劍橋雅思5 Test 2閱讀Passage 2原文翻譯 what’s so funny

劍橋雅思5 Test 2閱讀Passage 2原文翻譯 what’s so funny

劍橋雅思5 Test 2 Passage 2閱讀答案解析

第1自然段

The joke comes over the headphones: ‘Which side of a dog has the most hair? The left.’ No, not funny. Try again. ‘Which side of a dog has the most hair? The outside.’ Hah! The punchline is silly yet fitting, tempting a smile, even a laugh. Laughter has always struck people as deeply mysterious, perhaps pointless. The writer Arthur Koestler dubbed it the luxury reflex: ‘unique in that it serves no apparent biological purpose’.

電話對面的人講了個笑話：“狗的哪一邊頭發(fā)最多？左邊。” 不，不好笑。再試一次?！肮返哪囊贿叺念^發(fā)最多？外邊?！惫?！笑話既愚蠢又貼切，讓人微笑，甚至是大笑。笑聲一直使人們感到十分神秘，甚至毫無意義。作家亞瑟·科斯特勒（Arthur Koestler）稱其為奢侈的反射：“獨特之處在于它沒有明顯的生物學目的” 。

第2自然段

Theories about humour have an ancient pedigree. Plato expressed the idea that humour is simply a delighted feeling of superiority over others. Kant and Freud felt that joke-telling relies on building up a psychic tension which is safely punctured by the ludicrousness of the punchline. But most modern humour theorists have settled on some version of Aristotle’s belief that jokes are based on a reaction to or resolution of incongruity, when the punchline is either a nonsense or, though appearing silly, has a clever second meaning.

關于幽默的理論可以追溯到很久之前。柏拉圖文章來自老烤鴨雅思表達了這樣的觀點：幽默只是一種與眾不同的優(yōu)越感。康德和弗洛伊德認為，講笑話是建立在一種心理張力上，這種緊張情緒可以被趣味橫生的笑話所打破。但是，大多數(shù)現(xiàn)代幽默理論家都比較認同亞里士多德的某種觀點，即笑話是基于對不一致的反應或解決。逗人發(fā)笑的地方雖然毫無意義或者顯得很傻，但其具有巧妙的第二含義。

第3自然段

Graeme Ritchie, a computational linguist in Edinburgh, studies the linguistic structure of jokes in order to understand not only humour but language understanding and reasoning in machines. He says that while there is no single format for jokes, many revolve around a sudden and surprising conceptual shift. A comedian will present a situation followed by an unexpected interpretation that is also apt.

愛丁堡的計算機語言學家格雷姆·里奇（Graeme Ritchie）研究笑話的語言結構，從而理解幽默，以及機器中的語言領悟和推理。他說，雖然沒有單一的笑話形式，但許多笑話都圍繞著突然而令人驚訝的觀念轉變進行。喜劇演員將呈現(xiàn)一種情況，然后進行意外卻適當?shù)慕忉尅?/p>

第4自然段

So even if a punchline sounds silly, the listener can see there is a clever semantic fit and that sudden mental ‘Aha!’ is the buzz that makes us laugh. Viewed from this angle, humour is just a form of creative insight, a sudden leap to a new perspective.

因此，即使笑話聽起來很愚蠢，聽眾也可以看到有巧妙的語義匹配，而正是這種心理上突然的“啊哈！” 讓我們笑出聲來。從這個角度來看，幽默只是一種創(chuàng)造性洞察力的形式，是突然躍入新視野的一種方式。

第5自然段

However, there is another type of laughter, the laughter of social appeasement and it is important to understand this too. Play is a crucial part of development in most young mammals. Rats produce ultrasonic squeaks to prevent their scuffles turning nasty. Chimpanzees have a ‘play-face’ – a gaping expression accompanied by a panting ‘ah, ah’ noise. In humans, these signals have mutated into smiles and laughs. Researchers believe social situations, rather than cognitive events such as jokes, trigger these instinctual markers of play or appeasement. People laugh on fairground rides or when tickled to flag a play situation, whether they feel amused or not.

但是，還有另一種笑，即社交情景下的笑聲。了解這一點也很重要。玩耍是大多數(shù)年輕哺乳動物發(fā)育中至關重要的部分。老鼠發(fā)出吱吱聲，以防止它們的扭打變得嚴重起來。黑猩猩有一張“玩笑臉”-表情張揚，伴隨著喘息的“啊，啊”的聲音。在人類中，這些信號變成了微笑和大笑。研究人員認為，社交環(huán)境而不是諸如玩笑之類的認知事件觸發(fā)了這種玩耍中的本能標志。人們在游樂場或者被挑逗的時候笑出聲來，而不論他們是否覺得很有意思。

第6自然段

Both social and cognitive types of laughter tap into the same expressive machinery in our brains, the emotion and motor circuits that produce smiles and excited vocalisations. However, if cognitive laughter is the product of more general thought processes, it should result from more expansive brain activity.

社交和認知類型的笑都進入我們大腦中相同的表達機制，情感和運動回路產生笑容和激動的聲音。但是，如果認知笑聲是更普遍的思維過程的產物，它應該來自更廣泛的大腦活動。

第7自然段

Psychologist Vinod Goel investigated humour using the new technique of ‘single event’ functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). An MRI scanner uses magnetic fields and radio waves to track the changes in oxygenated blood that accompany mental activity. Until recently, MRI scanners needed several minutes of activity and so could not be used to track rapid thought processes such as comprehending a joke. New developments now allow half-second ‘snapshots’ of all sorts of reasoning and problem-solving activities.

心理學家Vinod Goel使用“單一事件” 功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）的新技術研究了幽默。MRI掃描儀使用磁場和無線電波來跟蹤伴隨精神活動的血液含氧量的變化。直到最近為止，MRI掃描儀都需要活動幾分鐘才行，因此無法用于跟蹤快速的思維過程，例如理解笑話?，F(xiàn)在，技術進步讓所有類型的推理和問題解決活動的半秒鐘快照成為可能。

第8自然段

Although Goel felt being inside a brain scanner was hardly the ideal place for appreciating a joke, he found evidence that understanding a joke involves a widespread mental shift. His scans showed that at the beginning of a joke the listener’s prefrontal cortex lit up, particularly the right prefrontal believed to be critical for problem solving. But there was also activity in the temporal lobes at the side of the head (consistent with attempts to rouse stored knowledge) and in many other brain areas. Then when the punchline arrived, a new area sprang to life – the orbital prefrontal cortex. This patch of brain tucked behind the orbits of the eyes is associated with evaluating information.

盡管Goel覺得腦部掃描儀并不是一個欣賞笑話的理想場所，但他發(fā)現(xiàn)有證據(jù)表明，理解笑話涉及廣泛的心理轉變。他的掃描顯示，在笑話剛開始時，聽眾的前額葉皮層會亮起來，它被認為對解決問題至關重要。但是在頭部側面的顳葉（與試圖激發(fā)儲存的知識相一致）以及其他許多大腦區(qū)域也有活動。然后，當笑點到來時，一個嶄新的區(qū)域出現(xiàn)了-眶前額葉皮層。這一藏在眼眶后面的大腦區(qū)域與評估信息有關。

第9自然段

Making a rapid emotional assessment of the events of the moment is an extremely demanding job for the brain, animal or human. Energy and arousal levels may need to be retuned in the blink of an eye. These abrupt changes will produce either positive or negative feelings. The orbital cortex, the region that becomes active in Goel’s experiment, seems the best candidate for the site that feeds such feelings into higher-level thought processes, with its close connections to the brain’s sub-cortical arousal apparatus and centres of metabolic control.

對當下事件進行快速的情感評估對于動物或人類的大腦來說都是一項極為艱巨的工作。眨眼間可能需要重新調整精力和興奮水平。這些突然的變化將產生積極或消極的感覺。軌道皮層，Goel實驗中活躍的區(qū)域，似乎是將這種感覺饋入高級思維過程的最佳人選，它與大腦皮層下的興奮裝置和代謝控制中心緊密相連。

第10自然段

All warm-blooded animals make constant tiny adjustments in arousal in response to external events, but humans, who have developed a much more complicated internal life as a result of language, respond emotionally not only to their surroundings, but to their own thoughts. Whenever a sought-for answer snaps into place, there is a shudder of pleased recognition. Creative discovery being pleasurable, humans have learned to find ways of milking this natural response. The fact that jokes tap into our general evaluative machinery explains why the line between funny and disgusting, or funny and frightening, can be so fine. Whether a joke gives pleasure or pain depends on a person’s outlook.

所有溫血動物都會對外界事件做出不斷的微小調整，但是由于語言的發(fā)展，大腦內部活動變得更加復雜的人類對周圍環(huán)境和自己的思想都會產生情感上的反應。每當找到一直以來所尋求的答案時，人們就會感到欣喜若狂。創(chuàng)造性的發(fā)現(xiàn)是令人愉悅的，人類已經(jīng)學會產生這種自然反應的方法。笑話進入了我們的普遍評估機制，這一事實解釋了為什么可笑與令人厭惡或令人恐懼之間存在完好的分界線。開玩笑給人帶來快樂還是痛苦取決于一個人的觀念。

第11自然段

Humour may be a luxury, but the mechanism behind it is no evolutionary accident. As Peter Derks, a psychologist at William and Mary College in Virginia, says: ‘I like to think of humour as the distorted mirror of the mind. It’s creative, perceptual, analytical and lingual. If we can figure out how the mind processes humour, then we’ll have a pretty good handle on how it works in general.’

幽默也許是一種奢侈品，但其背后的機制絕非偶然。正如弗吉尼亞州瑪麗學院的心理學家Peter Derks所說的那樣，“我喜歡把幽默當作心靈扭曲的鏡子。它具有創(chuàng)造力，感知力，分析能力和語言能力。如果我們能弄清大腦如何處理幽默，那么我們將對它的總體運作方式有一個很好的把握?！?/p>

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