Lesson Nine The Trouble with Television

　　電視的毛病

　　The Trouble with Television

　　要擺脫電視的影響是困難的。

　　It is difficult to escape the influence of television.

　　假如統(tǒng)計(jì)的平均數(shù)字適用于你的話，那么你到20歲的時(shí)候就至少看過2萬個(gè)小時(shí)的電視了，從那以后每生活10年就會(huì)增加1萬小時(shí)。

　　If you fit the statistical averages， by the age of 20 you will have been exposed to at least 20，000 hours of television. You can add 10，000 hours for each decade you have lived after the age of 20.

　　筆起看電視，美國人只有在工作和睡眠上花時(shí)間更多。

　　The only things Americans do more than watch television are work and sleep.

　　稍微計(jì)算一下，使用這些時(shí)間的一部分能夠做些什么。

　　Calculate for a moment what could be done with even a part of those hours.

　　聽說一個(gè)大學(xué)生僅用5000小時(shí)就可以獲得學(xué)士學(xué)位。

　　Five thousand hours， I am told， are what a typical college undergraduate spends working on a bachelor's degree.

　　在1萬個(gè)小時(shí)內(nèi)你能學(xué)成一個(gè)天文學(xué)家或工程師，流利掌握幾門外語。

　　In 10，000 hours you could have learned enough to become an astronomer or engineer. You could have learned several languages fluently.

　　如果你感興趣的話，你可能讀希臘原文的荷馬史詩或俄文版的陀思妥耶夫斯基的作品；如果對(duì)此不感興趣，那你可以徒步周游世界，撰寫一本游記。

　　If it appealed to you， you could be reading Homer in the original Greek or Dostoyevsky in Russian. If it didn't， you could have walked around the world and written a book about it.

　　電視的毛病在于它分散了人們的注意力。

　　The trouble with television is that it discourages concentration.

　　生活中幾乎一切有趣的、能給人以滿足的事都需要一定的建設(shè)性的、持之以恒的努力。

　　Almost anything interesting and rewarding in life requires some constructive， consistently applied effort.

　　即使是我們中間那些最遲鈍、最沒有天才的人也能做出一些事來，而這些事使那些從來不在任何事情上專心致志的人感到像是奇跡一般。

　　The dullest， the least gifted of us can achieve things that seem miraculous to those who never concentrate on anything.

　　但電視鼓勵(lì)我們不做出任何努力，它向我們兜售即時(shí)的滿足，它給我們提供娛樂，使我們只想娛樂，讓時(shí)間在毫無痛苦中消磨掉。

　　But Television encourages us to apply no effort. It sel