?自考英語二（下）課文翻譯之unit15

自考英語二（下）課文翻譯之unit15

Unit Fifteen

The Computer and The Poet

計算機與詩人

The essential problem of man in a computerized age remains the same as it has always been. That problem is not solely how to be more productive, more comfortable, more content, but how to be more sensitive, more sensible, more proportionate, more alive. The computer makes possible a marvelous leap in human proficiency; it pulls down the fences around the practicaland even the theoretical intelligence. But the question persists and indeed grows whether the computer will make it easier or

harder for human beings to know who they really are, to identity their real problems, to respond more fully to beauty, to place adequate value on life, and to make their world safer than it now is.

人類在計算機化時代所面臨的根本問題一如既往。這個問題不僅僅是要提高生產力，使人們更舒適、更滿足，而且是怎樣才能更有情感、更理智、更均衡、更有活力。計算機使人類進步發(fā)生飛躍的變化; 它在實際上乃至理論上掃除制約人類智能發(fā)展的障礙。 但是，涉及到人類對自身的認識， 對實際存在的問題的辨別，對美的更充分的理解， 對怎樣給生活更充分的價值， 怎樣使人類世界比現在更安全等方面， 計算機給人類帶來的究竟是更大的便利還是更多的困難，這個問題依然存在，而且變得日益嚴重。

Electronic brains can reduce the profusion of dead ends involved in vital research. But they can't eliminate the foolishness and decay that come from the unexamined life. Nor do they connect a man to the things he has to be connected to — the reality of pain in others; the possibilities of creative growth in himself; the memory of the race; and the rights of the next generation. The reason these matters are important in a computerized age is that there may he a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has always been a tendency to confuse logic with values, and intelligence with insight. Easy and convenient access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they would lead.

電腦能解開重要研究中的大量解決不了的問題，但不能清除來自未經研究審視的生活的愚蠢與腐朽。 電腦也不能把人和應該與人有關系的事情聯(lián)系起來，例如，別人的痛苦的現實、提高自身創(chuàng)造力的可能性、人類的記憶、以及下一代人的權利等等。在計算機化時代，上述這些問題之所以重要是因為人們可能傾向于把數據誤認為智慧，正如人們總是傾向于把邏輯與價值相混淆，把智能與洞察力混為一談一樣。方便快捷地獲得信息， 只有在人們有愿望和能力搞清這些信息意味著什么和會把人們引向何方時，才能夠給人帶來無限的好處。

Facts are terrible things if left spreading and unexamined.They are too easily regarded as evaluated certainties rather than as the rawest of raw materials crying to be processed into the texture of logic. It requires a very unusual mind, Whitehead said, to undertake the analysis of a fact. The computer can provide a correct number, but it may be an

irrelevant number until judgment is pronounced.

信息如果任其泛濫， 不加審核， 那是可怕的事情。 它們很容易被看作已有定論的可靠事實，而不是迫切需要處理使之具有邏輯條理的原始材料中最原始的材料。懷特黑德說過，對信息的分析需要非凡的頭腦。 計算機能夠提供正確的數據，但在未加判斷之前它可能只是一個無關的數據。

To the extent, then, that man fails to distinguish between the intermediate operations of electronic intelligence and the ultimate responsibilities of human decision, the computer could prove a digression. It could obscure man's awareness of the need to come to terms with himself. It may foster the illusion that he is asking fundamental questions when actually he is asking only functional ones. It may be regarded as a substitute for intelligence instead of an extension of it. It may promote undue confidence in concrete answers. "If we begin with certainties." Bacon said, "we shall end in doubts but if we begin with doubts, and we are patient with them, we shall end in certainties."

因此，在人們不能區(qū)別電子智能的這種中間運算與人們決策最終需負的責仟的情況下，計算機可能反而是一種節(jié)外生枝。 它可能使人們模糊了必須自知之明，滿足自身條件的這種意識。 當人們實際只提出功能性問題時， 計算機可能使人造成這樣的錯覺： 他們提出的是根本性的問題。 計算機能被看成是替代智能的工具而不是擴展智能的手段。 它可能促使人們對具體的答案過分相信。 培根說過，“起始于確信，結果于疑惑;起始于疑惑，繼之以不倦研究，則得可信之結果?！?

The computer knows how to conquer error, but before we lose ourselves in celebrating the victory, we might reflect on the great advances in the human situation that have come about because men were challenged by error and would not stop thinking and exploring until they found better approaches for dealing with it."Give me a good fruitful error, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections," Ferris Greenslet wrote, "You can keep your sterile truth for yourself."

計算機知道如何戰(zhàn)勝錯誤， 但是在我們沉醉于慶祝這一成就前， 我們也許應該深思，人類以往所取得的巨大進步都是因為人們受到錯誤挑戰(zhàn)并且不斷地思考與探索，直到找到對付錯誤的更好的辦法。費里斯·格林里特曾這樣寫道：“請給我優(yōu)良的富有成果的錯誤吧! 錯誤包含自我修正的種子。 把不能開花結果的真理留給你自己吧?！?

The biggest single need in computer technology is not for increased speed, or enlarged capacity, or prolonged memory, or reduced size, but for better questions and better

use of the answers. Without taking anything away from the technicians, we think it might be fruitful to effect some sort of junction betweenthe computer technologist and the poet. A genuine purpose may be served by turning loose the wonders of the creative imagination on the kinds of problems being put to electronic technology. The company of poets may enable the men who tend the machines to see a wider range of possibilities than technology alone may inspire.

我們對計算機技術惟一的最大的需要不是提高速度、增大容量、延長記憶或者減少體積， 而是更好地提出問題和利用其答案。 我們認為， 在不使技術人員喪失任何東西的情況下，計算機技術人員與詩人之間實現某種結合可能更富有成效。通過在由電了技術解決的問題上充分發(fā)揮創(chuàng)造性想像的神奇力量，計算機的真正目的可以實現。 詩人的參與能使計算機使用者看到比技術自身所能產生更寬廣的應用可能性。

A poet, said Aristotle, has the advantage of expressing the universal; the specialist expresses only the particular. The poet, moreover, can remind us that man's greatest energy comes not from his dynamos but from his dreams. But the quality of a man's dreams can only be a reflection of his subconscious. What he puts into his subconscious, therefore, is quite literally the most important nourishment in the world.

亞里士多德說過，詩人善于表達普遍性;而專家表達的只是特殊性。另外，詩人能提醒我們，人的最大能量不是來自于他充沛的精力而是來自于他的夢想。但是人的夢想的本質只是人的潛意識的反映。因此，詩人在其潛意識中傾注的確確實實是世界上最重要的營養(yǎng)。

Nothing really happens to a man except as it is registered in the subconscious. This is where event and feeling become memory and where the proof of life is stored. The poet — and we use the term to include all those who have respect for and speak to the human spirit — can help to supply the subconscious with material to enhance its sensitivity, thus safeguarding it. The poet, too, can help to keep man from making himself

over in the image of his electronic wonders. For the danger is not so much that man will be controlled by the computer as that he may imitate it.

人除了留存在其潛意識里的東西外， 其實再也沒有什么東西了。 在人的潛意識里，事件與情感變成記憶， 生活的證據也儲存在那里。 詩人——我們使用詩人這個詞概括一切表現了尊重人類精神并且與人類精神溝通的那些人——能給潛意識以內容， 以增強人類精神的敏感性， 從而維護人類的精神詩人還可以使人類不致于按照電子奇跡的形象改造自己。因為人類被計算機控制的危險固然存在，但人類若模仿計算機改造人類自身，則更可怕。

The poet reminds men of their uniqueness. It is not necessary to possess the ultimate definition of this uniqueness. Even to speculate on it is a gain.

詩人提醒人們注意自身的獨特性。 這種獨特性最終如何定義無關緊要， 但即使思考一下這個問題也會是得益非淺的。

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