What has happened to the American family--the fraying effect of harassed working parents, the stranglehold of the media, the pre

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问题      What has happened to the American family--the fraying effect of harassed working parents, the stranglehold of the media, the pressures of peer culture--is a theme much ranted a bout. Yet one aspect of what has happened has been overlooked: kids like those we see in "Kids"--they come from all over the social spectrum--never seem to sit down to a proper meal at home anymore. 【61】 This is not another pious harangue on "spiritual starvation"; this is about the fact that we may be witnessing the first generation in history that has not been required to participate in that primal rite of socialization, the family meal.
     【62】 The family meal is not only the core curriculum in the school of civilized discourse; it is also a set of protocols that curb our natural savagery and our animal greed and cultivate a capacity for sharing and thoughtfulness.
     Dinner rituals have nothing to do with class, or working women’s busy lives, or any particular family structure. I’ve had dinners of boiled potatoes with families in Siberia, suppers of delicious cold cuts with single welfare mothers in Chicago, bowls of watery gruel in the Sahara--【63】 all made memorable by the grace with which they were offered and by the sight of youngsters learning through experience the art of human companionship. The teenagers on display in" Kids" are not only physically starved by the junk food they consume as they slouch in front of the TV or lope toward their next bacchanal. Far worse, they are deprived of the main course of civilized life--the practice of sitting down at the dinner table and observing the attendant conventions. Like the Passover seder or the practice of sitting down at the dinner table and observing the attendant conventions. Like the Passover seder or the Communion bread, the ritual of nutrition helps to imbue families, and societies at large, with greater empathy and fellowship. 【64】 However, all rituals involve, to some degree, a sacrifice and the home meal re quires genuine sacrifices of time and energy, large expenditures of those very traits it nurtures patience, compassion and self discipline. Many of the teenagers in "Kids"--the more affluent one--are the offspring of the" me generation," members of what Christopher Lasch called" the culture of narcissism." And those parents may be the most at fault. Might it be that they have stinted on the socializing of their children by focusing on their own rituals of self improvement--enjoying their workout highs at health clubs or their learning highs in evening classes. 【65】 How much more fun it is, how much less tiring, for us to enjoy a fine, quiet dinner by ourselves, or with our buddies, without the litany of questions and corrections that youngsters company entails. But the family meal should continue to be a ceremonial, sacred time. If we don’t hold on to it, we risk rearing yet more kids who wake up asking "What happened"?
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答案家庭聚餐不仅仅是培养文明举止的学校的核心课程,它也是抑制我们天性中的野蛮和兽性的贪婪,培养与人共享,体谅别人的品质的二种礼仪。

解析 该句是一个由分号连接的复合句,分号前面的句子是一个简单句,分号后的句子是一个复合句。that引导的是定语从句,修饰protocols,该定语从句中有两个并列的谓语curb和cultivate。本句用顺译法翻译。特别注意的是,分号虽然连接的是两个独立的分句,但这两个分句中分别的连词not only和but al so,这两个词使两个分句之间有了递进的关系,这种关系一定要用“不但……而且……”,“不仅……也……”等汉语表示递进的关联词翻译出来。
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