2017年12月四级第3套长篇阅读匹配原文翻译及答案

A) "You suspended Ray Rice after our video," a reporter from TMZ challenged National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell the other day. "Why didn't you have the curiosity to go to the casino (赌场) yourself?" The implication of the question is that a more curious. commissioner would have found a way to get the tape.

TMZ的一名记者日前质问美国国家橄榄球联盟（NFL）专员罗杰·古德尔：'在我们的视频曝光后，你停了雷·赖斯的职。' '你为什么没有好奇心亲自去赌场看看？' 这个问题的言外之意是，一个更有好奇心的专员本会找到获取录像带的方法。

B) The accusation of incuriosity is one that we hear often, carrying the suggestion that there is something wrong with not wanting to search out the truth. "I have been bothered for a long time about the curious lack of curiosity," said a Democratic member of the New Jersey legislature back in July, referring to an insufficiently inquiring attitude on the part of an assistant to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who chose not to ask hard questions about the George Washington Bridge traffic scandal. "Isn't the mainstream media the least bit curious about what happened?" wrote conservative writer Jennifer Rubin earlier this year, referring to the attack on Americans in Benghazi, Libya.

我们经常听到对缺乏好奇心的指控，这暗示着不愿探寻真相是有问题的。'长期以来，我对这种奇特的缺乏好奇心感到困扰，'新泽西州议会的一名民主党议员在七月时说道，他指的是新泽西州州长克里斯·克里斯蒂的一名助手对乔治华盛顿大桥交通丑闻缺乏质疑态度。'难道主流媒体对发生的事情一点都不好奇吗？'保守派作家詹妮弗·鲁宾今年早些时候写道，他指的是在利比亚班加西发生的针对美国人的袭击事件。

C) The implication, in each case, is that curiosity is a good thing, and a lack of curiosity is a problem. Are such accusations simply efforts to score political points for one's party? Or is there something of particular value about curiosity in and of itself?

在每个案例中，言外之意都是好奇心是好事，而缺乏好奇心是个问题。这些指控仅仅是为自己的政党争取政治分数的努力吗？还是好奇心本身具有特殊价值？

D) The journalist Ian Leslie, in his new and enjoyable book Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Fatter Depends on It, insists that the answer to that last question is 'Yes.' Leslie argues that curiosity is a much-overlooked human virtue, crucial to our success, and that we are losing it.

记者伊恩·莱斯利在他新近出版且引人入胜的《好奇：求知欲及其为何关乎未来》一书中坚持认为，对最后一个问题的答案是'是'。莱斯利认为，好奇心是一种被严重忽视的人类美德，对我们的成功至关重要，而我们正在失去它。

E) We are suffering, he writes, from a "serendipity deficit." The word "serendipity" was coined by Horace Walpole in an 1854 letter, from a tale of three princes who "were always making discoveries, by accident, of things they were not in search of," Leslie worries that the rise of the Internet, among other social and technological changes, has reduced our appetite for aimless adventures. No longer have we the inclination to let ourselves wander through fields of knowledges, ready to be surprised. Instead, we seek only the information we want.

他写道，我们正遭受'意外发现匮乏'之苦。'意外发现'（serendipity）一词由霍勒斯·沃波尔在1854年的一封信中创造，源自一个关于三位王子的故事，他们'总是意外地发现他们并未寻找的东西。'莱斯利担心，互联网的兴起以及其他社会和技术变革，减少了我们对无目的探索的兴趣。我们不再倾向于让自己漫步于知识领域，准备迎接惊喜。相反，我们只寻求我们想要的信息。

F) Why is this a problem? Because without curiosity we will lose the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship. We will see unimaginative governments and dying corporations make disastrous decisions. We will lose a vital part of what has made humanity as a whole so successful as a species.

为什么这是个问题？因为没有好奇心，我们将失去创新和创业精神。我们将看到缺乏想象力的政府和垂死的企业做出灾难性的决定。我们将失去使人类作为一个物种如此成功的关键部分。

G) Leslie presents considerable evidence for the proposition that the society as a whole is growing less curious. In the U.S. and Europe, for example, the rise of the Internet has led to a declining consumption of news from outside the reader's borders. But not everything is to be blamed on technology. The decline in interest in literary fiction is also one of the causes identified by Leslie. Reading literary fiction, he says, makes us more curious.

莱斯利提供了大量证据来支持社会整体好奇心在下降的观点。例如，在美国和欧洲，互联网的兴起导致读者对国外新闻的消费下降。但并非一切都该归咎于技术。莱斯利指出，对文学小说兴趣的下降也是原因之一。他说，阅读文学小说使我们更加好奇。

H) Moreover, in order to be curious, "you have to be aware of a gap in your knowledge in the first place." Although Leslie perhaps paints a bit broadly in contending that most of us are unaware of how much we don't know, he's surely right to point out that the problem is growing: "Google can give us the powerful illusion that all questions have definite answers."

此外，为了保持好奇，'你必须首先意识到自己知识中的空白。'尽管莱斯利在主张我们大多数人不知道自己不知道多少时可能有些笼统，但他正确指出问题在加剧：'谷歌能给我们一种强烈的幻觉，即所有问题都有明确答案。'

I) Indeed, Google, for which Leslie expresses admiration, is also his frequent whipping body (替罪羊). He quotes Google co-founder Larry Page to the effect that the "perfect search engine" will "understand exactly what I mean and give me back exactly what I want." Elsewhere in the book, Leslie writes: "Google aims to save you from the thirst of curiosity altogether."

确实，莱斯利表示钦佩的谷歌，也是他频繁鞭挞的替罪羊。他引用谷歌联合创始人拉里·佩里的话，大意是'完美的搜索引擎'将'完全理解我的意思，并完全给我我想要的东西。'在书的其他地方，莱斯利写道：'谷歌旨在彻底拯救你脱离好奇的渴望。'

J) Somewhat nostalgically (怀旧地), he quotes John Maynard Keynes's justly famous words of praise to the bookstore: "One should enter it vaguely, almost in a dream, and allow what is there freely to attract and influence the eye. To walk the rounds of the bookshops, dipping in as curiosity dictates, should be an afternoon's entertainment." If only!

他有些怀旧地引用了约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯对书店的著名赞美之词：'一个人应该模糊地走进去，几乎像在梦中，让那里的东西自由地吸引和影响眼睛。逛书店，随好奇心指引而驻足，应该是一个下午的娱乐。'要是能这样就好了！

K) Citing the work of psychologists and cognitive (认知的) scientists, Leslie criticizes the received wisdom that academic success is the result of a combination of intellectual talent and hard work. Curiosity, he argues, is the third key factor--and a difficult one to preserve. If not cultivated, it will not survive: "Childhood curiosity is a collaboration between child and adult. The surest way to kill it is to leave it alone."

引用心理学家和认知科学家的研究，莱斯利批评了传统观点，即学术成功是智力天赋和努力相结合的结果。他认为好奇心是第三个关键因素——而且是难以保持的。如果不加以培养，它将无法存活：'童年好奇心是孩子与成人之间的合作。杀死它的最可靠方式是放任不管。'

L) School education, he warns, is often conducted in a way that makes children incurious. Children of educated and upper-middle-class parents turn out to be far more curious, even at early ages, than children of working class and lower class families. That lack of curiosity produces a relative lack of knowledge, and the lack of knowledge is difficult if not impossible to compensate for later on.

他警告说，学校教育往往以使孩子缺乏好奇心的方式进行。受过教育和中上层阶级父母的孩子，即使在早期，也比工人阶级和下层家庭的孩子好奇得多。这种缺乏好奇心导致相对缺乏知识，而缺乏知识在后期难以甚至不可能弥补。

M) Although Leslie's book isn't about politics, he doesn't entirely shy away from the problem. Political leaders, like leader of other organizations, should be curious. They should ask questions at crucial moments. There are serious consequences, he warns, in not wanting to know.

尽管莱斯利的书并非关于政治，但他并未完全回避这个问题。政治领导人，像其他组织的领导一样，应该好奇。他们应该在关键时刻提出问题。他警告说，不想知道会有严重后果。

N) He presents as an example the failure of the George W. Bush administration to prepare properly for the after-effects of the invasion of Iraq. According to Leslie, those who ridiculed former. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for his 2002 remark that we have to be wary of the "unknown unknowns" were mistaken. Rumsfeld's idea, Leslie writes, "wasn't absurd- it was smart." He adds, "The tragedy is that he didn't follow his own advice."

他举了乔治·W·布什政府未能为入侵伊拉克的后果做好适当准备的例子。据莱斯利说，那些嘲笑前国防部长唐纳德·拉姆斯菲尔德2002年关于我们必须警惕'未知的未知'的言论的人是错误的。莱斯利写道，拉姆斯菲尔德的想法'并不荒谬——而是聪明的。'他补充说，'悲剧在于他没有遵循自己的建议。'

O) All of which brings us back to Goodell and the Christie case and Benghazi. Each critic in those examples is charging, in a different way, that someone in authority is intentionally being incurious. I leave it to the reader's political preference to decide which, if any, charges should stick. But let's be careful about demanding curiosity about the other side's weaknesses and remaining determinedly incurious about our own. We should be delighted to pursue knowledge for its own sake--even when what we find out is something we didn't particularly want to know.

所有这些都让我们回到古德尔、克里斯蒂案例和班加西事件。在这些例子中，每个批评者都以不同方式指控当权者故意缺乏好奇心。我让读者根据自己的政治偏好来决定哪些指控成立。但我们要小心，不要只对对方的弱点要求好奇心，而对自己的弱点固执地保持无知。我们应该乐于为知识本身而追求知识——即使我们发现的是我们并不特别想知道的东西。