双语对照 ● It’s Never Too Late For Success 成功之路，永不言迟
It’s Never Too Late For Success 成功之路，永不言迟
◎ Charles D. Rice
You and your parents can stop worrying—Edison, Darwin and lots more were far from being geniuses in their teens.
你和你的父母可以不必担忧了——爱迪生、达尔文还有许多其他人在他们年少时远非天才。
History books seldom mention it, but the truth is that many of our greatest figures were practically “beatniks” when they were teenagers. They were given to daydreaming, indecision, hebetude[47](plain dullness), and they showed no promise of being a doctor, lawyer or teacher.
历史书上很少提到这些，但事实是：我们许多伟人在他们青少年时是“垮掉的一代”。他们也会做白日梦，也会优柔寡断，也会犯傻。而且，他们身上也没有显现出能够成为医生、律师或教师的潜质。
So, young men and women, if you suffer from the same symptoms, don’t despair. The world was built by men and women whose parents worried that they would “never amount to a hill of beans”. You don’t hear too much about their early failures because parents prefer to cite more inspiring examples.
所以，年轻的男女们，如果你们遇到了同样的状况，不必绝望。这个世界就是由那些父母担心会一事无成的男男女女创造的。他们早年失败的事情，想必你很少听说，因为父母更喜欢引用更多鼓舞人心的例子。
A MAN THEY DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT
他们不向你谈起的一个人
If you take piano lessons and your attitude towards practicing is marked by laziness, your parents might justly complain and flaunt before you the famous picture of little Mozart in his ruffled night-shirt, playing the piano at midnight in the attic. But the point is, your parents would not show you a picture of a certain part who never showed a whit of interest in music during his formative years. In fact he never showed talent in any direction whatever. Finally put to studying law, he barely passed his final exams. It was not until he was 22 that he suddenly became fired with a great passion for music and his name was Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
如果你正在学钢琴，可你并不勤于练习。这时，你的父母可能会一边指责你，一边在你面前对着一张著名的画尽情夸耀——穿着睡袍的小莫扎特大半夜还在阁楼上练钢琴。可关键是，你的父母不会给你看另外一副画——少年时期对音乐不感兴趣的那些人。准确地说，他从未在任何领域表现出超凡的天赋。最终，他选择了法律，但期末考试门门不及格。直到22岁那年，他突然对音乐有了强烈的兴趣。他的名字就叫彼得·伊里奇·柴科夫斯基。
EDISON WAS “ADDLED”
爱迪生是“愚蠢”的
In the sciences, there have been hundreds of geniuses who aimed straight at the goal from their earliest years, and hundreds who showed no aptitude at all. So it goes. You have the Wright Brothers, who were brilliant in engineering in their early teens, and you have Thomas Alva Edison, whose teacher tried to get him out of the class because his brain was “addled”. You have the Nobel Prize physicist Enrico Fermi, who at 17 had read enough mathematics to qualify for a doctor’s degree. And you have the great Albert Schweitzer, who wavered between music and the church until he was 30. Then he started his medical studies.
在科学领域里，有许多天才在早年时便瞄准了自己的目标，而有的却从未显露过自己的天赋。就是因为这样，我们才有了从小擅长机械引擎的莱特兄弟；有了因为“愚蠢”而差点被老师赶出教室的托马斯·阿尔瓦·爱迪生；有了17岁便博览数学类书籍并获得博士学位的诺贝尔物理学奖获得者恩里科·费米；有了30岁之前还在音乐和牧师之间犹豫不决，之后才开始学医的伟大的埃博特·施威茨。
DARW IN HATED SCHOOL
达尔文讨厌上学
Charles Darwin’s early life was a mess. He hated school, and his father once shouted, “You care for nothing but shooting dogs and rat catching, and you will be a disgrace[48]to yourself and all your family!” He was sent to Glasgow to study medicine, but he couldn’t stand the sight of blood. He was sent to divinity school and barely managed to graduate. Whereupon he chucked the whole business and shipped out to the South Seas on the famous exploring ship Beagle. On that voyage, one of history’s greatest scientists was born. It was here that he collected the material for the book that would revolutionize biological science—The Origin of the Species.
查尔斯·达尔文早年的生活就像一团乱麻。他讨厌上学。有一次，父亲冲他大声喊道：“除了打狗和追老鼠，你什么都不会。你会成为你自己和家人的耻辱！”就这样，他被送到格拉斯哥学医，可是他一见到血就晕。无奈之下，他又被送到神学院，可是他却无法毕业。于是他抛下一切，乘坐著名的探险之船——比格——来到南海。历史上最伟大的科学家之一就在此次航海中诞生了。《物种起源》——这本足以引发一场生物科学变革的书，它的素材就是在这次航海中搜集到的。
FAULKNER FAILED IN ENGLISH
福克纳英语考试不及格
Politics offers a familiar example of contrast. Herbert Hoover must have learned administration in the cradle. When he was at school he was drafted as football manager, though he didn’t know the game, and the glee club manager, though he couldn’t sing a note. Whatever he touched went smoothly, glee club or food for a starving Europe.
政界为我们提供了一个熟悉的反例。赫伯特·胡佛一定在婴儿时期便学会了行政管理。在学校，他是校足球队队长，尽管他对足球一窍不通；他也是校合唱队的队长，尽管他对唱歌也是一无所知。凡是他参加的活动总能顺利开展，不论是组织合唱队，还是为欧洲筹集食物。
But one of his successors in the White House had about as checkered a youth as can be imagined. Turned down by West Point because of poor vision, Harry Truman tried a dozen jobs, including in a drugstore, a bank, a bottling works, and a railroad yard. But he got there just the same.
然而，在白宫，他的一位接班人的青年时代却充满了艰辛。因为视力不佳未被西点军校录取的哈里·杜鲁门试着做过许多工作，包括在药店、银行、装瓶厂和铁路换装场上班。可他终究还是坐上了总统的宝座。
Great writers are supposed to be born, not made, but here again there are many fascinating exceptions. William Faulkner quit school in the fifth grade and rattled around the country as a house painter and a dishwasher.
伟大的作家照理说应是天生的，而非后天塑造的。可这儿有许多典型的例外。威廉·福克纳五年级时便辍学了，从此他就穿梭在全国各地，靠给别人油漆房子和洗碗为生。
Once he tried attending college, but failed in freshman English and quit. He wangled a postmaster’s job in a small Mississippi town, and infuriated the populace by getting the mail all mixed up and closing the office whenever he felt like it. Faulkner was 25 before he started the writing career that won him a Nobel Prize.
他曾经上过大学，可在大一的英语考试中，他就考了个不及格，于是他便辍学不上了。他用诈骗手段在密西西比亚的小镇上找到了一份邮递员的工作。可是他把邮件弄得一团糟，令民众激怒不已，并且由着自己的性子想什么时候收工就什么时候收工。在福克纳开始那段给自己带来诺贝尔奖的写作生涯时，他已经25岁了。
HOW ABOUT THOSE PRODIGIES
如何解释这些神童呢？
And added to all the aforementioned paradoxes[49]you have a small army of child prodigies who were graduated from college when they were 15, and are now obscure clerks in accounting departments. And you have a small army of men who were too stupid or indolent to get into or finish college and who are today presidents of the firms that hire the prodigies.
除了前面提到的那些怪才，你也知道不少神童。他们有的15岁便大学毕业，可最后却沦为财务部的一名小职员。也有一些孩子，因为当年太笨或太懒而放弃了大学，如今却成了聘请昔日神童的那些公司的总裁。
So who’s to say what about youth? Any young boy or girl who knows what he wants to do in life is probably the better off for it. But no teenager needs despair of the future. He has that one special advantage over the greatest man alive—time! If you don’t think time counts, look at Grandma Moses, she never sold a painting till she was 80.
那么，关于青春，到底谁说了算呢？任何心中拥有人生目标的少男少女都可能处于优势地位。但任何青少年都无需对未来感到绝望。和一位尚在人间的伟人相比，他拥有一个特别的优势——时间！如果你觉得时间算不上什么，那就请你看看摩西奶奶吧！直到80岁她才卖出第一幅画。
美丽语录
You got a dream, you gotta protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they wanna tell you that you can’t do it. If you want something, go get it.
如果你有梦想，守护它。 当人们做不到一些事情的时候，他们就会说你也同样不能。既然有了目标，你就要努力实现。
