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实之中。真正的高雅之士虚怀若谷,闻过则喜,不会被非理性的盲目偏见所左右,而在这个被庸男俗女充斥的世界,这等高雅之士只能被视为怪物。仿佛是出于天性,我们所有人都容不得稀罕之事,都恨其不守规矩;而正是依照与此极其相似的准则,小男孩嘲讽不合时令的草帽,他们的父辈则给异教徒派出传教士??(集体讨论,曹明伦 执笔)
Envy by Samuel Johnson
论嫉妒 [英]塞缪尔·约翰逊 著
Envy is almost the only vice which is practicable at all times, and in every place — the only passion which can never lie quiet for want of irritation; its effects therefore are everywhere discoverable, and its attempts always to be dreaded.
嫉妒几乎是唯一一种随时都能大行其道的恶习,唯一一种不会因缺乏刺激而平息的强烈感情,因此其影响随处可见,其攻击性也总是令人生畏。
It is impossible to mention a name which any advantageous distinction has made eminent, but some latent animosity will burst out. The wealthy trader, however he may abstract himself from public affairs, will never want those who hint, with Shylock, that ships are but boards. The beauty, adorned only with the unambitious graces of innocence and modesty, provokes, whenever she appears, a thousand murmurs of detraction. The genius, even when he endeavours only to entertain or instruct, yet suffers persecution from innumerable critics, whose acrimony is excited merely by the pain of seeing others pleased, and of hearing applauses which another enjoys.
一提到某位因其所长而才出众的名流,就会有人发出隐伏于心的妒意。富商不管怎样超脱于公共事务,也不乏有人像夏洛克那样,说商船不过是一堆木板,暗示其财富由风浪摆布者不足以谓之富人。(1)美女纵然仅以端庄素雅为装饰,其出现也会引起众人私下里的猜忌和诽谤。至于天才人物,即使他们只想展示令人愉悦的自然万象,或只想说明无可争辩的科学原理,也难免会招致众多批评者的诋毁,而批评者之尖刻仅仅是因为见不得别人欣然陶然,听不到别人所享受的掌声。
The frequency of envy makes it so familiar that it escapes our notice; nor do we often reflect upon its turpitude or malignity, till we happen to feel its influence. When he that has given no provocation to malice, but by attempting to excel, finds himself pursued by multitudes whom he never saw, with all the implacability of personal resentment; when he perceives clamour and malice let loose upon him as a public enemy, and incited by every stratagem of defamation; when he hears the misfortunes of his family, or the follies of his youth, exposed to the world; and every failure of conduct, or defect of nature, aggravated and ridiculed; he then learns to abhor those artifices at which he only laughed before, and discovers how much the happiness of life would be advanced by the eradication of envy from the human heart. 嫉妒之频频出现使我们队其熟视无睹,使我们很少想到其卑鄙险恶,除非自己碰巧也遭
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人妒忌。倘若遭妒忌者从不招惹怨恨,而只想凭真才实学超凡出众,那当他发现自己被一群他觉得与之并无不可化解之个人恩怨的民众纠缠之时,当他发现自己被种种诽谤伎俩煽动起来的铺天盖地的恶意丑化成社会公敌之时,当他得知自己家庭之不幸和少时的愚行而被公诸于众,自己所有的不端行为和性格缺陷都被夸大和嘲笑之时,他便能学会憎恶那些他此前只是一笑置之的伎俩,并发现若能从世人心中根除嫉妒,人们会怎样更多地感受生活之幸福。
Envy is, indeed, a stubborn weed of the mind, and seldom yields to the culture of philosophy. There are, however, considerations which, if carefully implanted and diligently propagated, might in time overpower and repress it, since no one can nurse it for the sake of pleasure, as its effects are only shame, anguish, and perturbation. It is above all other vices inconsistent with the character of a social being, because it sacrifices truth and kindness to very weak temptations. He that plunders a wealthy neighbour gains as much as he takes away, and may improve his own condition in the same proportion as he impairs another’s; but he that blasts a flourishing reputation, must be content with a small dividend of additional fame, so small as can afford very little consolation to balance the guilt by which it is obtained.
嫉妒实乃人们心中难以根除的野草,它极少接受理性之教化。不过,只要循循善诱且坚持不懈,迟早会有理性之思将其制服,毕竟没人会为了取乐而心怀嫉妒,因嫉妒之后果只有羞耻、苦闷和不安。较之其他所有恶习,嫉妒与人的社会属性最为相悖,因为它会蝇头小利而牺牲真诚和善良。一个人若是抢劫其富有的邻居,他所得之物即他所劫之物,其境况之改善与其邻居境况之恶化恰成正比;但一个人若是毁损他人的盛名,他只能满足于得到的那盛名分给他的一点点红利,而与他行恶而产生的负疚感相比,其获利之少几乎不可能给他带来慰藉。
(1)参见莎士比亚《威尼斯商人》第1幕第3场开始时夏洛克对巴萨尼奥说的那番话。集体讨论,曹明伦执笔)
四川外语学院第七届“语言桥杯”翻译大赛获奖译文选登
These aspects of her personality I came to know gradually over the coming months. What struck me first were the outward things, her animation and expressiveness. I couldn’t tell whether this was something she was born with, or whether the projection of emotion which she had learned as an actress had become second nature. When indignant, her eyes would flash fire, when happy she would laugh unrestrainedly like a child. I quickly changed my preconceived notions about the “inscrutableness” of Orientals.
在接下来的几个月里,我逐渐了解了她的这些个性特点。首先给我留下深刻印象的,是她种种外在的表现:活泼开朗,能言善谈。我不知道这是她的天性使然,还是因为当过演员,表情达意早已成为她的第二天性。她气愤时,两只眸子会冒出怒火;高兴时,却又像个孩子似的开怀大笑。我原先以为东方人都是“神秘难测”的,认识她之后,很快
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便改变了这个先入之见。
... She had not remarried because she had not found anyone for whom she could care enough and who would respect her independence.
??因为找不到一个既让她喜欢、又尊重她的独立性的男人,她一直没有再婚。至少,在我出现在她的面前之前是这样。我俩初次相识就立即被对方的外貌所吸引。 Not, at least, till I came along. Our physical attraction was immediate and mutual. But more than that, we shared an identity of interests and found pleasure in each other’s company... 不过,除此之外,我们还有着共同的兴趣爱好,觉得走在一起很开心。??
We sat in tea gardens amid flowering shrubs and fanciful pavilions and sipped green “Dragon Well” tea and cracked watermelon seeds. We wended through the City God Temple, with its many shops of marvelous handicrafts connected by a zigzag bridge around a lotus pond. 我们坐在绿树红花和亭台楼阁掩映下的茶园里,一边抿着碧绿的龙井茶,一边嗑着西瓜子儿。我们在城隍庙徜徉,那里有很多出售精美的手工艺品的店铺;一座绕着荷塘迂回而行的九曲桥,把商铺连在一起。
And we met in her flat with a few other Chinese friends and talked in low voices, with the radios turned on loud against possible eavesdroppers, about who had just been arrested, or what bookstores had been raided, or whether more revolutionaries had been executed, and what the news from the Liberated Areas was. Sometimes we could pick up Yen’an on my short-wave set.
我们时常在她的公寓房间里和几个中国朋友聚会。为防窃听,我们只得低声交谈,同时把收音机开得很响。我们谈论谁刚刚被捕了,哪几家书店被查抄了,是不是又有革命分子被处死,以及来自解放区的消息。有时我的那台短波收音机可以收听到延安电台的广播。
She had no doubt about our compatibleness, and if our future was unsure, so was the future of everyone in China. Nor did my “foreignness” seem to present any problems. She had got used to my appearance, and recovered from the initial shock of seeing me in a raglan sleeve topcoat on finding, when I took it off, that I had shoulders after all. In fact she had become bemused to such an extent that she thought I was quite nice-looking. No one stared when we appeared in public together, nor did I, for some reason, attract the crowds which often trailed other foreigners, awestruck by their outlandish garb and, by Chinese standards, huge noses. Her family offered no objections whatever.
她深信我俩意气相投。我们两个人也许前路渺茫,但是在中国何尝不是人人如此。我的“洋人相”似乎也不成问题。起初看到我穿着套袖的轻便大衣,她颇为惊愕,及至我脱掉大衣,她发现原来我也长着两只肩膀,这才回过神来。如今,她早已习惯我的这副洋人相了。事实上,她简直不知如何看待我的长相,竟至于觉得我长得挺好看的。我俩一
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起在公共场所露面时,没有人盯着我们看;不知何故,我也没有吸引人群围观。洋人一身奇装异服,还有按中国人的标准显得特别高的鼻子,都使中国人感到惊异,因此他们常常喜欢尾随洋人。她的家人一点儿也不反对我俩交往。
Absence of racial or religious prejudice is traditional in China. For two thousand years foreigners had been encouraged to settle in the Middle Kingdom and practice their religions and retain their customs. There was some talk among the rustics that all foreigners had red hair and blue eyes and walked without bending their knees. But those who had actually seen them knew better. None of her compatriots was shocked, though some perhaps wondered why she chose a foreigner when there was so many Chinese around.
传统上,种族歧视或宗教偏见在中国是不存在的。两千年来,“中央王国”一直柔怀远人,鼓励外国人在这片土地上定居、信教,并且保留他们的风俗习惯。乡下人中间有传言说洋人全都赤发碧眼,而且直着腿走路。但是,亲眼见过外国人的那些人知道,事实并非如此。看到我这个“异类”和她在一起,她的同胞无人感到震惊,尽管有些人也许会想:她的身边有那么多中国人,为什么偏偏选中一个老外? (香港大学中文学院 汪宝荣)
中译英部分
在义与利之外
Beyond Righteousness and Interests
“君子喻以义,小人喻以利”。中国人的人生哲学总是围绕着义利二字打转。可是,假如我既不是君子,也不是小人呢?
“Men of virtue are concerned whether they behave righteously while virtueless men are concerned about their personal interests.” The Chinese philosophy of life can hardly go beyond the continuous debate over righteousness and interests. But what am I concerned about if I am neither a man of virtue nor one without it?
曾经有过一个人皆君子言必称义的时代,当时或许有过大义灭利的真君子,但更常见的是借义逐利的伪君子和假义真信的迂君子。那个时代过去了。曾几何时,世风剧变,义的信誉一落千丈,真君子销声匿迹,伪君子真相毕露,迂君子豁然开窍,都一窝蜂奔利而去。据说观念更新,义利之辨有了新解,原来利并非小人的专利,倒是做人的天经地义。
There was once an alleged age of righteousness, in which all men were of virtue. Maybe, few of them were really men of virtue, who vindicated righteousness by sacrificing their own interests. However, most of them were either pharisees, who pursued their personal interests in the name of righteousness, or pedants, who believed in fake morality. Such an era had already elapsed. There was once a period of time when the ethos deteriorated overnight and people’s belief in righteousness greatly declined. Consequently, men of virtue vanished,
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pharisees revealed their impudent faces and pedants suddenly disenchanted. All people rushed for their own interests. It was said that people had renovated their values and they had endowed their conceptions of righteousness and interests with new contents. For them, the pursuit of personal interests is not a patent right of men without virtue but the primary principle followed by all human beings.
“时间就是金钱!”—这是当今一句时髦口号。企业家以之鞭策生产,本无可非议。但世人把它奉为指导人生的座右铭,用商业精神取代人生智慧,结果就使自己的人生成了一种企业,使人际关系成了一个市场。
我曾经嘲笑廉价的人情味,如今,连人情味也变得昂贵而罕见了。试问,不花钱你可能买到一个微笑,一句问候,一丁点儿恻隐之心?
Nowadays “Time is money” is a popular slogan. It is reasonable for entrepreneurs to adopt it in their production management. However, if we substitute commercial spirit for life wisdom, taking this slogan as a motto to guide our life, we tend to regard our life as business and our relationship, market.
不过,无须怀旧。想靠形形色色的义的说教来匡正时弊,拯救世风人心,事实上无济于事。在义利之外,还有别样的人生态度。在君子小人之外,还有别样的人格。套孔子的句式,不妨说:“至人喻以情。”
I once derided the human kindness for its cheapness. But at present it has become costly and infrequent. Can you buy a smile, a greeting or a particle of sympathy without money? However, there is no need to reminisce. In fact, various preaches of righteousness are helpless to the rectification of current social malpractices and the salvation of present public morals. Beyond righteousness and interests, there are other life values. Apart from men of virtue and virtueless men, there are men with other personality. A remark by Confucius might be quoted here, which says: “A perfect man apprehends affection.”
义和利,貌似相反,实则相通。“义”要求人献身抽象的社会实体,“利”驱使人投身世俗的物质利益,两者都无视人的心灵生活,遮蔽了人的真正的“自我”。“义”教人奉献,“利”诱人占有,前者把人生变成一次义务的履行,后者把人生变成一场权利的争夺,殊不知人生的真价值是超乎义务和权利外的。义和利都脱不开计较,所以,无论义师讨伐叛臣,还是利欲支配众生,人与人之间的关系总是紧张。
Righteousness and interests seem opposite on the surface but in nature they have something in common. “Righteousness” requests people to devote themselves to the abstract social noumenon while “interests” impels them to pursue the mundane loaves and fishes. Both of them ignore people’s spiritual life and as a result, they shade their real “selves”. “Righteousness” instructs people to dedicate themselves to the society and turns their life into the performance of an obligation while “interests” tempts people to appropriate material
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