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The Departed《无间道风云》(精讲之三)
[ 2007-06-09 09:49 ]

影片对白  Plus I don't know if it is beyond some fuckin' cop prick like Queenan to pull you out of the Staties and send you after me. I just can't know. I don't know what they do in that particular department anyway. Are you still a cop?

 

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Mafia 意大利黑手党

Society of criminals of primarily Italian or Sicilian origin. The Mafia arose in Sicily in the late Middle Ages, possibly as a secret organization to overthrow the rule of foreign conquerors. It drew its members from the small private armies, or mafie, hired by landlords to protect their estates. By 1900 the Mafia "families" of western Sicily controlled their local economies. In the 1920s Benito Mussolini jailed most of the members, but they were released by the Allies after World War II and resumed their activities. In the 1970s their control of the heroin trade led to fierce rivalry among the clans, followed in the 1980s by renewed governmental efforts to imprison the Mafia leadership. In the U.S., Sicilian immigrants included former Mafia members who set up similar criminal operations. Their operations expanded from bootlegging in the 1920s to gambling, narcotics, and prostitution, and the Mafia, or Cosa Nostra, became the largest U.S. syndicated crime organization. About 24 Mafia groups or "families" controlled operations in the U.S.; the heads (or "dons") of the largest families formed a commission whose main function was judicial and could override a don's authority. At the beginning of the 21st century the Mafia's power was greatly diminished through convictions of top officials, defections, and murderous internal disputes.

The real name: "Cosa Nostra"

According to some mafiosi, the real name of the Mafia is Cosa Nostra (literally, "our thing"). Many have claimed, as did the Mafia turncoat Tommaso Buscetta, that the word "mafia" was a literary creation. Other Mafia defectors, such as Antonio Calderone and Salvatore Contorno, said the same thing. According to them, the real thing was "cosa nostra". To men of honour belonging to the organization, there is no need to name it. Mafiosi introduce known members to other known members as belonging to "cosa nostra" (our thing) or la stessa cosa (the same thing/the common thing). Only the outside world needs a name to describe it, hence the capitalized form "Cosa Nostra".


American Cosa Nostra

The Sicilian Mafia continues to dominate organized crime in the U.S., despite aggressive FBI investigations in the 1970s and 1980s which somewhat decreased the Mafia's power. It uses this status to maintain control over much of both Chicago's and New York City's organized criminal activity (as well as criminal activity in other cities in the Northeast and across the country, such as Philadelphia, Las Vegas, and others.). The Mafia and its reputation have become entrenched in American popular culture, being portrayed in movies, TV shows, commercial advertising and even video games.

The American Mafia, specifically the Five Families of New York, has its roots in the Sicilian Mafia, but has been a separate organization in the United States for many years. Today, American Cosa Nostra cooperates in various criminal activities with the different Italian organized crime groups which are headquartered in Italy. It is wrongly known as the "original Mafia", although it was neither the oldest criminal organization, nor the first to act in the U.S. In 1986, according to government reports, it was estimated that there are 1,700 members of "La Cosa Nostra" and thousands of associate members. Reports also are said to include the Italian-American Mafia as the largest organized crime group in the United States and continues to hold dominance over the National Crime Syndicate, despite the increasing numbers of street gangs and other organizations of neither Italian nor Sicilian ethnicity. American Cosa Nostra is most active in the New York metropolitan area, Philadelphia, New England (see the Patriarca crime family), Detroit, and Chicago, but has members in many other major cities around the United States and also participates in international criminal activities. Canada also has its mafia families. The Martiello family, headed by an ailing Domenico Martiello, rules the Toronto area while the Bracaglia family, ruled by a very violent father/son combo of Angelo and Mike Bracaglia are in control of Vancouver. These two families seem to be the most powerful in the country.

考考你

将下面一段话译成汉语。

Plus I don't know if it is beyond some fuckin' cop prick like Queenan to pull you out of the Staties and send you after me. I just can't know. I don't know what they do in that particular department anyway.

The Departed《无间道风云》(精讲之二)考考你 参考答案

1. 不能只靠旁证就判定一个人有罪。
You can't convict a man of a crime on circumstantial evidence alone.


2. 让小孩玩火柴有意义吗?
Does it make sense to let children play with matches?

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(英语点津Annabel编辑)


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