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1、Unit 2 The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl Its still there, the Chinese school on Yale Street where my brother and I used to go. Despite the new coat of paint and the high wire fence, the school I knew 10 years ago remains remarkably, stoically the same. 我们之前上过的那所中文学校还在我和哥哥常去的耶鲁大街上。尽管外墙经过重新粉刷， 并
2、且周围有搞搞的铁丝栅栏，但是十年前我所知道的那个学校现在出奇地依然如故，一点 没变。 Every day at 5 P.M., instead of playing with our fourth- and fifth-grade friends or sneaking out to the empty lot to hunt ghosts and animal bones, my brother and I had to go to Chinese school. No amount of kicking, screaming, or pleading could dissuade my m
3、other, who was solidly determined to have us learn the language of our heritage. 每天下午 5 点,我和哥哥不得不去汉语学校，而不是和四、五年级的同学们一起玩或溜出去 到空地上捉鬼寻骨。不管我们怎么不情愿，踢东西也好，乱叫也好，央求也罢，都说动不 了妈妈，她铁了心地要我们去学祖宗传承给我们的语言。Forcibly, she walked us the seven long, hilly blocks from our home to school, depositing our defiant tearful fa
4、ces before the stern principal. My only memory of him is that he swayed on his heels like a palm tree, and he always clasped his impatient twitching hands behind his back. I recognized him as a repressed maniacal child killer, and knew that if we ever saw his hands wed be in big trouble. 从我们家到汉语学校相隔
5、七个长长的街区，沿路有好多小山丘，妈妈赶着我们走过这段路 程，最后把我们送到那位严厉的校长面前。这时我们泪流满面，满脸写着不情愿。我对校 长的唯一印象是他站在我们面前踮着脚后跟摇摆时，就像一棵棕榈树,而且他总是将他那双 不停抽搐的手紧紧扣在背后。在我眼里，他就是一个急不可耐的残杀孩子的凶手,还认为如 果我们看到他的手,就会遇到大麻烦。 We all sat in little chairs in an empty auditorium. The room smelled like Chinese medicine, an imported faraway mustiness. Like anc
6、ient mothballs or dirty closets. I hated that smell. I favored crisp new scents. Like the soft French perfume that my American teacher wore in public school. 我们都坐在一个小椅子上，礼堂空荡荡的。屋里散发出好似一股中药味，一种平时很难遇 到的难闻的霉味。也好似放了很久的卫生球味或者是脏兮兮的衣柜壁橱味。我讨厌那种气 味。我喜欢宜人的香味，它就像我在公立学校的美国老师身上散发的淡淡的法国香水味。 Although the emphasis
7、at the school was mainly language-speaking, reading, writing-the lessons always began with an exercise in politeness. With the entrance of the teacher, the best student would tap a bell and everyone would get up, kowtow, and chant, “Sing san ho,” the phonetic for “How are you, teacher?” 尽管学校教学的重点主要是
8、语言口语、阅读、写作每堂课总是从练习礼仪开始。随着 老师走进课堂,班长总要轻摇一下铃,大家随即起身,磕头并齐道,“先生好,”这一串汉语音 符就是给老师请安的意思。Being ten years old, I had better things to learn than ideographs copied painstakingly in lines that ran right to left from the tip of a moc but, a real ink pen that had to be held in an awkward way if blotches were to
9、be avoided. After all, I could do the multiplication tables, name the satellites of Mars, and write reports on Little Women and Black Beauty. Nancy Drew, my favorite heroine, never spoke Chinese. 十岁的人了,我还有比象形文字更重要的东西要学，而不是用毛笔从右到左一行行吃力地抄 写汉字，那可真叫墨水笔,如果你不想纸上留有墨墨点点的墨渍，你就要用一种笨拙的方式 握笔。话说回来，除了练毛笔字，我还能背出乘法
10、表,给火星上的卫星命个名,写篇有关 小妇人和黑美人这两部小说的读书报告。南茜朱尔是我最喜欢的一本书中的女主 人公,她从来不说汉语。 The language was a source of embarrassment. More times than not, I had tried to disassociate myself from the nagging loud voice that followed me wherever I wandered in the nearby American supermarket outside Chinatown. The voice belon
11、ged to my grandmother, a fragile woman in her seventies who would outshout the best of street vendors. Her humor was raunchy, her Chinese rhythmless and patternless. It was quick, it was loud, it was unbeautiful. It was not like the quiet, lilting romance of French or the gentle refinement of the Am
12、erican South. Chinese sounded pedestrian. Public. 汉语给我带来了尴尬和难堪。出入唐人街不远处有个美国人经营的超市，我在超市的任何 一个地方转悠，身后都会传来那个唠唠叨叨吵人的声音。此声音来自我的祖母,她年逾七旬， 弱不禁风，但她的声音能盖过嗓门最大的沿街叫卖的小贩的声音。她的幽默极为粗俗，她 说的汉语拖泥带水，缺少节奏感。她不会语法规则，但是却说得很快，而且声音很大,一点 儿也不悦耳。她的汉语不像法语听起来轻柔舒缓，抑扬顿挫，富有浪漫气息；也不像美国 南方人讲话声音柔和，用词高雅。而我的祖母，两者都不像，她的汉语听起来没有磁性， 没有特色。In
13、 Chinatown, the comings and goings of hundreds of Chinese on their daily tasks sounded chaotic and frenzied. I did not want to be thought of as mad, as talking gibberish. When I spoke English, people nodded at me, smiled sweetly, said encouraging words. Even the people in my culture would cluck and
14、say that Id do well in life. “My, doesn?t she move her lips fast,” they would say, meaning that Id be able to keep up with the word outside Chinatown. 在唐人街，每天有数以千计的华人来来往往，忙于自己的事务，给人一种忙碌躁动的感觉。 我可不想像他们那样被人看成是个疯了傻了爱扯闲话之人。当我用英语说话的时候，人们 向我点头并甜甜地微笑，说一些鼓励我的话。甚至华人也啧啧称赞，说我将来会有出息。 “天哪，你看她嘴唇（动得好快）多灵巧， ”他们总会这么说
15、，这就意味着我将能够融入唐 人街外面的世界。My brother was even more fanatical than I about speaking English. He was especially hard on my mother, criticizing her, often cruelly, for her pidgin speechsmatterings of Chinese scattered like chop suey in her conversation. “Its not What it is,Mom,” hed say in exasperation.“It
16、s What is it, what is it, what is it! Sometimes Mom might leave out an occasional “the” or “a”, or perhaps a verb of being. He would stop her in mid-sentence: “Say it again, Mom. Say it right.” When he tripped over his own tongue, hed blame it on her: “See, Mom, its all your fault. You set a bad example.” 我的哥哥甚至比我更加热衷于说英语。我的妈妈英语很烂，话语中会零星夹杂着汉语或中 文，如“杂碎”一词，哥哥因此对妈妈很苛刻，批评她起来常常不留面子。他总是恼怒地说道，“不是What it is,妈妈, 是What is it,
