評論
打印
Later I asked her, "How did you know the TV was here?"
后來我問她:“你是怎么知道家里有電視機的？”
The antenna. Now our house looks like everyone else's.
“電視天線呀。這一來我們家的房子看上去就跟別人家的一樣了。”
She had a wonderful smile on her face.
她臉上漾起燦爛的微笑。
When we were young our parents allowed us to watch TV two hours a night. Oh, yes. And we couldn't watch until our homework was finished. But after a year or two, TV wasn't exciting or new anymore. It became just another part of our lives, like shoes or soap. My parents still had fears about TV. We were going to forget how to read, they said. And we were not going to read books because watching TV was easier, they said. And TV was going to fill our minds with violence, they said. They said lots of things like that — once a day at least. I disagreed with them. I thought they were old-fashioned, thinking too much of old ways and ideas.
我們還小的時候，父母只允許我們每晚看兩個小時的電視。哦，是這樣。而且我們非得做完了功課才能看電視。可是，過了一兩年，電視的新鮮勁兒過了。電視就像鞋子和肥皂之類的日用品一樣，成了我們生活的一部分。我父母對電視仍心存戒慮，說我們會荒廢閱讀；說我們會不想看書，因為看電視更為輕松；還說電視會往我們的腦子里灌滿暴力。他們說了好多好多諸如此類的話——至少每天得說上一回。我可不同意他們的觀點，我覺得他們太守舊，腦子里的舊觀念太多。
Today, people still argue about the value of TV. Nobody can deny the power of TV. It has an enormous, a very powerful, influence on our lives. On the average, Americans spend 30 hours a week watching TV. Is this influence good or bad? This is an unanswerable question indeed: It is hard enough to measure influence; and it is even harder to decide what is good and what isn't. What is good, I suppose, is that many people are concerned about TV's influence and that we have the power to change what we don't like.
時至今日，人們仍在爭論電視的作用。沒有誰能否認電視的力量，它對我們的生活有著巨大的、非常強有力的影響。美國人平均一周看30小時的電視。其影響究竟是好是壞？這確實是個無法回答的問題。影響力本來就難以估量，要評定什么是好什么是壞就更難了。我認為好就好在很多人都很關心電視的影響，而且對我們不喜歡的東西我們也有能力加以改變。
Recently I read an article in the newspaper about the people of Monhegan Island, 18 kilometers off the coast of Maine. These people don't have electricity, and they decided, once again, that they liked it that way. Only a handful of people live there during the long winter, and they live without electricity — by choice. Electricity, they think, would make things too easy and spoil their way of life. Maybe the young people wouldn't want to go to town dances anymore. Maybe they would be more interested in staying home and watching television.
最近我在報上讀到一篇關于蒙希根島上居民的文章。該島離緬因州海岸18公里。島上居民不使用電，他們再次做出決定，他們喜歡這樣。在漫長的冬季，只有為數極少的人在那兒居住，他們過著沒有電的生活——出于他們自己的抉擇。他們認為電這玩意兒會使很多事情變得太容易，并會破壞他們的生活方式。年輕人或許就此不再去鎮上參加舞會。也許他們更樂于守在家里看電視。
