One of the most common types of nonfiction, and one that many people enjoy reading, is stories about people's lives. These stories fall into three general categories: autobiography, memoir, and biography.

　　最普遍的非小說類文學作品類型之一就是一些描述人們生活的故事，并且很多人喜歡閱讀這類作品。這些故事大致分為三類：自傳、回憶錄和傳記。

　　An autobiography is the story of a person's life written by himself or herself. Often it begins with the person's earliest recollections and ends in the present. Autobiography writers may not be entirely objective in the way they present themselves. However, they offer the reader a good look at the way they are and what makes them that way. People as diverse as Benjarmin Franklin and Helen Keller have written autobiographies. 1Other writers, such as James Joyce，have written thinly fictionalized accounts of their lives. These are not autobiographies，but they are very close to it.

　　自傳是作者記錄自己故事的文章。通常自傳會以作者最早期的回憶開始并以對現(xiàn)在情況的總結(jié)作為結(jié)束。自傳的作者也許不會完全客觀地介紹自己。然而，他們給讀者提供了一個途徑來了解自己比較好的行事風格和為何成就這樣的自己。就像本杰明·富蘭克林和海倫·凱勒一樣，各種各樣的人們已經(jīng)寫了自傳。其他的作者就像詹姆斯·喬伊斯一樣僅僅寫了關(guān)于自己生活的虛構(gòu)小說。這些不是自傳，但是它們和自傳非常相近。

　　Memoirs, strictly speaking, are autobiographical accounts that focus as much on the events of the times as on the life of the author. 2Memoir writers typically use these events as backdrops for their lives. They describe them in detail and discuss their importance. Recently，though，the term memoir seems to be becoming interchangeab1e with autobiography. A memoir nowadays may or may not deal with the outside world.

　　嚴格意義上來講，回憶錄是既注重作者本身的生活經(jīng)歷，也注重其所處的時代所發(fā)生的事件的自傳性的描述。回憶錄作者通常把這些事件作為他們生活的背景。他們詳細地描述這些事件并論述這些事件的重要性。雖然近些年，回憶錄這個詞似乎開始變得可以和自傳互換，但是目前回憶錄也許還沒有因外界評論而有所改變。

　　Biographies are factual accounts of someone else's life. In many senses，these may be the hardest of the three types to write. Autobiography writers know the events they write about because they lived them. But biography writers have to gather information from as many different sources as possible. Then they have to decide which facts to include. Their goal is to present a balanced picture of a person，not one that is overly positive or too critical. A fair well-presented biography may take years to research and write.

　　傳記事實上是記錄(作者以外)其他人的生活。在很多方面，傳記也許是這三種非小說類文學作品中最難寫的了。自傳作者知悉他們所寫的事件因為他們就生活在其中。但是傳記作者不得不盡量從很多不同的渠道來收集信息。然后他們不得不決定包含哪種事實。他們的目標是用比較全面的圖片來介紹一個人物，并不是過于積極也不是過于批判。一個公正并詳盡的傳記也許要花費許多年來研究并進行書寫。

　　詞匯：

　　backdrop /'bæk,drɔp/ n. 背景 interchangeable /intə 'tʃendʒəbl/ adj. 可轉(zhuǎn)換的

　　注釋：

　　1. People as diverse as Benjamin Franklin and Helen Keller have written autobiographies. 就像本杰明•富蘭克林和海倫•凱勒一樣，各種各樣的人們已經(jīng)寫了自傳。

　　2. Memoirs，strictly speaking，are autobiographical accounts that focus as much on the events of the times as on the life of the author. 嚴格意義上來講，回憶錄是既注重作者本身的生活經(jīng)歷，也注重其所處的時代所發(fā)生的事件的自傳性的描述。