又中又英—Until Hell Freezes over

作者：Alice的学习笔记

原文

Some religions, particularly the Christian religion which follows the Bible, believe there is a Heaven and Hell. At the end of the world, God will decide who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell, including those who have already died. Heaven is where good people will go and Hell is where bad people go to suffer. Many people think of Hell as a place of intense fire. I thought about Heaven and Hell last week after watching the TV news about the funeral of Daunte Wright. He was a 20-year-old African American shotdead by a policewoman during a traffic stop. The policewoman said she had intended to use her Taser but mistakenly used her gun instead.

A Taser is a weapon thatdoes not kill but gives people a small electric shock that makes them unable tomove for a while. There have been several recent cases of police officers shooting dead African Americans. It has become a big racial issue in the US. During the funeral, a civil rights leader angrily said if African Americans don’t fight for their children, no one else will. He said “We have to fight for our children until hell freezes over”. If you say you will do something “until hell freezes over” it means you will do it forever because it is almost impossible to do.

The expression is first believed to have appeared in print in 1919 when the American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald used it. The reason why “until hell freezes over” means doing something forever or doing something that is impossible to do is because Hell can never freeze. But Hell can never freeze only if you believe there is a Hell and that it is a place of intense fire. Some people believe Hell is a very cold place where God sends people to suffer although there are some references in the Bible of Hell being like a furnace, which means a container heated to a very high temperature to melt things like metal.

单词、短语

• intense
  强烈的;剧烈的;极度的。
     The battle for third place was intense...
     第三名的争夺紧张激烈。
     The fast-food business is intensely competitive.
     快餐业竞争非常激烈。

• Taser
  电击枪(发射电脉冲,使人暂时不能动弹)。

• racial
  种族的；种族间的；人种的。

拓展：
种族主义，racism；持种族偏见的；种族主义的，racist。

• civil
  国民的，国内的，政府的。Civil War——内战，在美国也叫独立战争，英文解释为：a war between opposing groups within a country。

   拓展：
   civil形容人的时候，可以表示彬彬有礼的，客气的。英文解释为：polite in a formal way, especially when you do not feel very friendly towards someone。
      When you’ve stopped arguing, you might be ableto have a civil conversation.
      当你停止争辩，你也许可以客气的交谈。
      He was most uncivil to your father - called him an old fool.
      *他对你父亲极其无礼——称他为老傻瓜。 *

• until hell freezes over
  永不，绝不可能。英文解释为：when hell freezes over，used to say that something will never happen.但是这个用法比较老派，现在在媒体上见的很少。

• furnace
  熔炉，火炉，或者用来形容火炉般的地方，极闷热的地方。英文解释为：If you say that a place is a furnace, you mean that it is very hot there.
     How can we walk? It's a furnace out there.
     我们怎么能走路呢？外面跟火炉似的。

翻译

一些宗教，尤其是信奉《圣经》的基督教，相信有天堂和地狱。在世界末了之时，神会裁决谁上天堂，谁下地狱，包括那些已死之人。天堂是好人会去的地方，地狱是坏人会去受苦的地方。许多人认为地狱是个燃烧着熊熊烈火之处。上星期，当我看到电视新闻报道丹特‧莱特的丧礼时，就想到了天堂与地狱。他是一个二十岁的非裔美国人，在一次交通截查期间被一名女警员枪杀。那名女警说她本想用她的泰瑟（Taser），却错误拔了手枪射击。

A Taser就是电击枪，会发出少量电流，令被攻击的人在短时间内不能郁动，但并不致命。近期有好几宗警员枪杀非裔美国人的案件，演变成美国很大的种族议题。在丧礼上，一名民权领袖愤怒地说，若非裔美国人不为自己的子女抗争，没有其他人会为他们争取的了。他说：「我们必须为我们的子女抗争，直至地狱结冰为止（until hell freezes over）。」若你说你会做某事“until hell freezes over”，意即你会永远做这件事，直到天荒地老，因为那是近乎不可能办到的事。

人们相信这个习语首先见刊于一九一九年，由美国小说家史考特‧费兹杰罗所用。“Until hell freezes over”解作永远持续地做某事，或做一样不可能达成的事，是因为地狱永不可能结冰。但唯有你相信有地狱，而且那是烧着熊熊烈火的地方，那地狱才会永不结冰。一些人相信，地狱是个非常寒冷的地方，神会将人送到那里受苦，即使《圣经》里有些篇章提及地狱时，会将之形容为 furnace，就是用非常高的温度来铸熔金属的熔炉或火窑。

原文作者：Michael Chugani 褚簡寧
中文翻译：七刻

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