2010年9月高级口译听力Passage3、4原文

P3
Man: When most couples married, they may discuss some things in advance like how many children they want or where they want to live. But most of the day-to-day details or problems of married life work out after marriage. Not so with Steven Karen Parsons who have a 15-page prenuptial agreement that states the rules they must follow in almost every aspect of their married life. Today, Karen is here with us.
Man: Karen, first I’d like to ask you why you decided to write this agreement. You’ve both been married before. Am I right?
Woman: Yes, I’ve been married twice and Steve was married once before. So we have some experience about what goes wrong in a marriage.
Man: And that’s why you wrote this agreement.
Woman: Yes, we found that many problems happen when a person has different expectations from his or her spouse. We want to talk about everything openly and honestly before we start living together. Also, we both know how important it is to respect each other’s quotes. We’re all bothered by things that seems small to someone else, like it used to really bother me when my ex-husband let his dirty clothes on the floor. So we put that in the agreement: dirty clothing must be put in a laundry bag. Now Steve knows what my expectations are.

Man: I’m sure that some people hearing this report will think this contract isn’t very romantic.
Woman: Well, we disagree. We think it’s very romantic. Disagreement shows that we set down and talked and really try to understand the other person. A lot of problems occur in a marriage because people don’t talk about what they want. That’s right. When we disagree about something, we work out solution. That’s good for both of us. I’d much rather do that than get some romantic gifts like flowers or candy.

Man: Some of these rules sound like, well, a business agreement. Many of your rules concern money in some way, even the rules about having children.

Woman: In our experience, disagreements about money can cause a lot of problems, so we talked about how we want to spend our money and put that in the agreement as well.

Man: So do you spend a lot of time checking on each other to see if the rules are being followed?

Woman: No, not at all. And we don’t argue about them, either. As a matter of fact I think we spend less time arguing than most couples. Because we both know what the other person expects. We can spend our time doing things we enjoy and just being with each other.
Man: What happens if one of you breaks the rule.？

Woman: We don’t think that will be a problem. No, because we do agree on these rules.

Man: But what if, say, you don’t want to cook dinner one night, what happens?

Woman: Well, we talk about it and reach a compromise. Maybe there’s a good reason.

Man: But if you break a lot of rules all the time?
Woman: Then we have to ask ‘Is this marriage really working?’ Because if we can’t follow all our own agreement. There’s no point making it.
Man: So it sounds like you two are happy with this agreement. Do you think other couples should follow your example and write the prenuptial agreement of their own?

Woman: “So a lot of work to write an agreement, but I think it could be useful to a lot of people. Maybe there would be fewer divorces if everyone did this.

Q11. About which of the following topics is the woman been interviewed?
Q12. What can we learn about the man and the woman from the interview?
Q13. According to the woman, why did so many problems happen in a marriage?
Q14. What does the woman think of this contract?
Q15. What happens if one of the couple sometimes breaks a rule of the contract?

解析：关于婚前协议的一篇采访。我们在学习英语时，不能多做题，多背单词就可以了，更应该去了解英美国家的文化。而这篇文章就体现了英美国家现在很流行的一种现象，就是婚前签订协议。Karen和丈夫指定了婚前协议，里面规定了婚姻生活力很多细节，并为自己为什么制定这样的协议及怎么处理婚姻生活里的状况作出了自己的解释。

这种采访类文章，要再争取听懂大部分时，也要注重对被采访对象态度的把握，同意还是不同意，及相关原因。例子理解即可，主要是抓住例子背后隐含的意思。

关键词：prenuptial agreement，agree, disagree，