剑桥雅思15阅读Test3Passage3原文翻译

第一段讲述了不同文化中的人们如何相互讲述童话故事，以及同一个故事在不同地区通常采用不同的形式。第二段探讨了童话故事的普遍吸引力，包括对警示信息的讨论。第三段介绍了一种比较相关童话故事版本的方法，以发现它们是如何演变和存留时间最长的。第四段详细描述了作者对《小红帽》及其相关版本进行的分析和研究。第五至第八段讨论了故事中不同元素的演变和重要性。第九段对于童话故事中女性作为受害者的主题进行了讨论。第十段探讨了恐怖故事对于我们的作用，以及它们如何帮助我们建立对负面情绪的抵抗力。

第1段

People of every culture tell each other fairy tales but the same story often takes a variety of forms in different parts of the world. In the story of Little Red Riding Hood that European children are familiar with, a young girl on the way to see her grandmother meets a wolf and tells him where she is going. The wolf runs on ahead and disposes of the grandmother, then gets into bed dressed in the grandmother’s clothes to wait for Little Red Riding Hood. You may think you know the story – but which version? In some versions, the wolf swallows up the grandmother, while in others it locks her in a cupboard. In some stories Red Riding Hood gets the better of the wolf on her own, while in others a hunter or a woodcutter hears her cries and comes to her rescue.

各种文化中的人们互相讲述童话故事，但同一个故事在世界各地常常有不同的形式。在欧洲孩子们熟悉的《小红帽故事中，一个年轻的女孩在去看奶奶的路上遇到了狼，并告诉了他她要去的地方。狼跑在前面处理掉了奶奶，然后穿上奶奶的衣服躺在床上等小红帽。你可能认为你知道这个故事 – 但是哪个版本呢？在一些版本中，狼吞下了奶奶，而在其他版本中，他将奶奶锁在橱柜里。在一些故事中，小红帽独自战胜了狼，而在其他故事中，猎人或樵夫听到她的哭声并来救她。

第2段

The universal appeal of these tales is frequently attributed to the idea that they contain cautionary messages: in the case of Little Red Riding Hood, to listen to your mother, and avoid talking to strangers. ‘It might be what we find interesting about this story is that it’s got this survival relevant information in it,’ says anthropologist Jamie Tehrani at Durham University in the UK. But his research suggests otherwise. ‘We have this huge gap in our knowledge about the history and prehistory of storytelling, despite the fact that we know this genre is an incredibly ancient one,’ he says. That hasn’t stopped anthropologists, folklorists and other academics devising theories to explain the importance of fairy tales in human society. Now Tehrani has found a way to test these ideas, borrowing a technique from evolutionary biologists.

这些故事的普遍吸引力经常被认为是因为它们包含了警示性的信息：在《小红帽》这个故事中，要听妈妈的话，避免和陌生人说话。英国达勒姆大学的人类学家杰米·泰拉尼说：“我们对于讲故事的历史和史前历史了解甚少，尽管我们知道这个类型是非常古老的。”这并没有阻止人类学家、民俗学家和其他学者们制定理论来解释童话在人类社会中的重要性。现在泰拉尼找到了一种测试这些想法的方法，借用了进化生物学家的技术。

第3段

To work out the evolutionary history, development and relationships among groups of organisms, biologists compare the characteristics of living species in a process called ‘phylogenetic analysis’. Tehrani has used the same approach to compare related versions of fairy tales to discover how they have evolved and which elements have survived longest.

为了确定有机体群体的进化历史、发展和关系，生物学家通过比较现存物种的特征进行“系统发育分析”。泰拉尼使用了相同的方法来比较相关的童话故事的不同版本，以发现它们是如何演变的，以及哪些元素存留时间最长。

第4段

Tehrani’s analysis focused on Little Red Riding Hood in its many forms, which include another Western fairy tale known as The Wolf and the Kids. Checking for variants of these two tales and similar stories from Africa, East Asia and other regions, he ended up with 58 stories recorded from oral traditions. Once his phylogenetic analysis had established that they were indeed related, he used the same methods to explore how they have developed and altered over time.

泰拉尼的分析集中在《小红帽》及其多种形式上，其中包括另一则被称为《狼和小羊》的西方童话故事。他检查了这两个故事以及来自非洲、东亚和其他地区的类似故事的变体，最终收集到了58个口头传统中的故事版本。一旦他的系统发育分析确定它们确实相关，他就使用相同的方法来探索它们是如何发展和改变的。

第5段

First he tested some assumptions about which aspects of the story alter least as it evolves, indicating their importance. Folklorists believe that what happens in a story is more central to the story than the characters in it – that visiting a relative, only to be met by a scary animal in disguise, is more fundamental than whether the visitor is a little girl or three siblings, or the animal is a tiger instead of a wolf.

首先，他测试了一些假设，即故事中哪些方面在演变中改变最少，表明它们的重要性。民俗学家认为故事中发生的事情比故事中的角色更核心 – 比如被一个可怕的伪装动物接待的亲戚，比访客是一个小女孩还是三个兄弟，或者动物是老虎而不是狼更基本。

第6段

However, Tehrani found no significant difference in the rate of evolution of incidents compared with that of characters. ‘Certain episodes are very stable because they are crucial to the story, but there are lots of other details that can evolve quite freely, ‘ he says. Neither did his analysis support the theory that the central section of a story is the most conserved part. He found no significant difference in the flexibility of events there compared with the beginning or the end.

然而，泰拉尼发现，在事件的演变速度与角色的演变速度之间没有显著差异。他说：“某些情节非常稳定，因为它们对于故事来说至关重要，但还有很多其他细节可以自由演变。”他的分析也不支持故事的中间部分是最保守的部分的理论。他发现中间部分的事件的灵活性与开头或结尾没有显著差异。

第7段

But the really big surprise came when he looked at the cautionary elements of the story. ‘Studies on hunter-gatherer folk tales suggest that these narratives include really important information about the environment and the possible dangers that may be faced there – stuff that’s relevant to survival,’ he says. Yet in his analysis such elements were just as flexible as seemingly trivial details. What, then, is important enough to be reproduced from generation to generation?

但真正令人惊讶的是，当他研究故事中的警示元素时。他说：“对猎人采集民间故事的研究表明，这些叙述包含了关于环境和可能面临的危险的非常重要的信息 – 这些对生存来说是相关的。”然而，在他的分析中，这些元素和看似琐碎的细节一样灵活。那么，什么足够重要能够代代相传呢？

第8段

The answer, it would appear, is fear – blood-thirsty and gruesome aspects of the story, such as the eating of the grandmother by the wolf turned out to be the best preserved of all. Why are these details retained by generations of storytellers, when other features are not? Tehrani has an idea: ‘In an oral context, a story won’t survive because of one great teller. It also needs to be interesting when it’s told by someone who’s not necessarily a great storyteller.’ Maybe being swallowed whole by a wolf, then cut out of its stomach alive is so gripping that it helps the story remain popular, no matter how badly it’s told.

答案似乎是恐惧 – 狼吃掉奶奶这样血腥和恶心的细节被证明是最好保留的。为什么这些细节能够被故事讲述者代代相传，而其他特征则不能呢？泰拉尼有一个想法：“在口头传统中，一个故事并不仅仅因为一个出色的讲故事者而存活下来。即使它由一个不是出色的讲故事者讲述，它也需要在讲述时很有趣。”也许被狼整个吞下，然后活生生地从它的肚子里被切割出来的情节非常吸引人，这有助于故事保持流行，无论讲述得有多糟糕。

第9段

Jack Zipes at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, is unconvinced by Tehrani’s views on fairy tales. ‘Even if they’re gruesome, they won’t stick unless they matter,’ he says. He believes the perennial theme of women as victims in stories like Little Red Riding Hood explains why they continue to feel relevant. But Tehrani points out that although this is often the case in Western versions, it is not always true elsewhere. In Chinese and Japanese versions, often known as The Tiger Grandmother, the villain is a woman, and in both Iran and Nigeria, the victim is a boy.

明尼苏达大学明尼阿波利斯分校的杰克·齐普斯对泰拉尼关于童话故事的观点并不认同。他说：“即使它们很恶心，除非它们有意义，否则它们不会被记住。”他认为像《小红帽》这样的故事中妇女作为受害者的主题解释了为什么它们继续保持相关性。但泰拉尼指出，尽管在西方版本中通常是这样，但在中国和日本版本中，通常被称为《老虎奶奶》，恶人是一个女人，在伊朗和尼日利亚，受害者是一个男孩。

第10段

Mathias Clasen at Aarhus University in Denmark isn’t surprised by Tehrani’s findings. ‘Habits and morals change, but the things that scare us, and the fact that we seek out entertainment that’s designed to scare us – those are constant,’ he says. Clasen believes that scary stories teach us what it feels like to be afraid without having to experience real danger, and so build up resistance to negative emotions.

丹麦奥尔胡斯大学的马蒂亚斯·克拉森对泰拉尼的发现并不感到惊讶。他说：“习惯和道德观念会改变，但是恐吓我们的事物以及我们寻找旨在恐吓我们的娱乐的事实 – 这些是恒定的。”克拉森认为恐怖故事教会我们在不必经历真正危险的情况下，体验害怕的感觉，从而增强对负面情绪的抵抗力。