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[size=3]AT FIRST sight, Quebec's provincial election altered nothing.
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乍看之下，魁北克省的选举结果没有改变任何事情。 |
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[size=3]But the symbolism was important.
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但是象征意义却很重要。 |
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[size=3]DESPITE their world-beating multinational companies and their export-led post-war economic miracle, the word “insular” might have been invented with the Japanese in mind.
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尽管有举世瞩目的跨国公司和出口引领的战后经济奇迹，在日本人心中“狭隘孤岛”这个词也许一直与其相伴而行。 |
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[size=3]FOR as long as multinational companies have existed—and some historians trace them back to banking under the Knights Templar in 1135—they have been derided by their critics as rapacious rich-world beasts.
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自从跨国公司诞生以来——一些历史学家将它们追溯到1135年圣殿骑士团统治下的银行业——它们一直被其批评者嘲笑为富裕世界的贪婪野兽。 |
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[size=3]Facts are stubborn things.
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事实是不容改变的东西。 |
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[size=3]IN HIS 1995 memoir, “Dreams from My Father”, Barack Obama confessed to youthful dabbling with pot, booze and “maybe a little blow”.
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在1995年的自传《源自父亲的梦想》中，巴拉克?奥巴马坦言年轻时代曾尝试过大麻、酒精，“可能还会来点可卡因”。 |
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[size=3]IT IS a cardinal rule of French politics that a presidential candidate must know how to caress a bovine bottom with aplomb.
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法国政坛的一项基本规则就是总统候选人必须知道如何挥洒自如地爱抚牛屁股。 |
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[size=3]JUST for a change this month, when Peru's schoolchildren trooped miserably back to their classrooms after the summer holiday, they were not faced with a teachers' strike.
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这月发生了一个变化，当秘鲁的学童暑假之后垂头丧气的成群结队返回教室的时候，他们面对的不再是教师们的罢工。 |
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[size=3]MAIMONIDES, a 12th-century rabbi and philosopher, argued that it is better to give anonymously, like the sages who secretly placed coins under the doors of the poor, than to flaunt your generosity.
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12世纪的犹太拉比和哲学家迈蒙尼德（Maimonides）[1]认为，行善不留名好过炫耀慷慨——圣贤们就悄悄将硬币放在穷人家门口。 |
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[size=3]MAN may labour from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done, says the old proverb.
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古谚语说得好：男人每天都干活，而女人的活永远干不完。 |
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[size=3]THE kidnap of a group of five Europeans (three Britons, a British-Italian woman and a French woman), along with a dozen Ethiopian guides and helpers, has highlighted one of the harshest parts of Africa: the land of the Afars (or Danakil), who stra
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五名欧洲人（三名英国人，一名英籍意大利妇女和一名法国妇女）以及跟随他们的十二名埃塞俄比亚向导和助手在阿尔法斯地区遭到绑架，该事件使非洲最混乱的地区之一阿法斯（或达内基尔）备受人们的关注，该地跨越埃塞俄比亚，厄立特里亚和吉布提三国的荒芜地带。 |
