英文 C1 聽力練習 第 3 回
English listening practice, C1, round 3 — 6 recordings, 30 questions
每一段都是母語錄音。建議先到網站聽、作答，再回來看逐字稿。
內容
第 1 段 你聽到兩個學生在討論小組報告。
逐字稿（聽完再看）
旁白You hear two students discussing a group presentation.
你聽到兩個學生在討論小組報告。
女I thought the presentation went well, considering.
以這個情況來說，我覺得報告還算順利。
男The content was solid, but we ran way over time. The lecturer had to cut us off before the conclusion.
內容很扎實，可是我們嚴重超時。講師在結論前就得打斷我們。
女That's because Tom insisted on showing every single graph.
那是因為湯姆堅持每張圖表都要放。
男Well, we all agreed to it. We should have rehearsed with a timer.
嗯，我們都同意了啊。我們應該計時排練才對。
第 2 段 你聽到一位男士談修復老家具。
逐字稿（聽完再看）
旁白You hear a man talking about restoring old furniture.
你聽到一位男士談修復老家具。
男People assume the satisfaction comes when a piece is finished and gleaming. For me, it's the stage before that — taking it apart and discovering how it was made. You find pencil marks the original carpenter left, sometimes a date. You feel a connection to someone who's been dead for two hundred years. The finished chair almost feels like an anticlimax.
大家以為成就感來自家具修好、閃閃發亮的時候。對我來說是在那之前的階段：把它拆開，發現它是怎麼做的。你會找到原本的木匠留下的鉛筆記號，有時還有日期。你會覺得和一個死了兩百年的人有了連結。完成的椅子反而有點讓人失落。
第 3 段 你聽到兩個朋友在討論一部電視影集。
逐字稿（聽完再看）
旁白You hear two friends discussing a television series.
你聽到兩個朋友在討論一部電視影集。
女Everyone at work is obsessed with that series, so I've finally started it.
公司每個人都迷那部影集，所以我終於開始看了。
男And?
然後呢？
女The acting is superb, I'll grant you. But the plot is so slow — three episodes in and almost nothing has happened.
演技很精湛，這我承認。可是劇情好慢，看了三集幾乎什麼事都沒發生。
男Stick with it. The slowness is deliberate; it makes the later episodes hit much harder.
繼續看吧。慢是故意的，這讓後面幾集的力道強很多。
女Fine, I'll give it two more.
好吧，我再看兩集。
第 4 段
逐字稿（聽完再看）
男Today I'm going to talk about the Fleetwater, a river that once ran through the middle of our city but has been hidden underground for more than a century. In the Middle Ages, the river was used by tanners, whose work made the water so polluted that people called it the Black Brook. By the eighteen-sixties it was little more than an open sewer, and after an outbreak of cholera the city council decided to cover it over. Today it flows through a brick tunnel about two metres wide. You can still hear it in a few places: there's a metal grate outside the central library where, on a quiet day, the sound of water is surprisingly loud. Several groups are now campaigning to bring the river back to the surface. They point to cities like Seoul, where uncovering a river created a popular park and actually lowered summer temperatures nearby. The main obstacle, of course, is cost — the latest estimate is around forty million pounds. A public consultation will begin in March.
今天我要談談弗利特河，一條曾經流經市中心、但已經藏在地底一百多年的河。中世紀時，這條河被製革工人使用，他們的工作把河水汙染得很嚴重，大家都叫它「黑溪」。到了 1860 年代，它幾乎只是一條露天下水道，霍亂爆發後，市議會決定把它加蓋。現在它流經一條大約兩公尺寬的磚砌隧道。有幾個地方還聽得到它：中央圖書館外有一個金屬格柵，安靜的日子裡，水聲大得令人驚訝。現在有好幾個團體在推動讓這條河重見天日。他們舉首爾等城市為例，在那裡揭開河道後不但成了熱門的公園，還降低了附近的夏季氣溫。當然最大的障礙是成本，最新估計大約四千萬英鎊。公眾諮詢將在三月開始。
第 5 段
逐字稿（聽完再看）
男With me is Ines Ferreira, who has translated more than forty novels from Portuguese into English. Ines, how did you start?
今天的來賓是伊內絲·費雷拉，她把四十多本小說從葡萄牙文翻成英文。伊內絲，你是怎麼開始的？
女By accident. I was teaching English in Lisbon, and a friend asked me to translate a short story she'd written, just for fun. A publisher happened to read it in a magazine and contacted me. I had no training at all — I learnt on the job, mostly by making mistakes.
純屬意外。我當時在里斯本教英文，一個朋友請我翻譯她寫的一篇短篇小說，只是好玩。一位出版商剛好在雜誌上讀到，就聯絡了我。我完全沒受過訓練，都是邊做邊學，大多是靠犯錯學的。
男What's the hardest thing to translate?
最難翻的是什麼？
女People expect me to say jokes or wordplay, and those are hard. But the real difficulty is rhythm. Every writer has a particular music in their sentences, and if you lose that, you lose the book, even if every word is technically correct.
大家以為我會說笑話或文字遊戲，那些確實難。但真正的難處是節奏。每個作家的句子都有獨特的音樂性，失去了它，就失去了整本書，即使每個字在技術上都是對的。
男Do you work closely with authors?
你會和作者密切合作嗎？
女When they're alive and willing! Some love being involved and answer dozens of emails. Others say, 'It's your book now,' and leave me alone. Oddly, I find the second kind more frightening.
如果他們還在世又願意的話！有些作者很喜歡參與，會回覆幾十封信。也有人說「現在這是你的書了」，就放手不管。奇怪的是，我覺得第二種更可怕。
男Translators' names rarely appear on covers. Does that bother you?
譯者的名字很少出現在封面上，這會困擾你嗎？
女It used to. But things are changing — more publishers now put our names on the front, and readers are more aware that they're reading a translation. I'd rather campaign for fair pay, though; that matters more than fame.
以前會。但情況在改變，越來越多出版商把我們的名字放在封面上，讀者也更清楚自己讀的是譯本。不過我更想爭取合理的報酬，那比名氣重要。
男What advice would you give a new translator?
你會給新譯者什麼建議？
女Read widely in your own language, not just the one you translate from. Your English is your instrument; it has to be perfectly in tune.
多讀自己母語的書，不只是你翻譯的那種語言。你的英文就是你的樂器，它必須完全調準音。
第 6 段 說話者 1
逐字稿（聽完再看）
旁白Speaker 1
說話者 1
男When the factory closed, I had a redundancy payment and no idea what to do. I'd done a bit of mechanics in the army, so I rented a garage and started repairing bikes. The hardest part wasn't the work — it was the paperwork. Licences, insurance, safety inspections... I spent more time on forms than on bikes in the first year.
工廠關門時，我拿到一筆資遣費，完全不知道該做什麼。我在軍中做過一點機械，所以租了一間車庫開始修腳踏車。最難的不是工作本身，而是文書作業。執照、保險、安全檢查……第一年我花在表格上的時間比花在腳踏車上還多。
旁白Speaker 2
說話者 2
女I noticed there wasn't a single shop in town selling clothes for tall women — and I'm six foot one. So I opened one. People said I was mad, but it was obvious there was demand. My problem has been letting people know we exist; most of my customers still find us by chance.
我發現鎮上沒有一家店賣高個子女生的衣服，而我有一百八十五公分。所以我就開了一家。大家說我瘋了，但需求明明就在那裡。我的問題是讓大家知道我們的存在，大部分客人到現在還是偶然發現我們的。
旁白Speaker 3
說話者 3
男I was a lawyer for twelve years, and I was bored out of my mind. I opened the bakery mainly because I needed a change of direction. The hardest thing is the hours — I start at four, and I barely see my kids before bedtime.
我當了十二年律師，無聊得要命。我開麵包店主要是因為需要轉換方向。最難的是工時，我四點開工，孩子睡前幾乎見不到他們。
旁白Speaker 4
說話者 4
女My mother ran a small café for thirty years, and when she got ill, someone had to keep it going. I never planned to run a business. The most difficult thing has been money — there are weeks when the bills arrive before the customers do.
我媽媽經營一家小咖啡館三十年，她生病時總得有人撐下去。我從沒打算做生意。最難的是錢，有些星期帳單比客人先到。
旁白Speaker 5
說話者 5
男I'd been selling my photographs to friends for years, and one of my regular buyers, who owns a gallery, suggested I sell prints online. Now it's my full-time job. What I miss is having colleagues — some days the only person I speak to is the postman.
我多年來一直把照片賣給朋友，有一位常客開藝廊，他建議我在網路上賣版畫。現在這成了我的全職工作。我想念的是有同事，有些日子我唯一說話的對象是郵差。