综合教程2 之The jeaning of America 的翻译说课讲解

综

合

教

程

< br>2

之

T

h

e

j

e

a

n

i

n

g

o

f

A

m

e

r

i

c

a

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

Tocqueville 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 learned 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

< br>_______________________________________________ ___

________________________ __________________________

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 p

atented 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

____________________ ______________________________

< br>_______________________________________________ ___

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-

______ ____________________________________________