MarkTwain—MirrorofAmerica中英对照翻译供参习

1、Mark Twain-the Mirror of AmericaMost Americans remember Mark Twain as the father of Huck Finns idyllic cmise through eternal boyhood and Tom Sawyefs endless summer of freedom and adventure In-dccd, this nation best-loved author was every bit as ad-venturous, patriotic, romantic, and humorous as anyo

2、ne has ever imagined I found another Twain as well 一 one who grew cynical, bitter, saddened by the profound personal tragedies life dealt him, a man who became obsessed with the frailties of the human race, who saw clearly ahead a black wall of night.在大多数美国人的心目中，马克?吐温是位伟大作家，他描写了哈克?费恩永恒的童年时代中 充满诗情画意的

3、旅程和汤姆?索亚在漫长的夏日里自由自在历险探奇的故事。的确，这位美 国最受人喜爱的作家的探索精神、爱国热情、浪漫气质及幽默笔调都达到了登H金造极的程度。 但我发现还有另一个不同的马克?吐温一一一个由于深受人生悲剧的打击而变得愤世嫉俗、 尖酸刻薄的马克?吐温，一个为人类品质上的弱点而忧心忡忡、明显地看到前途是一片黑暗 的人。Tramp printer, river pilot , Confederate guerrilla prospector, starry-eyed optimist, acid-tongued cynic: The man who became Mark Twain was

4、 born Samuel Langhorne Clemens and he ranged across the nation for more than a third of his life, digesting the new American experience before sharing it with the world as writer and lecturer. He adopted his pen name from the crr heard in his steamboat days, signaling two fathoms (12 feet) of water

5、一 a navigable depth His popularity is attested by the fact that more than a score of his books remain in print, and translations are still read around the world.印刷工、领航员、邦联游击队员、淘金者、耽于幻想的乐天派、语言尖刻的讽刺家：马克? 吐温原轻塞缪尔?朗赫恩?克莱门斯，他一生之中有超过三分之一的时间浪迹美国各地，体验 着美国的新生活，尔后便以作家和演说家的身分将他所感受到的这一切介绍给全世界。他的 笔名取自他在蒸汽船上做工时听到

6、的报告水深为两口寻(12英尺)一一意即可以通航的信号 语。他的作品中有二十几部至今仍在印行，其外文译本仍在世界各地拥有读者，由此可见他 的享誉程度。The geographic core in Twains early years, was the great valley of the Mississippi River, main artery of transportation in the young nations heart. Keelboats , flatboats and large rafts carried the first major commerce Lumber,

7、 corn, tobacco, wheat, and furs moved downstream to the delta country; sugar, molasses , cotton, and whiskey traveled north. In the 1850s, before the climax of westward expansion, the vast basin drained three-quarters of the settled United States.在马克?吐温青年时代，美国的地理中心是密西西比河流域，而密四西比河是这个年轻 国家中部的交通大动脉。龙竹船

8、、平底船和大木筏载运着最重要的商品。木材、玉米、烟草、 小麦和皮货通过这些运载工具顺流而下，运送到河口三角洲地区，而砂糖、糖浆、棉花和威 士忌酒等货物则被运送到北方。在19世纪50年代，西部领上开发高潮到来之前，辽阔的密 四西比河流域占美国已开发领土的四分之三。Young Mark Twain entered that world in 1857 as a cub pilot on a steamboat. The cast of characters set before him in his new profession was rich and varied a cosmos. He p

9、articipated abundantly in this life, listening to pilothouse talk of feuds, piracies, lynchings .medicine shows, and savage waterside slums. All would resurface in his books, together with the colorful language that he soaked up with a memory that seemed phonographic1857年，少年马克?吐温作为蒸汽船上的一名小领航员踏人了这片天地

10、。在这个新的工作 岗位上，他接触到的是各式各样的人物，看到的是一个多姿多彩的大干世界。他完全地投身 到这种生活之中，经常在操舵室里听着人们谈论民间争斗、海盗抢劫、私刑案件、游医卖药 以及河边的一些化外民居的故事。所有这一切，连同他那像留声机般准确可靠的记忆所吸收 的丰富多彩的语言，后来都有机会在他的作品中得以再现。Steamboat decks teemed not only with the main current of pioneering humanity, but its flotsam of hustlers. gamblers, and thugs as well. From t

11、hem all Mark Twain gained a keen perception of the human race, of the difference between what people claim to be and what they really arc. His four and a half year s in the steamboat trade marked the real beginning of his cducation. and the most lasting part of it. In later life Twain acknowledged t

12、hat the river had acquainted him with every possible type of human nature Tliose acquaintanceships strengthened all his writing, but he never wrote well than when he wrote of the people a-long the great stream.蒸汽船的甲板上不仅挤满了富有开拓精神的人们，而且也载着一些娼妓、赌棍和歹徒等 社会渣滓。从所有这些形形色色的人身上，马克?叶温敏锐地认识了人类，认识了人们的言 与行之间的差距。他在

13、蒸汽船上工作的四年半时间是他真正接受教育的开端，而且也是最具 有深远意义的教育。到了晚年，马克?吐温还声言是密西四比河使他了解了务种各样的人的 本性。这种生活体验对他的全部创作都起了促进作用，然而他描写得最为成功的还是那些密 西西比河上的人物。When railroads began drying up the demand for steam-boat pilots and the Civil War halted commerce. Mark Twain left the river country; He tried soldiering for two weeks with a mot

14、ley band of Confederate guerrillas who diligently avoided contact with the enemy Twain quit after deciding,r. I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating”随着铁路运输的发展，社会上对汽船领航员的需求日渐减少，而内战的爆发又阻碍了商 业贸易的发展。这时，马克?吐温便离开了密西四比河流域。他在南方邦联游击队的一支杂 牌队伍里当了两个星期的兵。那支队伍想方设法避免与敌军交战。在确信“我比发明撤退的 人更

15、精通撤退”之后，马克?吐温离开了那支队伍。He went west by stagecoach and succumbed to the epidemic of gold and silver fever in Nevada*s Washoe region For eight months he flirted with the colossal wealth available to the lucky and the persistent, and was rebuffed. Broke and discouraged, he accepted a job as reporter with

16、 the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, to literatures enduring gratitude.他乘驿站马车来到西部，在内华达州的华苏地区受到当时正流行的淘金热的诱惑。同那 只有既幸运而又锲而不舍的追求者才能取得的巨大财富三心二总地打了八个月交道之后，他 遭到了失败。在破产和灰心之余，他接受了为弗吉尼亚市领上开发报当记者的工作，这 一行动将获得文学界永久的感激。From the discouragement of his mining failures, Mark Twain began digging his way to regio

17、nal fame as a newspaper reporter and humorist. The instant riches of a mining strike would not be his in the reporting trade, but for making money, his pen would prove mightier than his pickax .In the spring of 1864, less than two years after joining the Territorial Enterprise, he boarded the stagec

18、oach for San Francisco, then and now a hotbed of hopeful young writers自从他因淘金失败而感到心灰意冷之后，马克?吐温便开始努力博取作为一爼报社记者 和幽默作家的地区性声望。从事新闻报道工作当然不能使他像淘金成功者一样立成巨富，但 在挣钱方而他的笔杆却比他的锄镐要有效得多.1864年春季，在他加盟领丄开发报还 寡妇家过上等人的体面生活，从那里逃出来后对他的朋友汤姆?索亚发牢骚说：“我试过了， 还是不行：不行啊，汤姆。那不是我过的日子那寡妇家吃饭要听钟声，睡觉要听钟声， 起床也要听钟声，什么事情都得规规矩矩，简直叫人受不了。”N

19、ine years after Tom Sawyer swept the nation, Huck was given a life of his own, in a book often considered the best ever written about Americans. His raft flight down the Mississippi with a runaway slave presents a moving panorama for exploration of American society.汤姆?索亚风靡美国九年之后，哈克被赋予独立的生命，成为一本被许多人认

20、为是 最成功的描写美国人的作品的书中的主人公。他同一个逃跑出来的奴隶一起乘坐木筏沿着密 四西比河顺流而下的漂流航程展现了一幅幅揭示美国社会生活全貌的生动画而。On the river, and especially with Huck Finn, Twain found the ultimate expression of escape from the pace he lived by and often deplored. from lifes regularities and the energy-sapping clamor for success.通过对密四西比河，尤其是对哈克?费恩

21、这一人物的描写，马克?吐温将自己想从那束缚着自 己并常常令自己苦恼的生活步调中摆脱出来，从生活中的各种淸规戒律以及为了事业成功而 进行的艰苦挣扎中解放岀来的愿望表达得淋漓尽致。Mark Twain suggested that an ingredient was missing in the American ambition when he said: HWhat a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf occasionally an

22、d renew our edges.u马克?吐温认为，美国人的理想中缺少了一种成分。他说：我们只消偶尔地躺下来好好放 松休息一下，保持锋棱利角，我们将有可能成为一个多么朝气蓬勃的民族，一个多么富有思 想的民族啊!”Personal tragedy haunted his entire life, in the deaths of loved ones: his father, dying of pneumonia when Sam was 12; his brother Henry, killed by a steamboat explosion; the death of his son,

23、Langdon at 19 months. His eldest daughter, Susy, died of spinal meningitis, Mrs. Clemens succumbed to a heart attack in Florence. and youngest daughter. Jean. an epileptic, drowned in an upstairs bathtub.马克?吐温的一生都笼罩在悲剧的阴影之中，自己的亲人一个接一个地去世：他的父亲 在他十二岁那年死于肺炎，他的兄弟亨利在一次汽船爆炸事故中遇难；他的儿子朗顿才满十 九个月即离开人世。他的大女儿苏茜

24、死于脊膜炎：克莱门斯夫人在佛罗伦萨死于心脏病；而 他的小女儿也因癫痫病的发作淹死在楼上的浴盆里。Bitterness fed on the man who had made the world laugh The moralizing of his earlier writing had been well padded with humor. Now the gloves came off with biting satire He pretended to praise the U S military for the massacre of 600 Philippine Moros in

25、 the bowl of a volcanic, crater. In The Mysterious Stranger, he insisted that man drop his religious illusions and depend upon himself, not Providence, to make a better world.这位曾令全世界欢笑的人自己却饱尝了人世的辛酸。他早期作品中的道徳说教厚厚地包着 一层幽默的外衣，现在幽默换成了辛辣的讽刺。对于美国军队在一个火山口上屠杀六百名菲 律宾摩洛人的行为，他没有直接进行抨击，而是假装为之高唱赞歌。在神秘的陌生人中， 他指岀人

26、类应该抛弃宗教幻想，依靠自己而不是上帝的力量去创造一个更加美好的世界。 The last of his own illusions seemed to have cmmbled near the end. Dictating his autobiography late in life, he commented with a crushing sense of despair on mcFs final release from earthly struggles: I., they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence;

27、 where they achieved nothing; where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness; where they have left no sign that they had existed 一 a world which will lament them a day and for-get diem forever.他自己的最后一个幻想到后来似乎也破火了。在晚年口述自传的时候，他以极端绝望的心 情谈到人从尘世的苦难中的最终解脱：他们从世界上消失了，在这个世界上他们无足 轻重，无所成就：甚至他们的存在本身就

28、是个错误，是个失败，是种愚蠢。这个世界上也没 有留下丝亳能表明他们存在过的痕迹。这个世界赠给他们的只是一日的哀伤和永久的遗忘。”Devices of figurationMetaphorMark Twain 一 Mirror of Americasaw clearly ahead a black wall of night.main artery of transportation in the young nations heartthe vast basin drained three-quarters of the settled United StatesAll would resur

29、face in his books.that he soaked up.Steamboat decks teemed.main current of.but its flotsamWhen railroads began drying up the demand.the epidemic of gold and silver fever.Twain began digging his way to regional fame.Mark Twain honed and experimented with his new writing muscles.took unholy verbal shots.Simile:Most American remember M. T. as the father of.a memory that seemed phonographicHyperbole:.cruise through eternal boyhood and .en