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  3. Possession for its own sake or in competition with the rest of the neighborhood would have been Thoreau’s idea of the low levels

Possession for its own sake or in competition with the rest of the neighborhood would have been Thoreau’s idea of the low levels

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问题     Possession for its own sake or in competition with the rest of the neighborhood would have been Thoreau’s idea of the low levels. The active discipline of heightening one’s perception of what is enduring in nature would have been his idea of the high. What he saved from the low was time and effort he could spend on the high. Thoreau certainly disapproved of starvation, but he would put into feeding himself only as much effort as would keep him functioning for more important efforts.
    Effort is the gist of it. There is no happiness except as we take on life-engaging difficulties. Short of the impossible, as Yeats put it, the satisfaction we get from a lifetime depends on how high we choose our difficulties. Robert Frost was thinking in something like the same terms when he spoke of "The pleasure of taking pains". The mortal flaw in the advertised version of happiness is in the fact that it purports to be effortless.
    We demand difficulty even in our games. We demand it because without difficulty there can be no game. A game is a way of making something hard for the fun of it. The rules of the game are an arbitrary imposition of difficulty. When someone ruins the fun, he always does so by refusing to play by the rules. It is easier to win at chess if you are free, at your pleasure, to change the wholly arbitrary rules, but the fun is in winning within the rules. No difficulty, no fun.
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答案 付出努力是其本质所在。要想获得幸福，就得终生与困难为伴并与之斗争。正如叶芝所言，除去不可能做成的事，我们一生获得的满足有多大，取决于我们选择的困难程度有多高。当罗伯特?弗罗斯特谈及“承受痛苦的快乐”时，他的思路也大抵如此。广告中宣扬的幸福观有一个致命缺点，那就是它声称幸福唾手可得，不用费力。 即便是在游戏中也需要有困难存在。我们需要困难，那是因为没有困难，就不会有游戏。所谓“游戏”，就是人为地制造困难来追求乐趣的方式。所谓的“游戏规则”，就是在游戏中任意施加的困难。每当有人破坏游戏、扫了大家的兴，总是因为此人不按规则玩游戏。下棋时，如果你随心所欲地更改早已设定好的规则，赢棋固然容易，但下棋的乐趣却荡然无存。总之一句话，没有困难，就没有乐趣。
解析 1、选段是一篇说理文，主要阐述困难在人生中的重要性，原文用词朴实、论述有力，考生应推敲译文用词，防止词不达意。
2、若将There is no happiness except…译为“除非…否则”或是“若…就没有”也是可行的。译文采用反译的策略，将其译作“要想…就得…”，直奔主题，简洁明了。
3、第2段第4句的The pleasure of taking pains除了译作“承受痛苦的快乐”之外，还可译为“苦中作乐”，“以苦为乐”。
4、第2段最后一句的…is in the fact that．．．本可译成“基于这样一个事实”，不过过分追求与原文在形式和意义上的对等在翻译中应当尽量避免。译为“那就是”既简明也符合原文的意思。purport to be／be purported to be意为“据称是，声称是”。
5、在翻译解释game和rules的时候增加了“所谓”二字，比较符合汉语介绍概念的表达习惯。
6、第3段第5句的play by the rules也可以诙谐地译为“按常理出牌”。
7、最后一句的No difficulty，no fun可以看做是选段的小结，因而译文增加了“总之一句话”，使得衔接更顺畅。
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