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The characteristics of modern youth may account for the misunderstandings between parents and their children. The young are now better educated and more influenced by western civilization. They earn more money and believe in spending rather than saving it. They grow up more quickly and are not so dependent on their parents. They think more for themselves and do not blindly accept the ideas of their elders and even those of the government. They have their own philosophy of life, and see almost everything in different perspectives. In contrast, parents who cling to old ideas and ways of life, and who resist changes will naturally collide with their children.
当代年轻人的特点可能造成了父母与子女之间的误解。现在的年轻人受过更好的教育并且更多地被西方文化所影响。他们挣钱更多，不相信攒钱，而愿意消费。他们成长得更快，而且不太依赖父母。他们更多为自己考虑，并且不盲目接受长辈甚至政府的观点。他们有自己的人生观，几乎看任何事情都是从不同的角度。与此相反，那些坚持传统观点和生活方式，拒绝改变的父母自然会跟他们的孩子们产生矛盾。
It is true that the young have the duty to take care of their parents, especially when they are old and sick. After a lifetime of hard work and the toil of bringing up and fostering children, our elders deserve the care the young extend to them. On the other hand, younger people can benefit from the experience and wisdom of older people who live with them on a daily basis.
年轻人确实有责任照顾他们的父母，尤其当父母年老生病的时候。在辛苦工作一辈子以及经历抚养和教育子女的辛劳之后，我们的长辈理应得到年轻一代的关爱。另一方面，年轻人可以从每天和他们生活在一起的长辈的经验和智慧中受益。
For the sake of their health, old and sick people are better off being placed in nursing homes, for there they can receive better service and more intensive care of the professional nurses. On the contrary, living in the home they often can't be taken proper care of as their adult children are often too busy with their own families and their work to give adequate time to them. Since it is a common practice for families to hire a babysitter for them, why not send them to the nursing home with a little more money?
为了老年人的健康考虑，体弱多病的老年人在养老院生活会更加舒适，因为在那里他们可以得到专业护工更好的服务和更精心的照顾。相反，住在家里，由于他们的成年子女经常忙于自己的家庭和工作而无法腾出足够的时间，他们往往得不到适当的照顾。既然雇用保姆来照顾老人对于很多家庭来说已经很普遍，为什么不用稍微多一点的钱把他们送到养老院呢？
Most importantly, they will be much happier there than at home. As their adult children go to work and grandchildren to school during the day, they have to spend most of the time with themselves. But in nursing homes for the elderly they won't suffer such boredom and loneliness. They can have people of their own age to talk and play with all day.
最重要的是，他们在养老院会比在家里更加快乐。由于白天他们的成年子女上班，而孙子孙女上学，老人们大多数时间不得不自己度过。但在养老院，他们不会忍受这么多无聊和孤独。他们全天都能有同龄人陪同聊天和娱乐。
Young married people who like the childless life claim that child rearing means losing too many things in life. Just imagine how much money—and how much energy—one has to devote to raising a child. When you plan to have a child, you have a responsibility. You have to do a lot of things before he or she comes to the world, and you have to take care of them not only physically but academically and even morally.
喜欢无子女生活的年轻已婚夫妇们认为，抚养子女意味着丧失生活中的很多东西。想想一个人需要花费多少金钱和精力来养育一个孩子吧。当你计划要一个孩子时，你就有了一份责任。你必须在他或她降临世界之前就做很多事情，而且你必须从身体上、从学习上甚至精神上照顾他们。
Obviously, to ensure a happy and successful life for a child may deprive one of the best and most productive years of one's life. You can't enjoy life thoroughly until your child gets married: You have to make many sacrifices. Your studies and careers may be affected for this reason and even the whole course of your life may be altered.
显而易见，确保孩子拥有一个幸福成功的人生，这可能会占据人的一生中最好最富成效的那几年。直到你的孩子结婚之前，你都不能彻底享受生活。你必须做出很多牺牲。你的学习和工作可能会因此受到影响，甚至你整个人生进程也可能被改变。
Admittedly, having a child is not without any benefits. A child may bring much joy and happiness into your life. You can experience much pleasure seeing them growing up and even becoming the pride of your family. When you get old, they can take care of you. Most significantly, you may die with no regret, for your life will be carried on through your child's blood.
不可否认，有一个孩子并非没有任何好处。一个孩子可以给你的生活带来很多快乐和幸福。看着他们成长，甚至成为全家的骄傲，你能感受到很多快乐。当你老了以后，他们能照顾你。最为重要的是，你的生命将通过孩子的血脉得以延续，你因此可以死而无憾。
People are always talking about “the problem of youth”. If there is one—which I take leave to doubt—then it is older people who create it, not the young themselves. Let us get down to fundamentals and agree that the young are after all human beings—people just like their elders. There is only one difference between an old man and a young one: the young man has a glorious future before him and the old one has a splendid past behind him. Maybe that is where the rub is.
人们总是在谈论“青年问题”。如果这个问题存在的话——请允许我对此持怀疑态度——那么，这个问题是由老年人而不是青年人自己造成的。让我们来认真研究一些基本事实，承认青年人和他们的长辈一样也是人。老年人和青年人只有一个区别：青年人有光辉灿烂的前景，而老年人的辉煌已成为过去。问题的症结恐怕就在这里。
When I was a teenager, I felt that I was just young and uncertain—that I was a new boy in a huge school, and I would have been very pleased to be regarded as something so interesting as a problem. For one thing, being a problem gives you a certain identity, and that is one of the things the young are busily engaged in seeking.
我十几岁时，总感觉自己年轻，有些事拿不准——我曾是一所大型学校里的一名新生，如果我当时真的被看成像一个问题那样有趣，我会感到很高兴的。首先，被看成一个问题会给你某种认可，这正是年轻人所热衷追求的东西之一。
I find young people exciting. They have an air of freedom, and they don't have a dreary commitment to mean ambitions or love of comfort. They are not anxious social climbers, and they have no devotion to material things. All this seems to me to link them with life, and the origins of things. It's as if they were, in some sense, cosmic beings in strong and evident contrast with us suburban creatures. All that is in my mind when I meet a young person is that he may be conceited, ill-mannered, presumptuous or fatuous, but I do not turn for protection to dreary clichés about respect of elders—as if mere age were a reason for respect. I accept that we are equals, and I will argue with him, as an equal, if I think he is wrong.
我觉得年轻人令人振奋。他们无拘无束，既不追逐卑微的名利，也不贪图安逸。他们不热衷于向上爬，也不一味追求物质享受。在我看来，所有这些使他们与生命和万物之源联系在了一起。从某种意义上讲，他们似乎是宇宙人，同我们这些凡夫俗子形成了强烈而鲜明的对照。每逢我遇到年轻人，脑子里想到的就是这些年轻人也许狂妄自负、举止无理、傲慢放肆、愚昧无知，但我不会用尊重长者这一套陈词滥调来为我自己辩护——似乎年长就是受人尊敬的理由。我认为我和他们是平等的。如果我认为他们错了，我会以平等的身份和他们争个明白。
Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. In the young there is a justification for this feeling. Young men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel bitter in the thought that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer. But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows, and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is somewhat abject and ignoble. The best way to overcome it—so at least it seems to me—is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river—small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, and the thought of rest will be not unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do, and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.
有些老年人因为对死亡的恐惧而感到烦恼。青年人有这种感觉是情有可原的。有理由害怕自己会死在战场上的年轻人，想到自己被剥夺了生活所能给予的最美好的东西时，感到痛苦，这是可以理解的。可是老年人已经饱尝了人间的甘苦，一切能做的都做了，如果怕死，就有点儿可怜又可鄙了。克服怕死的最好办法——至少在我看来是这样——就是逐渐使自己的兴趣更加广泛，逐渐摆脱个人狭小的圈子，直到自我的围墙一点一点地倒塌下来，自己的生活慢慢地和整个宇宙的生活融合在一起。个人的存在应该像一条河流，开始很小，被紧紧地夹在两岸中间，接着热情奔放地冲过巨石，飞下瀑布。然后河面渐渐地变宽，两岸后撤，河水流得更加平缓，最后连绵不断地汇入大海，毫无痛苦地失去了自我的存在。上了年纪的人这样看待生命，就不会有惧怕死亡的痛苦了，因为自己关心的一切都会继续下去。再者，随着精力的衰退，老年人的疲惫感会增长，有长眠的愿望未尝不是一件好事情。我希望工作到死为止，明白了有人会继续我的未竟事业，想到能做的事都做了，也就坦然了。
Parents are often upset when their children praise the homes of their friends and regard it as a slur on their own cooking, or cleaning, or furniture, and often are foolish enough to let the adolescents see that they are annoyed. They may even accuse them of disloyalty, or make some spiteful remarks about the friends' parents. Such a loss of dignity and descent into childish behavior on the part of the adults deeply shocks the adolescents, and makes them resolve that in future they will not talk to their parents about the places or people they visit. Before very long the parents will be complaining that the child is so secretive and never tells them anything, but they seldom realize that they have brought this on themselves.
当家长听到孩子赞扬自己朋友的家时，总感到不安，认为孩子在嫌弃自家的饭菜、卫生或家具，而且常常愚蠢地让孩子看出自己的烦恼。他们甚至可能会责备孩子不忠，或者讲些孩子朋友家长的坏话。家长这种有失身份和孩子气的做法使青春期的孩子大为震惊，决心以后不再向父母讲述他们去过的地方和见过的人。用不了多久家长就会抱怨孩子守口如瓶，什么事也不告诉他们，殊不知这是家长自己造成的。
Disillusionment with the parents, however good and adequate they may be both as parents and as individuals, is to some degree inevitable. Most children have such a high ideal of their parents, unless the parents themselves have been unsatisfactory, that it can hardly hope to stand up to a realistic evaluation. Parents would be greatly surprised and deeply touched if they realize how much belief their children usually have in their character and infallibility, and how much this faith means to a child. If parents were prepared for this adolescent reaction, and realized that it was a sign that the child was growing up and developing valuable powers of observation and independent judgment, they would not be so hurt, and therefore would not drive the child into opposition by resenting and resisting it.
不管家长的人品有多么好，作为父母有多么合格，孩子们对家长幻想的破灭在某种程度上是不可避免的。大多数孩子对父母估计过高，除非父母自身不能令人满意，否则这种估计很难指望能经受住现实的考验。如果家长意识到孩子们通常是多么相信家长的品行和绝对正确，以及这种信念会对孩子产生多么大的影响，那么家长会大为吃惊和深受感动的。如果家长对孩子的青春期反应有思想准备，并且意识到这象征着孩子们正在成长和发展宝贵的观察力、独立判断力，那么他们就不会那样伤心，也就不会由于怨恨和抵触这种反应，而把孩子推到自己的对立面去。
The adolescent, with his passion for sincerity, always respects a parent who admits that he is wrong, or ignorant, or even that he has been unfair or unjust. What the child cannot forgive is the parents' refusal to admit these charges if the child knows them to be true.
青少年酷爱真诚，对于能够承认错误或无知，甚至承认自己做得不公平或不公正的父母，他们总是尊敬的。孩子们所不能原谅的是：父母错了，孩子们也看出来了，可是父母还不肯承认。
Victorian parents believed that they kept their dignity by retreating behind an unreasoning authoritarian attitude; in fact they did nothing of the kind, but children were then too cowed to let them know how they really felt. Today we tend to go to the other extreme, but on the whole this is a healthier attitude both for the child and the parent. It is always wiser and safer to face up to reality, however painful it may be at the moment.
维多利亚时代的父母认为，他们可以靠无理的权威态度来维护自己的尊严，实际上那是根本不行的。孩子们只不过是被吓得不敢让父母知道自己的真实感受罢了。虽然现在我们倾向于走向另一个极端，但总的来看，不管是对孩子还是父母，这都是一种更健康的态度。遇事采取面对现实的态度总是比较明智和稳妥的，无论当时多么痛苦。