2013年高考英语广东卷 - 阅读理解B

Some people think that success is only for those with talent or those who grow up in the right family, and others believe that success mostly comes down to luck. I’m not going to say luck, talent, and circumstances don’t come into play because they do. Some people are born into the right family while others are born with great intelligence, and that’s just the reality of how life is.
有些人认为，成功只属于那些有天赋的人或在合适的家庭中长大的人，而另一些人则认为，成功主要取决于运气。我不会说运气、天赋和环境不起作用。有些人出生在合适的家庭，而另一些人天生就有很高的智商，这正是生活的现实。

However, to succeed in life, one first needs to set a goal and then gradually make it more practical. And, in addition to that, in order to get really good at something, one needs to spend at least 10,000 hours studying and practicing. To become great at certain things, it’ll require even more time, time that most people won’t put in.
然而，要想在生活中取得成功，首先需要设定一个目标，然后逐步使其更加实际。除此之外，为了真正擅长某件事，一个人需要花费至少10000小时的学习和练习。要想在某些事情上变得出色，需要更多的时间，而大多数人不会投入。

This is a big reason why many successful people advise you to do something you love. If you don’t enjoy what you do, it is going to feel like unbearable pain and will likely make you quit well before you ever become good at it.
这是很多成功人士建议你做自己喜欢的事情的一个重要原因。如果你不喜欢你所做的，你会感到难以忍受的痛苦，很可能会让你在变得擅长之前就放弃了。

When you see people exhibiting some great skills or having achieved great success, you know that they have put in a huge part of their life to get there at a huge cost. It’s sometimes easy to think they got lucky or they were born with some rare talent, but thinking that way does you no good, and there’s a huge chance that you’re wrong anyway.
当你看到人们展示了一些伟大的技能或取得了巨大的成功时，你就会知道他们付出了生命中的很大一部分代价来达到目的。有时很容易认为他们是幸运的，或者他们生来就有一些罕见的天赋，但这样想对你没有好处，而且很有可能你错了。

Whatever you do, if you want to become great at it, you need to work day in and day out, almost to the point of addiction, and over a long period of time. If you’re not willing to put in the time and work, don’t expect to receive any rewards. Consistent, hard work won’t guarantee you the level of success you may want, but it will guarantee that you will become rally good at whatever it is you put all that work into.
无论你做什么，如果你想成为一个伟大的人，你需要日复一日地工作，几乎达到上瘾的程度，并且需要很长一段时间。如果你不愿意投入时间和工作，不要指望得到任何奖励。始终如一的努力工作并不能保证你达到你想要的成功水平，但它能保证你在你投入所有工作的任何方面都会表现得很好。