練習(一):
Mrs. Chambers sits comfortably in her armchair, enjoying a cup of coffee. She has had athe right to relax. She has had a long and very busy life.
Mrs. Chambers has retired now to a small house in Bangor, a popular seaside town not far from Belfast. But for most of her life she lived in the country. Her husband’s farm was on an island in the middle of Strangford Lake. There, Mrs. Chambers baked bread twice a week, made jam every summer, and put her husband’s dinner on the table at twelve 0’clock exactly every day. The island farm had been owned by the Chambers family for may years, passing on from father to son. It was a quiet and beautiful place to live. They grew potatoes and vegetables, and kept hens and cows. When Mr. Chambers died, his son took on the farm, Mrs. Chambers moved away.
She takes another sip of coffee, and smiles as she remembers people from the past. “The old lady down the road thought she had a ghost in the house,” she says, “but it was only old Tom MaAleer, frightening her for fun.” The memories come fast. “Twenty men, they had, only tem years ago, to bring in the potato crop. Young Hugh has a machine now. He only needs five.”
It’s time for the news on TV. Mrs. Chambers wants to see the racing results. She won quite a lot of money last week. Next month she’s going down to Tipperary in the Republic of Ireland. The horse-racing there is wonderful. She finds it hard to stay away. But before the racing results there’s another item of news. A bomb has exploded in Belfast. Several people have been killed. Mrs. Chambers shakes her head. “They’re all crazy,” she says. “It’s just a few who make all the trouble. The rest of us want to live in peace. We’ve all got life long friends from both sides. And most of the time we never talk about the trouble.”
The racing results come on. She leans forward to watch. For her, ordinary everyday life is the most important thing.
參考譯文:
喬柏斯太太舒服地坐在扶手椅裏，享受着一杯咖啡。她有權利放鬆，她已經過了很長時間的忙碌生活了。
現在喬柏斯太太已經退休了，住在班戈區的一所小房子裏。班戈區是貝爾法斯特附近一個廣受喜愛的海邊小城。但是在生命中的大部分時間裏，她都住在農村。她丈夫在斯福德湖中間的一座島上有一個農場。喬柏斯太太每週都烤兩次麪包，每個夏天都要做果醬，每天12點準時把丈夫的午飯擺在桌上。島上的那個農場屬於喬柏斯家族已經很多年了，是從父輩傳下來的。那是個安靜美麗的地方。他們自己種土豆和蔬菜，還養母雞和奶牛。喬柏斯先生去世後，他的兒子接管了農場，喬柏斯太太搬離了那裏。
她喝了口咖啡。想起以前那些人的時候，她笑了。“住在路盡頭的那個老太太以爲自己房子裏有鬼，”她說，“其實那只是老湯姆.麥艾里爾唬她逗她玩的。”記憶被快速的喚醒。“僅僅在十年前，他們請了二十個人來挖土豆。年輕的休現在有了自己的機器，他只需要五個人。”
現在到電視新聞時間了。喬柏斯太太想看看跑馬比賽的結果。她上個禮拜贏了一大筆錢。她下個月要去愛爾蘭的蒂帕雷裏，那裏的跑馬比賽很精彩，她發現自己很難不參與進去。但是在比賽結果公佈之前還有另外一則新聞：貝爾法斯特發生一起爆炸，幾個人被炸死了。喬柏斯太太搖了搖頭。“他們瘋了”她說，“製造麻煩的只是少數人，我們其餘的人都想過平靜的生活。我們都有來自雙方的終身朋友(雙方指天主教徒和新教徒)，多數時候我們從不談論煩心事。”
比賽結果出來了。她傾着身子去看。對她來說，普通平凡的日常生活纔是最重要的。
練習(二):
I love reading novels, especially those classics. My favorite writer is Jane Austen, the one who wrote pride and prejudice. When BBC screened its latest adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel pride and prejudice, it was watched by a record 18 million British viewers. The series was then sold to 18 countries round the world, from America to Australia, from Iceland to Israel, there are Jane Austen fans in all corners of the globe, and even special Jane Austen discussion groups on the internet.
Jane Austen never once traveled aboard in her life time and she hardly ever left the south of England. When she died a spinster in 1817, only four of her six novels had been published, all anonymous and she eared a grand total of 648.65 pounds from her books. Now, nearly 200 years later, sales of her novels rival modern bestsellers, reaching 35,000 a week. There have been film and television productions of not only pride and prejudice, but also Emma, Persuasion, and the Oscar-winning Sense and Sensibility. Her house in Chawton in Hampshire is visited by 200 people a day.
She wad born in 1775, the seventh of eight children. Her father was the reverend George Austen. They were not well off, and lived in a village. By the time when she was 12, Jane was writing stories about heroines imprisoned in haunted castles, being rescued by glamorous heroes. In Jane’s own life there were three romantic attachments. The first was a handsome Irish law student called Tom Lefroy, who she met in 1795, but who had to return to Ireland a year later. The second, in 1801, was a young man called Samuel Blackall who she fell in love with when on holiday in Devon, but who tragically died suddenly soon after. The third was a large young man called Harries whose proposal she briefly accepted in 1802, “but he had nothing to recommend him but his size,” so she changed her mind.
In 1801 the family moved to Bath, where she was very unhappy. To make matters worse, in 1805 her father died, leaving his widow, Jane and her only sister Cassandra, also unmarried, even poorer than before. For four years they had to move from house to house, often staying with relatives. Finally in 1809 her brother Edward allowed them to live in a house on his estate in Chawton, only a few miles from Steventon where she had grown up. Here she was much happier, despite being the poor relation, dependent on charity. She not only revised her earlier novel but was able to write new ones, using her experiences to satirize and make fun of the social inequalities she saw around her. At last in 1811, Sense and Sensibility was the first of her novels to be published.
參考譯文：
我喜歡看小說，特別是那些精典名著。我特別喜愛的一個作者是簡.奧斯丁。她寫過一部小說叫《傲慢與偏見》。當BBC(英國廣播公司)上映簡.奧斯丁的《傲慢與偏見》小說的最終改寫本時，當時創下了1800萬英國觀衆的收看記錄。之後，一系列的叢書出售到全世界18個國家，從美國到澳大利亞，從冰島到以色列，全世界到處到有簡.奧斯丁的狂熱書迷，甚至在互聯網上還有專門的簡.奧斯丁的討論組。
簡.奧斯丁在她的生活中沒有出過一次國，甚至從末離開過英國的南部。在1987年她過世的時候，還是個末婚女子，她的六部小說只有四部已經出版，並且全部是匿名的，她只掙到了共648.65英鎊，這就是她小說的`全部酬勞。如今，也就是此後將近200年後，她小說的銷售商擊敗了當今的頂級推銷員，每星期可達到35000英鎊的收益。已經成爲電影、電視出版物的不僅僅是《傲慢與偏見》，還有《埃瑪》、《勸導》、還有奧斯卡獲獎作品《理智與情感》。她在漢普郡Chawton的家，每天都不低於200人蔘觀拜訪。
簡.奧斯丁出生於1775年，是家裏八個孩子中的第七個。她的父親是受人尊敬的牧師喬治. 奧斯丁。她們家不富裕，而且住在一個鄉村裏。直到她十二歲的那年，簡.奧斯丁一直在寫關於女主人公被關押在魔鬼城堡的故事，直到被魅力英雄拯救出來。在簡的生命中，有三次浪漫的情感歷程。第一次，是與一個英俊的愛爾蘭法律系的學生，名叫Tom Lefroy，她是在1795年遇到他的，但他不得不在一年之後返回愛爾蘭。第二次是在1801年，一個名叫Samuel Blackall的年青男子在德爾郡的假日裏讓她墜入愛河。但是那個男子沒過多久，突然悲慘地死去了。第三次是與一個名叫Harries大個子年青人，在 1802年他向她未婚的時候，她暫且允諾了他，“但是他除了他的架碼之外，一無所長”，於是她改變了主意。1801年，她們家搬遷到了巴思，她在那兒過得非常不幸。更爲糟糕的是，她父親在1805年撇下她們孤兒寡母撒手人鬟了，簡和她同樣未完婚的妹妹卡珊德娜比以前更加貧困。四年以來，他們到處搬家，經常在親戚家逗留。終於在1809年，她的兄弟愛德華同意她們住進他在Chawton作爲不動產的房子，只離她成長的Steventon這個地方几英里的距離。在這兒她生活幸福得多，儘管是由貧弱的親戚關係和依靠他們的施捨維繫。她不僅修正了她以前的小說，而且還創作出了新的作品。用她個人的經歷和見聞來嘲諷社會的不平等。最終在1811年，《理智與情感》作爲她的第一部小說被出版了。
