Animal Farm（117）

It was of the highest importance for the welfare【n. 福利；幸福；福利事业；安宁】 of the farm，Squealer said.  But still，neither pigs nor dogs produced any food by their own labour；and there were very many of them，and their appetites were always good.

斯奎拉说，这对庄园的福利至关重要。但是，猪和狗都不能靠自己的劳动生产出任何食物;猪和狗的数量很多，而且它们的胃口总是很好。

As for the others，their life，so far as they knew，was as it had always been.  They were generally hungry，they slept on straw，they drank from the pool，they laboured in the fields；in winter there was troubled by the cold，and in summer by the flies.  Sometimes the other ones among them racked【vt. 折磨；榨取】 their dim memories and tried to determine whether in the early days of the Rebellion，when Jones's expulsion was still recent【adj. 最近的；近代的】，things had been better or worse than now. They could not remember.  There was nothing with which they could compare their present lives：they had nothing to go upon except Squealer’s lists of figures，which invariably demonstrated that everything was getting better and better.  The animals found the problem insoluble【adj. 不能解决的；[化学] 不能溶解的；难以解释的】；in any case，they had little time for speculating on such things now.  Only old Benjamin professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been，nor ever could be much better or much worse—hunger，hardship，and disappointment being，so he said，the unalterable【adj. 不能改变的；坚定不移的】 law of life.

至于其他人，就他们所知，他们的生活还是一如既往。他们通常都很饿，睡在稻草上，喝池塘里的水，在地里干活。冬天寒冷刺骨，夏天苍蝇成群。有时，他们当中的其他人苦苦思索着那些模糊的记忆，想弄清楚在起义初期，也就是琼斯被驱逐的时候，情况是比现在好还是更糟。他们不记得了。他们没有任何东西可以用来比较他们目前的生活，除了斯奎拉列出的那些数字之外，他们没有任何依据，而这些数字总是表明，一切都在变得越来越好。动物们发现这个问题无法解决;无论如何，他们现在几乎没有时间去推测这些事情。只有老本杰明自称记得他漫长一生的每一个细节，知道事情从来没有，也不可能变得更好或更糟——饥饿、苦难和失望，他说，是生活不可改变的法则。