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Section B
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The great journey of learning
伟大的学习之旅
Malcolm X was an African-American civil rights activist, religious leader, writer, and speaker. Born in 1925, he was mysteriously assassinated in 1965. By the time of his death, his own telling of his life story, The Autobiography of Maclcolm X, had been widely known. He was born Malcolm Little into a poor household. Later, he took the name Malcolm X after joining an organization called the Nation of Islam, a religious group that had changed major practices and beliefs of mainstream Islam to apply more specifically to the condition of African-American people in the United States in the early 1960s.
马尔科姆·艾克斯是一位非裔美国民权活动家、宗教领袖、作家和演说家。他生于 1925 年， 1965 年被神秘地暗杀。在他去世之前，他对自己生平的自述——《马尔科姆·艾克斯自传》已闻名遐迩。他出生于一个贫民家庭，取名马尔科姆·利特尔。后来，他加入了一个叫“伊斯兰民族”的组织，之后改名为马尔科姆·艾克斯。“伊斯兰民族”是个宗教团体，它改变了美国主流伊斯兰教的一些主要的习俗和信仰，使之更适用于 19 世纪 60 年代早期非裔美国人的特定情况。
Malcolm X learned about the Nation of Islam while in prison for committing criminal acts such as theft. Because he was poorly educated, he felt inadequate to teach his new beliefs to others. As a young man, he could sketch his thoughts with poor grammar and little vocabulary using the simple, unsophisticated language of people on the street. As an adult, when he tried to inform people about his new beliefs at a rally, he found that he didn't have the adequate communication skills he needed. In his own words, he "wasn't even functional".
马尔科姆·艾克斯因当时犯有诸如偷窃等罪而入狱。他在监狱里得知了“伊斯兰民族”组织。由于没有受过良好的教育，他在向别人传授他的新信仰时感到力不从心。作为一名年轻人，他可以用草根语言来概述自己的想法，语言简单、粗浅、语法差劲，且词汇贫乏。可作为一名成年人，当他在大型公众集会上向人们阐述他的新信仰时，他发觉自己缺少了所需的语言交流技能。用他自己的话说，他“甚至没有这个功能”。
In a bid to increase his knowledge and improve his skills, desperate Malcolm X devised a scheme. He turned to books, believing this would be beneficial. However, when he tried to read serious books on his own, he was distressed as he didn't know most of the words. "They might as well have been in Chinese," he wrote. He skipped all the words he didn't know and then would end up with no clue as to what the book was about. "became frustrated," Malcolm X wrote in his autobiography, speaking of his inadequate language skills.
为了增长知识，提高沟通技能，深陷绝望的马尔科姆·艾克斯为自己制定了一个计划。他决定求助于书籍，相信书会使他受益匪浅。可是当他试图阅读一些严肃的书本时，他不禁倍感苦恼，因为大部分的词他都不认识。他写道：“这些书还不如是用中文写的。”他跳过了所有不认识的词，可是最终他全然不知这本书里写了什么。马尔科姆·艾克斯在他的自传里谈到他贫乏的语言技能时是这样写的：“我变得沮丧起来。”
