2010年肇始至今，短短数载，“《英语世界》杯”翻译大赛已经成为国内同类活动中参加人数最多的赛事。2013年5月，在迎接《英语世界》出版第300期之际，我们将秉承“给力英语学习，探寻翻译之星”的理念，继续举办第四届“《英语世界》杯”翻译大赛，诚邀广大翻译爱好者积极参与，比秀佳译。
本届大赛由悉尼翻译学院独家赞助。悉尼翻译学院成立于2009年，是在澳大利亚教育部注册的一家专业翻译学院。学院相关课程由澳大利亚翻译认证管理局（NAATI）认证。该院面向海内外招生，以构建“一座跨文化的桥梁”为目标，力图培养具有国际视野和跨文化意识的涉及多语种的口笔译人才。
大赛协办方：南开大学、中国翻译协会社科翻译委员会、四川省翻译协会和成都通译翻译有限公司。
一、大赛形式：
本届大赛为英汉翻译，参赛原文发布于商务印书馆网站（http://www.cp.com.cn/）、《英语世界》2013年第5期和《英语世界》官方博客 （http://blog.sina.com.cn/theworldofenglish）。
二、参赛要求：
1. 参赛者国籍、年龄、性别、学历不限。
2. 参赛译文须独立完成，不接受合作译稿。
3. 参赛译文及个人信息于截稿日期前发送至电子邮箱：yysjfyds@sina.com。
（1）邮件主题标明“翻译大赛”；
（2）以附件一形式发送参赛者个人信息，文件名“XXX个人信息”，内容包括：姓名、性别、出生年月日、学校或工作单位、通信地址（邮编）、电子邮箱和电话；
（3）以附件二形式发送参赛译文，文件名“XXX参赛译文”，内文规格：黑色小四号宋体，1.5倍行距，两端对齐。
4. 仅第一次投稿有效，不接受修改后的再投稿件。
5. 在大赛截稿之日前妥善保存参赛译文，勿在报刊、网络等任何媒体或以任何方式公布，违者取消参赛资格并承担由此造成的一切后果。
三、大赛时间：
起止日期：2013年5月1日～2013年7月20日。
奖项公布时间：2013年10月，在《英语世界》杂志、微博和博客中公布大赛评审结果。
四、奖项设置：
所有投稿将由主办单位组织专家进行评审，分设一、二、三等奖及优秀奖。一、二、三等奖获奖者将颁发奖金、奖品和证书，优秀奖获奖者将颁发证书和纪念奖。
五、联系方式：
为办好本届翻译大赛，保证此项赛事的公平、公正，我们成立了大赛组委会，负责整个大赛活动的组织、实施和评审工作。组委会办公室设在《英语世界》编辑部，电话/传真：010-65539242。
六、特别说明：
1. 本届翻译大赛不收取任何费用。
2. 本届翻译大赛只接受电子版投稿，不接受纸质投稿。
3. 参赛译文一经发现抄袭或雷同，即取消涉事者参赛资格。
《英语世界》杂志社
2013年5月
【翻译大赛原文】
The Alternate Life
The alternate life is the consequence of the communications revolution of the last 30 years or so. There is another, highly competitive educational system, opposed in almost every essential way to traditional schooling, that operates on the child and youth from the age of 2. It takes up as much of his time as the school does, and it works on him with far greater effectiveness.
That system is the linked structure of which television is the heart and which numbers among its constituents film, radio, comic books, pop music, sports―and the life styles (including the drug culture, permissive sex, and systematized antisocial conduct) which this structure either automatically or deliberately produces.
This alternative life is a life; it is not a diversion, a hobby, an amusement. It offers its own disciplines, its own curriculum, its own ethical and cultural values, its own style and language. It works on children and youths every day, year after year, teaching them, forming them, conditioning them. And it is profoundly opposed to traditional education. There is no way of reconciling the values of literature or science with the values of the TV commercial. There is no way of reconciling the vision offered by Shakespeare or Newton with the vision of life offered by the “Gong Show”. Two systems of thought and feeling stand opposed to each other.
This has never before been the case. The idea of education was never before opposed by a competitor. It was taken for granted because no alternative appeared on the horizon. But today there is a complete alternative life to which children submit themselves. This alternative life offers them heroes, slogans, images, forms of conduct, and content of a sort―and all run counter to the message given in the classroom.
For the first time in history, the child is required to be a citizen of two cultures: the tradition and the alternate life. Is it any wonder that such a division of loyalties should result in the chaos we observe? In a deep sense, all our children (and, to a degree, our teachers, our parents, and ourselves) are schizophrenics. On the one hand is the reality-system expounded in a book, the idea, the cultural past; on the other hand is the far more vivid and comprehensible reality-system expounded by television, the rock star, the religion of instantaneous sensation, gratification and consumption.
Good teachers, when you question them inexorably, almost always finally admit that their difficulties stem from the competition of the alternate life. And this competition they are not trained to meet. The alternate life has one special psychological effect that handicaps the teacher―any teacher, whether of writing or any other basic subject. That effect is a decline in the faculty of attention, and therefore a decline in the capacity to learn―not the innate capacity, but the capacity as it is conditioned by the media.
This conception of the alternate life is probably debatable, and it certainly will not be accepted by everyone. Its claim to the interest of others, if not their agreement, lies in the fact that it goes beyond the present educational system and tries to locate the ultimate source of our troubles in the changes now agitating our entire Western culture.
（节选自The Short Prose Reader (second edition) by Gilbert H. Muller and Harvey S. Wiener, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1982。题目为本刊所加。）