Twins 
双生儿

by Richard Sidaway
理查德 希达威

What do the singer Alanis Morissette, the supermodel Gisele Bundchen and the ex-Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan all have in common? The answer is, they all have a brother or sister who was born on the same day as them – a twin. And what links actresses Julia Roberts, Geena Davis and Holly Hunter? They all have twin children.
摇滚女歌手艾拉妮丝?莫莉塞特、超模吉赛尔?邦辰以及联合国前任秘书科菲?安南,这三个人之间有什么共同点呢?他们的共同点是,他们都有自己的孪生兄弟或者姐妹。那女演员朱莉亚?罗伯茨、吉娜?戴维斯和霍利?亨特之间又有什么相似之处呢?相似之处便是她们有一对双胞胎孩子。

You probably either have some twins in your family or you know/knew some at school – there are more of them about these days. This is because women are older when they have their first child and because more women are having fertility treatment. Both of these things increase the probabilities of two babies developing from the same egg.
如今,双胞胎比以往都多了,或者在你家里就有,或者在你学校里也有一些。这是因为现在的女人年纪比较大了才生第一胎孩子而且越来越多的人选择去做生育治疗。这些都增加了孕育双生子的概率。

The USA seems like a particularly good place to have a similar sibling. At the University of Minnesota they have been studying 8,000 pairs of twins since they were born. In the state of Ohio, there is a festival for twins every year in a place called… Twinsburg. And in New York there is even a restaurant which employs 37 sets of identical twins!
美国似乎是特别适合孕育双胞胎的地方。明尼苏达州大学,自8000对双胞胎一出生,就已开始对他们进行了许多研究。俄亥俄州的双胞胎镇有一个一年一度的双胞胎节。而在纽约的餐馆,居然聘用了37对同卵双胞胎。

Scientists love twins. Because they share the same genes, any differences between them must be because of environmental factors. Science now understands more about heart disease, cancer, and getting old from studying twins.
科学家们都很钟爱双胞胎。因为双胞胎的基因相同,假若有什么不同也是环境因素造成的。通过研究双胞胎,科学家们已经了解到了更多关于心脏病和癌症的知识。

Sometimes twins are separated at birth and only meet again when they are grown up. Even so, they sometimes make choices in life which are strangely similar. One pair only met each other after 40 years apart and found that their wives had the same name. And so did their children and their pets!
有些双胞胎一出生就分开了,直到长大后,他们才得以见面。尽管如此,他们在生活中做出的选择竟是如此的相似。有一对双胞胎,四十年没见过对方,当他们再次相见的时候,竟发现他们的伴侣居然是同名的,甚至连孩子和宠物的名字都是一样的。

Is there a difference between being physically identical and only being born on the same day? I knew a pair of non-identical twins when I was a boy. They were proud to be completely different from each other. One was very short-sighted from an early age and wore glasses. He picked up the local accent and was obsessed with trains. His brother spoke with a posh accent and was very musical. The first became a train driver and moved to Scotland. His brother went to a music college in London and became a concert pianist.
长的一样人和仅仅是同一天出生的人会不会有什么区别呢?小的时候,我认识一对异卵双胞胎。他们完全不同,而他们也因此感到十分自豪。其中一个,很小时视力就非常不好,所以带着眼镜。他的本地口音很重,十分迷恋火车。而另外一个,口音十分高雅,并且精通音乐。上面提到的第一位后来当了火车司机,然后搬去了苏格拉。而他的兄弟则上了伦敦音乐学院,最后成了一名演奏钢琴家。

I have recently been the teacher of two pairs of identical twins - I often have difficulty telling which is which. Luckily they don’t seem to mind. One day, I gave them a list of questions to see what they felt about being so close. Each twin answered the questions in a separate room.
最近我教的那个班来了两对同卵双胞胎,可是我经常分不清他们哪个是哪个。还好,他们好像并不怎么在意。有一天,我出了道题目来看看他们对两个人这么亲近有什么感想。他们分别在不同的房间回答我提出的问题。

Both pairs said they did many everyday activities together - studying, shopping, watching TV, or just spending time together. Both pairs had similar tastes in music and food, and even thought their voices sounded the same sometimes. Both pairs also commented that they would like more time to themselves…
这两对双胞胎说,他们每天一起参加活动、学习、购物、看电视,或者只是在一起消遣。而且他们对音乐和食物都有同样品味,甚至连他们的声音有时候听起来都是一样的。他们同时表示,还希望能有更多的时间在一起。

When I asked them what they were good at in school, one pair wrote the same five subjects almost in the same order. The other pair only had three subjects in common - one was interested in the Arts and the other more in science subjects.
当我问他们擅长哪些科目时,其中一对双胞胎写了五科相同的科目,而且顺序几乎一样。而另外一对则有三科科目一样,其中一个喜欢艺术,而另一位则更喜欢科学。

I also asked them if they ever had the same thoughts as their twin. The first pair said yes –for example, one of them often started talking about what the other one was thinking. Strangely, the other pair disagreed about whether this was true. One of the twins said that her sister would take the words out of her mouth, while the other said this never happened to her.
我还问他们是否曾经有过和自己的同胞兄弟或姐妹同样的想法。其中一对双胞胎说是,例如他们其中一个说出的事正是另一个在想着的事。奇怪的是,另外一对双胞胎却不同意这种说法。其中一对双胞胎说,她的姐姐说的事情,她永远都不会说。

The most interesting thing for me was studying the results of the psychological part of the test. I asked them to describe their personality using twelve different pairs of sentences. I found that each twin gave almost identical answers to her sister!
对于我来说,最有趣的部分是研究心理测试的结果。我让他们用十二组不同的句子描述他们的个性。有趣的是,我发现他们居然都用同样的句子描述对方!