课文翻译 课后翻译在最后
8.Similarly, don t think for a moment that a proven American salesperson can be sent to Great Britain and be expected to sell there, since it s the same language. In nine out of ten cases, he or she will fail. The ones who succeed are multicultural people with the rare ability to gain
acceptance from British customers. 同样，千万不要以为因为语言相同，一位老资格的美国推销员就可以被派往英国，并期望他在那儿打得开销路。他或她十有八九会失败。成功的是具有赢得英国顾客认同这一非凡才能的多元文化人。
9.And don t fall for the myth that a candidate s knowledge of superficial behavior like shaking hands or bowing is a sure sign of multiculturalism. An American businessman arriving in Japan is immediately aware of the cultural differences, even in the first hour. It only takes a few days to learn when to take off his shoes or how to eat with chopsticks — but he ll still feel like a bull in a china shop — and an exceptionally clumsy bull at that. Even moving as carefully as he can, he still finds himself sending all the china crashing to the floor and offending people right and left. A monocultural person gives up at this point, because even if he s ready to learn about another culture intellectually, he refuses to penetrate it emotionally. A multicultural person swallows his pride, learns from his blunders and in the end manages to get in touch with the spirit of the new culture, not just its superficial details.也不要轻信这样的神话：求职者对像握手或鞠躬这类表面举止的了解，就一定是多元文化素养的标志。一个美国商人一到日本，甚至在第一个小时内，就会马上意识到文化上的差异。 他只需几天就能学会什么时候脱鞋或怎样用筷子吃饭---但他仍会感到自己就像闯入瓷器店里的一头公牛， 而且是一头极其笨拙的公牛。即使他尽可能小心地走动，他仍会发现自己将所有的瓷器都撞到地上，并冒犯四周的人。一个单一文化人会在此刻放弃，因为即使他在理智上已愿意学习另一种文化，在感情上他也会拒绝渗入其中。一个多元文化人，会抑制其自尊心，从错误中吸取教训，并最终设法接触到这种新文化的精神，而不仅仅是其表面的细节。
第四单元 Text A、Turning failure into Success 化失败为成功
Vicky — beautiful, talented, very bright, voted "Most Likely to Succeed" in college — got a promising job with a large company after graduation. Then, after two years without promotions, she was fired. She suffered a complete nervous breakdown. "It was panic," she told me later. "Everything had always gone so well for me that I had no experience in coping with rejection. I felt I was a failure." Vicky's reaction is an extreme example of a common phenomenon.
维姬——才貌双全、聪明伶俐在大学里曾被选为“最有可能成功的人士”---毕业后在一家大公司找到一份很有前途的工作。然而过了两年她非但没有得到提升反而被解雇了。她的精神完全崩溃了。“这真叫人害怕”她后来告诉我说“我以前样样都那么顺利因此对遭受拒绝时应如何处理毫无经验。我觉得自己是个失败者。”维姬的反应是某种常见现象的一个极端例子。
Our society places so much emphasis on "making it" that we assume that any failure is bad. What we don't always recognize is that what looks like failure may, in the long run, prove beneficial. When Vicky was able to think coolly about why she was fired, for example, she realized that she was simply not suited for a job dealing with people all the time. In her new position as a copy editor, she works independently, is happy and once again "successful."
我们的社会如此推崇“成功” 以至于我们认为凡失败都是坏事。我们往往认识不到看似失败的东西也许从长远来看大有裨益。比如当维姬得以冷静地思考自己被解雇的原因时她便认识到自己只是不适合做老是跟人打交道的工作而已。在文字编辑这一新的岗位上她独挡一面心情愉快又一次“成功”了。
People are generally prone to what language expert S. I. Hayakawa calls "the two-valued
orientation." We talk about seeing both sides of a question as if every question had only two sides. We assume that everyone is either a success or a failure when, in fact, infinite degrees of both are possible. As Hayakawa points out, there's a world of difference between "I have failed three
times" and "I am a failure." Indeed, the words failure and success cannot be reasonably applied to
