Twins?
雙生兒

by Richard Sidaway
理查德 希達威

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.
搖滾女歌手艾拉妮絲?莫莉塞特、超模吉賽爾?邦辰以及聯(lián)合國前任秘書科菲?安南，這三個人之間有什么共同點呢？他們的共同點是，他們都有自己的孿生兄弟或者姐妹。那女演員朱莉亞?羅伯茨、吉娜?戴維斯和霍利?亨特之間又有什么相似之處呢？相似之處便是她們有一對雙胞胎孩子。

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，雙胞胎比以往都多了，或者在你家里就有，或者在你學校里也有一些。這是因為現(xiàn)在的女人年紀比較大了才生第一胎孩子而且越來越多的人選擇去做生育治療。這些都增加了孕育雙生子的概率。

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!
美國似乎是特別適合孕育雙胞胎的地方。明尼蘇達州大學，自8000對雙胞胎一出生，就已開始對他們進行了許多研究。俄亥俄州的雙胞胎鎮(zhèn)有一個一年一度的雙胞胎節(jié)。而在紐約的餐館，居然聘用了37對同卵雙胞胎。

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.
科學家們都很鐘愛雙胞胎。因為雙胞胎的基因相同，假若有什么不同也是環(huán)境因素造成的。通過研究雙胞胎，科學家們已經(jīng)了解到了更多關(guān)于心臟病和癌癥的知識。

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!
有些雙胞胎一出生就分開了，直到長大后，他們才得以見面。盡管如此，他們在生活中做出的選擇竟是如此的相似。有一對雙胞胎，四十年沒見過對方，當他們再次相見的時候，竟發(fā)現(xiàn)他們的伴侶居然是同名的，甚至連孩子和寵物的名字都是一樣的。

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.
長的一樣人和僅僅是同一天出生的人會不會有什么區(qū)別呢？小的時候，我認識一對異卵雙胞胎。他們完全不同，而他們也因此感到十分自豪。其中一個，很小時視力就非常不好，所以帶著眼鏡。他的本地口音很重，十分迷戀火車。而另外一個，口音十分高雅，并且精通音樂。上面提到的第一位后來當了火車司機，然后搬去了蘇格拉。而他的兄弟則上了倫敦音樂學院，最后成了一名演奏鋼琴家。

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.
最近我教的那個班來了兩對同卵雙胞胎，可是我經(jīng)常分不清他們哪個是哪個。還好，他們好像并不怎么在意。有一天，我出了道題目來看看他們對兩個人這么親近有什么感想。他們分別在不同的房間回答我提出的問題。

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…
這兩對雙胞胎說，他們每天一起參加活動、學習、購物、看電視，或者只是在一起消遣。而且他們對音樂和食物都有同樣品味，甚至連他們的聲音有時候聽起來都是一樣的。他們同時表示，還希望能有更多的時間在一起。

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.
當我問他們擅長哪些科目時，其中一對雙胞胎寫了五科相同的科目，而且順序幾乎一樣。而另外一對則有三科科目一樣，其中一個喜歡藝術(shù)，而另一位則更喜歡科學。

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.
我還問他們是否曾經(jīng)有過和自己的同胞兄弟或姐妹同樣的想法。其中一對雙胞胎說是，例如他們其中一個說出的事正是另一個在想著的事。奇怪的是，另外一對雙胞胎卻不同意這種說法。其中一對雙胞胎說，她的姐姐說的事情，她永遠都不會說。

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!
對于我來說，最有趣的部分是研究心理測試的結(jié)果。我讓他們用十二組不同的句子描述他們的個性。有趣的是，我發(fā)現(xiàn)他們居然都用同樣的句子描述對方！