2020年12月四级第2套长篇阅读匹配原文翻译及答案

A) Too often still, we think we know what poverty looks like. It's the way we've been taught, the images we've been force-fed for decades. The chronically homeless. The undocumented immigrant. The urban poor, usually personified as a woman of color, the "welfare queen" politicians still too often reference.

尽管我们常常以为自己知道贫困是什么样子。这是几十年来我们被灌输的形象。长期无家可归者。无证移民。城市贫民，通常被具象化为有色人种女性，政客们至今仍频繁引用的'福利女王'。

B) But as income inequality rises to record levels in the United States, even in the midst of a record economic expansion, those familiar images are outdated, hurtful, and counterproductive to focusing attention on solutions and building ladders of opportunity.

但随着美国收入不平等达到创纪录水平，即使在经济扩张创纪录之际，那些熟悉形象已经过时、有害，并且不利于关注解决方案和构建机会阶梯。

C) Today's faces of income inequality and lack of opportunity look like all of us. It's Anna Landre, a disabled Georgetown University student fighting to keep health benefits that allow her the freedom to live her life. It's Tiffanie Standard, a counselor for young women of color in Philadelphia who want to be tech entrepreneurs—but who must work multiple jobs to stay afloat. It's Ken Outlaw, a welder in rural North Carolina whose dream of going back to school at a local community college was dashed by Hurricane Florence—just one of the extreme weather events that have tipped the balance for struggling Americans across the nation.

当今收入不平等和机会缺乏的面孔看起来像我们所有人。她是安娜·兰德雷，一名残疾的乔治城大学学生，为保持能让她自由生活的健康福利而斗争。她是蒂芙尼·斯坦达德，费城为年轻有色人种女性担任顾问，她们想成为科技企业家——但必须打多份工维持生计。他是肯·奥特劳，北卡罗来纳州农村的一名焊工，他去当地社区大学上学的梦想被飓风佛罗伦萨摧毁——这只是让全国各地挣扎的美国人失去平衡的极端天气事件之一。

D) If these are the central characters of our story about poverty, what layers of perceptions, myths, and realities must we unearth to find meaningful solutions and support? In pursuit of revealing this complicated reality, Mothering Justice, led by women of color, went last year to the state capital in Lansing, Michigan, to lobby on issues that affect working mothers. One of the Mothering Justice organizers went to the office of a state representative to talk about the lack of affordable childcare—the vestiges (痕迹) of a system that expected mothers to stay home with their children while their husbands worked. A legislative staffer dismissed the activist's concerns, telling her "my husband took care of that—I stayed home. "

如果这些是我们关于贫困故事的主角，那么要找到有意义的解决方案和支持，我们必须揭开哪些感知、神话和现实的层面？为了揭示这一复杂现实，由有色人种女性领导的'母亲正义'组织去年前往密歇根州首府兰辛，游说影响职场母亲的问题。该组织的一名组织者去了一位州代表的办公室，谈论缺乏负担得起的儿童保育——这是期望母亲在家带孩子而丈夫工作的制度的残余。一名立法工作人员驳回了这位活动人士的担忧，告诉她'我丈夫负责那个——我待在家里。'

E) That comment, says Mothering Justice director Danielle Atkinson, "was meant to shame" and relied on the familiar notion that a woman of color concerned about income inequality and programs that promote mobility must by definition be a single mom, probably with multiple kids. In this case, the Mothering Justice activist happened to be married. And in most cases in the America of 2019, the images that come to mind when we hear the words poverty or income inequality fail miserably in reflecting a complicated reality; poverty touches virtually all of us. The face of income inequality, for all but a very few of us, is the one we each see in the mirror.

'母亲正义'主任丹妮尔·阿特金森说，这一评论'意在羞辱'，并依赖于一种熟悉的观念，即关心收入不平等和促进流动性的有色人种女性，根据定义必须是单身妈妈，可能有多个孩子。在这个案例中，'母亲正义'活动人士碰巧已婚。在2019年的美国大多数情况下，当我们听到贫困或收入不平等这些词时，脑海中浮现的形象悲惨地未能反映复杂现实；贫困几乎触及我们所有人。除了极少数人，收入不平等的面孔就是我们每个人在镜子里看到的那张脸。

F) How many of us are poor in the U. S. ? It depends on who you ask. According to the Census Bureau, 38 million people in the U. S. are living below the official poverty thresholds. Taking into account economic need beyond that absolute measure, the Institute for Policy Studies found that 140 million people are poor or low-income. That's almost half the U. S. population.

我们中有多少人在美国是贫困的？这取决于你问谁。根据美国人口普查局，美国有3800万人生活在官方贫困线以下。考虑到超出这一绝对衡量标准的经济需求，政策研究所发现有1.4亿人是贫困或低收入。这几乎是美国人口的一半。

G) Whatever the measure, within that massive group, poverty is extremely diverse. We know that some people are more affected than others, like children, the elderly, people with disabilities, and people of color.

无论采用何种衡量标准，在这个庞大的群体中，贫困极其多样。我们知道一些人比其他人受影响更大，如儿童、老年人、残疾人和有色人种。

H) But the fact that 4 in 10 Americans can't come up with $ 400 in an emergency is a commonly cited statistic for good reason; economic instability stretches across race, gender, and geography. It even reaches into the middle classes, as real wages have stagnated (不增长) for all but the very wealthy and temporary spells of financial instability are not uncommon.

但事实是，每10个美国人中有4个无法在紧急情况下拿出400美元，这是一个常被引用的统计数据，理由充分；经济不稳定性跨越种族、性别和地理。它甚至波及中产阶级，因为除了非常富有的人之外，实际工资已经停滞不增长，临时的财务不稳定期并不罕见。

I) Negative images remain of who is living in poverty as well as what is needed to move out of it. The big American myth is that you can pull yourself up by your own efforts and change a bad situation into a good one. The reality is that finding opportunity without help from families, friends, schools, and community is virtually impossible. And the playing field is nothing close to level.

关于谁生活在贫困中以及摆脱贫困需要什么，负面形象依然存在。美国的一大神话是，你可以通过自己的努力提升自己，将坏情况变为好情况。现实是，在没有家庭、朋友、学校和社区帮助的情况下找到机会几乎是不可能的。而且竞争环境远非公平。

J) The FrameWorks Institute, a research group that focuses on public framing of issues, has studied what sustains stereotypes and narratives of poverty in the United Kingdom. "People view economic success and wellbeing in life as a product of choice, willpower, and drive," says Nat Kendall-Taylor, CEO of FrameWorks. "When we see people who are struggling," he says, those assumptions "lead us to the perception that people in poverty are lazy, they don't care, and they haven't made the right decisions. "

专注于公共问题框架的研究所'框架研究所'研究了什么维持了英国贫困的刻板印象和叙事。'框架研究所'首席执行官纳特·肯德尔-泰勒说：'人们将经济成功和生活幸福视为选择、意志力和动力的产物。当我们看到挣扎的人时，这些假设导致我们认为贫困者懒惰、不关心、并且没有做出正确的决定。'

K) Does this sound familiar? Similar ideas surround poverty in the U. S. And these assumptions give a false picture of reality. "When people enter into that pattern of thinking," says Kendall-Taylor, "it's cognitively comfortable to make sense of issues of poverty in that way. It creates a kind of cognitive blindness—all of the factors external to a person's drive and choices that they've made become invisible and fade from view."

这听起来熟悉吗？类似的想法围绕美国的贫困。这些假设提供了虚假的现实图景。肯德尔-泰勒说：'当人们进入那种思维模式时，以那种方式理解贫困问题是认知舒适的。它创造了一种认知盲点——所有外在于个人动力和选择的因素变得不可见并淡出视野。'

L) Those external factors include the difficulties accompanying low-wage work or structural discrimination based on race, gender, or ability. Assumptions get worse when people who are poor use government benefits to help them survive. There is a great tension between "the poor" and those who are receiving what has become a dirty word; "welfare. "

这些外部因素包括伴随低薪工作的困难或基于种族、性别或能力的结构性歧视。当贫困者使用政府福利帮助生存时，假设变得更糟。'穷人'与那些接受已成为脏词'福利'的人之间存在巨大张力。

M) According to the General Social Survey, 71 percent of respondents believe the country is spending too little on "assistance to the poor." On the other hand, 22 percent think we are spending too little on "welfare"; 37 percent believe we are spending too much.

根据社会综合调查，71%的受访者认为国家在'援助穷人'上花费太少。另一方面，22%的人认为我们在'福利'上花费太少；37%的人认为花费太多。

N) "Poverty has been interchangeable with people of color—specifically black women and black mothers," says Atkinson of Mothering Justice. It's true that black mothers are more affected by poverty than many other groups, yet they are disproportionately the face of poverty. For example, Americans routinely overestimate the share of black recipients of public assistance programs.

'母亲正义'的阿特金森说：'贫困一直与有色人种——特别是黑人女性和黑人母亲——互换使用。'确实，黑人母亲比许多其他群体更受贫困影响，但她们不成比例地成为贫困的面孔。例如，美国人经常高估公共援助计划中黑人接受者的比例。

O) In reality, most people will experience some form of financial hardship at some point in their lives. Indeed, people tend to dip in and out of poverty, perhaps due to unexpected obstacles like losing a job, or when hours of a low-wage job fluctuate.

实际上，大多数人会在生命中的某个时刻经历某种形式的财务困难。确实，人们往往会陷入和脱离贫困，可能是由于意外障碍如失业，或当低薪工作的工时波动时。

P) Something each of us can do is to treat each other with the dignity and sympathy that is deserved and to understand deeply that the issue of poverty touches all of us.

我们每个人可以做的事情是，以应有的尊严和同情对待彼此，并深刻理解贫困问题触及我们所有人。