2017翻譯資格考試筆譯高級英譯漢精選（十六）
Hidden Within Technology’s Empire, a Republic of Letters
隱藏于技術(shù)帝國的文學(xué)界
When I was a boy “discovering literature”, I used to think how wonderful it would be if every other person on the street were familiar with Proust and Joyce or T. E. Lawrence or Pasternak and Kafka. Later I learned how refractory to high culture the democratic masses were. Lincoln as a young frontiersman read Plutarch, Shakespeare and the Bible. But then he was Lincoln.
我還是個"探索文學(xué)"的少年時，就經(jīng)常在想：要是大街上人人都熟悉普魯斯 特和喬伊斯，熟悉T.E.勞倫斯，熟悉帕斯捷爾納克和卡夫卡，該有多好啊!后來才 知道，平民百姓對高雅文化有多排斥。雖說少年時代身居邊陲的林肯就在閱讀普魯塔克，、莎士比亞和《圣經(jīng)》，但他畢竟是林肯。
Later when I was traveling in the Midwest by car, bus and train, I regularly visited small-town libraries and found that readers in Keokuk, Iowa, or Benton Harbor, Mich., were checking out Proust and Joyce and even Svevo and Andrei Biely. D. H. Lawrence was also a favorite. And sometimes I remembered that God was willing to spare Sodom for the sake of 10 of the righteous. Not that Keokuk was anything like wicked Sodom, or that Proust’s Charlus would have been tempted to settle in Benton Harbor, Mich. I seem to have had a persistent democratic desire to find evidences of high culture in the most unlikely places.
后來，我坐小車、巴士和 火車在中西部旅行，經(jīng)常走訪小鎮(zhèn)圖書館;發(fā)現(xiàn)在衣阿華州基奧卡克市，或者密歇根州本頓港市，讀者們借閱普魯斯特和喬伊斯的作品，甚 至還有斯維沃@和安德烈•別雷®的著作。D. H.勞倫斯的書也深受歡迎。有時我會想起上帝愿為十個義人而饒恕所多瑪城的故事^并非基奧卡克市和邪惡的所多瑪有何相似之處，也并非普魯斯特筆下的夏呂斯 ®想移居密西根州的本頓港，只不過我似乎一直有一種開明的想法，希望在最難覓高雅文化的地方找到高雅文化的證據(jù)。
For many decades now I have been a fiction writer, and from the first I was aware that mine was a questionable occupation. In the 1930’s an elderly neighbor in Chicago told me that he wrote fiction for the pulps. “The people on the block wonder why I don’t go to a job, and I’m seen puttering around, trimming the bushes or painting a fence instead of working in a factory. But I’m a writer. I sell to Argosy and Doc Savage,” he said with a certain gloom. “They wouldn’t call that a trade.” Probably he noticed that I was a bookish boy, likely to sympathize with him, and perhaps he was trying to warn me to avoid being unlike others. But it was too late for that.
至今，我已寫了幾十年小說，而且一開始就意 識到，這是個頗有爭議的職業(yè)。20世紀(jì)30年代，芝加哥一位年長的鄰居告訴我，他給通俗雜志寫小說。"街坊鄰里 都納悶，為什么不去上班，卻見我游來蕩去，修剪修剪樹木，粉刷粉刷籬笆，就是不去工廠干活兒�？晌沂亲骷野。遄淤u給《大商船》和《薩維奇醫(yī)生》⑦那些雜 志，"他說話時神情有些抑郁。"他們不會把這當(dāng)作正事兒。"他很可能已經(jīng)覺察到，我是個喜歡讀書的孩子，興許會與他產(chǎn)生共鳴，或者他想提醒我，不要與眾不 同，但這為時已晚。
From the first, too, I had been warned that the novel was at the point of death, that like the walled city or the crossbow, it was a thing of the past. And no one likes to be at odds with history. Oswald Spengler, one of the most widely read authors of the early 30’s, taught that our tired old civilization was very nearly finished. His advice to the young was to avoid literature and the arts and to embrace mechanization and become engineers.
一開始也有人告誡我，小說正頻臨死亡，猶如城郭或弓弩，已屬昨日之物。誰也不愿和歷史作對。奧斯瓦爾德•斯賓格勒*——30年代初擁有最廣泛讀者的作者之--曾教導(dǎo)我們，陳腐、古老的文明已幾近末路，建議年輕人避開文學(xué)和藝術(shù)，擁抱機械化，去當(dāng)工程師。
In refusing to be obsolete, you challenged and defied the evolutionist historians. I had great respect for Spengler in my youth, but even then I couldn’t accept his conclusions, and (with respect and admiration) I mentally told him to get lost.
你拒絕被淘汰，就是對進化論史學(xué)家的挑戰(zhàn)和蔑視。年輕時我非常尊重斯賓格勒，但即使那個時候，也無法接受他的結(jié)論，而(懷著敬慕之情)在心里對他說：你走遠(yuǎn)點吧。
Sixty years later, in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal, I come upon the old Spenglerian argument in a contemporary form. Terry Teachout, unlike Spengler, does not dump paralyzing mountains of historical theory upon us, but there are signs that he has weighed, sifted and pondered the evidence.
時隔60年，在最近一期《華爾街日報》上，偶見斯賓格勒式老調(diào)新彈。跟斯賓格勒不同，特里•蒂奇奧特并沒有將一座座令人窒息的史論大山壓在我們身上，但跡象表明，他權(quán)衡、篩選、思索過相關(guān)證據(jù)。
He speaks of our “atomized culture,” and his is a responsible, up-to-date and carefully considered opinion. He speaks of “art forms as technologies.” He tells us that movies will soon be “downloadable”—that is, transferable from one computer to the memory of another device—and predicts that films will soon be marketed like books. He predicts that the near-magical powers of technology are bringing us to the threshold of a new age and concludes, “Once this happens, my guess is that the independent movie will replace the novel as the principal vehicle for serious storytelling in the 21st century.”
他談到了我們的"原子化文化"，觀點新穎可靠，并 經(jīng)過深思熟慮，談到了 "作為技術(shù)的藝術(shù)形式"，告訴我們，電影很快就"可以下載"，即從一臺電腦轉(zhuǎn)入另一存儲設(shè)備。他還預(yù)測，電影不久會如書籍般銷售。他預(yù)言近乎魔法的技術(shù)之 力將把我們引入一個新時代，并得出結(jié)論："一旦這成為現(xiàn)實，我猜想，獨立電影會替代小說，成為21世紀(jì)嚴(yán)肅故事敘述的主要載體。"
In support of this argument, Mr. Teachout cites the ominous drop in the volume of book sales and the great increase in movie attendance: “For Americans under the age of 30, film has replaced the novel as the dominant mode of artistic expression.” To this Mr. Teachout adds that popular novelists like Tom Clancy and Stephen King “top out at around a million copies per book,” and notes, “The final episode of NBC’s ‘Cheers,’ by contrast, was seen by 42 million people.”
為了支持這一觀點，蒂奇 奧特先生指出，圖書銷量不幸下降，而電影觀眾卻大幅上升。"對30歲以下的美國人來說，電影已經(jīng)取代小說，成為藝術(shù)表達的首要模 式。"蒂奇奧特先生補充道，湯姆•克蘭西和斯蒂芬•金@等暢銷小說家"每本書最多也就賣到一百萬冊左右，"還說，"相比之下，全國廣播公司的《歡樂酒 店》*的最后一集，觀眾達4200萬之多。"
On majoritarian grounds, the movies win. “The power of novels to shape the national conversation has declined,” says Mr. Teachout. But I am not at all certain that in their day “Moby-Dick” or “The Scarlet Letter” had any considerable influence on “the national conversation.” In the mid-19th century it was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” that impressed the great public. “Moby-Dick” was a small-public novel.
就數(shù)量多寡而言，電影贏了。"小說左右國民言談的力量巳經(jīng)削弱，"蒂奇奧特先生說。但我絲毫不敢肯定，當(dāng)初《白鯨》或《紅字》對"國民言談"有過什么重大影響。19世紀(jì)中期，打動大眾的是《湯姆叔叔的小屋》�！栋做L》是一部小眾小說。
The literary masterpieces of the 20th century were for the most part the work of novelists who had no large public in mind. The novels of Proust and Joyce were written in a cultural twilight and were not intended to be read under the blaze and dazzle of popularity.
20世紀(jì)的文學(xué)杰作大多出自沒有大眾意識的小說家之手。普魯斯特和喬伊斯的小說，創(chuàng)作于暗淡的文化暮色之中，本來就無意讓人在大眾化的耀眼光焰下閱讀。
Mr. Teachout’s article in The Journal follows the path generally taken by observers whose aim is to discover a trend. “According to one recent study 55 percent of Americans spend less than 30 minutes reading anything at all…. It may even be that movies have superseded novels not because Americans have grown dumber but because the novel is an obsolete artistic technology.”
蒂奇奧特先生在《華爾街日報》上的文章，沿用了觀察家們旨在發(fā)現(xiàn)某種傾向的套路，指出"根據(jù)最近一項調(diào)査，55%的美國人閱讀時間不超過30分鐘……甚至可以說，電影取代了小說，不是因為美國人變傻了，而是因為小說這種技藝已經(jīng)過時。""
“We are not accustomed to thinking of art forms as technologies,” he says, “but that is what they are, which means they have been rendered moribund by new technical developments.”
我們還不習(xí)慣把藝術(shù)形式看成技術(shù)，"他說，"但事實上藝術(shù)形式就是技術(shù)，也就是說，藝術(shù)形式已經(jīng)因為新技術(shù)的發(fā)展而瀕臨死亡。"
Together with this emphasis on technics that attracts the scientific-minded young, there are other preferences discernible: It is better to do as a majority of your contemporaries are doing, better to be one of millions viewing a film than one of mere thousands reading a book. Moreover, the reader reads in solitude, whereas the viewer belongs to a great majority; he has powers of numerosity as well as the powers of mechanization. Add to this the importance of avoiding technological obsolescence and the attraction of feeling that technics will decide questions for us more dependably than the thinking of an individual, no matter how distinctive he may be.
文章除了強調(diào)崇尚科學(xué)的年輕人有吸引力的技術(shù)之外，還看得見其他一些 取向。如大多數(shù)同時代人做什么，你最好就做什么，與其和區(qū)區(qū)數(shù)千人一樣讀一本書，不如 和幾百萬人一樣看一場電影。另外，讀者只是獨自閱讀，而觀眾卻是與許多人共賞，既借機械技術(shù)之力，又得人數(shù)眾多之勢。不妨還可以補充說，避免技術(shù)上落伍也 很重要，而人們總覺得就解決問題而言，不管個人有多么出眾，技術(shù)要比個人的思想更可靠。這種感覺也很有吸引力。
John Cheever told me long ago that it was his readers who kept him going, people from every part of the country who had written to him. When he was at work, he was aware of these readers and correspondents in the woods beyond the lawn. “If I couldn’t picture them, I’d be sunk,” he said. And the novelist Wright Morris, urging me to get an electric typewriter, said that he seldom turned his machine off. “When I’m not writing, I listen to the electricity,” he said. “It keeps me company. We have conversations.”
很久以前，約翰•契弗⑧對我說，讓他堅持不懈地寫作的是讀者，那些從全國各地給他寫信的人。寫 作時，他覺得那些讀者和寫信人就在草坪那邊的小樹林里。"腦 子里要是沒有他們，那我就完了，"他說。還有小說家賴特•莫里斯〜極力勸我去買一臺電動打字機，說他自己的打字機都很少關(guān)掉。"不寫作的時候，就傾聽電流 的聲音，"他說，"它陪伴著我。我們可以交談。"
I wonder how Mr. Teachout might square such idiosyncrasies with his “art forms as technologies.” Perhaps he would argue that these two writers had somehow isolated themselves from “broad-based cultural influence.” Mr. Teachout has at least one laudable purpose: He thinks that he sees a way to bring together the Great Public of the movies with the Small Public of the highbrows. He is, however, interested in millions: millions of dollars, millions of readers, millions of viewers.
不知道蒂奇奧特先生如何使這些個人習(xí)性與"作為技術(shù)的藝術(shù)形式"兩者相容。也 許他會說，這兩位作家由于某種原因脫離了 "廣泛的文化影響"。蒂奇奧特先生至少有一個值得稱道的目的：他認(rèn)為自己發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個方法，能使"電影大眾"與"精英小眾"協(xié)調(diào)起來。但是，他感興趣的卻是 幾百萬這個數(shù)字：幾百萬美元，幾百萬讀者，幾百萬觀眾。
The one thing “everybody” does is go to the movies, Mr. Teachout says. How right he is.
蒂奇奧特先生說，"人人"都做的一件事情，就是去看電影。他說得對極了。
Back in the 20’s children between the ages of 8 and 12 lined up on Saturdays to buy their nickel tickets to see the crisis of last Saturday resolved. The heroine was untied in a matter of seconds just before the locomotive would have crushed her. Then came a new episode; and after that the newsreel and “Our Gang.” Finally there was a western with Tom Mix, or a Janet Gaynor picture about a young bride and her husband blissful in the attic, or Gloria Swanson and Theda Bara or Wallace Beery or Adolphe Menjou or Marie Dressler. And of course there was Charlie Chaplin in “The Gold Rush,” and from “The Gold Rush” it was only one step to the stories of Jack London.
回想20年代，每到周六，8到12歲的孩子們就會排隊買張五美分 的電影票，看看上個周六的危機是如何化解的。女主人公在火車就要輾過她之前幾秒鐘被松了 綁。接著新的一集開始了，然后就是新聞短片和《小頑童》"。最后是一部湯姆•米克斯的西部片;或者是一部珍妮《蓋諾的電影，講述年輕的新娘和她丈夫在閣樓 上的幸福生活，或是葛洛莉婭•斯旺森和蒂達•巴拉，或是華萊士 •比里，阿道夫•門吉歐，瑪麗•杜絲勒等影星主演的影片。當(dāng)然，還有査理《卓別林的《淘金記》，而《淘金記》離杰克•倫敦的故事只不過一步之遙。
There was no rivalry then between the viewer and the reader. Nobody supervised our reading. We were on our own. We civilized ourselves. We found or made a mental and imaginative life. Because we could read, we learned also to write. It did not confuse me to see “Treasure Island” in the movies and then read the book. There was no competition for our attention.
那時候觀眾和讀者并不對立。沒人去管我們的閱讀。我們自己做主，自我教化。我們發(fā)現(xiàn)或者說創(chuàng)造了充滿想象的精神生活。 我們因為能夠閱讀，所以也學(xué)會了寫 作。先看電影《金銀島》，然后再去讀這本書，并沒有讓我感到困惑。那時候，電影和書籍并沒有為吸引我們的注意力而爭先恐后。
One of the more attractive oddities of the United States is that our minorities are so numerous, so huge. A minority of millions is not at all unusual. But there are in fact millions of literate Americans in a state of separation from others of their kind. They are, if you like, the readers of Cheever, a crowd of them too large to be hidden in the woods. Departments of literature across the country have not succeeded in alienating them from books, works old and new. My friend Keith Botsford and I felt strongly that if the woods were filled with readers gone astray, among those readers there were probably writers as well.
美 國有一件更引人注目的奇事，那就是我們的少數(shù)群體數(shù)目眾多，規(guī)模龐大。幾百萬人構(gòu)成一個少數(shù)群體，根本算不得反常。但實際上，還有幾百萬能識文斷字的美 國人，相互之間處于隔離狀態(tài)�？梢哉f，閱讀契弗作品的人，就是一個數(shù)量大得無法藏身于小樹林的群體。全國各地的文學(xué)系沒能讓他們疏遠(yuǎn)書籍，無論是舊作還是 新書。我和我的朋友基思•博茨福德都深深感到，如果小樹林中擠滿了迷路的讀者，那么其中很可能也有作家。
To learn in detail of their existence you have only to publish a magazine like The Republic of Letters. Given encouragement, unknown writers, formerly without hope, materialize. One early reader wrote that our paper, “with its contents so fresh, person-to-person,” was “real, non-synthetic, undistracting.” Noting that there were no ads, she asked, “Is it possible, can it last?” and called it “an antidote to the shrinking of the human being in every one of us.” And toward the end of her letter our correspondent added, “It behooves the elder generation to come up with reminders of who we used to be and need to be.”
要詳細(xì)了解他們的生存狀態(tài)， 你只需辦一份像《文學(xué)界》這樣的雜志。一旦得到鼓勵，原先的無望之輩，就會顯山露水。一位早期讀者來信說，我們的刊物"內(nèi)容非 常新鮮、非常親切"，"真實、不造作，閱讀時不會讓人分心。"她注意到上面沒登廣告，便問，"這行嗎?能辦得下去嗎?"還將其稱作"一味解毒劑，治療我們 每個人身上的人性萎縮癥。"在書信末尾，我們這位筆友補充道，"老一代人有必要站出來提醒一下，我們過去是什么樣的人，應(yīng)該成為什么樣的人。"
This is what Keith Botsford and I had hoped that our “tabloid for literates” would be. And for two years it has been just that. We are a pair of utopian codgers who feel we have a duty to literature. I hope we are not like those humane do-gooders who, when the horse was vanishing, still donated troughs in City Hall Square for thirsty nags.
這正是當(dāng)初我和基思•博茨福德期望中的"讀書人小報"。兩年來，刊物信守著這個理念。我們倆是一對烏托邦式的老怪物，總覺得對文學(xué)負(fù)有責(zé)任。我希望我們別像那些不現(xiàn)實的行善者，馬匹都快絕跡了，居然還把料槽捐贈到市政廣場，以備口渴的馬兒飲水。
We have no way of guessing how many independent, self-initiated connoisseurs and lovers of literature have survived in remote corners of the country. The little evidence we have suggests that they are glad to find us, they are grateful. They want more than they are getting. Ingenious technology has failed to give them what they so badly need.
我們無從猜測，究竟有多少獨立、自發(fā)的文學(xué)鑒賞者和愛好者在全國各個偏遠(yuǎn)的角落里生存了下來。手頭的點滴證據(jù)表明，他們?yōu)槟軌蛘业轿覀兌吲d，也很感激。他們期望的比眼下得到的要多，精巧的技術(shù)并沒有滿足他們的迫切需求。
英譯漢參考譯文：
注釋
1) 本文作者索爾•貝婁(1915—2005)為美國作家、1976年諾貝爾文學(xué)獎得主.原文發(fā)表于1999年10月11曰《紐約時拫》，后收入《紐約時拫： 作家談寫作選輯》。標(biāo)題中"文學(xué)界"(the republic of letters) —詞來自拉丁語Respublica literaria, 18世紀(jì)盛行于歐美，指的是一個由文人組成的、想象的"共和國"，不受地域和國別限制，這一概念對啟蒙時代的學(xué)者影響很大。
2) 普魯塔克(46? -120?),古希臘傳記作家、散文家，著有《希臘羅馬名人比較列傳》等。
3) 斯維沃(1861—1928),意大利商人、作家，著有《澤諾的意識》等。
4) 安德烈•別雷(1880~1934),俄羅斯詩人、文藝?yán)碚摷�，著有《銀鴿》、《彼得堡》等。
5) 圣經(jīng)《創(chuàng)世紀(jì)》第18章：上帝欲滅所多瑪城，亞伯拉罕代為求懇，上帝允諾若城內(nèi)有十名義人.便不施懲罰。
6) 夏呂斯男爵為普魯斯特小說《追憶似水年華》中的人物，生活墮落。
7)《大商船》是美國一份通俗雜志，創(chuàng)刊于1882年，一般認(rèn)為是美國第一份通俗雜志，《薩維奇博士》是美國一份雜志，1933年至1949年發(fā)行，1964年起，雜志中的故事先后單獨出版發(fā)行，影響頗大。
8) 斯賓格勒(1880~1936),德國史學(xué)家、哲學(xué)家，著有《西方的沒落》等。
9) 湯姆•克蘭西(1947—),美國通俗小說家，著有《獵殺紅色十月》等，斯蒂芬•金(1947—),美國暢銷作家,著有《肖申克的救贖》等。
10) 美國一部情景喜劇。
11) 約翰•契弗(1912—1982),美國小說家，著有《華普肖一家》、《大收音機》等。
12) 賴特•莫里斯(1910"—1998),美國小說家，著有《幻象之地》、《草原之歌》等。
13) 美國20世紀(jì)初一部流行的喜劇短片。
