【英译汉】
In his classic novel, “The Pioneers”, James Fenimore Cooper has his hero, a land developer, take his cousin on a tour of the city he is building. He describes the broad streets, rows of houses, a teeming metropolis. But his cousin looks around bewildered. All she sees is a forest, “Where are the beauties and improvements which you were to show me?” she asks. He’s astonished she can’t see them. “Where! Why everywhere,” he replies. For though they are not yet built on earth, he has built them in his mind, and they are as concrete to him as if they were already constructed and finished.
Cooper was illustrating a distinctly American trait, future-mindedness: the ability to see the present from the vantage point of the future; the freedom to feel unencumbered by the past and more emotionally attached to things to come. As Albert Einstein once said, “Life for the American is always becoming, never being.”
【参考译文】
詹姆斯库伯在他的经典小说《拓荒者》中，塑造了一个主人公，一个土地开发商。他带着他的表妹去参观自己正在规划中的城镇，他津津乐道地描述着宽敞的街道、林立的高楼，俨然一个熙来攘往的大都市。但表妹环顾四周，一脸迷茫。她看到就只是一片森林。“你要给我看得美景和被你改造了的地方在哪里啊?”开发商大惊：“在哪儿?这部到处都是么?”尽管一切还没动工破土，但在他的心里早就已经建好了，而且真切的就如同早已竣工一样。
库伯在这里揭示了美国人的一种特有品性——前瞻性，站在未来的高度来看待现在的一切，不受过去的束缚而放眼未来。正如艾尔伯特所说：美国人永远生活在未来而不是现在。
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