2016.6.26英语阅读The dark side of friendship
The dark side of friendship
友谊的黑暗面
As a rule, friendship is considered an unalloyed good, one of life’s happy-happies, like flowers and fresh fruit.
一般来说，人们将友谊视作纯粹的善，视作人生一乐，就像花朵和新鲜水果一般。
Yet researchers who explore the deep nature of friendship admit the bond can have its thorns, bruise spots and pesticide traces.
但是，探索友谊深层本质的研究人员承认，友谊关系可能是布满荆棘，伤痕累累，同时还留有人为修葺的痕迹。
“A friendship is always a little bit of a conspiracy,” said Alexander Nehamas, a professor of philosophy at Princeton. "We two are here, they are over there, and we're going to do our thing whether they want us to or not."
“一段友谊总是有点像一场密谋。”普林斯顿大学的哲学教授 Alexander Nehamas 说道，“我们两人坐这儿，其他人坐那儿，我们自顾自做着我们的事，不管他们是否同意。”
And if they try to join us, we can say, no, sorry, that seat is taken. We’re saving it for a friend.
如果他们想加入我们，我们就能说，不行，真抱歉，这位子有人了。它是我们帮朋友留着的。
Who may not return the favor. Abdullah Almaatouq of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues recently showed that people are poor judges of who their friends are.
但朋友并不总会礼尚往来。供职于麻省理工的 Abdullah Almaatouq 和他的同事最近在研究中发现，人们不擅长判断谁是自己的朋友。
When the researchers asked 84 college students to identify which of their classmates qualified as friends, the researchers found that in half the cases, those labeled friends failed to reciprocate the designation.
当研究者请 84 位大学生指出同学中能够被划分为朋友的人时，研究者发现，在一半的案例中，被标识为朋友的人并没有给予相同的回报，将对方也划为朋友。
Friendships are also surprisingly fragile. Based on a detailed survey of 540 participants, researchers at Oxford University determined that people had a falling out with a member of their social circle about once every 7.2 months, and that a year later 40 percent of those ruptures remained unhealed.
此外，友谊还出人意料的脆弱。牛津大学一项周密的研究调查了 540 位受试者，研究表明，大约每 7.2 个月，人们就会与社交圈中的一位成员发生争吵，一年之后，这些破裂的友谊关系中有 40%都仍然没有修复。
Sure, love may mean never having to say you’re sorry. But friendship is a stricter taskmaster, and sorry may not be enough.
当然，爱情也许意味着你无需道歉。但友谊则像是一个严格得多的监工，要想维持一段朋友关系，光说抱歉或许是完全不够的。
————— 文章来源 / 纽约时报
重点词汇
side/saɪd/
n. 边；面
e.g.
Every coin has two sides.
The other side of the coin is that...
unalloyed/ˌʌnəˈlɔɪd/
adj. （金属）非合金的；（情感）纯粹的
nature/ˈneɪtʃər/
n. 大自然；本性，天性
e.g.
in nature
The nature of a promise is that it stays immune to changes.
conspiracy/kənˈspɪrəsi/
n. 阴谋，密谋
qualify/ˈkwɑːlɪfaɪ/
v. （使）有资格被划为
e.g.
He qualifies as a genuine basketball player.
reciprocate/rɪˈsɪprəkeɪt/
v. 互相给予，互换；回报
designation/ˌdezɪɡˈneɪʃn/
n. 指派，选定
fragile/ˈfrædʒl/
adj. 易碎的，易损坏的
rupture/ˈrʌptʃər/
n. （关系）破裂，决裂
happy-happy
好事，开心事
e.g.
goody-goody
save it
行了，住口
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