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Nature's pleasures are much qualified in New York.
在纽约所能欣赏到的自然美景非常有限。
You never see a star-filled sky; the city’s bright glow arrogantly obscures the heavens.
你从来看不到一片繁星点点的夜空，城里的万家灯火交相辉映使得天空黯然失色。
Sunsets can be spectacular: oranges and reds tinting the sky over the Jersey meadows and gaudily reflected in a thousand windows on Manhattan’s jagged skyline.
唯有日落时分的景色尚可谓壮观：泽西市草地上的天空染上了一块块深浅不一的橙红色，在曼哈顿那些高高矮矮、大大小小的建筑物上的万千扇玻璃窗的反射下，更显得绚丽多彩。
Nature constantly yields to man in New York: witness those fragile sidewalk trees gamely struggling against encroaching cement and petrol fumes.
大自然对纽约人总是低头服输。只须看看人行道上那些脆弱的树木迎着四面进逼的水泥路面和阵阵袭来的石油烟气拚命挣扎的样子，就足以说明问题了。
Central Park, which Frederick Law Olmsted designed as lungs for the city’s poor, is in places grassless and filled with trash,
由弗雷德里克·劳·奥姆斯特德设计的纽约中央公园本应是城市贫民休养身体、呼吸新鲜空气的场所，但如今园内有些地方已寸草不生，垃圾遍地，
no longer pristine yet lively with the noise and vivacity of people, largely youths, blacks, and Puerto Ricans, enjoying themselves.
无复当年的清新质朴之气，然而依旧人声嘈杂，生意盎然，许多人一一多数为年轻人、黑人和波多黎各人，仍在其间自得其乐。
On park benches sit older people, mostly white, looking displaced.
公园中的长条椅上则坐着一些上了年纪的人，其中以白人居多，看样子都是一些流离失所的人。
It has become less a tranquil park than an untidy carnival.
这里已经不是什么静造的公园了，倒更像是一个乱哄哄的狂欢场所。
Not the glamour of the city, which never beckoned to me from a distance, but its opportunity – to practice the kind of journalism I wanted – drew me to New York.
吸引着我来到纽约的不是这个城市的魅力--它从没有在远方向我遥遥招手呼唤，而是它给我提供了一个从事我梦寐以求的新闻事业的机会。
I wasn’t even sure how I’d measure up against others who had been more soundly educated at Ivy League schools,
我当时甚至拿不准自己的能力如何能比得上那些在东北部一些名牌大学受过更好教育的人，
or whether I could compete against that tough local breed, those intellectual sons of immigrants,
又怎能竞争得过纽约那些意志坚强的本地人，那些才华横溢的移民子弟.
so highly motivated and single-minded, such as Alfred Kazin, who for diversion (for heaven’t sake!) played Bach’s Unaccompanied Partitas on the violin.
他们是那样的目标明确，用心专一，比如那个艾尔弗雷德?卡津，他作为业余消遣(真是不可思议j)竞能用小提琴演奏巴赫的无伴奏组曲。
