句型三. ----- , ----- , ----- .

 
–The dung-beetle patiently rolled its small ball of elephant dung over the eternal spaces of its small corner of the Serengetti Plain, almost as if it were rolling the universe around itself, until it reached its destination. 
塞伦盖提大草原一个小角落的永恒空间中，屎壳郎在耐心地卷着大象的粪便球，仿佛卷着整个宇宙，直到到达它的目的地。
–I like to have curtains on my windows, as I need darkness to sleep in, and because I do not like other people to look in on what I am doing. 
我喜欢在窗户上挂上窗帘，因为我需要在黑暗中睡觉，同时我也不喜欢别人通过窗户窥视我在做什么。
–The wild geese flew low over the winter marshes a few minutes before the last clear light disappeared from the sky, as they knew the determined goose hunters were waiting for them, and they wanted to remain as difficult to see as possible.
在天空最后一丝亮光消失前的几分钟，野天鹅低低地飞过冬天的沼泽地，因为它们知道那些意志坚决的猎天鹅者在等它们，它们想使这些猎人尽量看不见它们。
 –I like to wander aimlessly through the night market alone, watching the thousand-and-one minute details of life that are played out in front of me, and letting my imagination turn a mere second’s observation into an evening of imagination for the next short story. 
我喜欢漫无目的地在夜市上独自漫步，看着展现在我面前的生活所带来的诸多细节，让我的想象将这些观察转化成我下一个短篇故事的内容。
–There was one boy on the street who sold candied haws on a stick, who would pipe out his wares in the manner of a consumptive choirboy, pleading with the faceless passers-by with both his faltering voice and his desperate eyes.
 街上有个卖糖葫芦的男孩，他好像一个合唱队的少年那样摆开自己的糖葫芦架子，用颤动的声音和绝望的眼神向路人乞求。
–Above the street’s long market place, with its almost cocoon-like web of dangling electric lights and shouting vendors, the unfathomable depths of dark night sky seemed almost to shut off the city from the rest of the imagined universe. 
市场里灯火缭乱，好像蚕茧织的网，到处是叫嚷的小商贩，而在它的上空，那深不可测的暗夜似乎要将这个城市与想象中的宇宙隔绝开来。
–I payed no attention to the immense and incomprehensible things above and beyond the lights, but walked slowly among the aimlessly milling people, observing them closely for just one element of their mundane life to expand upon in the next story. 
我丝毫没注意灯光之外的广阔而不可理解的事物，只是缓慢而无目的地走在磨房厂工人之间，仔细观察他们平凡的生活，为我下一个故事汲取素材。
–A few people were gathered around a woman selling “chou dou fu” from Hunan, drawn together in part by the woman’s imaginative salesmanship, as well as the pungent and fiercely evocative scent of the deep-fried tofu. 
一些人受到那个湖南卖“臭豆腐”的女人有想象力的销售技巧和那辛辣的刺鼻的煎得很老的臭豆腐味道的吸引，三三两两聚集到她的身旁。
–I ate three skewers 肉叉of the tofu in silence, allowing my mind to be thrown back to another old tofu-selling woman in Changsha, whose home-made tofu became the standard for every other skewer of tofu I ever ate. 
我安静地吃完三窜豆腐，脑海里回想着长沙一个买豆腐的妇人，她做的家常豆腐成为我今后品尝任何豆腐的标准。
–The people in the night market slowly lost their sense of individuality and appearance of purpose, but imperceptibly blended themselves into something almost inanimate and floating, making me forget why I had come to this place. 
夜市里的人们逐渐失去了他们的个性和出现的目的，但是不知不觉地和某种东西混在一起以至毫无生气而飘浮不定，也使我忘记我为什么来到这个地方。
–After wandering around the night market for an hour or two and doing nothing, I took a slow bus home to my curtained-off apartment, and began the dreamlike process of turning a myriad of unrelated snapshots of life into a skein of writing. 
在夜市无所事事地逛了大概一个或者两个小时后，我搭上慢车回到用窗帘隔开的住所，然后开始幻想将生活中毫无联系的大量瞬间揉进写作中。
–For three days now, the landscape has been entombed in a thick sheet of ice from the ice-storm, a slippery skin of white glass that is impossible to break through.  
三天以来，由于冰暴，这块土地覆盖着一层厚厚的冰，好像一层无法突破的光滑的白色的玻璃。
–I try to keep my mind sane and content by learning new things, in the hope they will be useful in the next chapter of life, when I can move from this place to the next. 
我努力通过学习新事物使自己保持清醒和满足，希望这些知识今后的生活中能有用，当我从一个地方移到另一个地方的时候。
–It must be wonderful to wander in a balloon through the clouds of a moonlit winter sky, where everything is at the same time indistinct and ghostly grey, and both the earth below and the infinite skies above are unseen and left to the imagination. 
在一个清月朗朗的冬日，坐在气球中漫游穿越云层，一定非常美妙，这时所有的景物都变得朦朦胧胧，带着神灵般的灰色，而眼下的地球和头顶无垠的天空也都无法看见，尽由想象。
–I do not know why people like to live in luxury, or why they seem to believe that “living the good life” is some sort of duty, since there are so many other interesting things to be done in life.
我不明白为什么人们喜欢生活奢侈，或者为什么他们看上去认为“做优越的生活”是某种责任，因为生活中还有除此之外的那么多有趣的事情。
–I went home after dinner in the local restaurant, read for an hour, and then went to bed. 
在当地一家餐馆吃完晚饭，我就回家了，读了一小时书，然后就睡觉了。
–There is a beach about five or six miles from here, and throughout my life it has been a sort of iconic “touchstone” of the soul, a place to re-connect with between the many wandering chapters of my life. 
离这里大概5到6英里有个沙滩，在我的生命中，它一直是某种灵魂的“试金石”，一个将我生命中许多漂泊的篇章连接的地方。
–It is strange that the sound of another airplane passing overhead can bring my mind back home from the place of dreams, back into the world of reality and the patient computer before me, and that this “translation” of my imaginative mind is also a comfortable thing. 
令人奇怪的是飞过头顶的飞机的声音能将我的思想从梦想之地带回家，带回现实，带回眼前这台耐心的电脑，这样一种有想象能力的思想的“翻译”也是一家令人愉快的事情。
–Writing this book on “sentences and paragraphs” calms my nervous feelings, especially after a day doing mundane but necessary things, but sometimes I worry about the long road ahead of me to the end of the book. 
写“句子和段落”这本书，让我紧张的心绪得以平静，尤其是在做了一天世俗但是必须的事情之后，但是有时面对要写完这本书，还有如此长的路要走，开始有些担心。
–It is difficult to visit my woodland property frequently, but in my imagination and letters to the builders, I am arranging all kinds of details there every day. 
要经常看望我森林区的财产有些困难，但是在我的想象以及给盖房子工人的信中，我安排着每天所有的各种细节。
–There are many “layers” of life in the sea, and the deeper we go, the less we know about what really goes on there. 
海洋的生命有很多“层”，我们走的越深，我们对到达的地方就知道得越少。
–I went to the “abandoned property” section of the town dump a few days ago, and was surprised to find a very large suitcase, which was in almost perfect condition. 
几天前我去市里一个“废弃财产”区，惊讶地发现一个几乎完好的很大的手提箱。
–I could not understand why someone would throw away such a good suitcase, but I was grateful for the opportunity to take it home, and I quickly put it into the back of the car. 
我无法理解为什么有人会扔掉那么好的一个箱子，但是又十分感激能将它拾回家，飞快地将它放在汽车的后座上。
–After the dinner-party guests have left, the house loses its former energy and sense of urgency, and an exhausted torpor settles over everyone left behind. 
晚宴后，客人纷纷离开，顿时屋子里先前的活力和紧迫感消失无影，剩下的所有人都显得疲惫无力。
–Photographs of friends are both good and bad, for they show you how attractive the friends are, but they also trigger memories of the occasional quarrels you had. 
朋友的照片既好也不好，因为它们让你想起这些朋友多么有吸引力，但是也能触动那些记忆，关于你们之间曾经的争吵。
–There were many people that I did not speak to just before I left the city, as I was too tired to do anything, and my grief at departing made me want to just pack up and run away. 
离开城市之前还有好多人我连话也没来得及说，一方面我太累了，但是另一方面离别的愁绪也让我只想就此打包赶紧逃离。
–Writing is like a mistress with changing emotions, in that it demands you to sacrifice your energy to the cause of “painting” imagination, but it also yields amazing ideas without charge. 
写作就好像一个情绪多变的情妇，它让你为了“画出”想象事物而耗费精力，但是同时也能让你产生不可思议的想法。
–This past hour of writing has been very fruitful, but the beautiful forest outside faded and vanished into the darkness of another winter night, without my even being aware of it. 
过去的一个小时写作富有成果，但是一不留神，外面美丽的森林正慢慢消逝在冬日的夜色中。
–Due to the day-time melting and the night-time freezing, the ice on the pond has become much smoother and flatter, making it possible for the local children to go skating. 
经过白天的融化和夜晚的凝结，池塘的冰已经变得更平滑，使孩子们可以在上面滑了。
–When one of my friends went home for the annual family holiday, she was criticized by her family for not having a boyfriend, and this made her feel sad throughout the whole holiday. 
当我的一个朋友因为每年一度的家庭假日回家，家人指责她还没有男朋友，这使她整个假日都闷闷不乐。
–Once every day, I take my friend to the local market to buy groceries, and this makes his life more convenient. 
曾经每天我带着朋友去当地市场买杂货，这使他的生活更加方便了。
–The sky is very blue at this time of the year, especially in the days after a major snowstorm, and this lifts everyone’s spirits higher. 
一年这个时候的天空很蓝，尤其是大的暴风雪之后，这使每个人的情绪都更加高涨。
–Mary likes to add Indian curry to her sauces, as this makes her food taste more interesting, and it always provides a topic of conversation during Sunday dinner parties. 
玛丽喜欢在调味汁中加入印度咖喱，因为这使她的食物尝起来更有意思，而且这也总是星期天晚饭派对上的一个话题。
–Ten people came to the dinner party yesterday, and most of them brought something for the appetizer or dessert, so there was too much food on the table that day. 
昨天的晚饭派对来了十个人，大多数的人都带来了开胃菜或者是甜点，因为桌上吃的太多了。
–The teacher stayed in his office correcting homework for many hours after the last class, while all the other teachers went out to a huge party at the local restaurant, as he wanted to finish his week’s work on time. 
当所有其他老师去当地餐厅参加一个盛大的派对时，这名老师在最后一节课后留在办公室批改学生的作业，批改了好几个小时，因为他想准时结束这个星期以来的工作。
–Libraries are the most important public service to keep in operation during extended economic recessions, as they provide a quiet place for jobless people to study and research in, away from the harassed tedium of the outside world. 
图书馆是经济萧条期间保持开放的最重要的公共服务场所，因为它们为那些失业者提供了安静的场地进行学习和研究，远离那令人担忧，沉闷的外界世界。
–There is often nobody to call and chat with when you are lonely and have nothing to do, but when you are tired and want o have a nap in the afternoon, everyone wants to call about something.
常常在你孤独和无所事事的时候，没有人给你电话，但是当你疲倦，想在下午打个盹时，每个人都想给你打电话说些事。  
–There are so many sentences floating around my head at odd moments of the day, but when I sit down in front of the computer to write “Type Three” sentences, they disappear from the furthest corners of my imagination. 
一天里那些零碎地时间里总有很多句子浮现在脑海中，可是当我坐在电脑前，写作“句型三”时，这些句子则从想象的最深处消失。
–While staying with my friend, I have often run up and down the stairs to answer various calls, and this has given me a lot of exercise. 
和朋友呆在一起的日子，我常常跑上跑下接不同的电话，这带给我很多练习。
–Some people like to eat cold cereal in the morning for breakfast, as it is fast and convenient to prepare, but others like to take the time and effort to make cooked cereal. 
一些人喜欢早饭吃冷的粥，因为这样准备起来比较快捷，但是另一些人则喜欢花时间精力准备煮好的粥。
–Since the ice-storm, there have been almost no birds flying around the house, and I wonder if they were all killed by the cold and buried under the ice. 
冰雪以来，房子附近几乎没有什么鸟了，我在想它们是不是冻死了或者埋在冰雪里。
–Under the bright light of the mid-afternoon sun, the tops of the willow tree are a quietly beautiful shade of yellow, so far removed in spirit from the ghostly grey of evening. 
在午后明亮的阳光下，杨柳树顶呈现出静谧而美好的黄色的影子，离夜晚那可怕的灰色如此遥远。