我而言是很重要的，我不敢冒险让她来学校为我说情，因为我知道心胸狭隘、不讲情面的教员会同样地使她难堪，那意味着我们俩都会不愉快、会有失颜面。千万不要啊，如果她告诉我父亲的话，他将会立即为我大动干戈。
Then one day our family won a newspaper competition for a free photographic portrait sitting. I was beside myself with excitement: my imagination fuelled by glamorous shots of the popular Hollywood temptresses. I couldn't wait to tell my friends the thrilling news.
8.后来有一天，我们家赢得了一个报刊比赛，可以免费照相。当我想到著名好莱坞影星华丽的照片时，我非常兴奋。我迫不及待地想要把这个令人激动的消息告诉我朋友。
That was, until Mam told me that I would have to wear my best, lace trimmed bright green dress to school that day, as the portrait sitting was straight after classes. She had no hint of torment I faced.
9.直到那天，妈妈说我必须穿我最好的浅绿色的镶有蕾丝花边的裙子去学校时，我知道我的想法破灭了，因为拍照正好在课后，而她却没察觉到我所面临的困窘。
There was none of my usual pleasure in putting on the cherished dress that day. Heavy-hearted, I dragged myself to school, an emerald green target in a sea of blue. At assembly I didn't bother to wait for the command but trudged up to the stage of my own accord to endure the sniggers of the other girls and the beady eyes of the deputy head.
10.到了这一天，我漫不经心地穿上了那条珍爱的裙子，心情沉重地拖着脚步去了学校。在校会上，没等到罚站的命令，我就径直地走上了站台，再一次忍受着同辈的嘲笑和副校长的冷眼。
Tears of frustration threatened to break free as I wondered for the umpteenth time why the callous teacher couldn't look past my clothes for once and see the obedient and eager-to-participate young girl beneath.
11.当我无数次地想到那个冷酷无情的老师对我的衣服连看都不看一眼，并对坐在下面乖巧且渴望加入年轻女孩队伍的我视而不见时，委屈的泪水忍不住的想流下来。
After assembly our first class was English Literature, my favourite lesson with my favourite teacher. I consoled myself that I could at least lose myself in Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities for a while at the back of the class to recuperate and regain my composure. Imagine my dismay when, immediately the class began, Miss McVee ordered me to come and sit in the front row, directly before her. I slowly rose and, blinking back tears, headed to the front of the class. Surely Miss McVee hadn't crossed into the enemy camp, too?
12.校会结束以后，第一节课是英国文学，这是我最喜欢的一门课，上课的老师是我最喜欢的老师。为了能使我的内心平静下来，我安慰自己至少我还能在教室的后面享受品读查尔斯·狄更斯的《双城记》。当我还在假想的时候，却突然上课了，迈克·维让我做到教室的前面，难道迈克·维已经加入了敌方阵营？
With downcast eyes and bowed head, tears once again threatened to betray my dejection, even though I had always tried my hardest not to show how miserable I was at being singled out time after time.
13.尽管在我一次又一次被挑出去站着的时候，我都尽力掩饰我有多么痛苦，但我低垂的眼，低下的头和流出的泪又一次泄露了我的沮丧。
As I took my seat at the front, Miss McVee cocked her head to one side and looked me up and down carefully. And then she came out with the most welcome sentence I had ever heard at that mean-spirited place.
14.由于我坐在前排，迈克·维小姐抬起头从上到下仔细打量了我一番，之后她说出了在这个
心胸狭窄的地方我听到过的最动听的一句话。
\orry that I shall have the pleasure of looking at you for just one lesson and not the entire day.\亲爱的，我觉得你就是这个沉闷的学校里最亮丽的最可爱的一道风景线，看到你是一件让人觉得愉悦的事情，而我们只有一节课的见面时间，不是一整天。
The block of ice that was my young heart thawed instantly and my shoulders rose back to their full height. I'm sure the smile I gave that woman must have been the widest she'd ever seen. I floated through the rest of the day buoyed by the warmth generated by her thoughtfully chosen words. 16.我冰封的心瞬间就融化了，我开始变得很自信。我相信我给她的那个微笑是她见过的最灿烂的笑容。在剩余的时间里我都因她的那些话所带来的暖意而飘飘然了。
Although English Literature was her forte, that day Miss McVee taught me, and perhaps the whole class, a lesson in compassion that I have never forgotten. She taught me that one kind word in a time of need can last a lifetime. Indeed, her thoughtful words strengthened a part of my soul that has never been weakened by anyone or anything since. 17.虽然她擅长的是英国文学，但那天迈克·维老师给我，甚至整个班级，上了一堂让我至今难忘的教会人同情的一课。她教会我:在逆境中一句善意的话可以帮助人的一生。事实上，她意味深长的话，让我内心深处的某一部分的灵魂更加坚强，再也不会被任何人，任何事打败。
Unit 3 Bards of the Internet
One of the unintended side effects of the invention of the telephone was that writing went out of style. Oh, sure, there were still full-time scribblers -- journalists, academics, professional wordsmiths. And the great centers of commerce still found it useful to keep on hand people who could draft a memo, a brief, a press release or a contract. But given a choice between picking up a pen or a phone, most folks took the easy route and gave their fingers -- and sometimes their mind -- a rest. 1.电话发明的一个意想不到的副作用就是使写作脱离原有的格式。确实，现在仍有一些全职的三流作家，比如记者，学者，作家。在商业的中心，当人们需要草拟一份备忘录，简介，新闻稿或是合同时，手写仍然有用。但就拿笔或打电话而言，大多数人希望采取简便的方式并让自己的手指放松，有时他们确实这样想。
Which makes what's happening on the computer networks all the more startling. Every night, when they should be watching television, millions of computer users sit down at their keyboards; dial into CompuServe, Prodigy, America Online or the Internet; and start typing -- E-mail, bulletin-board postings, chat messages, rants, diatribes, even short stories and poems. Just when the media of McLuhan were supposed to render obsolete the medium of Shakespeare, the online world is experiencing the greatest boom in letter writing since the 18th century.
2.是什么发生在电脑网络中，让其如此令人吃惊。每个夜晚，当人们在看电视时，数以百万计的电脑用户在他们的键盘前，拨号给CompuServe，Prodigy，美国在线或是互联网，并开始打字，发邮件，发布电子公告，聊天，咆哮，谩骂，甚至写个短故事和诗歌。当麦克卢汉的媒介被认为提出了废弃莎士比亚的媒介时，网上世界却在经历着自18世纪以来在书写格式上最大的剧变。
\ion about the flexibility and utility of prose,\
Francisco Chronicle. Patrick Nielsen Hayden, an editor at Tor Books, compares electronic bulletin boards with the \
s passed letters from hand to hand, adding a little more at each turn. David Sewell, an associate editor at the University of Arizona, likens netwriting to the literary scene Mark Twain discovered in San Francisco in the 1860s, \le folk tradition.\n to the Elizabethan era, when, thanks to Gutenberg, a generation of English writers became intoxicated with language.
3.《旧金山记事报》的专栏作家，乔恩·卡罗尔说，我坚持认为电子邮件和电脑会议技术在散文的适用和实用上影响了整整一代人。由托尔出版公司的编辑，帕特里克·尼尔森海登认为，与18世纪末，19世纪初的―作家小彩盒‖，每个成员通过手与手之间传递信件，电子公告栏，在每个回合增加了一点。，亚利桑那大学的副主编，大卫·休厄尔，把网络作品比作马克·吐温在18世纪60年代发现的文学场景，人们正在通过在充满是非的人为传统中移植网络作品，从而重新定义新闻业。回望托马斯·潘恩和独立战争的小册子作家们，亦或是伊丽莎白时代，由于古登堡的出现，那个年代的英国作家们开始沉浸于语言的创作中。 But such comparisons invite a question: If online writing today represents some sort of renaissance, why is so much of it so awful? For it can be very bad indeed: sloppy, meandering, puerile, ungrammatical, poorly spelled, badly structured and at times virtually content free. \ads an all too typical message on the Internet, \1!!!\
4.但是这种比较产生了一个问题。如果网上创作表现出了文艺复兴年代的一些风格，为什么其中的一些会如此糟糕？一些确实很糟：随意，海阔天空，没有语法，错误拼写，结构混乱，有的甚至内容空虚，没有涵义。在网上看到个如此特殊的信息，―HEY!!!1‖,―I THINK METALLICA IZ REEL KOOL DOOD! 1 !!!‖
One reason, of course, is that E-mail is not like ordinary writing. \ten speech,' \emerged as one of the pre-eminent stylists on the Net.‖These things are little more considered than coffeehouse talk and a lot less considered than a letter. They're not to have and hold; they're to fire and forget.\y word processors on computer systems that charge by the minute and in some cases will shut down without warning when an hour runs out.
5.当然要提的一个原因是电子邮件不像普通的写作。在康涅狄格州，韦斯特波特工作的文学经纪人，在互联网涌现的著名的文体学家之一的Gerard Van der leua说，你必须把电子邮件当做是一份书面发言，比咖啡馆谈论多点严肃性，比正式写作少点客套。它们不必是内容丰富，观点充足，应当是值得探讨抨击。一些网上记录用钟表滴答的韵律使其具有灵性，用电脑上基本的词汇处理程序在几分钟内进行加工，当一小时过去，大多数情况下，程序会在没有警告的前提下自动关闭。
That is not to say that with more time every writer on the Internet would produce sparkling copy. Much of the fiction and poetry is second-rate or worse, which is not surprising given that the barriers to entry are so low. \kes a hell of a lot of work to get published, which naturally weeds out a lot of the garbage. On the Net, just a few keystrokes sends your writing out to thousands of readers.\6.这不是说每一个在网上花费大量时间的作家都能写出具有火花的作品。大多数的小说和诗歌是一般的甚至更糟，不必惊奇如此，因为网络进入的门槛很低。Mary Anne Mohanraj，一
位土生的芝加哥诗人说，在真实的世界里，一部作品往往花费大量的时间去发布，这自然会淘汰大量的垃圾作品。而在网上，只需点击几个键便可将作品呈现在成千上万的读者面前。 But even among the reams of bad poetry, gems are to be found. Mike Godwin, a Washington-based lawyer who posts under the pen name \ writer at Cray Research who turned a moribund discussion group called rec. arts. poems into a real poetry workshop by mercilessly critiquing the pieces he found there. \d said if he was such a god of poetry, why didn't he publish his poems to the group?\in. \ce-to-face meeting with a fellow network scribbler, is now revered on the Internet as a classic. It begins, \ do as you might suspect, but I wanted to make a certain impression.\
7.但在这些大量的糟粕中还有有些精华坐在。Mike Godwin，一位华盛顿土生的律师，用笔名―记忆‖写作，讲述了关于Joe Green的故事，一位在Gray研究所的科技作家，通过无情批评团体中的缺点进而将一个名为rec。arts。poems接近破散的讨论团体转变为一个真实的诗歌创作间。godwin回忆说，一些人很愤怒地说如果joe是一名诗歌天才，为什么他不发表自己的作品呢。事实上，他做到了，并全部公布了。Green的Well Met in Minnesota，一首记录着与网络二流作家面谈的伪英雄体诗，已经在网络奉为经典。开头是，真实情况是我装扮成坎特布雷传说中的人为去见迈克。正如你说质疑的，这是如此困难，但我仍想留下点念想。 The more prosaic technical and political discussion groups, meanwhile, have become so crowded with writers crying for attention that a Darwinian survival principle has started to prevail. \ompetitive that you have to work on your style if you want to make any impact,\ a software designer in Chicago. Good writing on the Net tends to be clear, vigorous, witty and above all brief. \College in Vancouver, British Columbia. \its of thought here.\
8.越来越多的一般科技政治讨论团体正逐渐被一群渴望得到关注的人充斥着，他们希望人们知道达尔文的生存法则开始盛行。Jorn Barger，一名芝加哥软件开发者说，如果希望得到关注，你不得不形成自己的风格。网络上好的作品应是清晰，有力，诙谐并具有思想。位于英属哥伦比亚，温哥华的卡布兰诺学院的一名写作老师Crawford Kilian说，媒体拥护这种简练，小段落，列表，一句话往往能含概思想。
Some of the most successful netwriting is produced in computer conferences, where writers compose in a kind of collaborative heat, knocking ideas against one another until they spark. Perhaps the best examples of this are found on the WELL, a Sausalito, California, bulletin board favored by journalists. The caliber of discussion is often so high that several publications -- including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal -- have printed excerpts from the WELL.
9.一些成功的网络作品在电脑会议中产生，作者们在会议中以合作基调讨论着，直到碰撞出思想的火花。最好的例子可以在记者们喜欢的WELL,a Sausalito,加利福尼亚，电子公告栏上发现。这种讨论的水准之高，使得一些包括纽约时报，华尔街日报在内出版物有时从WELL引用文章发表。
Curiously, what works on the computer networks isn't necessarily what works on paper. Netwriters
