每日英中翻译，来自每日翻译

· 英译中

原文：

      In spite of the title, this article will really be on how not to grow old, which, at my time of life, is a much more important subject. My first advice would be to choose your ancestors carefully. Although both my parents died young, I have done well in this respect as regards my other ancestors. My maternal grandfather, it is true, was cut off in the flower of his youth at the age of sixty-seven, but my other three grandparents all lived to be over eighty. Of remote ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off. A great-grandmother of mine, who was a friend of Gibbon, lived to the age of ninety-two, and to her last day remained a terror to all her descendants. My maternal grandmother, after having nine children who survived, one who died in infancy, and many miscarriages, as soon as she became a widow devoted herself to women's higher education. She was one of the founders of Girton College, and worked hard at opening the medical profession to women. She used to relate how she met in Italy an elderly gentleman who was looking very sad. She inquired the cause of his melancholy and he said that he had just parted from his two grandchildren. “Good gracious,” she exclaimed, “I have seventy-two grandchildren, and if I were sad each time I parted from one of them, I should have a dismal existence!” “Madre snaturale,” he replied. But speaking as one of the seventy-two, I prefer her recipe. After the age of eighty she found she had some difficulty in getting to sleep, so she habitually spent the hours from midnight to 3 a.m. in reading popular science. I do not believe that she ever had time to notice that she was growing old. This, I think, is the proper recipe for remaining young. If you have wide and keen interests and activities in which you can still be effective, you will have no reason to think about the merely statistical fact of the number of years you have already lived, still less of the probable brevity of your future.

译文：

        尽管起了这样一个标题，但本文真正想说的是如何可以不老，在我这个年纪，这个话题更是重要得多。我的第一个建议是谨慎地选择你的先辈。我的父母很早就去世了，但我的其他祖辈在这方面做得不错。我的外祖父在67岁时被夺去了“年轻”的生命，而我的外祖母、祖父、祖母都活了80多岁。再往远一点说，我的先辈们，只有一位活得不长，而且是死于一种现在很罕见的病——被砍头。我的一位曾祖母，她是吉本（英国历史学家）的朋友，活了九十二岁，直到临终都使后辈们望而生畏。我的外祖母有九个孩子，其中一个出生不久就夭折了，还经历过多次流产。她成为寡妇后就投身于女性高等教育。她是吉尔顿学院的创始人之一，曾努力为女性争取开放医学专业。她说她在意大利遇到一位看起来很悲伤的老先生。她问他悲伤的原因，他说因为他刚和两个孙子分开。“天哪，”我外祖母感叹，“我有72个孙子孙女，如果每次和其中一个分开我就伤心，那我的生活该有多糟糕！”听了这话，老先生说：“真是个奇怪的母亲（意大利语）。”作为曾祖母72个后辈中的一个，我很赞成她的处事态度。80岁后，她开始入睡困难，所以她习惯在午夜到凌晨三点间阅读科普读物。我敢说，她从来没时间去注意自己是不是在变老。我认为，这就是保持年轻的正确方法。如果你有广泛和强烈的兴趣爱好，还能参加一些活动，那就没理由去想你已经活了多少年，这只是个数字，更没理由去想未来剩下的日子是否有限。