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Later I asked her, "How did you know the TV was here?"
后来我问她:“你是怎么知道家里有电视机的？”
The antenna. Now our house looks like everyone else's.
“电视天线呀。这一来我们家的房子看上去就跟别人家的一样了。”
She had a wonderful smile on her face.
她脸上漾起灿烂的微笑。
When we were young our parents allowed us to watch TV two hours a night. Oh, yes. And we couldn't watch until our homework was finished. But after a year or two, TV wasn't exciting or new anymore. It became just another part of our lives, like shoes or soap. My parents still had fears about TV. We were going to forget how to read, they said. And we were not going to read books because watching TV was easier, they said. And TV was going to fill our minds with violence, they said. They said lots of things like that — once a day at least. I disagreed with them. I thought they were old-fashioned, thinking too much of old ways and ideas.
我们还小的时候，父母只允许我们每晚看两个小时的电视。哦，是这样。而且我们非得做完了功课才能看电视。可是，过了一两年，电视的新鲜劲儿过了。电视就像鞋子和肥皂之类的日用品一样，成了我们生活的一部分。我父母对电视仍心存戒虑，说我们会荒废阅读；说我们会不想看书，因为看电视更为轻松；还说电视会往我们的脑子里灌满暴力。他们说了好多好多诸如此类的话——至少每天得说上一回。我可不同意他们的观点，我觉得他们太守旧，脑子里的旧观念太多。
Today, people still argue about the value of TV. Nobody can deny the power of TV. It has an enormous, a very powerful, influence on our lives. On the average, Americans spend 30 hours a week watching TV. Is this influence good or bad? This is an unanswerable question indeed: It is hard enough to measure influence; and it is even harder to decide what is good and what isn't. What is good, I suppose, is that many people are concerned about TV's influence and that we have the power to change what we don't like.
时至今日，人们仍在争论电视的作用。没有谁能否认电视的力量，它对我们的生活有着巨大的、非常强有力的影响。美国人平均一周看30小时的电视。其影响究竟是好是坏？这确实是个无法回答的问题。影响力本来就难以估量，要评定什么是好什么是坏就更难了。我认为好就好在很多人都很关心电视的影响，而且对我们不喜欢的东西我们也有能力加以改变。
Recently I read an article in the newspaper about the people of Monhegan Island, 18 kilometers off the coast of Maine. These people don't have electricity, and they decided, once again, that they liked it that way. Only a handful of people live there during the long winter, and they live without electricity — by choice. Electricity, they think, would make things too easy and spoil their way of life. Maybe the young people wouldn't want to go to town dances anymore. Maybe they would be more interested in staying home and watching television.
最近我在报上读到一篇关于蒙希根岛上居民的文章。该岛离缅因州海岸18公里。岛上居民不使用电，他们再次做出决定，他们喜欢这样。在漫长的冬季，只有为数极少的人在那儿居住，他们过着没有电的生活——出于他们自己的抉择。他们认为电这玩意儿会使很多事情变得太容易，并会破坏他们的生活方式。年轻人或许就此不再去镇上参加舞会。也许他们更乐于守在家里看电视。
