2016年考研英语二阅读 Text 3 原文翻译及答案解析

That everyone’s too busy these days is a cliché. But one specific complaint is made especially mournfully: There’s never any time to read.

如今每个人都太忙，这已是一个陈词滥调。但有一个特定的抱怨尤其令人哀叹：根本没有时间阅读。

What makes the problem thornier is that the usual time-management techniques don’t seem sufficient. The web’s full of articles offering tips on making time to read: “Give up TV” or “Carry a book with you at all times.” But in my experience, using such methods to free up the odd 30 minutes doesn’t work. Sit down to read and the flywheel of work-related thoughts keeps spinning – or else you’re so exhausted that a challenging book’s the last thing you need. The modern mind, Tim Parks, a novelist and critic, writes, is overwhelmingly inclined toward communication. It is not primarily introverted; it is, if anything, inclined to interruption. Deep reading requires not just time, but a special kind of time.

使问题更加棘手的是，通常的时间管理技巧似乎不够充分。网上有很多文章提供腾出时间阅读的建议，比如“放弃电视”或“随身携带一本书”。但根据我的经验，使用这些方法来挤出零碎的30分钟并不奏效。坐下阅读时，与工作相关的思绪飞轮不断转动——或者你精疲力尽，根本不想读一本有挑战性的书。小说家和评论家蒂姆·帕克斯写道，现代思维极大地倾向于沟通。它并非主要内向；如果说有什么倾向的话，是倾向于被打断。深度阅读不仅需要时间，还需要一种特殊的时间。

In, “becoming more efficient is part of the problem. Thinking of time as a resource to be maximised means you approach it instrumentally, judging any given moment as well spent only in so far as it advances progress toward some goal. Immersive reading, by contrast, depends on being willing to risk inefficiency, goallessness, even time-wasting. Try to slot it in as a to-do list item and you’ll manage only goal-focused reading – useful, sometimes, but not the best fulfilling read. “The future comes at us like empty bottles on an unstoppable and nearly infinite conveyor belt,” writes Gary Eberle in his book Sacred Time, and “we feel a pressure to fill these different-sized bottles (days, hours, minutes) as they pass, for if they get by without being filled, we will have wasted them.” No moment could be worse for losing yourself in a book.

其中，‘提高效率是问题的一部分。’将时间视为一种需要最大化资源的思维方式意味着你以工具性的方式对待它，只有当某个时刻推进了某个目标的进展时，才认为它被充分利用。相比之下，沉浸式阅读依赖于愿意承担低效、无目标甚至浪费时间的风险。试图将其安排为待办事项清单上的一项，你只会实现目标导向的阅读——有时有用，但不是最令人满足的阅读。加里·埃伯利在他的书《神圣时间》中写道：‘未来像在一条不可阻挡且几乎无限的传送带上的空瓶向我们袭来，’并且‘我们感到一种压力，要在这些不同大小的瓶子（日子、小时、分钟）经过时填满它们，因为如果它们未被填满而过去，我们就浪费了它们。’没有比沉浸在书中更糟糕的时刻了。

So what does work? Perhaps surprisingly, scheduling regular times for reading. You’d think this might feed the efficiency mind-set, but in fact, Eberle notes, such ritualistic behaviour helps us “step outside time’s flow” into “soul time.” You could limit distractions by reading only physical books, or on single-purpose e-readers. “Carry a book with you at all times” can work if, say, you just need to dip in often enough, so that reading becomes the default state from which you temporarily surface to take care of business, before dropping back down. On a really good day, it no longer feels as if you’re “making time to read,” but just reading, and making time for everything else.

那么什么方法有效呢？或许令人惊讶的是，安排固定的时间进行阅读。你可能会认为这会助长效率至上的思维模式，但事实上，埃伯利指出，这种仪式化的行为帮助我们‘走出时间的流动’，进入‘灵魂时间’。你可以通过只阅读实体书或使用专用电子阅读器来限制干扰。‘随身携带一本书’如果奏效，比如说，你只需足够频繁地投入其中，使得阅读成为默认状态，你暂时浮出水面处理事务，然后再沉下去。在真正美好的一天，你不再感觉像是在‘腾出时间阅读’，而只是在阅读，并为其他一切腾出时间。