Truyện cười song ngữ

Mathematics

This is the only subject with absolutely no practical use. You learn that 1 + 1 = 2, only to be told a few years later that 1 + 1 = 10 and introduced to the binary system. You also learn differentiation, integration and plenty of other important things. In the end, though, you still need a pocket calculator when you go shopping.

Physics

The study of falling apples and other fruit. You also learn to calculate train timetables and work out when two trains will meet if they are travelling on the same... track. People who finish studying physics seldom go on to grow apples or travel by train.

Chemistry

A subject in which you have to memorise the right answers and the experiments. Pour one bottle into another, shake or stir, sometimes heat it up, and finally pour the whole lot into the garden. That's an experiment.

Biology

The study of fruit flies and various other household creatures. Yet if you ask a grown-up how babies are made, you're bound to be told, "A stork brings them and leaves them on the windowsill for their mothers."

Geography

This subject teaches you to read maps and point out the Americas on a world map. It must be the newest subject of all: before Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas, surely nobody had to study it.

History

Your teachers make you remember who overthrew which king. Sometimes you even have to remember a monarch's birthday, although he never throws a birthday party and you certainly don't need the date to buy him a present.

Literature

You have to read a book so thick that you barely have time to glance at its title before walking into the exam room. By the end of the course, you may know that Hugo and Huy Can aren't brothers, and that Xuan Dieu wasn't a pen salesman, even though he made his living by his pen.

Philosophy

Philosophy is a phenomenology of phenomena, and sometimes, when we discuss those phenomena, what we're doing is indeed phenomenology. That is why phenomenology is called the discussion of those phenomena. But sometimes those phenomena aren't phenomenology, so discussing those phenomena is phenomenology.

Altogether, these subjects can be squeezed into 2,000 lessons over four or five years. Two lessons are genuinely useful—for example, you can only switch on a fan when there's electricity. The other 1,998 are utterly pointless—for example, how electricity makes the fan turn.

All you have to do is copy down what the teacher says, memorise it, copy it onto your exam paper, and then forget it. Anyone unlucky enough to be unable to forget becomes a lecturer and never escapes university.

As for going to university, just go along and study something to keep up with your friends. Surely you can't let all your friends go to university while you sit at home playing MU Online!

Từ vựng trong truyện

• binary system: hệ nhị phân, hệ đếm sử dụng hai chữ số 0 và 1
• differentiation: phép vi phân
• integration: phép tích phân
• overthrew: lật đổ một người hoặc chính quyền đang nắm quyền
• made his living by his pen: kiếm sống bằng nghề viết
• phenomenology: hiện tượng học; ở đây được lặp lại để gây cười
• keep up with: theo kịp, không thua kém