【答案解析】We have been used to regarding our mother in this way: she belongs to us, to our father, to her mother-in-law, to my brother and me as well as to our children. When we were young, mother sewed and patched our clothes under the dim light, bought home delicious food after work, went to school to attend the parent-teacher meeting, comforted us gently and wiped our eyes, and all of these were familiar to us. However, the sudden death of our father in the Cultural Revolution made us realize that our mother was lonely and helpless. She buried her head in her arms, trembling and sobbing. For a moment, she paid no attention to our frightened calls and yells. At that time she was away in her own world. But soon afterwards, she was back with us. For our sake, she came back and was kept in the cowshed and cleaning the toilet. She really did this for us. I said to her: "Morn, you have to live on, for us." And I took it for granted that with these words she can live on as usual. Teenager as I was then, I felt that morn should never leave us and we were all that she lived for. And mother didn"t leave us. As time went by, we had been used to her emaciation and toll, her tolerance to our hot-tempered grandma (her mother-in-law) and her smile to the grandchildren. In our mind, this is our mother, a life-long filial daughter-in-law, a good wife and a devoted mother.
And now, we suffered a great loss both physically and mentally. Mother has passed away, leaving us behind. We have never realized that mother herself is a unity. [解析] 1．本文为萌芽杂志社编审周佩红于1995年写作的《母亲这样的女人》的节选，描写的是作者对母亲的情感。文章中有时代的印记，文化大革命时，蹲牛棚并不是真正的蹲在牛棚里，而是指被关在牛棚里，翻译的时候要注意。
2．“小的时候，我们习惯了母亲在灯下捏着针线……我们的泪水。”一句中“我们习惯了”以后的内容均为该句的宾语，如果按正常语序翻译，会显得句子宾语部分太长，理解起来比较困难。所以可做将宾语前置的处理，将主谓语放在句末，即“all of these were familiar to us”。
3．“家长会”不能简单译成parents" meeting，而应将其翻译成parent-teacher meeting。
4．“柔声细语的抚慰我们”译为“comforted us gently”比较合适，当然，也可以将“柔声细语”直译为in a gentle voice。
5．“擦去我们的泪水”可以译为wiped the tears off our faces，但我们这里采取了更简洁地道的译法wiped our eyes，也与前面的comforted us gently比较协调一致。
6．“文革”属于专有名词，应当译为the Cultural Revolution。
7．“我们，就是她活在世上的全部理由”可能被很多同学译成“We were all the reasons why she lived in the world”，但这样的译法明显过于生硬，且不地道。因此，我们把它泽成we were all that she lived for，似乎更为妥当。
8．“这就是母亲的形象：一个终身的孝媳，贤妻，良母”一句中的冒号在汉语中起解释说明的作用，而我们在译成英语的时候则不必要使用冒号，而应该把冒号后面的部分改成同位语，似乎更妥：In our mind, this is our mother, a life-long filial daughter-in-law, a good wife and a devoted mother.其中，“孝媳，贤妻，良母”我们虽然可以处理成a good daughter-in-law， a good wife，and a good mother，但显然对于呼应文意没有多少帮助，因此，我们译成了a filial daughter-in-law, a good wife and a devoted mother，应该更能准确反映出文章对母亲的描述。