不生硬的

These young, slim, stately things a thousand houses high (or so it seemed to me, coming from an architecture that had never defied the earth), a tower of Babel each one, not one tower of Babel but many, a city of Babel towers, casually, easily strewn end up against the skies― they stood at the brink, close-crowded, the brink of America, these Giantesses, these Fates, which were not built for a king nor a ghost nor any man's religion, but were materialized by those hard, cold, magic words― opportunity, enterprise, prosperity, success― just business words out of world-wide commerce from a land rich in natural resource.

参差不齐地插入云天，不啻通天塔之城。这些女性巨人，命运女神，密密麻麻地站立在美国的边缘。她们不是爲一位帝王、一个幽灵或任何人的宗教而建造的，而是由几个生硬、冰冷、神奇的单词──机会、事业、繁荣、成功──物化而成，而这些商业辞汇来源於一个自然资源丰富的国家世界规模的贸易活动。

The split between the two groups can hardly be papered over.

这两个团体间的分歧难以掩饰。

This approach not only encourages a greater number of responses, but minimizes the likelihood of stale groupthink.

这种做法不仅鼓励了更多的反应，而且减少跟风的可能性。