美语咖啡屋 第 8 课： Lottery 彩票

Y: 大家好, 我是杨晨! 欢迎您到美语咖啡屋!

J: Hello and welcome to American Cafe! I'm Jody. Here, Yang Chen. I bought you something. An instant Lottery Ticket. See, you scratch off the surface to see if you have won. Let me do mine first. (scratch, scratch) Come on Lady Luck! Make me a winner! (scratch, scratch) Damn! Nothing.

Y: Hmm, 好象幸运女神不太喜欢你。

J: I guess not. Well, you try yours and see how you do.

Y: 好，我来试试我的运气。(scratch, scratch) 哇! 我赢了五块钱!

J: What! Let me see that. You won five bucks! I think I gave you the wrong ticket. I think I gave you mine. Can I have it back?

Y: No way!

J: Now, what would really be exciting is if you won the BIG Lottery.

Y: 你说的好多州一起办的那个超级乐透奖,对不对？

J: Yes. That's right! The POWERBALL!

(Enter sharp lightning crack)

Y: 这个声音好恐怖啊！

J: What our listeners may not know but a well-timed lightning bolt sound is meant to signify the mysterious, the awesome, like the POWERBALL!!!

(Enter sharp lightning crack)

Y: 好了，好了，我现在已经感受到超级乐透的威力了。现在你这个音响效果可不可以停止了呢？

J: Okay. No more lightning bolts. For a while.

Y: 可是，我们是不是先来解释lottery这个词，然后再发挥你的音响效果。

J: Let's do. The Lottery is gambling. It's a drawing of numbers. And you have to get all six numbers right AND pick the right number as the Powerball to win.

Y: 噢，对，Lottery是以买彩票或奖券的方式进行赌博。

J: The jackpot recently is really high: $210 million!

Y: 哇! 两亿一千万美元!! 啊，我要昏倒了。

J: That's right, Sister! You go ahead and faint. The night before the drawing, I stopped at my neighborhood store and there was a line of about 50 people waiting to buy their lottery tickets. Here's some on-site interviews of people actually buying their lottery tickets. Here's Carl from Miami...

Carl: Lottery ticket is a gambling format for a winning of a ticket for $210 million.

J: $ 250 million. What are the odds that you can win?

Carl: one in 250 million, I think.

J: So why are you here?

Carl: Someone's gotta win, that's basically it. The chances are low, but someone does have to win.

Y: 他刚才提到一个词“odds”，我看我们需要先给大家解释一下。

J: Sure. O-D-D-S. You know, your chances of winning. What are your odds of winning? But for this lottery, the odds were 1 in 250 million.

Y: 那么这里就是说赢得机律是1比2亿5千万。

J: So the odds are very low. And this woman Susan had a very funny way of describing how she views her odds and why she still plays.

Y: 好，我们听听Susan的见解。

Susan: Your have a better chance of getting hit by lightning than you do of winning the lottery. However, people do get hit by lightning. So it does make sense to give it a try.

J: So, you're willing to risk a couple of dollars and see if you can win the jackpot.

Susan: Yes!

J: See! She mentioned the word "lightning!"

(Enter sharp lightning crack)

Y: 你知道吗，你听起来象个巫婆一样。

J: Okay. Now, get serious, Yang Chen. You know, after I started interviewing people they all started talking about the big "what if?" You know what if I win?

Y: 就是，我都替他们发愁。如果赢了，那么多钱怎么花呀？

J: Here's what Susan had to say.

Y: 好吧, 我们来听听Susan的宏伟计划。

Susan: Well, that's what everyone always thinks as they're waiting in line ... "What would they do if they won." And of course, the first thing you think is quit your job and buy all those things that are on your list, that you wanted to get...you know...

J: Another woman, Olivia from New Orleans, Louisiana, said that after she paid off her and her family's debt she would give some of her winnings to charities.

Olivia: I would definitely donate some to charity, because there are a lot of good courses. And pay off all my debts, my mother's debts, my sister's debts and travel.

Y: 每个人都那么说。如果赢了以后先把工作辞了，然后买下所有以前买不起的东西，还要捐一部份给慈善机构。

J: Well, that's what they say before they win. I don't know what they say after they win.

Y: 好，我们的时间到了。谢谢大家收听美语咖啡屋。