综合教程2 之The jeaning of America 的翻译

This is the story of a sturdy American symbol which has now spread throughout most of the

world. The symbol is not the dollar

. It is not even Coca-Cola. It is a simple pair of pants called

blue jeans, and what the pants symbolize is what Alexis de Tocquevi

lle called “a manly and

legitimate passion for equality…. Blue jeans are favored equally by bureaucrats and cowboys;

bankers and deadbeats; fashion designers and beer drinkers They draw no distinctions and

recognize

no

classes;

they

are

merely

American

1

.

Yet

they

are

sought

after

almost

everywhere in the world ― including Russia, where authorities recently broke up a teen

-aged

gang that was selling them on the black market for two hundred dollars a pair

. They have

been around for a long time, and it seems likely that they will outlive even the necktie.

[2] This ubiquitous American symbol was the invention of a Bavarian- born Jew. His name was

Levi Strauss.

[3] He was born in Bad Ocheim, Germany , in 1829, and during the European political turmoil

of 1848 decided to take his chances in New York , to which his two brothers already had

emigrated. Upon arrival, Levi soon found that his two brothers had exaggerated their tales of

an easy life in the land of the main chance. They were landowners, they had told him; instead,

he found them pushing needles, thread, pots, pans ribbons, yarn, scissors and buttons to

housewives. For two years he was a lowly peddler

, hauling some 180 pounds of sundries

door-to-door to eke out a marginal living. When a married sister in San Francisco offered to

pay his way West in1850, he jumped at the opportunity, taking with him bolts of canvas he

hoped to sell for tenting.

[4] It was the wrong kind of canvas for that purpose, but while talking with a miner down from

the mother lode, he l

earned that pants ― sturdy pants that would stand up to the rigors of the

digging

―

were

almost

impossible

to

find.

Opportunity

beckoned.

On

the

spot,

Strauss

measured the man's girth and inseam with a piece of string and, for six dollars in gold dust 2 ,

had [the canvas] tailored into a pair of stiff but rugged pants. The miner was delighted with

the result, word got around about “those pants of Levi's” and Strauss was in business. The

company has been in business ever since.

[5]When Strauss ran out of canvas, he wrote his two brothers to send more. He received

instead a tough, brown cotton cloth made in Nimes, France ― called serge de Nimes and

swiftly shortened to “denim”(the word “jeans” derives from G ê nes, the French word for

Genoa, where a similar cloth was produced). Almost from the first, Strauss had his cloth dyed

the distinctive indigo that gave blue jeans their name 3 , but it was not until the 1870s that

he added the copper rivets which have long since become a company trademark. The rivets

were the idea of a Virginia City, Nevada , tailor

, Jacob W. Dacis, who added them to pacify a

mean-tempered miner called Alkali Ike. Alkali, the story goes, complained that the pockets of

his jeans always tore when he stuffed them with ore samples and demanded that Davis do

something about it. As a kind of joke, Davis took the pants to a blacksmith and had the

packets riveted; once again, the idea worked so well that word got around; in 1873 Strauss

appropriated 4 and patented the gimmick ― and hired Davis as a

regional manager

.

[6]

By

this

time,

Strauss

had

taken

both

his

brothers

and

two

brothers- in-law

into

the

company

and

was

ready

for

his

third

San

Francisco

store.

Over

the

ensuing

years

the

company prospered locally, and by the time of his death in 1902, Strauss has become a man

of prominence in California . For three decades thereafter the business remained profitable

though

small,

with

sales

largely

confined

to

the

working

people

of

the

West

―

cowboys,

lumberjacks, railroad workers, and the like. Levi's jeans were first introduced to the East,

apparently, during the dude-ranch craze of the 1930s, when vacationing Easters returned and

spread the word about the wonderful pants with rivets. Another boost came in World War

Ⅱ

,

when

blue

jeans

were

declared

and

essential

commodity

and

were

sold

only

to

people

engaged in defense work 5 . From a company with fifteen salespeople, two plants, and almost

no business east of the Mississippi in 1946, the organization grew in thirty years to include a

sales

force

of

more

than

twenty-two

thousand,

with

fifty

plants

and

offices

in

thirty-five

countries. Each year

, more than 250,000,000 items of Levi's clothing are sold ― including

more than 83,000,000 pairs of riveted blue jeans. They have become, through marketing,

word of mouth, and demonstrable reliability, the common pants of America . They can be

purchased

pre-washed,

pre-faded,

and

pre-shrunk

for

the

suitably

proletarian

look.

They

adapt

themselves

to

any

sort

of

idiosyncratic

use;

women

slit

them

at

the

inseams

and

convert

them

into

long

skirts,

men

chop

them

off

above

the

knees

and

turn

them

into

something to be worn while challenging the surf. Decorations and ornamentations abound.

[7]The pants have become a tradition, and along the way have acquired a history of their

own ― so much so that the company has opened a museum in San Francisco. There was, for

example 6 , the turn-of-the-century trainman who replaced a faulty coupling with a pair of

jeans; the Wyoming man who used his jeans as a towrope to haul

his car out of a ditch; the Californian who found several pairs in an abandoned mine, wore

them, then discovered they were sixty-three years old and still as good as new and turned

them over to the Smithsonian as a tribute to their toughness. And then there is the

particularly terrifying story of the careless construction worker who dangled fifty-two stories

above the street until rescued, his sole support the Levi's belt loop through which his rope

was hooked.

美国牛仔裤史话

卡琳

·

奎因

[1]

本文讲述的是美国的一个坚实的象征物，如今已经遍及 世界大部分地区。此物不是美元，甚至也不是

可口可乐，而只是一条称作蓝色牛仔裤的普 通裤子。这条裤子所象征的，如亚历克西

·

德托克维尔所言，是

“

对平等的果敢而正当的渴求

……”< /p>

无论是官员还是牛仔，银行家还是赖帐徒，时装设计师还是嗜酒成性者，

< br>都同样青睐蓝色牛仔裤。这种裤子对人不分高低贵贱，只要是美国人都可以穿。不过，牛仔裤几乎在世界< /p>

各地都广受欢迎

——

其中包括俄罗斯，其 当局最近破获了一个在黑市上倒卖牛仔裤的青少年团伙，他们的

牛仔裤卖到

200

美元一条。牛仔裤已经流行了很长时间， 看来其生命力甚至可能超过领带。

[2]

< br>这个无所不在的美国象征是一个出生于巴伐利亚的犹太人发明的，它的名字叫李维

·

施特劳斯。

[3]

他于

1829

年出生于德国的巴德奥切姆，

1848

年欧洲政治动荡期间，决定去纽约碰碰运气，他的< /p>

两个哥哥已经移民去了那里。到了纽约，李维很快就发现，两个哥哥关于在这片充满机遇的 土地上生活比

较安逸的说法实在有些言过其实。他们说自己拥有土地，可他发现他们在向 家庭主妇推销针线、锅罐、缎

带、

剪刀和钮扣。

李维做了两年寒酸的小贩，

拉着

180

来磅的杂货挨门挨户地叫卖，

勉强维持生计。

1850