1. Those ad campaigns celebrating the Big Apple, those T-shirts with a heart design proclaiming " I love New York," are signs, pathetic in their desperation, of how the mighty has fallen.

那些歌颂“大苹果”的广告活动和宣称“我爱纽约”的印有心形图案的T恤其实是在绝望中表现出来的悲哀迹象，表明纽约的强者地位已经衰落。

2. New York City used to leave the bragging to others, for bragging was " bush." Being unique, the biggest and the best, New York didn't have to assert how special it was.

过去纽约任其他城市自吹自擂，因为吹嘘是很低级的。纽约，作为独一无二的，同时也是最大和最好的城市，根本无需宣称自己有多与众不同。

3. It isn't the top anymore, at least if the top is measured by who begets the styles and sets the trends. Nowadays New York is out of phase with American taste as often as it is out of step with American politics.

如果以作为衡量头号城市的标准的话，纽约的光芒不复存在了。如今，纽约与美国人的情趣脱节，就像其往往与美国政治步调不相一致一样。

4. Once it was the nation's undisputed fashion authority, but it too long resisted the incoming casual style and lost its monopoly. No longer so looked up to or copied, New York even prides itself on being a holdout from prevailing American trends, a place to escape Common Denominator Land.

它曾经是美国无可争辩的时尚标杆，但它长期以来抵制引入休闲风格，从而失去了其垄断地位。纽约再也不被人们所敬仰和效仿，它甚至以成为美国时尚潮流的抵制者和脱离共性之地的一片净土而自鸣得意。

5. Its deficiencies as a pacesetter are more and more evident. A dozen other cities have buildings more inspired architecturally than any built in New York City in the past twenty years.

纽约不能再作为领跑者的缺陷日渐明显。其他十几座城市的建筑比纽约市过去二十年打造的建筑更加激动人心。

6. The giant Manhattan television studios where Toscanini's NBC Symphony once placed now sit empty most of the time, while sitcoms cloned and canned in Hollywood, and the Johnny Carson show live, preempt the airways from California.

巨大的曼哈顿电视演播厅，曾经是托斯卡尼全国广播公司交响乐的演奏之地，如今大部分时间都空无一人，然而好莱坞生产的大批情景喜剧和约翰尼卡森现场直播的脱口秀却抢先霸占了加利福尼亚的电视频道。

7. Tin Pan Alley has moved to Nashville and Hollywood. Vegas casinos routinely pay heavy sums to singers and entertainers whom no nightspot in Manhattan can afford to hire. In sports, the bigger superdomes, the more exciting teams, the most enthusiastic fans, are often found elsewhere.

锡盘巷（美国纽约流行音乐出版业的集中地）搬到了纳什维尔和好莱坞。拉斯维加斯的赌场通常高薪聘请歌手和艺人，而显然曼哈顿的夜场请不起。在体育方面，更大型的体育馆，更令人兴奋的球队和最疯狂的粉丝也遍布纽约之外的地方。

8. New York is never a good convention city- being regarded as unfriendly, unsafe, overcrowded, and expensive- but it is making something of a comeback as a tourist attraction.

纽约从来都不是一个理想的集会之地-被认为不友好、不安全、超拥挤、高消费-但是它正以旅游胜地的姿态卷土重来。

9. Even so, most Americans would probably rate New Orleans, San Francisco, Washington, or Disneyland higher. A dozen other cities, including my hometown of Seattle, are widely considered better cities to live in.

尽管如此，大多数美国人会对新奥尔良、旧金山、华盛顿和迪士尼评价更高，认为这十几座城市，包括我的家乡西雅图，更适宜居住。

10. Why, then, do many Europeans call New York their favorite city? They take more readily than do most Americans to its cosmopolitan complexities, its surviving, aloof, European standards, its alien mixtures.

那么，为什么这多欧洲人认为纽约是他们最爱的城市呢？比起大多是美国人，他们更喜欢这种国际大都市里存在的错综复杂的事物，残存着的冷漠的欧洲处事风格，还有它各种异域风格元素的参杂融合。

11. Perhaps some of these Europeans are reassured by the sight, on the twin fashion avenues of Madison amd Fifth, of all those familiar international names-the jewelers, shoe stores, and designer shops that exist to flatter and bilk the frivolous rich. But no; what most excites Europeans is the city's charged, nervous atmosphere, its vulgar dynamism.

在麦迪逊大道和第五大道这两条双子时尚街道上看到熟悉的国际品牌-这些为了迎合和欺骗轻浮的富人而存在的珠宝店，鞋店和设计店，或许看到这些景象更坚定了欧洲人对纽约的好印象。但其实不是的，最让欧洲人兴奋的是这座城市紧张的氛围与庸俗的活力。

12. New York is about energy, contention, and striving. And Since it contains its share of articulate losers, it is also about mockery, the put down, the loser's shrug (" Whaddya gonna do?"). It is about constant battles for subway seats, for a cabdriver's or a clerk's or a waiter's attention, for a foothold, a chance, a better address, a larger billing. To win in New York is to be uneasy; to lose is to live in jostling proximity to the frustrated majority.

纽约充满了活力，争论和争斗。纽约也不乏能说会道的失败者，因此也充满了嘲弄，贬低和失败者的丧气话（“你还能怎么办？！”）其中充满了永无休止的争斗，为了抢占一个地铁座位，为了得到的哥和店员的注意，为了一席之地，为了一次机会，为了更好的住所，为了更显著的地位。在纽约，要想成功就一定会心神不安，但一旦失败就要沦落到与许多灰心丧气的人居住在同一个屋檐下的地步。

13. New York was never Mecca to me. And though I have lived there more than half my life, you won't find me wearing an "I Love New York" T-shirt. But all in all, I can't think of many places in the world I'd rather live. It's not easy to define why.

对我而言，纽约从来都不是麦加圣地。尽管我已在那度过了大半生，你也不会看到我穿着“我爱纽约”的T恤。但总而言之，我想不出这个世界上还有什么其他地方我更想去居住。很难解释原因。

14. Nature's pleasures are much qualified in New York. You never see a star-filled sky; the city's bright glow arrogantly obscures the heavens. 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.

纽约的自然风光很有限。你从来都不会看到繁星点点的天空，城市明亮的灯光傲慢地闪耀着，使天空黯然失色。日落很壮观，橘红色浸染着泽西市草坪的上空，在曼哈顿参差不齐的天际线的成千扇窗户的反射下，显得俗气绚丽。

15. Nature constantly yields to man in New York: witness those fragile sidewalk trees gamely struggling against encroaching cement and petrol fumes. Central Park, which Frederick Law Olmsted designed as lungs for the city's poor, is in places grassless and filled with trash, no longer pristine yet lively with the noise and vivacity of people, largely youths, blacks, and Puerto Ricans, enjoying themselves. On park benches sit older people, mostly white, looking displaced. It has become less a tranquil park than an untidy carnival.

在纽约，人定胜天：看看人行道两旁的脆弱的树木，它们勇敢地与侵略者——水泥地和油烟气作斗争。由弗设计的中央公园本是为了给城市中的贫民提供新鲜空气的绿地，如今却寸草不生，垃圾满地，再也不是最初的样子。里面确充满了人的喧闹嘈杂，大部分是精力充沛的年轻人，黑人和波多黎各人自得其乐。公园长椅上坐着老年人，主要是白人，他们看上去流离失所。中央公园不再是宁静的公园，而更像是乱糟糟的嘉年华。

16. 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. I wasn't even sure how I'd measure up against others who had been more soundly educated at Ivy League schools, or whether I could compete against that tough local breed, those intellectual sons of immigrants, so highly motivated and single-minded, such as Alfred Kazin, who for diversion (for heaven's sake!) played Bach'sUnaccompanied Partitason the violin.

吸引我从远方来到纽约的不是这座城市的魅力，而是它提供了我从事新闻行业的机遇。我当时并不确定自己如何与那些在常春藤大学受过良好教育的人相提并论，或者能否与坚韧的当地人相竞争，那些聪明的移民后代目标明确，专心致志，如卡津为了消遣（天哪！）竟然用小提琴演奏巴赫的《无伴奏组曲》。

17. A testing of oneself, a fear of giving in to the most banal and marketable of one's talents, still draws many of the young to New York. That and, as always, the company of others fleeing something constrict where they came from. Together these young share a freedom, a community of inexpensive amusements, a casual living, and more rough times. It can't be the living conditions that appeal, for only fond memory will forgive the inconvenience, risk, and squalor.

为了证明自己，害怕自己的才能沦为平淡无奇和受利益驱使的事物，许多年轻人仍相继来到纽约。此外，总是有些人逃离家乡的束缚来到这里。这些年轻人在一起分享自由，居住在可以提供廉价的娱乐活动的社区，过着自在的生活，度过艰难的时期。纽约的生活条件不可能吸引他们，因为只有美好的回忆才会是他们接受这种脏乱差的生活环境。

18. Commercial Broadway may be inaccessible to them, but there is off-Broadway, and then off-off-Broadway. If painters disdain Madison Avenue's plush art galleries, Madison Avenue dealers set up shop in the grubby precincts of Soho.

商业化的百老汇剧院可能不会向他们开放，但是还有外百老汇，然后还有外外百老汇。如果画家看不上麦迪逊大街豪华的艺术画廊，麦迪逊大街上的经销商就会在索霍区的凌乱之地开商店。

19. But the purity of a bohemian dedication can be exaggerated. The artistic young inhabit the same Greenwich Village and its fringes in which the experimentalists in the arts lived during the Depression, united by a world against them. But the present generation is enough of a subculture to be a source of profitable boutiques and coffeehouses. And it is not all that estranged.

但是，波西米亚式献身的纯洁性可能被夸大了。这些文艺青年居住在格林威治村及其周边地区, 当年大萧条时期，一批艺术实验主义者也居住在这里，联合在一起对抗一个敌对的世界。但如今的这一代年轻人形成的亚文化群体，足以成为精品店和咖啡馆的利润来源。而且他们也不是那么与世隔绝的。

20. Manhattan is an island cut off in most respects from mainland America, but in two areas it remains dominant. It is the banking and the communications headquarters for America. In both these roles it ratifies more than it creates. Wall Street will advance the millions to make a Hollywood movie only if convinced that a bestselling title or a star name will ensure its success.

曼哈顿在很多方面都是与美国大陆相隔绝的孤单，但是，其在两个方面仍保持着统治地位。它是美国的金融和通讯总部。在这两个方面，它发挥的审批功能超过创造功能。只有当确信一个卖座的头衔或明星能保证电影的成功，华尔街才会预支数百万美元来制作一部好莱坞电影。

21. The networks' news centers are here, and the largest book publishers, and the biggest magazine- and therefore the largest body of critics to appraise the films, the plays, the music, the books that others have created. New York is a judging town, and often invokes standards that the rest of the country deplores or ignores. A market for knowingness exists in New York that doesn't exist for knowlege.

美国广播电视网的新闻中心位于这里，最大的图书出版商和最大的杂志社也在这里——因此，这里云集了对他人创作的电影，戏剧，音乐和图书进行评价的大批评论家。纽约就是一个裁判城，经常行使其他城市反对或忽视的标准。在纽约这个地方，真正的只是学问没有市场，狡黠伶俐却颇有市场。

22. The ad agencies are all here too, testing the markets and devising the catchy jingles that will move millions from Mcdonald's to Burger King, so that the ad agency's "creative director" can lunch instead in Manhattan's expense-account French restaurants.

广告公司也都位于此处，他们窥测市场动态，发明了朗朗上口的广告语，使得数百万人在麦当劳和汉堡王之间穿梭。这样，广告公司的创意总监们就可以在曼哈顿的法国餐馆想用午餐了，并且还可以报销。

23. The bankers and the admen, the marketing specialists and a thousand well-paid ancillary service people, really set the city's brittle tone- catering to a wide American public whose numbers must be respected but whose tastes do not have to be shared.

银行家，广告商，营销专家和千名领着优厚薪水的服务人员真正地设定了整座城市尖锐的基调——迎合广大美国公众的需求，却只关注数量，而非品味。

24. The condescending view from the fiftieth floor of the city's crowds below cuts these people off from humanity. So does an attitude which sees the public only in terms of large, malleable numbers- as impersonally as does the clattering subway turnstile beneath the officer towers.

从五十层楼高的地方俯视下面的人群使这些人高高在上。他们认为广大人民群众不过是一大堆可以任意排列的数字罢了——就像写字楼下面咔哒作响的地铁十字转门一样，没有一丝人情味。

25. I am surprised by the lack of cynicism, particularly among the younger ones, of those who work in such fields. The television generation grew up in the insistent presence of hype, delights in much of it, and has no scruples about practicing it.

我对在这些领域工作的人，尤其是年轻人感到惊讶，因为他们当中很少有人愤世嫉俗。这些成长于电视时代的人，面对一波又一波的宣传炒作，他们引以为乐，并且毫无顾忌的付诸实践。

26. Men and women do their jobs professionally, and, like the pilots who from great heights bombed Hanoi, seem unmarked by it. They lead their real lives elsewhere. In the Village bars they are indistinguishable in dress or behavior from would-be artists, actors, and writers.

男男女女做起事来非常专业。就像从高空轰炸河内的飞行员一样，丝毫不受他所从事的工作的影响。因为他们在其它地方过着真正的生活。在乡村酒吧里，他们的穿着和举止与准艺术家，演员和作家毫无差别。

27. The boundaries of " art for art's sake" aren't so rigid anymore; art itself is less sharply defined, and those whose paintings don't sell do illustrations; those who can't get acting jobs do commercials; those who are writing ambitious novels sustain themselves on the magazines. Besides, serious art often feeds on the popular these days, changing it with fond irony.

“为了艺术而艺术”的界限不在那么刻板了；艺术本身的定义也不再清晰了。画作卖不出的人画起了插图；得不到表演工作的人拍起了商业广告；创作鸿篇巨制的人写起了期刊。此外，如今高雅艺术靠通俗艺术来滋养，使通俗艺术发生了可喜的讽刺性变化。

28. In time the newcomers find or form their own worlds; Manhattan has many such worlds, huddled together but rarely interacting. I think this is what gives the city its sense of freedom. There are enough like you, whatever you are.

这些新来者迟早会找到或形成自己的圈子；曼哈顿有很多这样的圈子，人们群居在一起却很少来往，我想正是这一点赋予了这座城市自由的气息。无论你是哪种人，总有足够多的人像你一样。

29. And it isn't as necessary to know anything about an apartment neighbor- or to worry about his judgment of you- as it is about someone with an adjoining yard. In New York, like sees like, and by economy of effort excludes the rest as strangers. This distancing, this uncaring in ordinary encounters, has another side: in no other American city can be lonely be as lonely.

你不必了解住在同一栋楼里的邻居——或者担心他对你的评价——住在相邻院子的邻居才有必要这样做。在纽约，人以类聚，为了节省精力则把其他人视为陌生人。日常交往中的这种距离感和冷漠感有另外一面：那些孤独的人在纽约比在美国其他任何一座城市更孤独。

30. So much more needs to be said. New York is a wounded city, declining in its amenities, overloaded by its tax burdens. But it is not a dying city; the streets are safer than they were five years ago; Broadway, which seemed to be succumbing to the tawdriness of its environment, is astir again.

要说的还有很多。纽约是一个满布疮痍的城市，基础设施日趋衰落，重税压身。但是它并不是一个濒临死亡的城市，街道比五年前更安全，曾沦落于俗丽不能自拔的百老汇又重新骚动起来了。

31. The trash-strewn streets, the unruly schools, the uneasy feeling or menace, the noise, the brusqueness-- all confirm outsiders in their conviction that they wouldn't live here if you gave them the place. Yet show a New Yorker a splendid home in Dallas, or a swimming pool and cabana in Beverly Hills, and he will be admiring but not envious. So much of well-to-do America now lives antiseptically in enclaves, tranquil and luxurious, that shut out the world. Too static, the New Yorker would say. Tell him about the vigor of your outdoor pleasures; he prefers the unhealthy hassle and the vitality of urban life. He is hopelessly provincial. To him, New York-- despite its faults, which he will impatiently concede ("So what else is new?")-- is the spoiler of all other American cities.

垃圾满地的街道，秩序混乱的学校，不安的感觉或威胁，喧闹和无礼--所有这些使局外人确信就算把纽约给他们，他们也不会在这里居住。但是，如果一个纽约客看到达拉斯富丽堂皇的住宅或游泳池和浴室，他会心生羡慕但绝不会嫉妒。因此美国许多富人超然地居住在宁静而奢华的地方，与世隔绝。纽约客会说，太无聊了。对他讲激情四射的户外活动的乐趣，他更喜欢都市生活不健康的喧嚣与活力。他的思想观念狭隘得无可救药。对他来说，纽约-- 尽管他们不耐烦的承认它的缺陷（“还有什么是新的呢？”）-- 比美国其他城市都要优越。

32. It is possible in twenty other American cities to visit first-rate art museums, to hear good music and see lively experimental theater, to meet intelligent and sophisticated people who know how to live, dine, and talk well; and to enjoy all this in congenial and spacious surroundings. The New Yorker still wouldn't want to live there.

在其他二十座城市，可能会参观到一流的艺术博物馆，听到美妙的音乐，看到生动的戏剧，遇到懂得生活，美食和言谈的聪明且精明的人；并且在宽敞舒适的环境中享受这一切。但是纽约客还是不想住在那里。

33. What he would find missing is what many outsiders find oppressive and distasteful about New York-- its rawness, tension, urgency; its bracing competitiveness; the rigor of its judgments; and the congested, democratic presence of so many other New Yorkers, encased in their own worlds. The defeated are not hidden away somewhere else on the wrong side of town. In the subways, in the buses, in the streets, it is possible to avoid people whose lives are harder than yours.

他会发现那缺少局外人眼里的纽约令人难以忍受和反感之处-- 它的粗俗，紧张和急迫；它那令人振奋的竞争；它缜密的评判；还有拥挤在一处，不分尊卑贵贱，活在自己的世界里的诸多纽约客。失败者不必躲在城市的角落里，在地铁上，公交车上，大街上，比你生活更艰难的人比比皆是。

34. With the desperate, the ill, the fatigued, the overwhelmed, one learns not to strike up conversation (which isn't wanted) but to make brief, sympathetic eye contact, to include them in the human race. It isn't much, but it is the fleeting hospitality of New Yorkers, each jealous of his privacy in the crowd. Even helpfulness is often delivered as a taunt: a man, rushing in the traffic light, dashes in front of an oncoming car. "Watch it, Mac," shouts the man behind him. "You want to be wearing a Buick with Jersy plates?"-- great scorn in the word Jersey, home of drivers who don't belong here.

对于失望透顶，疾病缠身，痛苦不堪和不知所措的人，不要与之交谈（交谈不是人们期望的），一个短暂的同情的眼神就够了，表明他们也属于这个圈子。这看起来不算什么，但是对唯恐在公众面前暴露隐私的纽约客来说，这就是稍纵即逝的友好的表示了。纽约客甚至会用嘲讽的方式帮助别人：一个闯红灯的人冲到一辆开过来的汽车前面。“兄弟，当心点，”后面的人喊道。“你想要让一辆泽西牌照的别克汽车撞到吗？”-- “泽西”这个词有很强的嘲讽意味，指的是外地司机的家乡。

35. By Adolf Hitler's definition, New York is a mongrel city. It is in fact the first truly international metropolis. No other great city-- not London, Paris, Rome, or Tokyo-- play host (or hostage) to so many nationalities. The mix is much wider- Asians, Africans, Latins- than when that tumultuous variety of Europeans crowded ashore at Ellis Island. The newcomers are never fully absorbed, butt are added precariously to the undigested many.

按照阿道夫希特勒的定义，纽约是一个杂种城市。事实上它是第一座真正意义上的国际性大都市。其他的大城市-- 伦敦，巴黎，罗马或东京-- 都没有接纳（或收留）这么多的民族。比起当年熙熙攘攘的欧洲人登上埃利斯岛的时候们，现在的混杂程度有过之而无不及。这些新来者从未被完全接纳，但却不确定加入到同未被接纳的人群当中。

36. New York is too big to be dominated by any group, by Wasps or Jews or blacks, or by Catholics of many origins- Irish, Italian, Hispanic. All have their little sovereignties, all are sizable enough to be reckoned with and tough in asserting their claims, but none is powerful enough to subdue the others. Characteristically, the city swallows up the United Nations and refuses to take it seriously, regarding it as an unworkable mixture of the idealistic, the impractical, and the hypocritical. But New Yorkers themselves are in training in how to live together in a diversity of races-- the necessary initiation into the future.

纽约太大了而不能被任何一班人马所支配，无论是盎格鲁，犹太人还是黑人，或者有众多起源的天主教徒-- 爱尔兰人，意大利人和西班牙裔美国人。所有这些人都有自己的小领域，并且人数众多，在维护自己的主张方面又恨强硬，这些都足以引起重视并谨慎对待，但没有一方能强大到足以制服另一方。典型的是，这个城市吞并了联合国，不把它当回事，认为它是由理想家，不且实际的人和虚伪做作的人组成的无法运作的混合体。但是，纽约客自己正努力学会如何在多种族的社会里和平共处-- 这是迈向未来的必要开端。

37. The diversity gives endless color to the city, so that walking in it is a constant education in sights and smells. There is a wonderful variety of places to eat or shop, and though the most successful of such places are likely to be touristy hybrid compromises, they too have genuine roots. Other American cities have ethnic turfs jealously defended, but not, I think, such an admixture of groups, thrown together in such jarring juxtapositions.

多样化赋予了这座城市无尽的色彩，因此漫步其中是在不断考验你的视觉和嗅觉。有各种各样吃饭或购物的好地方，尽管这些最成功的地方很可能为吸引游客而把将各种地方特色混杂在一起，当然也会拥有真正的根源。美国其他的城市，不同的种族盘踞在自己的地盘上，不容侵犯，但我认为它们缺乏这种不同群体错杂共生的交汇融合。

38. In the same way, avenues of high-rise luxury in New York are never far from poverty and mean streets. The sadness and fortitude of New York must be celebrated, along with its treasures of art and music. The combination is unstable; it produces friction, or an uneasy forbearance that sometimes becomes a real toleration.

同样，纽约高楼林立的豪华大街从来没有远离贫穷和穷街僻巷。纽约的悲伤和坚韧连同其艺术和音乐的瑰宝都值得赞扬。这种不稳定的组合会产生摩擦或令人不安的自我克制，这种克制有时也会变成真正的忍耐。

39. Loving and hating New York becomes a matter of alternating moods, often in the same day. The place constantly exasperates, at times exhilarates. To me, it is the city of unavoidable experience. Living here, one has the reassurance of steadily confronting life.

对纽约的爱恨交替，是最主要的情绪变化，这种交替变化通常发生在同一天。这个地方总是让人恼怒，有时却也让人兴奋。对我来说，这是我经历中无可逃避的一座城市，一座确保人们每天过着困难重重的生活的城市。