains were raised to more than Alpine height，and there was interspaced far larger between them of savannahs and forest lawns; the hedges were rich with white roses; and no living creature was to be seen, excepting that in the green churchyard there were cattle tranquilly reposing upon the verdant graves，and particularly round about the grave of a child whom I had once tenderly loved，just as I had really seen them，a little before sunrise，in the same summer when that child died.
2003
In his classic novel, “The Pioneers”, James, Feminore Cooper has his hero, a land developer, take his cousin on a tour of the city he is building. He describes the broad streets, rows of houses, a teeming metropolis. But his cousin looks around bewildered. All she sees is a forest, “Where are the beauties and improvements which you were to show me?”she asks. He’s astonished she can’t see them. “Where! Why everywhere,”he replies. For though they are not yet built on earth, he has built them in his mind, and they are as concrete to him as if they were already constructed and finished.
Cooper was illustrating a distinctly American trait, future-mindedness: the ability to see the present from the vantage point of the future; the freedom to feel unencumbered by the past and more emotionally attached to things to come. As Albert Einstein once said, “Life for the American is always becoming, never being.”
得病以前，我受父母宠爱，在家中横行霸道，一旦隔离，拘禁在花园山坡上一幢小房子里，我顿感打入冷宫，十分郁郁不得志起来。

一个春天的傍晚，园中百花怒放，父母在园中
设宴，一时宾客云集，笑语四溢。

我在山坡的小屋里，悄悄掀起窗帘，窥见园中大千世界，一片繁华，自己的哥姐，堂表弟兄，也穿插其间，个个喜气洋洋。

一霎时，一阵被人摒弃，为世所遗的悲愤兜上心头，禁不住痛哭起来。

2002
The word “winner”and “loser”have many meanings. When we refer to a person as a winner, we do not mean one who makes someone else lose. To us, a winner is one who responds authentically by being credible, trustworthy, responsive, and genuine, both as an individual and as a member of a society.
Winners do not dedicate their lives to a concept of what they imagine they should be: rather, they are themselves and as such do not use their energy putting on a performance, maintaining pretence, and manipulating others. They are aware that there is a difference between being loving and acting loving, between being stupid and acting stupid, between being knowledgeable and acting knowledgeable. Winners do not need to hide behind a mask.
Winners are not afraid to do their own thinking and to use their own knowledge. They can separate fac ts from opinions and don’t pretend to have all the answers. They listen to others, evaluate what they say, but come to their own conclusions. Although winners can adore and respect other people, they are not totally defined, demolished, bound, or awed by them. Winners do not play “helpless”, nor do they play the blaming game. Instead, they assume responsibility for their own lives.
大自然对人的恩赐，无论贫富，一律平等。

所以人们对于大自然，全都一直并深深地依赖着。

尤其在乡间，上千年来人们一直以不变的方式生活着。

种植庄稼和葡萄，酿酒和饮酒，喂牛和挤奶，除草和栽花；在周末去教堂祈祷和做礼拜，在节日到广场拉琴、跳舞和唱歌；往日的田园依旧是今日的温馨家园。

这样，每个地方都有自己的传说，风俗也就衍传了下来。

2001
乔羽的歌大家都熟悉。

但他另外两大爱好却鲜为人知，那就是钓鱼和喝酒。

晚年的乔羽喜爱垂钓，他说，“有水有鱼的地方大都是有好环境的，好环境便会给人好心情。

我认为最好的钓鱼场所不是舒适的、给你准备好饿鱼的垂钓园，而是那极其有吸引力的大自然野外天成的场所。

”钓鱼是一项能够陶冶性情的运动，有益于身心健康。

乔羽说：“钓鱼可分三个阶段：第一阶段是吃鱼；第二阶段是吃鱼和情趣兼而有之；第三阶段主要是钓趣，面对一池碧水，将忧心烦恼全都抛在一边，使自己的身心得到充分休息。

”
Possession for its own sake or in competition with the rest of the neighborhood would have been Thoreau’s idea of the low levels. The active discipline of heightening one’s perception of what is enduring in nature would have been his idea of the high. What he saved from the low was time and effort he could spend on the high. Thoreau certainly disapproved of starvation, but he would put into feeding himself only as much effort as would keep him functioning for more important efforts.
Effort is the gist of it. There is no happiness except as we take on life-engaging difficulties. Short of the impossible, as Yeats put it, the satisfaction we get from a lifetime depends on how
high we choose our difficulties. Robert Frost was thinking in something like the same terms when he spoke of “The pleasure of taking pains”. The mortal flaw in the advertised version of happiness is in the fact that it purports to be effortless.
We demand difficulty even in our games. We demand it because without difficulty there can be no game. A game is a way of making something hard for the fun of it. The rules of the game are an arbitrary imposition of difficulty. When someone ruins the fun, he always does so by refusing to play by the rules. It is easier to win at chess if you are free, at your pleasure, to change the wholly arbitrary rules, but the fun is in winning within the rules. No difficulty, no fun.
2000
中国科技馆的诞生来之不易。

与国际著名科技馆和其他博物馆相比，它先天有些不足，后天也常缺乏营养，但是它成长的步伐却是坚实而有力的。

它在国际上已被公认为后起之秀。

世界上第一代博物馆属于自然博物馆，它是通过化石、标本等向人们介绍地球和各种生物的演化历史。

第二代属于工业技术博物馆，它所展示的是工业文明带来的各种阶段性结果。

这两代博物馆虽然起到了传播科学知识的作用，但是，它们把参观者当成了被动的旁观者。

世界上第三代博物馆是充满全新理念的博物馆。

在这里，观众可以自己去动手操作，自己细心体察。

这样，他们可以更贴近先进的科学技术，去探索科学技术的奥妙。

中国科技馆正是这样的博物馆!它汲取了国际上一些著名博物馆的长处，设计制作了力学、光学、电学、热学、声学、生物学等展品，展示了科学的原理和先进的科技成果。

If people mean anything at all by the expression “untimely death”, they m us t believe that some deaths nm on a better schedule than others. Death in old age is rarely called untimely—a long life is thought to be a full one. But with the passing of a young person, one assumes that the best years lay ahead and the measure of that life was still to be taken. History denies this, of course. Among prominent summer deaths, one recalls those of MariLarry Monroe and James Deans, whose lives seemed equally brief and complete. Writers cannot bear the fact that poet John Keats died at 26, and only half playfully judge their own lives as failures when they pass that year. The id ea that the life cut short is unfulfilled is illogical because lives are measure d by the impressions they leave on the world and by their intensity and virtue.
1999
加拿大的温哥华1986年刚刚度过百岁生日，但城市的发展令世界瞩目。

以港立市，以港兴市，是许多港口城市生存发展的道路。

经过百年开发建设，有着天然不冻良港的温哥华，成为举世闻名的港口城市，同亚洲、大洋洲、欧洲、拉丁美洲均有定期班轮，年货物吞吐量达到8，000万吨，全市就业人口中有三分之一从事贸易与运输行业。

温哥华（Vancouver）的辉煌是温哥华人智慧和勤奋的结晶，其中包括多民族的贡献。

加拿大地广人稀，国土面积比中国还大，人口却不足3000万。

吸收外来移民，是加拿大长期奉行的国策。

可以说，加拿大除了印第安人外，无一不是外来移民，不同的只是时间长短而已。

温哥华则更是世界上屈指可数的多民族城市。

现今180万温哥华居民中，有一半不是在本地出生的，每4个居民中就有一个是亚洲人。

而25万华人对温哥华的经济转型起着决
定性的作用。

他们其中有一半是近5年才来到温哥华地区的，使温哥华成为亚洲以外最大的中国人聚居地。

In some societies people want children for what might be called familial reasons: to extend the family line or the family name, to propitiate the ancestors; to enable the proper functioning of religious rituals involving the family. Such reasons may seem thin in the modern, secularized society but they have been and are powerful indeed in other places.
In addition, one class of family reasons shares a border with the following category, namely, having children in order to maintain or improve a marriage: to hold the husband or occupy the wife; to repair or rejuvenate the marriage; to increase the number of children on the assumption that family happiness lies that way. The point is underlined by its converse: in some societies the failure to bear children (or males) is a threat to the marriage and a ready cause for divorce.
Beyond all that is the profound significance of children to the very institution of the family itself. To many people, husband and wife alone do not seem a proper family —they need children to enrich the circle, to validate its family character, to gather the redemptive influence of offspring. Children need the family, but the family seems also to need children, as the social institution uniquely available, at least in principle, for security, comfort, assurance, and direction in a changing, often hostile, world. To most people, such a home base, in the literal sense, needs more than one person for sustenance and in generational extension.
1998
1997年2月24日我们代表团下榻日月潭中信大饭店，送走了最后一批客人，已是次日凌晨3点了。

我躺在床上久久不能入睡，披衣走到窗前，往外看去，只见四周峰峦叠翠，湖面波光粼粼。

望着台湾这仅有的景色如画的天然湖泊，我想了许多，许多……
这次到台湾访问交流，虽然行程匆匆，但是，看了不少地方，访了旧友，交了新知，大家走到一起，谈论的一个重要话题就是中华民族在21世纪的强盛。

虽然祖国大陆、台湾的青年生活在不同的社会环境中，有着各自不同的生活经历，但大家的内心都深深铭刻着中华文化优秀传统的印记，都拥有着振兴中华民族的共同理想。

在世纪之交的伟大时代，我们的祖国正在走向繁荣富强，海峡两岸人民也将加强交流，共同推进祖国统一大业的早日完成。

世纪之交的宝贵机遇和巨大挑战将青年推到了历史前台。

跨世纪青年一代应该用什么样的姿态迎接充满希望的新世纪，这是我们必须回答的问题。

日月潭水波不兴，仿佛与我一同在思索……
I agree to some extent with my imaginary English reader. American literary historians are perhaps prone to view their own national scene too narrowly, mistaking prominence for uniqueness. They do over-phrase their own literature, or certainly its minor figures. And Americans do swing from aggressive over phrase of their literature to an equally unfortunate, imitative deference. But then, the English themselves are somewhat insular in their literary appraisals. Moreover, in fields where they are not pre-eminent —e. g. in painting and music —they too alternate between boasting of native products and copying those of the Continent. How many English paintings try to look as though they were done in Paris; how many times have we read in articles that they really represent an “English tradition”after all.
To speak of American literature, then, is not to assert that it is completely unlike that of
Europe. Broadly speaking, America and Europe have kept step. At any given moment the traveler could find examples in both of the same architecture, the same styles in dress, the same books on the shelves. Ideas have crossed the Atlantic as freely as men and merchandise, though sometimes more slowly. When I refer to American habit, thoughts, etc., I intend some sort of qualification to precede the word, for frequently the difference between America and Europe (especially England) will be one of degree, sometimes only of a small degree. The amount of divergence is a subtle affair, liable to perplex the Englishman when he looks at America. He is looking at a country which in important senses grew out of his own, which in several ways still resembles his own — and which is yet a foreign country. There are odd overlappings and abrupt unfamiliarities; kinship yields to a sudden alienation, as when we hail a person across the street, only to discover from his blank response that we have mistaken a stranger for a friend.
1997
来美国求学的中国学生与其他亚裔学生一样，大多非常刻苦勤奋，周末也往往会抽出一天甚至两天的时间去实验室加班，因而比起美国学生来，成果出得较多。

我的导师是亚裔人，嗜烟好酒，脾气暴躁。

但他十分欣赏亚裔学生勤奋与扎实的基础知识，也特别了解亚裔学生的心理。

因此，在他实验室所招的学生中，除有一名来自德国外，其余5位均是亚裔学生。

他干脆在实验室的门上贴一醒目招牌：“本室助研必须每周工作7天，早10时至晚12时，工作时间必须全力以赴。

”这位导师的严格及苛刻是全校有名的，在我所呆的3年半中，共有14位学生被招进他的实验室，最后博士毕业的只剩下5人。

1990年夏天，我不顾别人劝阻，硬着头皮接受了导师的资助，从此开始了艰难的求学旅程。

Opera is expensive: that much is inevitable. But expensive things are inevitably the province （范围）of the rich unless we abdicate（退位、放弃）society’s power of choice. We can choose to make opera and other expensive forms of culture, accessible（易接近的，可达到的）to those who cannot individually pay for it. The question is: why should we? No body denies the imperatives（必要的）of food, shelter, defence, health and education. But even in a prehistoric cave, man-kind stretched out a hand of not just to eat, drink or fight, but also to draw. The impulse（冲动）towards culture, the desire to express and explore the world through imagination and representation（表述、陈述）is fundamental. In Europe, this desire has found fulfillment（完成、成就）in the masterpieces of our music, art, literature and theatre. These masterpieces are the touchstones（标准、试金石）for all our efforts; they are the touchstones for the possibilities to which human thought and imagination may aspire（立志、追求目标、渴望）; they carry the most profound （深厚的、深刻的）messages that can be sent from one human to another.
1996
近读报纸，对国内名片和请柬的议论颇多，于是想起客居巴黎时经常见到的法国人手中的名片和请柬，随笔记下来，似乎不无借鉴之处。

在巴黎，名目繁多的酒会，冷餐会是广交朋友的好机会。

在这种场合陌生人相识，如果是亚洲人，他们往往开口之前先毕恭毕敬地用双手把自己的名片呈递给对方，这好像是不可缺少的礼节。

然而，法国人一般却都不大主动递送名片，双方见面寒暄几句，甚至海阔天空地聊一番也就各自走开，只有当双方谈话投机，希望继续交往时，才会主动掏出名片。

二话不说先递名片反倒显得有些勉强。

It should have been easy. They were battle-tested veterans with long ties to Reagan and even longer ties to the Republican party, men who understood presidential politics as well as any in the country. The backdrop of the campaign was hospitable, with lots of good news to work with: America was at peace, and the nation’s economy, a key factor in any election, was rebounding vigorously after recession. Furthermore, the campaign itself was lavishly financed, with plenty of money for a top-flight staff, travel, and television commercials. And, most important, their candidate was Ronald Reagan, a president of tremendous personal popularity and dazzling communication skills. Reagan has succeed more than any president since John F. Kennedy in projecting a broad vision of America– a nation of renewed military strength, individual initiative, and smaller federal government.
1995
简.奥斯丁的小说都是三五户人家居家度日，婚恋嫁娶的小事。

因此不少中国读者不理解她何以在西方享有那么高的声誉。

但一部小说开掘得深不深，艺术和思想是否有过人之处，的确不在题材大小。

有人把奥斯丁的作品比作越咀嚼越有味道的橄榄。

这不仅因为她的语言精彩，并曾对小说艺术的发展有创造性的贡献，也因为她的轻快活泼的叙述实际上并不那么浅白，那么透明。

史密斯夫人说过，女作家常常试图修正现存的价值秩序，改变人们对“重要”和“不重要”的看法。

也许奥斯丁的小说能教我们学会转换眼光和角度，明察到“小事”的叙述所涉及的那些不小的问题。

I, by comparison, living in my overpriced city apartment, walking to work past putrid sacks of street garbage, paying usurious taxes to local and state governments I generally abhor, I am rated middle class. This causes me to wonder, do the measurement make sense? Are we measuring only that which is easily measured--- the numbers on the money chart --- and ignoring values more central to the good life?
For my sons there is of course the rural bounty of fresh-grown vegetables, line-caught fish and the shared riches of neighbours’ orchards and gardens. There is the unpaid baby-sitter for whose children my daughter-in-law baby-sits in return, and neighbours who barter their skills and labour. But more than that, how do you measure serenity? Sense if self?
I don’t want to idealize life in small places. There are times when the outside world intrudes brutally, as when the cost of gasoline goes up or developers cast their eyes on untouched farmland. There are cruelties, there is intolerance, there are all the many vices and meannesses in small places that exist in large cities. Furthermore, it is harder to ignore them when they cannot be banished psychologically to another part of town or excused as the whims of alien groups --- when they have to be acknowledged as “part of us.”
Nor do I want to belittle the opportunities for small decencies in cities --- the eruptions of one-stranger-to-another caring that always surprise and delight. But these are, sadly, more exceptions than rules and are often overwhelmed by the awful corruptions and dangers that surround us.。