英译汉
The line of demarcation between the adult and the child world is drawn in many ways. For instance, many American parents may be totally divorced from the church, or entertain grave doubts about the existence of God, but they send their children to Sunday school and help them to pray. American parents struggle in a competitive world where sheer cunning and falsehood are often rewarded and respected, but they feed their children with nursery tales in which the morally good is pitted against the bad, and in the end the good inevitably is successful and the bad inevitably punished. When American parents are in serious domestic trouble, they maintain a front of sweetness and light before their children. Even if American parents suffer a major business or personal catastrophe, they feel obliged to turn to their children and say, “Honey, everything is going to be all right.” This American desire to keep the children’s world separate from that of the adult is exemplified also by the practice of delaying transmission of the news to children when their parents have been killed in an accident. Thus, in summary, American parents face a world of reality while many of their children live in a near-ideal unreal realm where the rules of the parental world do not apply, are watered down, or are even reversed.
【参考译文】
成人世界和儿童世界在许多方面泾渭分明。比如说，许多美国人可能从来不去教堂，或者对上帝是否存在十分怀疑，但是他们却会把孩子送到主日学校，教会他们祈祷。美国人生存的社会充满竞争，尔虞我诈才能名利双收，但是在他们教育孩子的幼儿故事里，在好人与坏人的斗争中最终却总是善有善报，恶有恶报。如果美国人出现严重的家庭危机，在孩子们面前，他们表面上却仍然是温柔可亲。即使工作、生活遭遇重大挫折，他们也认为有必要对孩子说：“宝贝儿，一切都会好起来的。”如果大人遭遇事故身亡，不会立刻把噩耗告诉孩子，这种做法也可以说明美国人希望让孩子的世界和成人的世界分离开来。因此，总的说来，美国人生活在现实的世界中，孩子则生活在一个几乎完美的天地里，这里成人世界的规则不适用，淡化了，甚至完全相反。