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What life means to me?
BY JACK LONDON
1.I was born in the working class. I early discovered enthusiasm, ambition, and ideals; and to satisfy these became the problem of my childlife. My environment was crude and rough and raw. I had no outlook, but an uplook rather. My place in society was at the bottom. Here life offered nothing but sordidness and wretchedness, both of the flesh and the spirit; for here flesh and spirit were alike starved and tormented.
1、我出生于工人阶级。小时候我有激情，雄心和理想，如何实现这些是我童年的困惑。我生存的环境是原始的，粗糙的和艰难的。我看不到前途，但可以向上看。我生活在社会的底层。在这里，无论在身体上和精神上，生活都是肮脏的和不幸的，因为身体上和精神都饱受饥渴和折磨。
2.Above me towered the colossal edifice of society, and to my mind the only way out was up. Into this edifice I early resolved to climb. Up above, men wore black clothes and boiled shirts, and women dressed in beautiful gowns. Also, there were good things to eat, and there was plenty to eat. This much for the flesh. Then there were the things of the spirit. Up above me, I knew, were unselfishnesses of the spirit, clean and noble thinking, keen intellectual living. I knew all this because I read \Library\novels, in which, with the exception of the villains and adventuresses, all men and women thought beautiful thoughts, spoke a beautiful tongue, and performed glorious deeds. In short, as I accepted the rising of the sun, I accepted that up above me was all that was fine and noble and gracious, all that gave decency and dignity to life, all that made life worth living and that remunerated one for his travail and misery. 2、我头顶之上高耸着巨大的社会建筑，在我看来，只有向上爬才有出路，很小的时候我决心爬进这座高楼。我头顶上，男人们穿着白衬衣黑礼服，女人们则华衣锦服，还有佳肴，这是身体上的享受。然后还有精神上的享受。我知道，在
我之上是慷慨无私的精神，纯净和崇高的思想，敏锐的智力的生活。我熟悉这些是因为我读过“海滨图书馆”的系列小说。小说里，除了恶棍和女冒险家，所有的男男女女都思考着美好的思想，说着动听的话，做着光荣的事。总之，就像接受太阳升起一样，我接受了这些。在我之上一切都是美好的，崇高的，优雅的，都给生命以体面和尊严，都使生活有意义。都能补偿人们的辛劳和痛苦。 3.But it is not particularly easy for one to climb up out of the working class—especially if he is handicapped by the possession of ideals and illusions. I lived on a ranch in California, and I was hard put to find the ladder whereby to climb. I early inquired the rate of interest on invested money, and worried my child's brain into an understanding of the virtues and excellencies of that remarkable invention of man, compound interest. Further, I ascertained the current rates of wages for workers of all ages, and the cost of living. From all this data I concluded that if I began immediately and worked and saved until I was fifty years of age, I could then stop working and enter into participation in a fair portion of the delights and goodnesses that would then be open to me higher up in society. Of course, I resolutely determined not to marry, while I quite forgot to consider at all that great rock of disaster in the working class world—sickness.
3、但是以工人阶级的社会底层走出是极不容易的——尤其是受到理想和幻想制约时。那时我生活在加利福利亚的大农场，很难找到向上爬的梯子。一开始我询问投资的利率，绞尽了我的小脑壳，才明白人类了不起的创造——复合利率——的好处和优势。后来我弄清了各年龄层的工人的现行工资和生活开销，从这些数字中，我得出结论：如果我马上就开始工作存钱，直到五十岁我才能退休，开始享受到那个时候才向我开放的上层社会的乐趣和妙处。当然，我坚决不结婚，可是我完全忘记考虑到工人阶层最大的灾难——疾病。
But the life that was in me demanded more than a meager existence of scraping and scrimping. Also, at ten years of age, I became a newsboy on the streets of a city and found myself with a changed uplook. All about
me were still the same sordidness and wretchedness, and up above me was still the same paradise waiting to be gained; but the ladder whereby to climb was a different one. It was now the ladder of business. Why save my earnings and invest in government bonds, when, by buying two newspapers for five cents, with a turn of the wrist I could sell them for ten cents and double my capital? The business ladder was the ladder for me, and I had a vision of myself becoming a baldheaded and successful merchant prince. 但是，这是在我的生活要求多了微薄的存在刮抠的。此外，在十几年的年龄，我成了一个城市的街头报童，发现自己有改变uplook。所有关于我的人还是一样的卑鄙和可怜，以及高达上面我还是一样的天堂等待上涨，但梯子据此攀登是不同的。现在是业务的阶梯。为什么要救我的收益，投资于国债的时候，通过购买两份报纸五毛钱，用手腕一转，我可以把它们卖出去10美分，加倍我的资金？业务梯是梯子我，我有自己的愿景成为一个光头和成功的商业巨子。 Alas for visions! When I was sixteen I had already earned the title of \But this title was given me by a gang of cut-throats and thieves, by whom I was called \Prince of the Oyster Pirates.\And at that time I had climbed the first rung of the business ladder. I was a capitalist. I owned a boat and a complete oyster-pirating outfit. I had begun to exploit my fellow creatures. I had a crew of one man. As captain and owner I took two-thirds of the spoils, and gave the crew one-third, though the crew worked just as hard as I did and risked just as much his life and liberty.
唉，愿景！当我十六岁那年，我已经赢得了标题为“王子”。但这个称号是给我用的切割喉咙，盗贼团伙，由谁来我被称为“牡蛎海盗王子。”那时，我已经爬到了梯子业务的第一个梯级。我是一个资本家。我拥有一条船，一个完整的牡蛎盗版装备。我开始利用我的同胞的生物。我只好一个人船员。作为队长和所有者我把三分之二的战利品，并给船员三分之一，虽然剧组的工作只是很难，因为我没有和冒险一样多，他的生命和自由。