VOA慢速英语:Baloney or Blarney?

Baloney is a kind of sausage that many Americans eat often. The word also has another meaning in English. It is used to describe something – usually something someone says – that is false or wrong or foolish.
熏肠是美国人经常食用的一种香肠。在英语中，这个词语还有其他的含义。它常常被拿来形容某些事物——错误的事或愚蠢的人。

Baloney sausage comes from the name of the Italian city, Bologna. The city is famous for its sausage, a mixture of smoked, spiced meat from cows and pigs. But, boloney sausage does not taste the same as beef or pork alone.
熏肠（Baloney）这个名字源于一座意大利城市Bologna。这座城市因香肠而闻名，这种香肠是由牛肉和猪肉混合、经过熏制、并用香料调味而成的。但是，这种熏肠与一般的牛肉或猪肉香肠味道迥异。

Some language experts think this different taste is responsible for the birth of the expression baloney. Baloney is an idea or statement that is nothing like the truth, in the same way that baloney sausage tastes nothing like the meat that is used to make it.
一些语言专家认为，是其独特的口味导致了baloney这个词语的诞生。baloney用来描述与事实相悖的事物，同样，boloney熏肠肉质的味道完全不同于一般香肠的肉质，这两者有异曲同工之妙。

Baloney is a word often used by politicians to describe the ideas of their opponents.
baloney是政客们经常用来描述其政敌观点的一个词。

The expression has been used for years. A former governor of New York state, Alfred Smith, criticized some claims by President Franklin Roosevelt about the successes of the Roosevelt administration. Smith said, “No matter how thin you slice it, it is still baloney.”
这种表达方式已经沿用了很多年。50年前，纽约州的一位州长阿尔佛雷德•史密斯，批评总统佛兰克林•罗斯福有关罗斯福政府施政成功的讲话。史密斯说：“不管你切得多么薄，熏肠还是熏肠。”（言下之意：不管你如何狡辩，施政失败，事实就是如此。）

A similar word has almost the same meaning as baloney. It even sounds almost the same. The word is blarney. It began in Ireland about sixteen hundred.
有一个词的意思和baloney(一派胡言)十分相近，甚至连读音都极其相似。这个词就是Blarney(胡扯)。这个词大约起源于1600年的爱尔兰。

The lord of Blarney castle, near Cork, agreed to surrender the castle to British troops. But he kept making excuses for postponing the surrender. And, he made them sound like very good excuses, “this is just more of the same blarney.”
布拉尼城堡位于科克郡（爱尔兰南部城市，全国第二大城市）附近，该城堡的统治者同意向英国大不列颠军队交付城堡，但是他却编造各种借口拖延交付时间，而且，他编造的理由貌似还很充分，“这不过是些大同小异的奉承话。”

The Irish castle now is famous for its Blarney stone. Kissing the stone is thought to give a person special powers of speech. One who has kissed the Blarney stone, so the story goes, can speak words of praise so smoothly and sweetly that you believe them, even when you know they are false.
现在，这个爱尔兰城堡以布拉尼石（也称为巧言石）闻名于世。（人们认为，）亲吻石头能够赋予人特殊的言语能力。有个故事讲到：亲吻布拉尼石的人能够将溢美之词讲得十分流畅甜蜜，以至于就算你知道这些话是假的，你也不由得会相信。

A former Roman Catholic bishop of New York City, Fulton Sheen, once explained, “Baloney is praise so thick it cannot be true. And blarney is praise so thin we like it.”
一位纽约前罗马天主教的主教——富尔顿•谢恩曾经解释道：“吹嘘（baloney）赞美有余，实在不足，难以成真；奉承（blarney）赞美适度，虚实相应，使人喜欢。”

Another expression is pulling the wool over someone’s eyes. It means to make someone believe something that is not true. The expression goes back to the days when men wore false hair, or wigs, similar to those worn by judges today in British courts.
另一个习语是“pulling the wool over someone's eyes”（蒙骗某人）。它的意思是使人相信虚假的事情。这个习语可以追溯到人们戴假发的年代，这些假发类似于现在英国法庭上法官的头饰装扮。

The word wool was a popular joking word for hair. If you pulled a man’s wig over his eyes, he could not see what was happening. Today, when you pull the wool over someone’s eyes, he cannot see the truth.
人们谈到头发时经常用一个词来开玩笑，这就是wool。如果你把一个人的假发扯到他的眼睛前，那他就看不见所发生的一切。今天，如果你蒙骗了一个人，那他就分不清事实真相了。

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