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Miscellaneous
一般
ad hoc
专门任务的,特设的
After the organization that has staged the parade for more than 150 years refused to permit gay groups to march under their own banner,
150年来负责主办游行的组织已经表示拒绝同性恋团体打着自己的旗号参加,
Mayor David Dinkins handed control of the parade to an ad hoc group that favored including the gays.
市长丁金斯就把主管责任交给一个专门组成的团体,它支持同性恋者参加。
Even with the tape delays necessitated by time differences,
虽然因为时差会造成录像带延误,
Costas will cover events as they happen, a high-wire act that will show off his considerable ad-lib talents.
科斯塔斯[NBC奥运主播]仍将同步报道。这种走钢索式的演出可以卖弄他相当不错的即兴才华。
androgynous
亦男亦女的
For years, the androgynous singer k.d. lang was locked out of main-stream country.
多年来,中性的歌手k.d.lang被拒于乡村音乐主流之外。
God includes masculinity and femininity within himself without having sexual gender,
神无性别,但含有男性与女性特质,
Bloesch explains, but "the God of the Bible is not androgynous."
Bloesch如是说:“可是《圣经》里的神并不是亦男亦女的”。
basket case
无行为能力者,废物
Sometimes called the world's richest basket case because of its wealth of such natural resources as teak and minerals,
缅甸因为富于天然资源,包括柚木与各种矿物,所以有时候被称作世界上最富有的废物。
Burma needs foreign aid and investment to modernize.
它需要外援与外国投资以求现代化。
behemoth
庞然巨物
After young Watson became chief executive in 1956, he transformed the manufacurer of typewriters into the Big Blue behemoth of computing.
在小Watson于1956年成为总裁之后,他把这家打字机制造厂改头换面,变成电脑界的庞然巨物IBM。
It is admittedly very difficult to "do something" while relying on the free market and trying to curb the statist Leviathan.
要靠自由市场机能,又要箝制政府的巨兽,这诚然很难去“做事”。
But that is the narrow bridge on which the conervatives will have to fight.
可是保守派也只能站在这道窄桥上战斗。
brass
高级将领,高级官员
He seldom hid his differences with GM's top brass, often phrasing his protests in barnyard epithets.
他和通用公司高级主管之间意见不合时也并不隐瞒,而且抗议的言词毫不客气,常常用到乡下的骂人话。
They will have to do without the household workers and car the state had provided to each.
从前政府会为每人提供料理家务的人员以及汽车,现在没有了。
That's enough to make a bigwig take to his sickbed, but illness could be a problem too.
光是这点就可以让这些大人物气出病来,可是生病也有问题。
buccaneer
海盗
Rupert Murdoch, buccaneer owner of Fox and much else of the world's communications business,
默多克,海盗般的福克斯公司老板,也是全世界许多传播媒体的拥有人,
seemed to be a throwback to those spacious days (spacious for owners.)
似乎是属于过去那种海阔天空时代的人(对老板来说是海阔天空)。
The HUD mess has joined the $300 billion savings-and-loan bailout and the ongoing Pentagon procurement investigation as a legacy of the freebooting Reagan years.
住都局的烂摊子和高达3000亿的信贷公司承接债务案,以及还在进行中的五角大楼采购弊案一样,都是巧取豪夺的里根时代的后遗症。
buff
狂热爱好者
He was a drinker and a jazz buff, but he habitually cloaked himself in a grave manner (when he turned 60, Alan Bennett asked,
他爱喝酒,也是爵士乐迷,可是他习惯摆出一副严肃的外表(他满60岁的时候,贝内特说:)
"but when was he anything else?")
“他一向都是60岁呀!”
A proposal to bowdlerize France's barn-burning anthem provokes an indignant Mon Dieu! from traditionalists. 

有人提议要把法国那首号召人们暴动的国歌(马赛曲)修改一下,这个建议让卫道之士大呼“我的天!”
bummer
不愉快的经验
The idea of having but one life to lead has always been a bummer,
人生只能有一次,这个念头一向就是令人不愉快的经验。
but never more than it is for today's health-conscious audience.
对于今天那些注意健康问题的电影观众而言更是如此。
Already, party lovers from New York City to Paris to Tokyo are booking rooms,
making reservations and hatching plans for the mega-night. Those who don't start planning now may find themselves,
on the night of nights, all dressed up with no place to go.
And that would quite a downer-sort of like watching all the nines on your car odometer roll over into zeros and having no one to share it with.
chic
时髦,优雅
Miami has already become a chic hangout for the international set.
迈阿密已经成为国际名流时髦的聚集处所。
Critics on the right called Avedon radical chic; those on the left dismissed him as chic, period.
右派的批评家说Avedon是时髦的激进派;左派的批评家则只说他不过是追求时髦的角色罢了。
cognoscenti
鉴赏家,专家
During the decades since, She Loves Me has become a closet favorite of theater insiders.
At last, the cognoscenti have let the rest of the world in on the secret.
After last month's big quakes, Los Angeles wine connoisseur Dennis Overstreet realized that the next one might demolish his cellars. Party!
cynosure
众人瞩目
Nearly 6 ft. tall, imperially slim and sleekly dressed, she is usually the cynosure of attention at any gathering.
她身高近6英尺,苗条而有贵族气派,打扮高雅,不论在哪里都是众人瞩目的焦点。
deep-six
废弃
Says a relieved Republican:"They've finally deep-sixed the list of 12 legislative accomplishments and jetisoned the five pillars of reform. "
一名深感如释重负的共和党员说:“他们终于废弃了12项立法成就的说贴,也抛弃了所谓改革的五大支柱不提。”
During that time, songs were scrapped and replaced, sometimes more than once;
在那段时间,歌曲被抛弃换新,有时还不只一次重写对白;
dialogue was rewritten; scenes were restaged; and a principal performer was fired.
重搭布景,主角也遭开除。
dexterous
熟练的,技巧高超的
The author's laconic prose manages to be both dexterous and sinister.
这位作者简洁的文字做到既洗练又有邪恶的暗示。
Through some adroit lawyering, Faal turned that mistake to a decisive advantage.
经由技巧高超的律师手法,法尔把这项错误转为已方明确的优势。
donnybrook
混乱,打群架
Unfortunately, it also became the symbol of what Israel and some of its supporters in Congress perceived as a betrayal,
很不幸,这个事件也被以色列与美国国会中一些以色列支持者视为美国出卖以色列的象征。
and they created a donnybrook in Congress that, I believed, we could not afford to lose.
他们于是在国会发动一场混战,我认为我们一定要赢。
eclectic
兼容并蓄的,采各家所长的
Her taste runs also to arrangement of Chopin and Joplin, as well as to Japanese and Brazilian music,
她的品味也包括改写的萧邦和[美国作曲家]Joplin的曲子,以及日本、巴西音乐。
part of an eclectic approach that is winning her fans around the world.
她这种兼容并蓄的风格使她风靡全世界。
For nearly 40 years, Gordimer has spoken out against apartheid,
接近40年了,戈迪默大声控诉种族隔离政策,
that crazy quilt of laws and restrictions that enabled the white minority to control and suppress the country's black majority.
这是五花八门的一些法律规章所构成的大拼盘,让居于少数的白人得以控制,压抑该国多数人口的黑人。
egghead
知识分子
This is an eghead cofee-table book that all will discuss, many will buy, yet few will manage to finish. 

这是一本摆在咖啡桌上好看的知识分子书籍,所有人都会讨论它,许多人会买它,但很少人能看完它。
The Disney-Merchant Ivory alliance blends highbrow with nobrow.
迪斯尼与Merchant Ivory的合并,把高级知识分子和俚俗的水平调和起来。
eureka
我找到了!
The world may come to California thinking it is a magnificent playground, which it is.
世人前来加州,心里可能把它当成个大游乐场-这也没错。
"Eureka," says the state's motto:"I have found it."
该州的座右铭就是“我找到了!”
Put 31 of these plots on the walls of a museum and - Eureka! -you have an exhibition of colorful, exquisitely crafted designs that hold their own with many abstract
把31张这种构造图挂在博物馆墙上,然后-有了!-就成了一次多彩多姿、手工精美的设计展,和许多抽象画挂在一起毫不逊色。
galvanize
刺激行动
Nothing has galvanized today's antismoking activists as much as the Environmental Protection Agency report released a year ago
今日反烟运动蓬勃发展,最大的刺激来自于一年前环保署发布的一项报告。
that classified environmental tobacco smoke as a class-A carcinogen and estimated that 3,000 nonsmokers die each year from lung cancer as a result of other smoke.
其中把间接吸烟列为第一级致癌物质,并估计每年有3000名的非吸烟者死于间接吸烟引起的肺癌。
groundbreaking
开创性的
In a groundbreaking decision, the Supreme Court afirmed a lowercout ruling that gives a man the right not to become a father against his wishes.
在一项开创性的判决中,最高法院肯定下级法院的裁定:男性有权按自己的意愿选择不要做父亲。
His score for Ghosts may not be trailblazing music, but it is effective,
他为Ghosts所谱的曲也许算不上是很有开创性的音乐,可是效果很好,
and above all, singable.
而且更重要的是可以唱。
halcyon
宁静的,祥和的
Even with recent increases in federal and state fuel taxes, gasoline costs Americans 44% less in real terms than it did in 1980,
即使最近联邦政府与州政府都调高了燃料税,可是比起1980年,经过通货膨胀调整后的实际价格来算,今天的汽油还是便宜44%。
and surprisingly, 24% less than it did in the halcyon days of 1960, before anyone had heard of Saddam Hussein or OPEC.
还有一个令人惊讶的比较:比起1960年的宁静岁月,那个不知萨达姆•侯赛因与石油输出国组织为何物的时代,今天的油价竟然还低24%。
haute cuisine
高级法式料理
Even if ostriches don't become haute cuisine, investors are hoping the big birds achieve greater fame than a spot on Sesame Street.
就算驼鸟上不了高级法式料理台盘,投资者也希望这种大鸟的名声不只是在芝麻街轧一角而已。
La Mere Blanc in Vonnas, France, was long a famous cuisine de femme restaurant,
法国冯纳市的白老妈餐厅老早就是有名的妇女餐厅,
but it earned Michelin's three-star rating only after Georges Blanc took over from his mother and began to dream up nouvelle haute cuisine.
可是一直到白乔治从老妈手中接管,并构想出新高级法式料理之后,才赢得米其林的三星评价。
iconoclast
打破偶像者,攻击传统者
As an iconoclast in a country of enforced artistic conformity,
在艺术家被迫要遵守一致标准的苏联,作为一个打破传统者,
Schnittke represented for many of his Soviet countrymen a kind of artistic glasnost long before Gorbachev made it permissible.
Schnittke在许多同胞心目中代表一种艺术方面的“开放”,而且这是早在戈尔巴乔夫允许开放之前的事。
Outrageous, iconoclastic, with warning shadows and baroque camera angles,
故意激怒观众,打破偶像,内含警告性的阴影与巴洛克式的电影视角,
Citizen Kane told future movie makers that anything was possible.
《公民凯恩》一片告诉未来的电影人:天下没有不可能的事。
jerry-built
偷工减料的
The consitution is just a jerry-built thing and needs to be changed, and that's what Yeltsin wants to do.

 

宪法只是偷工减料订出来的,有必要修改,叶利钦也正有意去修改它。
Americans' impatience for quick-fix remedies resembles the frustration that dives inner-city youths to seize on illegal getrich schemes:
美国人急于采用一举解决问题的补救措施,这很像都市贫民区的青年所感受的挫折感,让他们去攫取违法的致富方案:
they want to cut corners, produce high yields and not pay a price.
他们总想走捷径、一步登天,不愿付出代价。
kinky
稍微变态的
His current esearch involves the kinky pastime known as sploshing-the eoic act of dumping a plate of food on your loved one.
他目前研究的对象包括一种稍微变态的娱乐叫做泼洒-这种煽情行为是把一盘食物倒到爱人身上。
knee-jerk
直觉的,不经思考的
There's a knee-jerk response on the part of minorities against national testing because we've suffered the most from them in the past.
少数民族对于国家考试会有一种直觉式的反感,因为我们过去吃它的亏最大。
He takes the measure of an issue and comes up with a gut response on whether a policy will fly.
他会衡量一件事情,然后对于政策是否能成功推行,会产生一种心底的直觉反应。
mainstay
支柱
A mainstay of Asian cuisines, soybeans can be boiled, canned or processed as bean curd (tofu).
黄豆是亚洲各国料理的重要成分,可以煮,可以做罐头,也可以加工做豆腐。
A bulwark against despair, a anctuary of freedom, a subversive counterforce.
它是抵挡绝望的壁垒,是捍卫自由的圣地,也是反政府的颠覆力量。
Besides seeking to buttress the yen, the Bank of Japan was trying to prevent an outbreak of inflation.
日本银行此举除了要支撑日元之外,也还为了防止通货膨胀爆发。
manque
不足的
If Clinton has often cribbed from Perot's text about the deficit and other issues, Perot keeps raising the standard to demonstrate that Clinton is only a reformer manque.
如果说克林顿常常窃取佩罗对于赤字等议题的说词,佩罗则是不断提高标准以显示克林顿是不够格的改革者。
But the fatal flaw is that NATO membership isn't ensured even if the wannabes demonstrate their worthiness.
有一个致命的瑕疵在于:北约会员国身份不见得可以拿得到,即使有意加入者证明本身的价值也是一样。
pooh-pooh
表示不屑、嗤之以鼻
Now Macy's (the 135-year-old department store) has announced its deal with Don Hewitt (the 70-year-old executive producer of 60 Minutes) to create a Macy's home-shopping
梅西公司(135年历史的百货公司连锁)现在已经宣布和休伊特(现年70,是电视节目《60分钟》的制作人)达成协议,开辟一条梅西电视购物频道-
an imitative idea that was instantly pooh-poohed by the TV and retailing establishments.
这个模仿别人的构想立即被电视台与零售嗤之以鼻。
The local Pooh-Bahs of Washington share a conensus in favor of statehood for the capital.
华盛顿当地的当权派领袖已有共识,支持首都升级为州。
posh
豪华的、最高级的
And so Daniel, from the posh side of town, took on his first role and accent:
就这样,住在高级住宅区的丹尼尔开始扮演第一个角色:
that of the working-class lad.
工人阶级小孩,也学会了新的口音。
Who gets a posh office, a lavish expense allowance, a devoted staff and unlimited postage?
谁可以获得一间高级办公室,大笔的固定费用,一批认真负责的工作人员,还有不限额度的邮费?
Answer:any former Speaker of the House of Representatives.
答案是:只要是御任的众议院议长都可以。
riffraff
无赖,下层阶级
Indeed, it seems part of the American Dream to become rich enough to wrap oneself in so much tanklike armor that one barely feels the bump of the riffraff undertire.
确实,美国梦似乎包括这一条:要赚够多的钱,把自己包裹在坦克车似的装甲中,在车辆碾过一些无赖时连一点震动都感觉不到。
At a recent speech, he read from [some hate mail]:"You are the lowest scum on earth " signed by "an American Patriot." 

最近在一场演讲中他念出[一份攻击信]:“你是地球上最低级的废物。”署名“美国爱国者”。
sanguine
乐观自信的
Hight taxes, unemployment over 10% and an influx of immigrants have finally driven the normally sanguine Italians into a rage.
高税率、10%以上的失业率以及移民潮涌入,终于使通常乐观自信的意大利人勃然大怒。
He was, as all who knew him agreed, a paragon of the phlegmatic temperament:
认识他的人都说他是沉稳个性的典范:
a walking mirror whose reflections could not be argued with.
好象一面活镜子,里面映出来的影像是没得商量的。
Then he scares you witless. Here come a nosy tyannosaur and a fanfaced, bilious dilophosaur.
来了一只爱管闲事的霸王龙,还有一只扇子脸、脾气暴躁的dilophosaur龙。
terra incognita
未知领域
International TV progamming is the great terra incognita for American viewers.
国际电视节目对美国观众而言是全然陌生的领域。
In Berlin, East Germans huddle over subway maps as they head into Western terra incognita,
在柏林,东德人进入陌生的西德领域时,挤在地铁车站地图前面端详,
a place most of them know only from television; at other checkpoints their cars pile up for miles on end.
他们大部分人对西德的了解限于电视报道。在别的检查站,东德来的车辆大排长龙。
watershed
分水岭
In the vast arean of international commerce, the action will seem piddling,
在国际贸易的大竞技场上这件举动似乎是小事一桩,
perhaps involving no more than $25 million in trade.
大概只牵涉到2500万美元之内的贸易额,
But environmentalists will see it as a watershed event in the history of conservation.
但环保人士会把它视为环保史上的分水岭。
whipping boy
代罪羔羊
Just as some American politicians blame Japan for the ecession, the U.S. is a popular whipping boy in Europe.
正如有些美国政客喜欢把经济萧条怪在日本的头上,美国本身在欧洲也是普遍被当作经济萧条的代罪羔羊。
As Los Angeles' neighbors sink under smog, congestion, crime and uncurbed development,
they have made the city a whipping boy for all their woes.
white elephant
白象,大而无当之物
SeaQuest DSV, NBC's new futuristic undersea adventure, has a big - name backer (Steven Spielberg) and a big commitment from the network (which ordered 22  sight unseen).
美国国家广播公司新的未来式海底冒险剧集《征服海洋DSV》背后有大牌靠山(斯皮尔伯格),公司也以大手笔表示承诺(没有看到作品就订购了22集)。
But once critics got a look at its dreary pilot, most pegged the show as a seagoing white elephant.
可是评论家看到了乏味的剧情之后,大多把这部剧集称为一只下海的白象。
So why are aerospace engineers around the world crambling to build the next generation of this billion-dollar white elephant?
那么全世界的航空工程师为什么还争先恐后要制造下一代的这种花费数十亿美元的白象?
whiz
奇才
Only last April, there were similar shots of tennis whiz Monica Seles,
只不过在去年4月间就有网坛奇才塞莱丝遇袭的类似镜头。
who was stabbed in the back in the midst of a match by a virulent fan of her vival, Steffi Graf.
她在比赛当中被对手格拉芙的一位恶意的球迷刺伤背部。
Defense Secretary-designate Les Aspin, 54, is a former whiz kid from Robert McNamara's Pentagon.
内定的国防部长接班人亚斯平,今年54岁,从前是在麦克纳马拉执掌五角大楼时代的青年才俊之一。
willy-nilly
不论愿不愿意,无从选择
Clinton was clearly aware last week that he will be pulled willy - nilly into foreign affairs.
克林顿上周很清楚,不论他愿不愿意,他会被拖入外交事务中。
[...] "Our Administration will be forced to spend a lot of time on foreign policy whether we want to or not."
“我们的政府会被迫花很多时间在外交政策上,不论我们愿不愿意。”
Clusters of high-rise apartment buildings-able to house 250,000 tourists in all-rose helter-skelter on virgin slopes.

 

一群群公寓大厦,总共能容纳25万名游客,在处女地的山坡上凌乱地建了起来。
THE WHIPPING BOY
Should anyone much care whether an American boy living overseas gets six vicious thwacks on his backside?
So much has been argued, rejoined and rehashed about the case of Michael Fay, an 18-year-old convicted of vandalism and sentenced to a caning in Singapore,
that an otherwise sorry little episode has shaded into a certified International Incident,
complete with intercessions by the U.S. head of state.
An affair that sometimes sounds-on editorial pages-equivalent to the abduction of Helen of Troy has outraged American libertarians
even as it has animated a general debate about morality East and West and the proper functioning of U.S.law and orde
The Trojan War this is not:the wooden horse is in America's citadel.
Which, to all appearances, is what Singapore wanted, The question of whether anyone should care about Michael Fay is idle:
though Singapore officials profess shock at the atention his case has drawn,
they know Americans care deeply about the many sides of this issue.
Does a teenager convicted of spraying cars with easily emovable paint deserve half a dozen powerful strokes on the butocks with a sopping wet bamboo staff?
At what point does swift, sure punishment become torture?
By what moral authority can America, with its high rates of lawlessness and license,
preach to a safe society about human rights?
Isn't the hipshape and affluent little city-state molded by Lee Kuan Yew a model of civic virtues?
Not quite the game of Twenty Questions, but close enough.
The caning sentence has fascinated many Americans who had never heard of Singapore and perhaps could not tell Southeast Asia from Sweden on a map.
It has concentrated minds wondrously on an aleady lively domestic debate over what constitutes a due balance between individual and majority rights.
Too bad Michael Fay has become a fulcrum for this discussion.
Not only does he seem destined to be pummeled and immobilized by an instrument of ordeal,
but the use of Singapore as a standard for judging any other society,
let alone the cacophonous U.S., is fairly worthless.
To begin with, Singapore is an offshore republic that tightly limits immigation.
Imagine crime-ridden Los Angeles, to which Singapore is sometimes contrasted,
with hardly any inflow of the hard-luck, often desperate fortune seekers who flock to big cities.
Imagine in the same way Jakarta or Shanghai.
Beyond that, Singapore began its life as a British colony designed to serve as a hipping,
administrative and financial center. Today it is a highly skilled society without the urban sprawl and rural poverty tha afflict larger nations.
An analogue might be Manhattan incorporated as a republic between the Battery and 96th Street,
with its own flag, armed forces and immigration controls.
Even without its government's disciplinary measures, Singapore more than plausibly would be much the same as it is now.
An academic commonplace today is that the major factor determining social peace and prosperity is culture - a sense of common identity, tradition and values.
The house that Lee built is 76% ethnic Chinese, a people with one of the most self-disciplined cultures in the world.
Prizing family, learning and hard work,
overseas Chinese have prospered wherever they have settled.
Heavily Chinese Hong Kong is, granted, a somewhat messier place than Singapore.
But without social engineering or the flogging of vandals,
Hong Kong is still very safe and quite rich. Its crime rate:
1,522, reported offenses for every 100,000 people in 1992. Singapore's was 1,507.
And America's? Don't ask. Unlike Singapore, though, the U.S. today is a nation in search of a common culture,


 

trying to be a universal society that assimilates the traditions of people from all over the world.
Efforts to safeguard minority as well as individual rights have produced,
as Lee charges, a gridlock in the justice system.
America is not the pandemonium portrayed in the shockaddicted mass media.
But its troubles stem more from the decay of family life than from any government failures.
Few societies can afford to look on complacently.
As travel eases and cultures intermix, the American experience is becoming the world's.
Singaporeans have every right to be proud of their achievements.
Does that justify Micheal Fay's sentence?
A letter writer to the New York Times advised that "six of the best,"
as he suffered at an English public (that is, private) school, might cure all that ails American youth.
Comparing Fay's sentence to a headmaster's paddling is fatuous-
but then,as John Updike once noted, old boys of Eton and Harrow can often "mistake a sports car for a woman or a birch rod for a mother's kiss."
The pain from flaying with wet rattan, as it is done in Singapore, can knock a prisoner out cold.
The circumstances of this affair-evidently no Singaporean has ever been punished under the Vandalism Act for defacing pivate property-
suggest that Singapore has used Fay as an unwilling point man in a growing quarrel between East and West about human right
Several large Asian countries, China among them, argue that the U.S. has no business criticizing their own, equally legitimate values.

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