散文佳作108篇内的文章，英译汉练习。
Love is Not Like Merchandise — Sydney J.Harris
A reader in Florida, apparently bruised by some personal experience, writes in to complain, “If I steal a nickel’s worth of merchandise, I am a thief and punished; but if I steal the love of another’s wife, I am free.”
一位佛罗里达的读者，似乎个人遭受到了伤害，写信向我抱怨道：“如果我偷了价值5美分的商品，我就是小偷，应该被惩罚。而如果我偷了某人妻子的心，我可以不受任何惩罚。”
This is a prevalent misconception in many people’s minds—that love, like merchandise, can be “stolen”. Numerous states, in fact, have enacted laws allowing damages for “alienation of affections”.
这是在很多人心中存在的一种错误的观点，认为爱情就像商品，可以被“偷走”。事实上，许多州已经实施了容忍使他人出轨这样的行为的法律允许因爱人出轨而得到赔偿金的法律。。
But love is not a commodity; the real thing cannot be bought, sold, traded or stolen. It is an act of the will, a turning of the emotions, a change in the climate of the personality.
但爱情不是商品，它是不可以买卖、交易或偷走的真实存在的东西。爱情是一种意识活动，情感的转向，个人性格的改变。
When a husband or wife is “stolen” by another person, that husband or wife was already ripe for the stealing, was already predisposed toward a new partner. The “love bandit” was only taking what was waiting to be taken, what wanted to be taken.
当某位丈夫或妻子被另一个人偷走时，这位丈夫或妻子其实早已是可以让人摘走的成熟了的“果实”，早已想换一个伴侣了。爱情强盗们只是拿走了等待被拿走的东西，主动想要被拿走的东西。
We tend to treat persons like goods. We even speak of the children “belonging” to their parents. But nobody “belongs” to anyone else. Each person belongs to himself, and to God. Children are entrusted to their parents, and if their parents do not treat them properly, the state has a right to remove them from their parents’ trusteeship.
我们容易把人当作商品来对待。我们甚至会说孩子属于他们的父母。但没有人属于其它任何人。每个人属于他自己，属于上帝。孩子应该得到父母的照顾，而如果他们的父母没有照顾好他们，国家有权剥夺父母的监护权。
Most of us, when young, had the experience of a sweetheart being taken from us by somebody more attractive and more appealing. At the time, we may have resented this intruder—but as we grew older, we recognized that the sweetheart had never been ours to begin with. It was not the intruder that “caused” the break, but the lack of a real relationship.
我们中的大多数人年轻时都经历过恋人喜欢上被另一个比我们更加有魅力的人夺去的事情。这时，我们会憎恶这位第三者。但当我们逐渐成熟，我们认识到，我们喜欢的人一开始就不属于我们。不是第三者造成的分手，而是因为没有真正的感情。
On the surface, many marriages seem to break up because of a “third party”. This is, however, a psychological illusion. The other woman or the other man merely serves as a pretext for dissolving a marriage that had already lost its essential integrity.
表面上，许多婚姻因为第三方的介入而破裂。这其实是一种心理的错觉。另一个女人或男人，只是早已不再彼此忠诚的婚姻破灭的借口。
Nothing is more futile and more self-defeating than the bitterness of spurned love, the vengeful feeling that someone else has “come between” oneself and a beloved. This is always a distortion of reality, for people are not the captives or victims of others—they are free agents, working out their own destinies for good or for ill.
爱情被践踏后，心中凄苦，愤恨那个来到自己和爱人中间的人。但这其实是没有意义的。这一直是一种对现实的扭曲。人不是其它人的俘虏或受害者，他们是自由的个体，决定自己的命运，不管是好还是坏。
But the rejected lover or mate cannot afford to believe that his beloved has freely turned away from him and so he ascribes sinister or magical properties to the interloper. He calls him a hypnotist or a thief or a home-breaker. In the vast majority of cases, however, when a home is broken, the breaking has begun long before any “third party” has appeared on the scene.
但被抛弃了的恋人或伴侣不能相信是他喜欢的人主动选择离开他。因此他把一切都归咎于第三者。他称第三者为催眠师，小偷或拆散家庭的人。但是大多数关系破裂了的家庭，在第三方介入之前，其实就已经出现了裂痕。