第82讲 暴露自己 Let someone off the hook & Open oneself up to sth.

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汉语中有句很传神的表达叫“罪有应得”，在英文中有一个片语与之意思完全相反──let someone off the hook, 它指“让某人免于责难”。

先看一个例句：

“I can never forgive him for what he did to me.” Perhaps, you always complained like this when someone else had offended you. Needless to say, countless people, like you, are not willing to let the offender off the hook.
(译文：“我永远不会原谅他对我所做的事”。也许，当别人冒犯了你时，你常这样埋怨。不用说，许多人就像你一样不愿让冒犯者逍遥无事。)

这里的片语let someone off the hook意思是“让某人免受责难，让某人逍遥无事”。大家知道hook的意思是“钓鱼的勾子”，所以片语的字面意义就是“拔掉已经上勾的鱼儿嘴中的勾子，让其跑掉”，这不正是“让其逍遥无事”的意思吗？现在人们就用它来形容一个人做了不该做的事甚至是坏事而没有受到惩罚。To let someone off the hook is to allow he or she to escape punishment or criticism. For example:

We must let him wait there for more than a couple of hours before letting him off the hook easily.
(译文：我们在轻易的让他逍遥无事前必须让他在那儿等上两个来钟头。)

其实人应该大肚一点，所谓冤冤相报何时了，有时学会忘记何尝不是一种人生的哲学？不过有人认为，这次你软弱了，下次人家还会欺负到你头上。

It seems that forgiveness is sometimes challenging, but it is possible. Don’t think forgiving others means opening yourself up to more hurt. There is a truth, which tells us that not forgiving hurts you far more than it hurts the offender.
(译文：宽恕有时看起来对你来说是困难的。但是它确实是可能的。不要认为宽恕别人就意味着你将自己暴露于更多的伤害之下。有一个事实是不宽恕对你造成的伤害远比对冒犯者造成的伤害大。)

多难理解的一句话呀!让我们来看一看其中的一个片语：open oneself up to something. 从字面上看这个片语是指“把某人全身心的展于某事之下”，所以我们翻译为“使自己暴露于某事之下”。The idiom means to make oneself available or susceptible to something. 这是一个比较新式的表达法，许多词典里还没有收录呢!

Telling others everything about you probably makes you opening yourself up to more nescience.
(译文：告诉别人过多你的信息可能使你暴露于更多的无知之下。)

结束语：今天我们介绍了两个片语，其中open oneself up to something是一个新片语，意思是“使自己暴露于某事之下”。另一个片语是let someone off the hook，它的意思是“让某人逍遥无事”。