新视野大学英语第三版读写教程第三册Unit5A

Will you be a worker or a

laborer

?

你想做工作者还是劳役者？

To be truly happy, a person must feel both free andimportant. People are never happy if they feel

compelled by society to do work they do not enjoy, orif what they do enjoy is ignored by society a

s havingno value or importance. In a society where slavery inthe

strict

sense has been abolished,

the

social

indications around work, the value of work and thesalary, have degraded many laborers

into modernslaves -

一个人要想真正快乐，

必须觉 得自己既自由又重要。

如果觉得自己是受社会逼迫而做自己不

喜 欢的工作，或者自己喜欢的工作被认为没价值或不重要而遭社会忽视，那他绝不会快乐。

在一个奴隶制度严格说来已经被废除的社会里，

工作的社会含义、

工作的价值和薪水，

已经

把许多劳役者降格为现代奴隶

——“

薪奴

”

。

People are considered laborers if their job has an

adverse

effect on them, yet they feelcompelled

to continue working by the

necessity

of conforming to societal expectations andearning the reve

nue to support themselves and their families. The polar opposite of labor is we play a

game, we enjoy what we are doing, but it is a purely private pastime; societydoes not care when

or whether we play.

如果人们的工作对自己有负面的影响，

但为了遵从社会的期望或者挣钱养家糊口而被 迫必须

继续工作，

那么他们就被认为是劳役者。

劳役的对立面是玩乐。当我们玩游戏时，

我们很享

受正 在做的事情，但这仅仅是个人娱乐。社会对我们何时玩乐或者是否玩乐并不关心。

Between labor and play stands work. People are labeled as workers if their personal interests

coin

cide

with the jobs society pays them to do; what is necessary labor from the point of viewof socie

ty is

voluntary

play from the individual's personal point of view. Whether a job is to be

designated

as labor or work depends, not on the job itself, but on the tastes of the individualwho undertake

s it. The difference does not, for example,

correlate

with the difference betweena

manual

and

m

ental

job or between jobs of low or high

esteem

; a gardener covered in dirt ina

greenhouse

may

be a worker while a well-dressed city mayor may prove to be an

unhappylaborer

!

处 于劳役和玩乐之间的就是工作。如果人们的个人兴趣跟社会付酬让他们做的工作相吻合，

他们就被称为工作者。

社会上看来一定是苦工的事情对个人来说却是自在的玩乐活动。< /p>

一份

活到底应定为工作还是劳役并不取决于其本身，

而是承担这份活的个人感受。

比如，

二者的