久久亚洲国产成人影院-久久亚洲国产的中文-久久亚洲国产高清-久久亚洲国产精品-亚洲图片偷拍自拍-亚洲图色视频

English 中文網 漫畫網 愛新聞iNews 翻譯論壇
中國網站品牌欄目(頻道)
當前位置: Language Tips> 譯通四海> Columnist 專欄作家> Zhang Xin

Take the bull by the horns

[ 2010-05-21 12:52]     字號 [] [] []  
免費訂閱30天China Daily雙語新聞手機報:移動用戶編輯短信CD至106580009009

Take the bull by the hornsReader question: In this sentence - She took the bull by the horns and was very aggressive - what does “take the bull by the horns” mean?

My comments:

Obviously it means she was very aggressive. That much is certain.

If you have ever watched bullfighting, one of the most popular as well as controversial pastimes in Spain, you’ll see that bullfighters, or matadors, never take bulls by the horns.

That says a lot about the sport, I am afraid, in which matadors are usually honored as brave and courageous. They’re nothing of the kind.

Just dirty, tricky and mean, if you see the bloody sport from the view of the bulls.

You see, a matador uses a piece of red cloth to trick the animal into lunging forward at the piece of red and as the animal passes the matador by, the latter pulls out a sward-like thin blade and knifes the raging bull on top of the back, aiming the blade at the heart and lungs underneath.

Again and again.

Matadors never, ever, take the bull by the horns. Dare not.

Obviously, I’m not suggesting that they should (take the bull by the horns). I’m just saying conventional ideas often rest on questionable premises. Bullfighting is simply not a fair sport. And therefore it would be very difficult for unbiased third parties, say, someone flying over Earth from the Mars, to accept that matadors are brave and courageous as we humans sometimes do accept them as such. In all likelihood, those from the Mars would probably consider the bulls to be braver and more courageous, foolhardy too to be sure, than any of the two legged earthlings involved.

This said, let’s steer clear of the bloody Spanish sport for the moment and return to the term in question – take the bull by the horns.

I’m sure it’s clear to you by now what it means for one to take the bull by the horns.

Yes, if you take the bull by the horns, you are willing to tackle a problem head-on, directly and not via round-about routes.

It takes courage to do that, of course, and hence if you use this term on someone, it might suggest that you admire them for their courage.

Here are media examples:

1. Presidential politics ran smack into the U.S. financial crisis yesterday. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Republican candidate John McCain, seeking to portray himself as a leader on an issue that polls show has been working against him, said he'll suspend his campaign and return to Washington to join talks over the Bush administration's proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. He also said he wouldn’t take part in tomorrow’s scheduled debate with Democrat Barack Obama unless the crisis is resolved.

Obama, saying that a president must be able to handle “more than one thing at a time,” said he would continue to campaign. He said the debate should go on as planned to provide Americans a forum to evaluate how each candidate would handle the calamity that has gripped Wall Street and Washington.

McCain’s thrust and Obama’s parry added to the uncertainty of the campaign and carried risk for both candidates.

“This is a fascinating gambit, in an already fascinating election,” said Sidney Milkis, a University of Virginia political science professor. “One could say that McCain’s ‘putting country first’ would be more impressive if he were ahead, instead of behind, as many recent polls suggest.”

McCain drew support from Republicans, with Senator Mel Martinez of Florida saying he “took the bull by the horns and exercised leadership” by calling for the campaign’s suspension. Lawmakers know “the financial crisis is huge, but can't come together,” to complete legislation, he said.

- McCain, Obama Spar Over Crisis as First Debate May Be Casualty, Bloomberg.com, September 25, 2008.

2. Picasso spent almost half his life in exile in France after the civil war, during which time the Republic made him director in absentia of the Prado museum. He refused to return to Spain while Franco was alive. And, because he was a member of the French Communist party, he was never allowed to visit America.

But despite Paris’s decline during the 1950s and New York’s ascendance as the centre of the art world, Picasso never much cared that he couldn’t go there. Along with many other French intellectuals and artists, Picasso joined the Communist party in 1944 and remained a member for life. He channelled money into the party and into communist newspapers. He gave a million francs to striking miners. He made works, especially drawings, for communist-inspired peace conferences and innumerable other causes. He was, surprisingly – especially for a Spaniard of his generation – an anti-racist.

Picasso’s politics were never in doubt, though this side of him is often pushed aside for a view of the artist as a protean genius and priapic monster. He was a man of his time, shaped by his upbringing, ambition and talent (it possessed him as much as he possessed it), as well as by the events he lived through. Guernica, commemorating the destruction of the ancient capital of the Basque homeland in 1937 by German and Italian bombers, and painted the same year, remains Picasso’s best-known declaration of revulsion to fascism; but themes of war and suffering were a constant in his work. Guernica's blacks, whites and greys, as stark as newsreel footage and front-page news, were continued in works such as the less-than-successful 1951 Massacre in Korea, or the great Charnel House, now in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The current exhibition opens with Charnel House, which would alone be worth a visit to Liverpool; but Picasso’s small still lifes of the 1940s, 50s and 60s carry a similar symbolic weight, even if their meaning is more furtively delivered. They are filled with disquiet.

“Painting is not made to decorate houses,” the artist wrote in 1943. “It is an instrument of offensive and defensive war against the enemy.” Picasso toiled over Charnel House slowly, between 1944 and 1945, despite the fact that the painting appears almost cursory and unfinished. It is a deceptively complex and rich painting, with an amazing tension between the subject and the language used to depict it – the slaughtered family heaped dead under a kitchen table, their bodies intertwined. The more you stare at it, the more you get entwined, too. The painting was initially inspired by documentary footage showing the assassination of a family during the civil war; the ghost of Goya’s Disasters of War hovers in its mangled stillness. This is nature morte as aftermath. An arm reaches upward, stiffened in death, the hand bloated and seamed like a baseball mitt, clutching at nothing.

As well as slaughters and still lifes, the exhibition is filled with posters, scarves, copies of telegrams from Fidel Castro and commendations from the Russian politburo. Curator Lynda Morris has spent years in the archives, gathering material. There are photographs of Picasso listening intently to speeches at a peace conference in Poland; Picasso with Soviet officials; Picasso staring at a photograph of Stalin.

All this is fascinating stuff, and details Picasso’s commitment and generosity. He handed over suitcases of cash. He protested the death by electric chair of the Rosenbergs, executed for handing over US atomic bomb secrets to the Russians. And he made his only trip to the UK to attend a peace conference in Sheffield in 1950; upon arrival at Victoria station, he was detained by immigration officials for 12 hours.

...

Picasso: Peace and Freedom covers its subject fitfully, and is dependent on what loans were available. Later in the show, we come to quieter images: Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’Herbe redone cartoonishly, and very late paintings of musketeers, the artist imagining himself morphing into Frans Hals, and a horny old whiskered Rembrandt. These come as something of an aside. Asked about his political views in 1968, the artist remarked that if he wanted to respond to such questions he would change his profession and become a politician. “But this, of course, is impossible,” he said. Art exists in the social world, and is political whether we want it to be or not. Picasso took the bull by the horns. His art stands up for his own individual creative freedom, but it's one that didn’t give him much peace.

- Picasso: War, peace and a life of extremes, Guardian.co.uk, May 19, 2010.

本文僅代表作者本人觀點,與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題,尊重他人,禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

我要看更多專欄文章

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

相關閱讀:

Catch phrase

Sore loser

Never look a gift horse in the mouth

Turf war

(作者張欣 中國日報網英語點津 編輯陳丹妮)

 
中國日報網英語點津版權說明:凡注明來源為“中國日報網英語點津:XXX(署名)”的原創作品,除與中國日報網簽署英語點津內容授權協議的網站外,其他任何網站或單位未經允許不得非法盜鏈、轉載和使用,違者必究。如需使用,請與010-84883631聯系;凡本網注明“來源:XXX(非英語點津)”的作品,均轉載自其它媒體,目的在于傳播更多信息,其他媒體如需轉載,請與稿件來源方聯系,如產生任何問題與本網無關;本網所發布的歌曲、電影片段,版權歸原作者所有,僅供學習與研究,如果侵權,請提供版權證明,以便盡快刪除。
 

關注和訂閱

人氣排行

翻譯服務

中國日報網翻譯工作室

我們提供:媒體、文化、財經法律等專業領域的中英互譯服務
電話:010-84883468
郵件:translate@chinadaily.com.cn
 
 
主站蜘蛛池模板: 91精品视频播放 | 成人免费一区二区三区视频软件 | 亚洲天堂小视频 | 日韩精品免费一级视频 | 欧美性巨大欧美 | 久香草视频在线观看免费 | 久久精品国产99久久久 | 亚洲巨乳自拍在线视频 | avtt天堂网 手机资源 | 亚洲日本在线观看网址 | 久久久久久久国产免费看 | 米奇精品一区二区三区在线观看 | 日本 国产 欧美 | 成人做爰视频www在线观看 | 德国女人一级毛片免费 | 亚洲欧美一区二区久久 | 男人一进一出桶女人视频 | 毛片在线视频观看 | 5级做人爱c视版免费视频 | 毛毛片在线 | 一区精品麻豆经典 | 噜噜噜狠狠夜夜躁精品 | 亚洲午夜国产精品 | 男女免费视频 | 欧美午夜视频一区二区 | 一级做a爰性色毛片 | 日本一级大黄毛片免费基地 | 欧美激情一级欧美精品 | 精品国产午夜久久久久九九 | 亚洲欧美日韩在线不卡中文 | 在线观看 a国v | 真实国产精品视频国产网 | 狠狠色丁香久久综合网 | 日本精品高清一区二区2021 | 国产激爽大片在线播放 | 免费一级欧美大片在线观看 | 香港一级纯黄大片 | 美国一级做a一级视频 | 亚洲 中文 欧美 日韩 在线人 | 久久精品精品 | 亚洲三级黄色 |