【备注】这里记录的是本人参加第二届全国芙蓉杯青年翻译奖（2006年）的参赛译文，获优秀奖（英译汉），不足之处，供大家点评。 英译汉： The Woods: A Meditation （《林中思语》原文） What brought me to the woods was grief. My mother died of cancer when I was twenty-one. She was forty-eight. Hers was along harrowing death with remissions and tatters of hope and experimental treatments and long stretches of sheer suffering alleviated by morphine oblivion. She was in and out of hospitals for the better part of six years. I walked the long linoleum corridors and talked with the doctors and interns and nurses about dosages and the weather, about radiation and baseball. For every dire intention there was a correspondent distraction that enabled each person to keep going on 悲痛将我带到了这片树林。我二十一岁时，母亲死于癌症，当时她才四十八岁。经过病痛缓解继而治愈希望的破灭和那些实验性治疗之后，靠吗啡的麻醉，母亲在有所缓和的病痛中持续了一段时间，但最终还是被可怕的死神带走了。在近六年的时间里，我们几度将她送进医院。在铺着油毡的走道上，我徘徊过，与医生、实习生及护士谈论过有关用药的剂量问题和天气情况，聊过放射的影响以及棒球赛。每一次短暂的愈合，都让我们从紧张中稍稍放松开来，从而使得我们每一个人都能继续坚持下去。 I sat by her bedside reading aloud to her from her favorite distractionVictorian novels. She was wild about Anthony Trollope. The vicars and lords and widows whose cordial yet machinating lives Trollope recounted seemed reasonably settled, yet being people they managed to muck things up. Both the settled aspect, the golden dust of autumnal England , the material weight of furniture and dresses and jewels, and the making a mess of things pleased my mother. She had lived, but she wanted to live more. She had wanted to visit Europe and see cathedrals and parsonages. She had wanted to breathe the ripe air of history. Now there were a hospital bed and duration and books. 我坐在她的病榻边，大声朗读着她最喜欢的消遣读物――维多利亚时期的小说。她对安东尼 . 特罗洛普的小说极其着迷。在特罗洛普的笔下，那些牧师、贵族和寡妇们，对生活充满热情却又诡计多端。这些在她看来都合情合理，但从现实生活来看，这些角色总是败事有余。小说一成不变的描述角度，英格兰秋天金色的尘埃，家具、服装、珠宝的物质价值以及对那些主人翁们成事不足的描写，这些都让母亲开心。她已经生活过，只是还想活得更久一些。她曾想去参观欧洲，去看那儿的大教堂和牧师寓所，她还曾想去感受小说中的那种意境。但是现在她所能拥有的只是一张病床、一段弥留的时光和几本书而已。 I lived with death on a daily basis, a companion of sorts, mute but tireless. When I shaved in the morning or stopped at a drive-in to get a hamburger or walked from one class at the university to another, I felt deaths presence. In that sense, part of me was dying with her as I watched her valiantly struggle with her diseases mindless depredations. What did those dispiriting cancer cells know? How many nights had I sat by her bedside when she was asleep, too weary and sad to pick my-self up, and listened to the noises of the hospital, the squeak of shoes and the rolling creak of gurneys, as if they might bring me an answer? What brought me to the woods was the prospect of living on earth with nothing between me and the earthnone of the electronic gibber- jabber. I craved directness and quiet. What brought me to the woods was an impulse to get lost, to almost literally be off the map. America was vast and a fair amount of it still looked as though not many people lived there. I liked the prospect of thinking about land not in terms of building lots but acres. 死亡和我天天相随，它就像一个伙伴，沉默无语而不知疲倦。早晨刮脸时，死亡从刮刀边滑过；路过商店，在车内伸手购买汉堡包时，死亡从手指间溜过；在大学校园内，从一个课堂走进另一个课堂时，死亡从我身边掠过。从某种意义上来说，看着母亲勇敢地同那些疯狂吞噬生命的疾病作斗争时，我的部分身心在随同她一起死亡。那些令人绝望的癌细胞可知道：有多少个晚上在母亲睡着的时候，我坐在她的病榻旁忧心忡忡，疲惫不堪以致无力起身？有多少个晚上，医院内各种器械发出的响声、走廊上鞋子的吱吱声以及轮床的嘎嘎声，仿佛能给我答案似的在我耳边萦绕？一种期待期待我和这个世界断绝一切往来，包括远离电子世界的喋喋不休――将我带到这片树林。我渴求直截了当与平静安适的生活。一种渴望迷失自我、确切地说想消失的冲动将我带到了这片树林。美国疆土辽阔，但还有大片的领域似乎荒无人烟。我喜欢将土地想象成田野，而不是高楼大厦的堆积地。 What brought me to the woods was generational. My wife and I were part of the back-to-the-land movement of the Sixties and Seventies, the little tide of people who wanted to return to a countryside they had never experienced. What brought me to the woods was romanticism. I wanted to feel elemental sublimity, the full force of the stars and rain and wind. What brought me to the woods was pragmatism. I wanted to learn how to take care of my self. What brought me to the woods was my being an urban Jew who was ready to leave behind the vestiges of assimilated religion and culture that had been bequeathed to me. I wasnt ashamed of it. I craved, however, something different from the largely asphalt landscape I grew up in. What brought me to the woods was the longing to be with words in an undistracted place. Woods and words were almost identical. When we look for one thread of motive, we are, in all likelihood, deceiving ourselves. 一种渴望体验大自然的浪漫精神将我带到了这片树林。我想体味大自然的尊严，也想体味日月星辰和风风雨雨的全部力量。一种谋生的实用主义将我带到这片树林。我想学会如何照顾自己。一种这样的思考将我带到了这片树林：即使身为都市犹太人，我亦已准备抛下这些被同化了的文化与宗教。我不会为此感到羞愧，因为我渴求某些东西，某些存在于这片生我养我、被沥青覆盖的大地之外的东西。一种在宁静中追求文学的渴望将我带到这片树林。因为丛林（ woods ）与文字（ words ）拼写非常相近。我们心知肚明：在思索这一串串动机时，我们都像在欺骗自己。 We lived for over twenty-three years on forty-eight wooded acres that we purchased from an old Mainer who had bought up land in the Thirties like postage stamps and sold off a parcel every now and then when he needed some money. We lived off the gridno conventional power, no electric lines, no light switches, faucets, or spigots, no toaster or hair dryer, no flush toilet, no furnace, and no monthly bill from Central Maine Power. Often when we told people how we lived, they asked us forthrightly how we could live that way. What was with us? Frequently they assumed that we were ideologues of some sort, that we were living without electricity to make a point about the dry rot of Western civilization. Perhaps we were latter day Luddites or devotees of Rousseau or Thoreau. We must be of the company of the sanctimonious, those who live to judge others. 我们在这 48 英亩 的林地上生活了 23 年。地是从一位老缅因州人手里买下的。三十年代，他像买邮票一样买下整片土地，随后在他需要钱时，又一块一块地卖掉。我们远离尘嚣：没有电，没有电线与开关，没有自来水，没有烤箱，没有电吹风，没有抽水马桶，没有暖气，当然也就没有每月从缅因州中心电站寄来的账单。当我们告诉他人怎样生活时，他们经常会问我们怎么做到的，我们身边有什么可用的东西呢？通常，人们会认为我们是某种理想主义者，认为我们试图通过没有电的生活方式来证明西方文明的腐朽。也许还有人认为我们就是现代的勒德分子，或是卢梭、梭罗的狂热信仰者；要不我们一定是那些假装高尚、执着于批判他人的某些团体的成员。 I never blamed people for making such assumptions. Anything out of the ordinary tends to be taken personally. The fact was that we had situated our house a few hundred feet beyond what the power company considered a reasonable distance to put in their poles. Beyond that distance, a customer had to sign a contract and pay a bunch of money up front. We never had that money and so we never got power. We could have situated the house closer to the poles to begin withthere was plenty of road frontagebut that logical consideration never entered our heads. Other concernsaesthetic, intuitive, and earthyguided where we built our house. It was on a rise where, once upon a time, a farmhouse had sat. There was a dug well there that we wound up using. Despite the rapidity with which a dooryard became the woods again, there was still something of a south-facing clearing there. 我不会责怪他们拥有这样或那样的猜测。所有与众不同的东西都会引发因人而异的揣测。实际上，我们只是住在离电力公司规定安置电线杆范围数百英尺外的地方。超出了这个规定范围后，顾客必须和电力公司签下合同，而且还得预先交一笔不小的费用。我们没办法筹到这笔钱，所以也就无法用上电。其实我们也可以将房子建在离电线杆较近的地方而且更临近大路。但这种理性思考从未出现在我们的脑海中。其它诸如美学的、直觉的、质朴的考虑，让我们做出决定将家建在那里。它修建在一个小山坡上，那里曾经有一座农舍，还有一口可供我们汲水的井。尽管庭院很快就变为林地，但还是留有一些朝南的空旷地。 We had rented our share of dark apartments and wanted all the sunlight we could get. People had lived for eons without electric lights and water pressure. Though we had never done it, as blithe and hardworking spirits we felt that we could too. At first we said, Next year, well get power. This is just temporary. Years went by, however, and we got used to going to the outhouse, hauling buckets of water, heating with wood, bathing in a metal tub, lighting kerosene lamps. 我们租下了属于自己昏暗的房间，希望拥有所有能够拥有的阳光。前人在没有电灯和自来水的情况下生活了无数个世纪。虽然还没做到这一点，但无忧无虑而又勤劳刻苦的我们，相信自己一定能行。一开始我们说：明年就可以用上电，这种情况只是暂时的。然而，若干年过去了，我们已经习惯了使用室外厕所，用桶打水，用木材生火，用金属浴盆洗澡，用煤油灯照明。 Right from the beginning we had a small gas stove that ran off propane tanks, which we cooked on when the wood-fired cook stove wasnt in use. We never considered ourselves purists. The fact is that we got to like the simplicity of it, how physical action A produced result B. Nor did we expect anyone to be particularly enthused about how we lived. Most Americans believe in progress of some type; going backwards seems perverse. Though we had our material enthusiasmshand tools, for instance, and cast-iron pots and blue jeans and ceramic vasesthe way we lived took some air out of the sails of acquisitive desire. A friend called us cheerleaders for the nineteenth century. 刚开始时，我们也用一个小小的煤气灶做饭，因为当时用木材生火的灶台还没有做好。我们从未认为自己是传统的纯粹主义者。实际上，我们开始喜欢上由动作 A 产生结果 B 这一简单而又直接的物理过程。我们并不期望任何人来过分关注我们的生活方式。大多数美国人认为：事物以某种形式向前发展，才是正常的；任何形式的倒退，都是不可思议的。我们热衷于传统的物质生活，例如喜欢手工工具、铸铁盆、牛仔裤和陶制花瓶。这种生活方式使我们可以稍稍摆脱贪婪的诱惑，所以朋友称我们是十九世纪的代言人。
标签: 教学相长
