shattered faith

Shattered Faith

破碎的信念

I remember my first Mortenson ①Moment. It was a few years ago, in an old auditorium. Greg Mortenson, arriving late, flashed a shy smile and a namaste sign as he took the stage. Soon he launched into The Story: How in 1993, he ②stumbled into the tiny Pakistani village of Korphe. How the kind villagers nursed him back to health③ with many cups of tea. How as payment for their generosity, he returned to build a school. ④How that one school became hundreds of schools across Pakistan and Afghanistan. And how, tonight, we could help him build more.

我还记得第一次见到摩顿森的时候。那是几年前，在一座旧礼堂里。因为来晚了，葛瑞格．摩顿森上台时双手合十，不好意思地笑了笑。他很快便开始讲''故事''了:他如何在1993年误打误撞到了巴基斯坦的小村子科尔飞；善良的村民如何用③一杯杯茶照料他康复；他如何重返当地修建了一所学校，回报他们的慷慨；一所学校如何变成遍布巴基斯坦和阿富汗的数百所学校；还有当晚我们如何能够帮助他修建更多学校。

分析：①词类转换，名词用作动词，译作“见到...的时候”；②本意为“偶然进入”活译作“误打误撞”更好；③？我感觉不应该直译，光凭茶他怎么可能康复？

④翻译好

If Mortenson’s story—distilled from his mega-bestseller Three Cups of Tea—seemed ⑤smarmy in places, its pull was irresistible. Anybody with a heart had to be inspired by the beautiful idea that one man could make such a profound difference in such a hard and desperate part of the world. People had not merely come to listen, they’d come to believe.

虽然摩顿森从他销量数百万的畅销书《三杯茶》中颉取的故事有些地方⑤看似矫情，但其感染力却是难以抗拒的。⑥一个人能够给世界上这么艰难困苦的地方带来这么大的变化，这样的美好理念一定会感染任何一个有同情心的人。人们不只是为了倾听而来，也是为了相信而来。

分析：⑤“矫情”不如“迎合大众”好⑥翻译的好。

This past week, thanks to⑦an extended piece of electronic journalism by bestselling author Jon Krakauer, we learned that Mortenson may very well be a charlatan. That significant passages of The Story appear to be fictions .That his charity is apparently hopelessly mismanaged. That many of its schools stand empty—some of them serving as storage sheds for hay.

在过去的这个星期中，多亏了畅销书作者乔恩·克拉考尔的长篇网络报道，我们得知摩顿森很可能是个江湖骗子；“故事”中的重要章节看来是杜撰的；他的慈善机构管理极为不善；修建的许多学校空空如也，其中一些成了放草料的仓库。

分析：⑦属于意译，是原文表达的意思更准确；

⑧It’s only natural to feel betrayed and disappointed upon discovering that those we admire are flawed. But this was more than simple imperfection.

⑨Believers like me were left to pick up the million little pieces of yet another shattered hero. And to wonder, how could we have been so gullible?

⑧发现我们所敬佩的人有瑕疵，感到被欺骗和有所失望是理所应当的。但这不是瑕疵那么简单。⑨像我这样相信他的人只有收拾好又一个被打破的英雄形象的无数小碎片，想想我们为什么这么容易上当受骗。

分析：⑧调整整个句子，使翻译通顺符合逻辑；⑨感觉翻译的句子冗长，有种一口气读下来特别累的感觉，我是这样翻译的“我们这些信仰者除了拾起那些破碎的英雄的形象，还能做些什么？”

Americans have a profound longing for heroes—now perhaps more than ever. On some level, we still subscribe to the myth of the man⑩in the white hat. We yearn to believe not only in his good deeds but in his inherent goodness as a person. We seem to have a monochromatic view of heroism. We have a hard time believing that the doer of a heroic deed could have serious defects or①even be rotten to the core. Heroes are supposed to be heroic—period. We prefer to take ours neat.

美国人十分渴望英雄—现在也许比以往更甚。在某种程度上，我们仍然相信⑩“戴白帽子的人”的神话（在美国早期的无声电影中，戴白帽子的角色即好人英雄）。我们所渴望相信的不仅是他的善举，②也是他作为人的内在美德。我们眼中的英雄品质似乎只有一种颜色。我们很难相信一个做出英雄行为的人会有严重的瑕疵甚至①坏到骨子里。一句话，英雄就应该是崇高的。我们更愿意相信我们的英雄完美无瑕。

分析：⑩用了注释法，很容易明白句子中“白帽子”的含义：①意译的非常好，递进关系更好。②翻译成“还有”递进关系更容易凸显。

Yet all heroes and saints are imperfect—even the greatest ones. So what? Their accomplishments seem all the more heroic③ for their having been complicated, multidimensional, flesh-and-blood human beings.

然而任何英雄和圣人都是不完美的，就连最伟大的英雄也是如此。那有怎样呢？他们的丰功伟绩是因为他们是复杂多面、有血有肉的人而愈发高尚。

分析：③翻译成“因为”很好。

Our deep need for heroes is tied to the sheer size of our country and the myth of the frontier. During the time of the “winning”of the West, the most popular form of literature in America was the “blood and thunder”:

mass-produced novels in which swashbuckling characters rescued kidnapped women, shot up the savages, and saved the day. ④The nation was hungry for a single heroic character who could personify the surge of Manifest Destiny, exalting American accomplishments while simplifying the stickiest aspects of Western conquest. Who cares if it wasn’t true?

我们对于英雄的深切渴求是与我们国家的辽阔疆域和边疆地区的传奇密不可分的。在“征服”西部的时代，美国最盛行的文学形式就是“血腥与暴力”小说。在这种批量创作的小说中，游侠角色拯救被绑架的妇女，击毙暴徒，转败为胜。

④全体国民都渴望一个孤胆式的人物能够成为“命定扩张”浪潮的化身，颂扬美国的丰功伟绩，同时使西部征程中最困难的部分变得轻而易举。即使这不是真的，又有谁在乎？

分析：④翻译的意思感觉上下文连不上。？

Perhaps⑤ the most telling quote from Krakauer’s piece speaks to this same theme—the notion that Mortenson’s story was allowed to⑥blossom without check for years because it soothed the ⑦national conscience during a messy, intractable war.

克拉考尔文章中⑤最一针见血的一句话谈到了同一个问题。他认为，摩顿森的故事⑥得以畅通无阻的盛行多年，是因为它在一场胡乱棘手的战争中抚慰了全体国民的⑦良心。

分析：⑤⑥意译的特别好。⑦翻译的不好，不如直接译成“抚慰了民心”。

Until we hear from him, I prefer to hold on to the perhaps naive belief that ⑧the final truth of these allegations will fall somewhere shy of doing irreparable harm to his great cause. The idea of Three Cups of Tea remains heroic, even if its creator has gone astray.

在我们听到摩顿森亲口说之前，我宁愿继续（也许天真地）相信，这些传言的⑧真相最后会不了了之，不至于给他的伟大事业造成无法弥补的伤害。《三杯茶》的理念仍然是崇高的，哪怕它的缔造者已经误入歧途。

分析：⑧意译，把原文要表达的意思淋漓尽致。

总结:在做这篇文章前，我自己翻译了一遍，有好多不符合汉语习惯，直译的不能表达意思，意译的走形，而且在用词方面注意的比较少，发现了很多问题。继续努力。