2025年06月六级第3套仔细阅读 Passage 1 原文翻译及答案解析

Why are we so worried about our careers? Partly it's to do with money, but there's a psychological aspect to our fears as well.

为什么我们如此担心职业生涯？部分原因与金钱相关，但我们的担忧也有心理层面的因素。

We worry because we suspect—not wrongly—that the world is full of a frightening sort of person ready to judge us ruthlessly and swiftly: a person we can call a snob.

我们之所以担忧，是因为我们怀疑——这种怀疑并非毫无道理——世界上满是那种令人畏惧的人，他们随时准备冷酷而迅速地评判我们：我们可以称这种人为势利小人。

A snob is anyone who takes a relatively small part of us and uses it to come to a rigid conclusion about how much of their attention we deserve. In the past, that might be your ancestry and royal connections. Nowadays, the snob cares about one thing only: what you do for a living.

势利小人是指那些抓住我们相对微小的方面，并据此得出僵化结论，判断我们值得他们多少关注的人。过去，这可能涉及你的血统和皇室关系。如今，势利小人只关心一件事：你以何为生。

This explains why the first question we will be asked in any new social context is "What do you do?" and according to how we answer, snobs will either welcome us with broad smiles, or leave us in the cold.

这就解释了为何在新的社交场合，我们常被问到的第一个问题是“你从事什么工作？”而根据我们的回答，势利小人会要么笑脸相迎，要么冷落我们。

And that is why we are fired up by such a desperate urge to achieve and impress.

正因如此，我们被那种迫切的渴望所驱动，去取得成就并给人留下深刻印象。

Sometimes our behaviour is mistaken for greed and vanity, but it is more than this. A lot of our interest in fancy cars, jobs and houses has nothing to do with materialism. It has to do with a hunger for the respect and esteem that is only available in our societies through the acquisition of material goods. It isn't the goods themselves we seek, it is the love we stand to gain through our possession of them. The next time we see someone driving a Ferrari, we shouldn't condemn them for their greed, we should pity them for the intensity of their need for love from the world.

有时我们的行为被误解为贪婪和虚荣，但事实并非如此。我们对豪车、好工作和豪宅的许多兴趣与物质主义无关，而是源于对尊重和敬重的渴望，这种尊重在我们的社会中唯有通过获取物质财富才能获得。我们追求的并非财富本身，而是通过拥有它们所赢得的爱。下次当我们看到有人驾驶法拉利时，不应因其贪婪而谴责他们，而应怜悯他们对爱的迫切需求。

At the root of snobbery is a lack of imagination and confidence about how to decide who in the world is valuable. The snobs are brutally misguided and slavish in their beliefs about how the superior individuals can be identified. For snobs, it is the already acclaimed and already successful who are the only ones worthy of respect. There is no room in their timid regimented minds to imagine that someone might be clever, kind or good—and yet somehow have been overlooked entirely by society, their qualities lying hidden beneath an unfamiliar veil, and having as yet discovered no obvious outlet.

势利心态的根源在于缺乏想象力和判断他人价值的自信。势利小人残酷而奴性地相信如何识别卓越人士。对他们而言，唯有已获赞誉和成功的人才值得尊重。他们怯懦而刻板的思想无法想象，某人可能聪慧、善良或优秀，却被社会全然忽视，其特质掩藏于陌生的面纱之下，尚未寻得显露的机会。

The true answer to snobbery is not to say that there is no such thing as a better or worse person, but to insist that better or worse exist in constantly unexpected places and carry none of the outward signs of distinction. And because we are such poor judges of the worth of others, our ultimate duty remains to be kind, good, curious and imaginative about pretty much everyone who ever crosses our path.

应对势利的真正答案并非否认存在优劣之分，而是坚称优劣常存于意想不到之处，且不附带任何外在的卓越标志。由于我们评判他人价值的能力有限，我们最终的责任是善待、友善、好奇并充满想象力地对待几乎每一位途经我们生命的人。