 不容忽視的elephant in the room
[ 2009-05-26 16:28 ]
我們的母語里有“視而不見”、“充耳不聞”這樣的成語來表示人們對與自己無關的事情采取忽略的態度。有一些事，無關痛癢，可有可無的，被忽略了也就罷了。可是如果有些事情就像突然在你的房間里出現一頭大象（elephant in the room）那么明顯，可你還是在忽略，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 room would be impossible to overlook; thus, people in the room who pretend the elephant is not there might be concerning themselves with relatively small and even irrelevant matters, compared to the looming big one.
Elephant in the room（房間里的大象）指顯而易見而又被忽略的事實。這個短語傳遞的信息是：如果一頭大象出現在房間里，那是不可能被忽視的；由此，房間里的人假裝無視大象的存在可能是他們在關注一些小事或者無關緊要的事情，而并不把注意力放在這個大物件上。
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.
這個短語常用來指代顯而易見，但是因為禁忌或者怕引起尷尬而被某一群體忽略的問題、方法或者有爭議的話題，比如種族、宗教等一些社會禁忌的話題。
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.
籌集學費已經像房間里的大象一樣，成了一個不容忽視的問題。
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（英語點津 Helen 編輯）
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