新世纪博士生综合英语Unit 1 课文及译文.doc

Unit1 The Burden of Womanhood Too often in the Third World, a female’s life is hardly worth living. By: John Ward Anderson Molly Moore 女人的负担 往往在第三世界，女性的生活几乎是不值得活的。 约翰.沃德.安德森和莫莉.摩尔 1.When Rani returned home from the hospital cradling her newborn daughter, the men in the family slipped out of her mud hut while she and her mother-in-law mashed poisonous oleander seeds into a dollop of oil and dropped it into the baby’s throat. As soon as darkness fell, Rani crept into a nearby field and buried her baby girl in a shallow, unmarked grave next to a small stream. 当拉尼抱着她刚出生的女儿从医院回到家时，男人们溜出了她的土屋，她和她的婆婆将有毒的夹竹桃种子捣碎成一团油，并将其塞到婴儿的喉咙里。夜幕一降临，拉尼就蹑手蹑脚地来到附近的一块土地，将她的女婴埋在一条小溪浅旁边的一个不深的、没有标记的坟墓内。 2.“I never felt any sorrow,” Rani, a farm laborer with a weather-beaten face, said through an interpreter. “There was a lot of bitterness in my heart toward the baby because the gods should have given me a son.” “我从来没有感到任何悲哀”，脸部饱经风霜的拉尼通过翻译说，“我的心对孩子充满了辛酸，因为神本应该赐予我一个儿子”。 3.Each year hundreds and perhaps thousands of newborn girls in India are murdered by their mothers simply because they are female. Some women believe that sacrificing a daughter guarantees a son in the next pregnancy. In other cases, the family cannot afford the dowry that would eventually be demanded for a girl’s marriage. 在印度每年有数百甚至数千名新生女婴被他们的母亲谋杀，只因为他们是女孩。有些妇女认为，牺牲一个女儿将保证下次怀孕是儿子。在其他情况下，家庭买不起女孩结婚时所需的嫁妆。 4.And for many mothers, sentencing a daughter to death is better than condemning her to life as a woman in the Third World, with cradle-to-grave discrimination, poverty, sickness and drudgery. 对于很多母亲而言，判处女儿死刑胜过让她在第三世界作为一个女人生活经历一辈子的歧视、贫困、疾病和劳苦。5. While women in the United States and Europe-----after decades of struggling for equal rights----often measure sex discrimination by pay scales and seats in corporate board rooms, women in the Third World gauge discrimination by mortality rates and poverty levels. 虽然欧美国家的妇女，在经过了几十年对平等权利的抗争之后，通常以工薪标准和董事会中的席位来衡量性别歧视，但第三世界的妇女以死亡率和贫困程度来衡量歧视。 6. “Women are the most exploited among the o