2024考研英语：《经济学人》中英读译Day63

英语阅读能力依靠什么？必然是词汇的积累，但，仅仅是词汇的积累是不够了，更应该了解英语句式，不同句型所表达意义。如何培养自己的阅读语感呢？那么就跟着聚创考研网小编每天学一点英语，一起为考研筑起坚实的地基。阅读是需要积累的，就像我们需要经常和人沟通才会促进我们的表达能力一样~小伙伴跟着小编一起，每天坚持打卡，培养英语阅读能力及语感，了解文章一些经典词汇的用法。

经济学人:科学世家赫胥黎(上)

In 1958 Julian Huxley fell in love with a gorilla.Then in his early 70s, he had long been a household name in Britain.As Alison Bashford describes in her new double biography, Julian had inherited the role of evolution’s frontman from his grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley, a Victorian scientist writer.Yet on meeting Guy the Gorilla at London Zoo, Julian found himself undone.“Magnificent in his reserve and silent sense,” he wrote of their first encounter, “he gives you a look of sombre dignity that makes you feel in some real sense his inferior.”This fellow-feeling for animals, Ms Bashford notes, was a reversion to Huxley type.Thomas had started on the road to agnosticism—a term he coined—in 1860, after his son died in childhood and a tone-deaf curate presiding over the funeral quoted Paul’s epistles: “If the dead rise not again, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

译文

1958年，朱利安·赫胥黎爱上了一只大猩猩。在他70岁出头的时候，他早就是英国家喻户晓的人物了。正如艾莉森·巴什福德在她的新双重传记中所描述的那样，朱利安从他的祖父——维多利亚时代的科学家作家托马斯·亨利·赫胥黎那里，继承了进化论代表的角色。然而，当朱利安在伦敦动物园遇到大猩猩盖伊时，他发现自己完蛋了。“他太沉默寡言了，”他这样描述他们的第一次相遇，“他看过来的眼神中有着阴郁的庄严，让你在某种真正意义上感觉到了他的自卑。”巴什福德指出，这种对动物的同情心，是隔代遗传了老赫胥黎。托马斯在1860年开始走上不可知论（他自创的术语）的道路，当时他的儿子在孩提时代就已经去世了，主持葬礼的一位音盲牧师引用了保罗的书信：“若死人不复活，我们就吃吃喝喝吧，因为明天就要死了。”

Ridiculous, Thomas thought: as a zoologist who had observed primates’ treatment of the dead, he doubted that they believed in resurrection.Nor were they inclined to gluttony.Why should people be any different?The sea-tide that would pull him away from religion and towards secular science was tugging at his heels.It would sweep him to notoriety as “Darwin’s Bulldog”, arch-debunker of “natural theology” and champion of the descent of man.The same currents bore his grandson from an abortive academic career to national and eventually global fame as a broadcaster and popular-science writer.“A man now cannot be a universal expert,” a colleague told the young Julian, as a warning against imitating his illustrious grandfather.The younger Huxley took that as a challenge.Appropriately for acolytes of Darwinism, Thomas and Julian shared what may have been heritable traits: scientific genius, an appetite for culture (both were keen poets), and a tragic tint of mental instability.Thomas was wracked by depression.Julian’s tempestuous ego troubled his marriage and tried his friends; his brother committed suicide.

译文

托马斯认为这很荒谬：作为一名观察过灵长类动物对待死者方式的动物学家，他怀疑它们是否相信复活这一说。它们也不喜欢暴饮暴食。那人类又为什么会有所不同呢？此时，那股后来把他从宗教拉向世俗科学的浪潮正紧随其后。它使他声名狼藉，成为了“达尔文的斗牛犬”、“自然神学”的主要批判者和人类起源论的捍卫者。而同样的潮流却把他的孙子从失败的学术生涯中拯救了出来，使其成为了一名在全国乃至全球享有盛誉的广播员和科普作家。一位同事对年轻的朱利安说：“现在的人不可能成为全能专家”，以此警告他不要效仿他杰出的祖父。小赫胥黎把这当成了一个挑战。作为达尔文主义的追随者，托马斯和朱利安有着共同的特征，这些特征或许是可以遗传的：科学天赋，对文化的渴望(两人都是狂热的诗人)，以及精神不稳定的悲剧色彩。托马斯深受抑郁症的折磨。朱利安狂暴的自我让他的婚姻出现问题，也使他的朋友忍无可忍；他的兄弟还自杀了。