2013年第1周翻译练习

2013年第1周翻译练习

1. 汉译英

我们住在一所山村学校，叫喊声未必能让远处的人家听见。忽然，我想起了口哨——母亲上体育课时用的口哨。鼓起胸膛，我拼命地让全部气流吹出尽可能最大的声响。渐渐地，我听见了家门前由远及近嘈杂的脚步声，大声说话的声音。窗外交织着手电筒的光亮。我听见了乡亲们喊我的名字。开了门，一群人扛着锄头站在我家门前，他们都是周围我熟悉的乡亲。善良的黑脸，热切的目光，一群人由衷的关爱，驱散了我内心的恐惧。

2. 英译汉：

Luck Mark Twain

It was at a banquet in London in honor of one of the two or three conspicuously illustrious English military names of this generation. For reasons which will presently appear, I will with hold his real name and titles and call him Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby, Y.C., K.C.B., etc., etc., etc. what a fascination there is in a renowned name! There sat the man, in actual flesh, whom I had heard of so many thousands of times since that day, thirty years before, when his name shot suddenly to the zenith from a Crimean battlefield, to remain forever celebrated. It was food and drink to me to look, and look, and look at that semi-god; scanning, searching, noting: the quietness, the reserve, the noble gravity of his countenance; the simple honesty that expressed itself all over him; the sweet unconsciousness of hiss greatness---unconsciousness of the hundreds of admiring eyes fastened upon him, unconsciousness of the deep, loving, sincere worship welling out of the breasts of those people and flowing toward him.

The clergyman at my left was an old acquaintance of mine---clergyman now, but had spent the first half of his life in the camp and field and as an instructor in the military school at Woolwich. Just at the moment I have been talking about a veiled and singular light glimmered in his eyes and he leaned down and muttered confidently to me, indicating the hero of the banquet with a gesture:

“Privately---he’s an absolute fool.”

This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject had been Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonishment could not have been greater. Two things I was well aware of: that the Reverend was a man of strict veracity and that his judgment of men was good .therefore I knew, beyond doubt or question, that the world was mistaken about this hero: he was a fool. So I meant to find out, at a convenient moment, how the Reverend, all solitary and alone, had discovered the secret.

Some days later the opportunity came, and this is what the Reverend told me:

About forty yeas ago I was an instructor in the military academy at Woolwich. I was present in one of the sections when young Scoresby under went his preliminary examination. I was touched to the quick with pity, for the rest of the class answered up brightly and handsomely, while he ---why, dear me, he didn’t know anything, so to speak. He was evidently good, and sweet, and lovable, and guileless; and so it was exceedingly painful to see him stand there, as serene as a graven image, and deliver himself of answers which were veritably

miraculous for stupidity and ignorance. All the compassion in me was aroused in his behalf. I said to myself, when he comes to be examined again he will be flung over, of course; so it will be simply a harmless act of charity to ease his fall as much as I can .I took him aside and found that he knew a little of Caesar’s history; and as he did n’t know anything else, I went to work and drilled him like a galley-slave on a certain line of stock questions concerning Caesar which I knew would be used. If you’ll believe me, he went through with flying colors on examination day! He went through on that purely superficial ”cram”, and got compliments too, while others, who knew a thousand times more than he, got plucked. By some strangely lucky accident---accident not likely to happen twice in a century--- he was asked no question outside of the narrow limits of his drill.

It was stupefying. Well, all through his course I stood by him, with something of the sentiment which a mother feels for a crippled child; and he always saved himself ---just by miracle, apparently.

Now, of course, the thing that would expose him and kill him at last was mathematics. I resolved to make his death as easy as I could; so I drilled him and crammed him, and crammed him and drilled him ,just on the line of questions which the examiners would be most likely to use, and then launched him on his fate. Well, sir, try to conceive of the result: to my consternation, he took the first prize! And with it he got a perfect ovation in the way of compliments.

Sleep? There was no more sleep for me for a week. My conscience tortured me day and night. What I had done purely through charity, and only to ease the poor youth’s fall. I never had dreamed of any such preposterous results as the thing that had happened. I felt as guilty and miserable as Frankenstein. Here was a woodenhead whom I had put in the way of glittering promotions and prodigious responsibilities, and but one thing could happen: he and his responsibilities would all go to ruin together at the first opportunity.

The Crimean War had just broken out. Of course there had to be a war, I said to myself. We could n’t have peace and give this donkey a chance to die before he is found out. I waited for the earthquake. It came. And it made me reel when it did come. He was actually gazetted to a captaincy in a marching regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the service before they climb to a sublimity like that. And who could ever have foreseen that they would go and put such a load of responsibility on such green and inadequate shoulders? I could just barely have stood it if they had made him a cornet; but a captain---think of it! I thought my hair would turn white.

Consider what I did---I who so loved repose and inaction. I said to myself, I am responsible to the country for this, and I must go along with him and protect the country against him as far as I can. So I took my poor little capital that I had saved up through years of work and grinding economy, and went with sigh and bought a cornetcy in his regiment, and away we went to the field.

And there---oh, dear, it was awful. Blunders? ---why he never did anything but blunder. But, you see, nobody was in the fellow’s secret. Everybody had him focused wrong, and necessarily misinterpreted his performance every time. Consequently they took his idiotic blunders for inspirations of genius. They did, honestly! His mildest blenders were enough to make a man in his right mind cry; and they did make me cry---and rage and rave, too, privately. And the thing that kept me always in a sweat of apprehension was the fact that every fresh

blunder he made increased the luster of his reputation! I kept saying to myself. He’ll get so high that when discovery does finally come it will be like the sun falling out of the sky.

He went right along, up from grade to grade, over the dead bodies of his superiors, until at last, in the hottest moment of the battle of---down went our colonel, and my heart jumped into my mouth, for Scoresby was next in rank! Now for it, said I; we’ll all land in Sheol in ten minutes, sure.

The battle was awfully hot; the allies were steadily giving way all over the field. Our regiment occupied a position that was vital; a blunder now must be destruction. At crucial moment, what does this immortal fool do but detach the regiment from its place and order a charge over a neighboring hill where there wasn’t a suggestion of an enemy! “There you go!” I said to myself, “This is the end at last.”

And away we did go, and were over the shoulder of the hill before the insane movement could be discovered and stopped. And what did we find? An entire and unsuspected Russian army in reserve! And what happened? We were eaten up? That is necessarily what would have happened. But no, those Russians argued that no single regiment would come browsing around there at such a time. It must be the entire English army, and that the sly Russian game was detected and blocked; so they turned tail, and away they went, pell-mell, over the hill and down into the field, in wild confusion, and we after them; they themselves broke the solid Russian center in the field, and tore through, and in no time there was the most tremendous rout you ever saw, and the defeat of the allies was turned in to a sweeping and splendid victory! Marshal Canrobert looked on, dizzy with astonishment, admiration, and delight; and sent right off for Scoresby, and hugged him, and decorated him on the field in presence of al the armies!

And what was Scoresby’s blunder that time? Merely the mistaking his right hand for his left--- that was all. An order had come to him to fall back and support our right; and, instead, he fell forward and went over the hill to the left. But the name won that day as a marvelous military genius filled the world with his glory, and that glory will never fade while history books last.

He is just as good and sweet and lovable and unpretending as a man can be, but he doesn’t know enough to come in when it rains. Now that is absolutely true. He is the supremest ass in the universe; and until half an hour ago nobody knew it but himself and me. He has been pursued, day by day and year by year, by a most phenomenal and astonishing luckiness. He has been a shining soldier in all our wars for a generation; he has littered his whole military life with blunders, and yet has never committed one that didn’t make him a knight or a baronet or a lord or something. Look at his breast; why, he is just clothed in domestic and foreign decorations. Well, sir, every one of them is the record of some shouting stupidity or other; and, taken together, they are proof that the very best thing in all this world that can befall a man is to be born lucky. I say again, as I said at the banquet, Scoresby’s an absolute fool.

事情发生在伦敦的一次宴会上。这次宴会是为当代英国威名显赫的两三位军事将领之一举行的。由于下面即将说明的原因，我将不提他的真实姓名和各种头衔。我将称他为陆军中将阿瑟·斯考兹比勋爵、皇家护卫骑士、巴斯爵士，等等，等等，等等。鼎鼎大名的人物具有多大的魅力130年前他在克里米亚战役中崭露头角，名声大噪，历久不衰。从那时以后我曾无数次听见人们谈到他，而此刻他本人就坐在那儿。我盯着这位半神半人似的人物，看呀，看呀，看呀，好像这就是我的美酒佳肴。我注视着他，搜寻他的一切特点并默记在心：他的

面部表情安详、矜持、高贵、严肃；他的气质中具有朴素、诚实的品格，这是一眼就看得出的；他对自己的丰功伟绩虽然踌躇满志，但却不露声色——好像不知道成百双充满崇敬之情的眼睛正注视着他；好像不知道出自人们内心的一股深厚的爱慕之情，一种真诚的崇拜，正朝他涌来。

坐在我左边的牧师是我的老相识。他现在是牧师，可前半辈子却是在戎马生涯中度过的，而且还当过伍立奇军事学校的教官。就在我刚谈到的这个时刻，他眼中隐隐约约闪现出一种十分离奇的目光，一边用手势指着宴会上的那位英雄，一边俯过头来轻轻地，但却是满有把握地对我说：

“私下说说一他是个头号大傻瓜。”

这个评语使我大吃一惊。如果他说的是拿破仑、苏格拉底或是所罗门，我也不会感到更惊奇了。有两点我是清楚的：这位牧师说话句句真实可靠；而且他很有知人之明。因此我断定，毫无疑问，世人是错看了这位英雄：他的确是个傻瓜。于是我就想在方便的时候向这位孤身独处的牧师问清楚，他是怎样发现这个秘密的。

过了些日子，机会来到了，下面就是这位牧师告诉我的话：

大约40年前，我在伍立奇军事学校当教官。年轻的斯考兹比参加初试时，我在他那个小组。班上别的学员回答问题都很漂亮，而他一一唉，天啊，他可说是一无所知，我的怜悯之心不禁为之大动。谁都看得出他是个好孩子，可亲可爱，又很天真；此刻他站在那儿，呆若木鸡，回答问题时的愚昧无知真是荒谬绝伦，叫人看了十分痛心。我的怜悯心都被他激发起来了。我暗自思忖，复试时他肯定是要被刷掉的；既然如此，尽我所能来减轻他摔下来的痛苦，也就只不过是一种无害的慈悲举动而已。我把他叫到一旁，发现他还知道一点儿恺撒大帝的历史，既然他别的什么也不知道，于是我就辅导他，逼他像奴隶船上的奴隶一样拼命准备有关恺撒大帝的一些老生常谈的问题，而我知道这些问题是会考到的。信不信由你，考试那天他居然名列前茅！就凭这点儿纯释是表面功夫的“死记硬背”他过了关，而且还受到赞扬；而别人呢，虽然比他强一千倍，却被淘汰了。由于某种奇妙幸运的机遇一—这种机遇—百年也难碰到第二次，除了他准备的狭窄范围之外，没其妙。这么说吧，自始至终我都守护着他，我对他的感情就像一位母亲对待自己的瘸腿小孩一样；但他却总是能从困境中自己解脱出来——明摆着全是凭奇迹。

当然啰，到头来揭穿他、要他命的还是数学。我打定主意尽量叫他死得痛快点儿；于是我选定了考官最可能出的题目的路子对他反反复复进行填鸭式的硬灌，然后让他听天由命。您想想那结果吧：叫我大吃一惊，他居然荣获头奖！全场向他热烈鼓掌祝贺。

睡觉？一个星期我都睡不着。我日日夜夜受着良心的折磨。我做的这一切纯粹是出于恻隐之心，只是为了让这可怜的小伙子别摔得太惨。

我做梦也没有想到，事情的结果竟是如此之荒唐透顶。我感到像弗兰肯斯坦一样有罪，难过。我让一个呆瓜可能有机会青云直上，荣膺重任；而结局只能是：时机一到，他和他的事业前程都会一块儿完蛋。

克里米亚战争这时刚刚爆发。我暗中想，当然得有一场战争。要是在和平时期，就没有机会叫这头蠢驴在死之前不露出本相。我等着火山爆发。火山果然爆发了。可是火山爆发时却惊得我目瞪口呆。官方公报上发表他为作战团队的一名上尉！比他强的人服役到老，头发都灰白了，才能爬到这样高的位置6谁又预料得到他们竟会把责任如此重大的一副担子放在这样稚嫩而不堪胜任的肩膀上？要是他们叫他当一名扛大旗的军士，我还勉强受得了；可是

叫他当上尉一想想看！这真把我吓了个半死。

我是个爱好安逸、不好活动的人，可是想想看我干了件什么事。

我自思自想，这件事我要对国家负责，我一定得跟他一起去尽我所能保护国家不受他的祸害。于是我拿出历年辛辛苦苦工作、点点滴滴节省下来的一点积蓄，叹了口气，跑到他那个团队买了个扛大旗的差使，跟部队一起开赴战场。

哎哟哟，真可怕。犯错误？——他可只会犯错误，别的什么也干不出来。但是你得明白，这家伙的秘密谁也没窥破过。大伙儿都错看了他，并且对他的所作所为每次都必然做出错误的解释。结果是，他们把这个白痴所犯的大错竟然当成是天才的杰作。我一点也不瞎说，他们就是这样胡搞的！他最微小的错误也足够叫一个头脑清醒的人大喊起来；这些错误的确叫我大喊起来——这叫我私下里大发雷霆、破口大骂。老是使我直冒冷汗的是，每次他犯下一个新的错误，他的英名就愈加大放异彩！我不断地对自己说，他这样青云直上，、有朝一日真相揭穿的时候，那会像太阳从天上掉下来。

他的上级不断阵亡，他也就踏着他们的尸体步步高升。最后，在某战役最炽烈的时刻，我们的上校也牺牲了。我吓得心都快从口里跳出来了，因为斯考兹比是第二名军衔最高的军官！瞧吧，我说，不到十分钟咱们全都得到地狱里报到，没错。 ’

战斗打得异常激烈，联军在整个战场上节节败退。我们团队所踞的阵地十分重要；此刻出错必会招致全军覆没。在这一发千钧之际，，这个头号大傻瓜是怎样指挥的呢？他把团队从阵地撤出，下令向邻近的一座小山包发起冲锋，而那里连一个敌兵的影子也没有！“一错再错！”我自言自语地说，“这下子到底是全完蛋啦。”

我们一个劲儿往前冲，敌人还来不及发现和制止我们的疯狂行动，我们就已经冲上了山脊。我们看到了什么呢？谁也想不到竟是俄军整整一个军的后备队！结果如何呢？是不是把我们吃掉了呢？百分之九十九的情况下，那必然是我们的下场。但是，不，那些俄国人推测：在这种时刻，单单一个团队是决不会像羊群放牧似的在这儿出现的。必定是英军全军出击，必定是俄军的诡计已被识破而不能得逞；因此他们就掉头乱跑，从山上跑到山下，混乱不堪，我们则尾追不舍；他们自己破坏了俄军坚强的中央阵地，撕开了一个缺口，于是俄军立即全线大溃败，那情形真是少见，结果联军反败为胜，获得了伟大、辉煌的胜利！坎罗伯特元帅看到这一切，又惊又喜，赞叹不已，立即召见斯考兹比，拥抱他，在战场上当着全军的面给他授勋！

那一次斯考兹比犯的是什么错误？只不过是把右手当成了左手——如此而已。命令叫他往后靠，支援我方右翼；而他呢，他却往前靠，越过小山包向左方运动。但是那一天，他却一举成名，成了一位神奇的天才军事家，誉满全球。只要世上还有历史书存在，这种荣誉就永放光芒。

他是一位非常和蔼可亲、平易近人的好人，但他就是不知道下雨了应当进屋躲躲。这话一点不假。他是宇宙间夭字第一号的蠢驴；半个钟头以前除了他自己和我之外还没有旁人知道内情。日复一日，年复一年，他交的全是好运，一种极不寻常的、令人惊叹不已的好运。在一代人的时期内，他参加过我们的历次战争，战功彪炳；他在戎马生涯中始终不断犯错误，然而这些错误总是使他荣膺爵士、从男爵、勋爵或是别的什么称号。瞧他的胸脯儿，嘿，密密麻麻挂满了本国和外国的勋章。你瞧，每枚勋章都是某件荒唐透顶的蠢事的记录，这些勋章加在一起就证明：人生在世所能碰到的最最好的事就是一出娘胎就交上好运气。我在宴会上说过，我现在再说一遍，斯考兹比是个头号大傻瓜。

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