english-idiom-20110129

英语单词 不容忽视的elephant in the room

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我们的母语里有“视而不见”、“充耳不闻”这样的成语来表示人们对与自己无关的事情采取忽略的态度。有一些事，无关痛痒，可有可无的，被忽略了也就罢了。可是如果有些事情就像突然在你的房间里出现一头大象（elephant in the room）那么明显，可你还是在忽略，那就一定有原因了。

　　"Elephant in the room" is an English idiom for an obvious truth that is being ignored or goes unaddressed. It is based on the idea that an elephant in a roomwould be impossible to overlook; thus, people in the room who pretend the elephant is not theremight be concerning themselves with relatively small and even irrelevant matters, compared to the looming big one.

　　Elephant in the room（房间里的大象）指显而易见而又被忽略的事实。这个短语传递的信息是：如果一头大象出现在房间里，那是不可能被忽视的；由此，房间里的人假装无视大象的存在可能是他们在关注一些小事或者无关紧要的事情，而并不把注意力放在这个大物件上。

　　The term is used to refer to a question, problem, solution, or controversial issue that is obvious, but which is ignored by a group of people, generally out of embarrassment or taboo, such as an issue that involves a social taboo like race or religion.

　　这个短语常用来指代显而易见，但是因为禁忌或者怕引起尴尬而被某一群体忽略的问题、方法或者有争议的话题，比如种族、宗教等一些社会禁忌的话题。

　　For example:

　　Financing schools has become a problem about equal to having an elephant in the living room. It's so big you just can't ignore it.

　　筹集学费已经像房间里的大象一样，成了一个不容忽视的问题。