English stories

[flower1989]

[TẶNG BẠN] TRỌN BỘ Bí kíp học tốt 08 môn
Chắc suất Đại học top - Giữ chỗ ngay!!

ĐĂNG BÀI NGAY để cùng trao đổi với các thành viên siêu nhiệt tình & dễ thương trên diễn đàn.

Đọc truyện Tiếng Anh là một phương pháp rât hiệu quả để nâng cao từ vựng. Mình sẽ giới thiệu với các bạn chương 1 của truyện "Little prince".


Chapter 1

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Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.
In the book it said: "Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion."

I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing Number One. It looked like this:


I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them.

But they answered: "Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat?"

My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My Drawing Number Two looked like this:


The grown-ups' response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic and grammar. That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

So then I chose another profession, and learned to pilot airplanes. I have flown a little over all parts of the world; and it is true that geography has been very useful to me. At a glance I can distinguish China from Arizona. If one gets lost in the night, such knowledge is valuable.

In the course of this life I have had a great many encounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence. I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them.

Whenever I met one of them who seemed to me at all clear-sighted, I tried the experiment of showing him my Drawing Number One, which I have always kept. I would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding. But, whoever it was, he, or she, would always say:

"That is a hat."

Then I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, or primeval forests, or stars. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.

...GO TO CHAPTER 2
Nếu các bạn muốn đọc tiếp, mình sẽ post lên sau.

 

[mauchien2007]

Flower có thể chỉ cho anh nghĩa của cụm này không "Boa constrictors"

 

[flower1989]

Flower có thể chỉ cho anh nghĩa của cụm này không "Boa constrictors"

Boa constrictor: a large S American snake that kills animal for food by winding its long body around them and crushing them.
Chắc ở Việt Nam không có loại rắn này đâu, anh ạ.

 

[amaranth]

Flower có thể chỉ cho anh nghĩa của cụm này không "Boa constrictors"

Boa constrictor: a large S American snake that kills animal for food by winding its long body around them and crushing them.
Chắc ở Việt Nam không có loại rắn này đâu, anh ạ.

:lol::lol: BOA là con trăn, nó không có độc, nhưng cơ nó khỏe, nó quấn con mồi và xiết lại => gãy xương chết, rồi nó nuốt trọng, không cần nhai gì cả…
http://khuongduy.com/prince/viet/index.html
Amaranth không cố tình nêu bản dịch ra đây để làm nhụt nhuệ khí luyện tiếng Anh của mọi người, nhưng mà sau khi đọc xong và cố gắng hiểu bản tiếng Anh rồi, những ai thích có thể xem thêm bản dịch để đối chiếu, so sánh xem cách dịch của người ta như thế nào. Hơn nữa trong bản dịch này có kèm đầy đủ hình minh họa (do chính tay tác giả vẽ) trông rất dễ thương.
Thân,

 

[kentaro]

Good job, nhưng sắp thi rồi mà mang cái này ra học chắc ớn quá !...

 

[flower1989]

Good job, nhưng sắp thi rồi mà mang cái này ra học chắc ớn quá !...

Hoc thi cung can thu gian chut chu, ma doc may truyen nay vua hoc vua choi, hay lam ma

 

[flower1989]

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

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So I lived my life alone, without anyone that I could really talk to, until I had an accident with my plane in the Desert of Sahara, six years ago. Something was broken in my engine. And as I had with me neither a mechanic nor any passengers, I set myself to attempt the difficult repairs all alone. It was a question of life or death for me: I had scarcely enough drinking water to last a week.
The first night, then, I went to sleep on the sand, a thousand miles from any human habitation. I was more isolated than a shipwrecked sailor on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Thus you can imagine my amazement, at sunrise, when I was awakened by an odd little voice. It said:

"If you please-- draw me a sheep!"

"What!"

"Draw me a sheep!"

I jumped to my feet, completely thunderstruck. I blinked my eyes hard. I looked carefully all around me. And I saw a most extraordinary small person, who stood there examining me with great seriousness. Here you may see the best potrait that, later, I was able to make of him. But my drawing is certainly very much less charming than its model.


That, however, is not my fault. The grown-ups discouraged me in my painter's career when I was six years old, and I never learned to draw anything, except boas from the outside and boas from the inside.
Now I stared at this sudden apparition with my eyes fairly starting out of my head in astonishment. Remember, I had crashed in the desert a thousand miles from any inhabited region. And yet my little man seemed neither to be straying uncertainly among the sands, nor to be fainting from fatigue or hunger or thirst or fear. Nothing about him gave any suggestion of a child lost in the middle of the desert, a thousand miles from any human habitation. When at last I was able to speak, I said to him:

"But-- what are you doing here?"

And in answer he repeated, very slowly, as if he were speaking of a matter of great consequence:

"If you please-- draw me a sheep..."

When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey. Absurd as it might seem to me, a thousand miles from any human habitation and in danger of death, I took out of my pocket a sheet of paper and my fountain-pen. But then I remembered how my studies had been concentrated on geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar, and I told the little chap (a little crossly, too) that I did not know how to draw. He answered me:

"That doesn't matter. Draw me a sheep..."

But I had never drawn a sheep. So I drew for him one of the two pictures I had drawn so often. It was that of the boa constrictor from the outside. And I was astounded to hear the little fellow greet it with,

"No, no, no! I do not want an elephant inside a boa constrictor. A boa constrictor is a very dangerous creature, and an elephant is very cumbersome. Where I live, everything is very small. What I need is a sheep. Draw me a sheep."

So then I made a drawing.


He looked at it carefully, then he said:

"No. This sheep is already very sickly. Make me another."

So I made another drawing.


My friend smiled gently and indulgenty.

"You see yourself," he said, "that this is not a sheep. This is a ram. It has horns."

So then I did my drawing over once more.


But it was rejected too, just like the others.

"This one is too old. I want a sheep that will live a long time."

By this time my patience was exhausted, because I was in a hurry to start taking my engine apart. So I tossed off this drawing.


And I threw out an explanation with it.

"This is only his box. The sheep you asked for is inside."

I was very surprised to see a light break over the face of my young judge:

"That is exactly the way I wanted it! Do you think that this sheep will have to have a great deal of grass?"

"Why?"

"Because where I live everything is very small..."

"There will surely be enough grass for him," I said. "It is a very small sheep that I have given you."

He bent his head over the drawing:

"Not so small that-- Look! He has gone to sleep..."

And that is how I made the acquaintance of the little prince.



...GO TO CHAPTER 3

 

[flower1989]

Các bạn đọc thử 1 câu chuyện cảm động này nhé:
There was a blind girl who hated herself because of being blind. She hated everyone except her boyfriend. One day, the girl said that if she could only see the world, she would marry her boyfriend. One lucky day, someone donated a pair of eyes to her! Then she saw every thing including her boyfriend... . Her boyfriend then asked her," Now that u can see, will you marry me?" The girl was SHOCKED when she saw that her boyfriend was blind! She said," I am sorry but i can't marry you because u areblind." Her boyfriend walked away with tears... and said, Please just take care of my eyes...."!!!

 

[amaranth]

Well, when your story first came to me elsewhere on the net, it read that the one who blindly walked away at the end was the girl, and the boy keep her eyes. I think this was more reasonable, because I generally can't believe that there can be such a girl as in your story, Flower I wish there would be few people like that on earth.

 

[flower1989]

Well, when your story first came to me elsewhere on the net, it read that the one who blindly walked away at the end was the girl, and the boy keep her eyes. I think this was more reasonable, because I generally can't believe that there can be such a girl as in your story, Flower I wish there would be few people like that on earth.

Hey, u cant believe that there is such a girl like the one in my story. Y do u think that it's reasonable for a boy to do that :?: In my opinion, anyone ( no matter boy or girl ) can be cruel sometimes ( even when they do it intentionally or just by mistake)

 

[amaranth]

I didn't mean that girls are never cruel at all. The main doubtful point to me is whether on earth there is a boy who agrees to walk away like that :evil:
However, if I had been in his case, I would have given my girl only one eye To me, to Love means to Share, not to Give All :lol:

 

[flower1989]

I didn't mean that girls are never cruel at all. The main doubtful point to me is whether on earth there is a boy who agrees to walk away like that :evil:
However, if I had been in his case, I would have given my girl only one eye To me, to Love means to Share, not to Give All :lol:

Good suggestion
Then u and ur girl friend would have been an one-eyed couple :wink:

 

[flower1989]

P/S: Hình như cái topic này chỉ dành riêng cho 2 anh chị luôn rồi đó!

Trâm Ngân à, tham gia luôn cho zui đi

 

[amaranth]

@Tramngan: Thì vốn dĩ cái truyện này có ai đọc đâu, ta không vào ủng hộ thì sợ chủ topic buồn…

@Flower: hihi, every of my suggestions is good. Unless it's good I won't ever say it out at all

 

[flower1989]

@Tramngan: Thì vốn dĩ cái truyện này có ai đọc đâu, ta không vào ủng hộ thì sợ chủ topic buồn… )

Nè, phải nói là cái truyện này chưa có ai đọc ( nhưng yên tâm, ko lâu nữa sẽ trở nên popular_ thực ra là đang tự an ủi mình thế )

 

[upadepzaj]

Hjx , mãi mới hiểu được , chuyện này dịch ra Tiếng Việt thì cũng đắt khách lắm , chứ viết tiếng anh thì chỉ có thiểu số thui . ( = chứng là Box Tiếng anh cũng ko nhôn cho lắm )

 

[mimina]

hay đóa !
cóa lẽ chũng ta nên tìm kím những tác phẩm hay roài dịch sang TA nhỉ ^___^
mina cũng hay dịch , nhưng mờ dịch truyện cười thoai ^___^

 

[amaranth]

Hjx , mãi mới hiểu được , chuyện này dịch ra Tiếng Việt thì cũng đắt khách lắm , chứ viết tiếng anh thì chỉ có thiểu số thui . ( = chứng là Box Tiếng anh cũng ko nhôn cho lắm )

Mình có đưa link tiếng Việt ở trên đó, bạn nào đọc thấy khó khăn thì đối chiếu hai bản, vừa là đọc truyện mà vừa học tiếng Anh luôn
Mimina nè, bạn biết chuyện "Lần đầu thân mật" của Thái Trí Hằng không, mình từng thử dịch lại sang tiếng Anh từ bản dịch tiếng Việt (hix, mình không biết tiếng Hoa) cũng được một đoạn đó.

 

[luanvn]

suggestion

Theo mình không nên đọc những tác phẩm này vì... Dài ---->dễ dẫn đến đau mắt.
Các bác nên tăng cường post những loại như là những mẩu chuyện cười thì em ủng hộ nhiệt tình :? :idea: :wink:

 

[flower1989]

Các bạn chắc đều đọc :"Chiếc lá cuối cùng" của Ohenri rùi, mình post bản Tiếng Anh lên đây cho mọi người tham khảo nhé. ( nguyên tác bao giờ cũng hay hơn, dịch tất diệt mừ)

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These "places" make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!

So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a "colony."

At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the table d'hôte of an Eighth Street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.

That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places."

Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.

One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, gray eyebrow.

"She has one chance in - let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. " And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-u on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?"

"She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day." said Sue.

"Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for instance?"

"A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man worth - but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind."

"Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten."

After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime.

Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep.

She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.

As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a monocle of the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside.

Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting - counting backward.

"Twelve," she said, and little later "eleven"; and then "ten," and "nine"; and then "eight" and "seven", almost together.

Sue look solicitously out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.

"What is it, dear?" asked Sue.

"Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now."

"Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie."

"Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?"

"Oh, I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with magnificent scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were - let's see exactly what he said - he said the chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy self."

"You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. "There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go, too."

"Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the light, or I would draw the shade down."

"Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly.

"I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Beside, I don't want you to keep looking at those silly ivy leaves."

"Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as fallen statue, "because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves."

"Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move 'til I come back."

Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along with the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above.

Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker.

Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings.

"Vass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her? Ach, dot poor leetle Miss Yohnsy."

"She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old - old flibbertigibbet."

"You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes."

Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit miner on an upturned kettle for a rock.

When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.

"Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper.

Wearily Sue obeyed.

But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last one on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from the branch some twenty feet above the ground.

"It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same time."

"Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, "think of me, if you won't think of yourself. What would I do?"

But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed.

The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves.

When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised.

The ivy leaf was still there.

Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove.

"I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring a me a little broth now, and some milk with a little port in it, and - no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook."

And hour later she said:

"Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples."

The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left.

"Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his. "With good nursing you'll win." And now I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is - some kind of an artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more comfortable."

The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You won. Nutrition and care now - that's all."

And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a very blue and very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows and all.

"I have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him the morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it, and - look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell."