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I know the irony strikes like with the force of a cartoon anvil now, but...
我現在明白了反諷就像用卡通鐵砧去打擊你，但……
So they had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English literature. A compromise was reaced that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents' car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.
他們希望我取得高職學位，而我卻想攻讀英國文學。最后，我和父母達成了妥協，我改學現代語言，現在回想起來，當時雙方都不怎么滿意。于是，父母的車剛一開遠，我就丟下德語，去學習古典文學。
I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
我不記得告訴過父母自己在學習古典文學，他們可能是在我畢業典禮那一天才知道的。我想，他們也許認為，在全世界的所有專業中，不會有比研究希臘神話更沒用的專業了，那甚至無法換來一間獨立寬敞的衛生間。
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibily lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticize my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticized only by fools.
在這里我想說明一點：我不會因為父母的觀點而怪他們。不要因為父母給你的人生路指錯了方向就無休止地埋怨他們。當你到一定年齡，可以自己把握人生時，就應該自己承擔責任。再者，父母這樣做是希望我不會過窮日子，所以我不能責怪他們。他們經歷了貧窮，我后來也一度很窮，所以我很理解他們，因為貧窮并不是一種高貴的經歷。貧窮會讓人感覺恐懼、有壓力，有時甚至讓人感覺沮喪。貧窮意味著說不盡的羞辱和艱辛?？孔约旱呐[脫貧窮值得自豪，只有傻瓜才會將貧窮浪漫化。
