5研究生英语读写佳境课文翻译unit 5.doc

?????????????????????? 1 Why do we laugh? Because we find something funny ,most people would say. Robert Provine, a behavioral neurobiologist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, once thought so too. But then he and his students began wandering about the college campus notebooks in hand, recording exactly what really made people laugh. 为什么我们会笑？大部分的人都会说那是因为我们找到了一些有趣的事情。Robert Provine是Maryland大学的行为精神生物学家，他曾经也是这样认为的。但是他和他的学生们开始散步在大学校园里，手里拿着笔记本，准确地记下引人发笑的原因。 2 Twelve hundred “laugh episodes” later, Provine was convinced that most laughter has little to do with jokes or funny stories. The vast majority or laughs followed mundane statements(普通话语) such as “It was nice meeting you, too” or “Can I join you?”Only some 10 to 20 percent followed anything remotely recognisable（细微联系）as a punch line(妙句、关键句).So what are the majority of laughs actually about? 记录下一千二百个“笑的事件”后，Provine相信大部分的笑与开玩笑和滑稽的故事没有关联。绝大部分的笑是出现在像“遇到你很高兴”或是“我可以加入你们吗？”这样的普通话语之后。仅仅有百分之十至二十的笑是出现在和妙句有一点点联系的话语之后。既然如此绝大部分发笑的原因是什么呢？ 3 The search for an answer brings you face to face with (直面)problems that are at once both the bane and lifeblood of virtually all research into human emotions. You may think the social context of the emotion is obvious; but then you realize that people laugh when they’re nervous as well as amused, disappointed as well as joyous, and sometimes simply because someone else is laughing. 对这个答案的搜寻使得我们直面这样的问题：对人类情感好坏的研究。你可以想象情感的社会环境显而易见，但是你会意识到人们在他们紧张、高兴、失望、快乐时，甚至有时仅仅因为其它人在笑也会笑。 4 You may also set out with the belief that the emotion has evolved into(发展为，演变为) something rather sophisticated（相当复杂的）, requiring the brain’s conscious（意识）, cognitive centers （认知中心） to respond to subtle（微妙的） social indications like punch lines; but then you realise that most people cannot will themselves to(强迫他们去做) laugh command or suppress an unwanted attack of the giggles. Laughter arises not from our conscious mind but from a primitive, precognitive part of our brain , says Provine. “We’ re talk