很多雅思考生為了提高雅思閱讀分數，做了很多題目，但成效不大，這時可以想想是不是備考書籍選擇不當造成，建議考生們多多看劍橋雅思真題。上海新航道雅思小編第一時間給大家帶來了劍5Test2雅思閱讀譯文Passage2-什么這么好笑?。希望可以幫助廣大雅思考生輕松備考雅思。

  雅思劍5Test2閱讀譯文Passage2-什么這么好笑?

  What’s so funny?

  John McCrone reviews recent research on humor

  什么這么好笑?

  ---John McCrone對近期幽默研究的回顧

  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. ’

  笑話從耳機中傳出來：“狗哪一邊的毛最多?左邊。”不對，不好笑，再猜。“狗哪一邊毛最多?外邊。”哈!這句話的關鍵詞語有些荒唐，卻很合適，令人宛爾，甚至捧腹大笑。笑一直讓人類感到神秘，或許笑沒有什么意義。作家Arthur Koestler稱笑為奢侈的反射作用，“笑的獨特之處就在于它沒有明顯的生物學目的。”

  Theories about humour have an ancient pedigree. Plato expressed the idea that humor 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 humor 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.

  幽默理論有著悠久的歷史。柏拉圖認為幽默就是一種因感到比別人優越而體會到的快樂的感覺。康德和弗洛伊德認為講笑話則要營造一種精神上的緊張氣氛，最后抖開笑話的包袱，讓其滑稽有趣之處化解這種緊張氣氛。但是大多數當代幽默理論家最終都采納了亞里士多德的觀點：笑話的基礎就是一種對不和諧情況的反應或解釋，這種情況下笑話的關鍵語句或者沒有什么特殊意義，或者貌似荒唐卻聰明地隱含了第二層含義。

  Graeme Ritchie, a computational linguist in Edinburgh, studies the linguistic structure of jokes in order to understand not only humor 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.

  愛丁堡的計算語言學家Graeme Ritchie在研究笑話的語言結構，不僅為了理解幽默，同時也為了了解機器的語言理解能力及推理能力他說，盡管笑話沒有固定的模式，但是許多笑話都是圍繞某個出其不意的概念轉換展開的。喜劇演員會描述一個情景，然后給出一個出人意料卻又恰如其分的解釋。

  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, humor is just a form of creative insight, a sudden leap to a new perspective.

  所以，即使笑話的關鍵語句聽起來有些荒唐，聽眾卻可以意識到其中有一個機靈恰當的語義，而心頭掠過的“對呀”這一恍然大悟的感嘆就是令我們發笑的信號。從這個角度看來，幽默就是一種創造性的洞察力，一種向新視角的突越。

  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.

  但是還有另外一種笑，就是社會交往中緩解緊張局面的笑。理解這種笑也是很重要的。在許多幼小的哺乳動物的發育當中，游戲都是關鍵的一部分。老鼠會在廝打游玩時發出超聲波似的尖叫聲，防止廝打變成真的爭斗。黑猩猩有一種游戲表情，把嘴張得大大的，同時發出“啊、啊”的喘息聲。對于人類來說，這些信號都已轉化成為了微笑和大笑。研究人員認為，激發這種本能的游戲信號或緩解緊張局面信號的因素不是笑話等認知活動，而是社會場景。人們玩旋轉木馬或被別人逗癢，開始玩鬧時，無論是否感到好笑都會發出笑聲。

  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.

  無論是社交場合中的笑還是認知活動中的笑，都是我們大腦中的同一表達機制在起作用。情感和運動神經網絡令人微笑，并發出笑聲。但是，如果認知活動中的笑是更多元的思維過程的產物的話，那么這種笑應當源干更廣泛的大腦活動。

  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“單事件”官能磁共振成像這一新技術對幽默進行調查研究，磁共振成像掃描儀使用磁場和無線電波跟蹤伴隨著心理活動的充氧血液中發生的變化。直到最近，這種掃描議都還需要數分鐘的時間才能完成掃描，所以無法用于跟蹤理解笑話這樣迅速的思維過程。而新的進展使所有的退理和解決問題活動都能在半秒鐘就快速成像。

  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感到弄清了大腦內部的活動并不能完美地解決笑話的理解問題，他卻發現理解笑話需要思維的大轉換。他的掃描儀顯示聽笑話的人在笑話開始時前額腦皮層會發亮，尤其是對 解決問題起關鍵作用的右前額會發亮。但是在頭部側面的顳葉也會有活動，表明在試圖激發已有的知識，大腦其他許多區域也有活動。然后，當包揪抖開時，一個新的區域——前額眼眶腦皮層活躍起來。這個蜷縮在眼眶后邊的大腦區域是與處理信息相聯系的。

  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.

  無論人腦還是動物的大腦，迅速對眼前的事件作出情感上的判斷都是一件非常艱巨的任務。能量和受激反應的程度都要在一眨眼的功夫作出調整。這些突然的改變產生的感覺既有積極的又有消極的。在Goel實驗中變得活躍的眼眶腦皮層區域由于與大腦的次腦皮層喚激結構和新陳代謝控制中樞有著密切的聯系，似乎最有可能是將這些感覺轉入更高一層的思維過程的區域。

  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.

  所有的溫血動物對外界變化的刺激都在不斷地作出細微的調整，但人類由于擁有語言而有著更為復雜的內心活動，所以人類不僅會對周圍的環境產生感情上的反應，而且會對自身的思維產生感情上的反應。一旦某一苦苦尋找的答案出現了，人就會突然產生一種快樂的認可感。由于創造性的發現是令人愉悅的，人類學會了尋找獵取這種自然反應的途徑。笑話可以進人我們的一般評估機制，這就說明有趣與惡心，或者有趣與恐怖之間的界限是十分微妙的。一個笑話給人帶來的是快樂還是痛苦取決于一個人的價值觀。

  Humor 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 humor, then we’ll have a pretty good handle on how it works in general.’

  幽默可能算是一種奢侈品，但其背后的機制卻不是進化過程中的偶然事件。正如弗吉尼亞州威廉—瑪麗學院的心理學家Peter Derks所說：“我樂意將幽默想像成是思維的歪曲鏡，幽默是創造性的，感性的、與分析和語言有關的。如果我們能夠找出思維是如何處理幽默的，我們就能從整體上處理好其運作機制。”

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