Lesson Nine  The Trouble with Television
A prominent anchorman warns of
TV’s adverse effect on America’s culture
By Robert McNeal
电视的毛病
罗伯特·迈克尼尔
○课文逐句翻译
要摆脱电视的影响是困难的。
It is difficult to escape the influence of television.
假如统计的平均数字适用于你的话，那么你到20岁的时候就至少看过2万个小时的电视了，从那以后每生活10年就会增加1万小时。
If you fit the statistical averages, by the age of 20 you will have been exposed to at least 20,000 hours of television. You can add 10,000 hours for each decade you have lived after the age of 20.
比起看电视，美国人只有在工作和睡眠上花时间更多。
The only things Americans do more than watch television are work and sleep.
稍微计算一下，使用这些时间的一部分能够做些什么。
Calculate for a moment what could be done with even a part of those hours.
听说一个大学生仅用5000小时就可以获得学士学位。
Five thousand hours, I am told, are what a typical college undergraduate spends working on a bachelor's degree.
在1万个小时内你能学成一个天文学家或工程师，流利掌握几门外语。
In 10,000 hours you could have learned enough to become an astronomer or engineer. You could have learned several languages fluently.
如果你感兴趣的话，你可能读希腊原文的荷马史诗或俄文版的陀思妥耶夫斯基
earnest作品；如果对此不感兴趣，那你可以徒步周游世界，撰写一本游记。
If it appealed to you, you could be reading Homer in the original Greek or Dostoyevsky in Russian. If it didn't, you could have walked around the world and written a book about it.
电视的毛病在于它分散了人们的注意力。
The trouble with television is that it discourages concentration.
生活中几乎一切有趣的、能给人以满足的事都需要一定的建设性的、持之以恒的努力。
Almost anything interesting and rewarding in life requires some constructive, consistently applied effort.
即使是我们中间那些最迟钝、最没有天才的人也能做出一些事来，而这些事使那些从来不在任何事情上专心致志的人感到像是奇迹一般。
The dullest, the least gifted of us can achieve things that seem miraculous to those who never concentrate on anything.
但电视鼓励我们不做出任何努力，它向我们兜售即时的满足，它给我们提供娱乐，使我们只想娱乐，让时间在毫无痛苦中消磨掉。
But Television encourages us to apply no effort. It sells us instant gratification. It diverts us only to divert, to make the time pass without pain.
电视节目的多样化成了一种麻醉剂而不是促进思考的因素。
Television's variety becomes a narcotic, nor a stimulus.
它那系列的、多变的画面引着我们跟着它走。
Its serial, kaleidoscopic exposures force us to follow its lead.
观众无休无止地跟着导游游览：参观博物馆30分钟，看大教堂30分钟，喝饮料30分钟，然后上车去下一个参观点，只是电视的特点是时间分配以分秒计算，而所选择的内容却多为车祸和人们的互相残杀。
The viewer is on a perpetual guided tour: 30 minutes at the museum, 30 at the cathedral, 30 for a drink, then back on the bus to the next attraction — except on television, typically, the spans allotted are on the order of minutes or seconds, and the chosen delights are more often car crashes and people killing one another.
总之许多电视节目取代了人类最可贵的一种才能，即主动集中自己的注意力，而不是被动地奉送注意力。
In short, a lot of television usurps one of the most precious of all human gifts, the ability to focus your attention yourself, rather than just passively surrender it.
吸引并抓住人们的注意力是大多数电视节目安排的主要目的，它加强了电视是有利可图的广告的载体的作用。
Capturing your attention —and holding it—is the prime motive动机 of most television programming and enhances its role as a profitable advertising vehicle.
节目安排使人生活在无休止的恐惧之中，唯恐抓不住人们的注意力——不管是什么人的注意力都担心。
Programmers live in constant fear of losing anyone's attention—anyone's.
避免造成这一局面的最有把握的办法就是使一切节目都保持简短，不要使任何人的注意力过于集中而受到损害，而要通过多样化、新奇性、动作和行动不断地提供刺激。
The surest way to avoid doing so is to keep everything brief, not to strain the attention of anyone but instead to provide constant stimulation through variety, novelty, action and movement.
很简单，电视的运作原则就是迎合观众的注意力跨度短这一特点。
Quite simply, television operates on the appeal to the short attention span.
这只是最简单的解决办法，但它逐渐被看作是电视这一宣传媒体特定的，内在固有的性质，是必须履行的职责，似乎是司令萨尔诺夫或另一个令人敬畏的电视创始人给我们传下了刻有铭文的石碑，命令电视上出现的一切节目均不得使观众需要片刻以上的注意力。
It is simply the easiest way out. But it has come to be regarded as a given, as inherent in the medium itself; as an imperative, as though General Sarnoff, or one of the other august pioneers of video, had bequeathed to us tablets of stone commanding that nothing in television shall ever require more than a few moments' concentration.
要是运用得恰当，这倒也无可厚非。
In its place that is fine.
如此出地把使人忘却现实的娱乐作为大规模推销工具加以包装，谁又能反对这样一种宣传媒介呢？
Who can quarrel with a medium that so brilliantly packages escapist entertainment as a mass-marketing tool?
但是我看到了它的价值现已充斥于这个国家及其生活之中。
Rut I see its values now pervading this nation and its life.
认为快速思维和快餐食品一样影响着生活节奏很快、性情急躁的公众，这已成了时髦的看法。
It has become fashionable to think that, like fast food, fast ideas are the way to get to a fast-moving, impatient public.