新世紀大學英語 2 課文 翻譯 3.The Shadowland of Dreams

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1、The Shadowland of Dreams Alex Haley The text is selected from Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work (Copyright 1996 by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Maida Rogerson, Martin Rutte & Tim Clauss). close 1RT Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, bu

2、t I also explain that there's a difference between "being a writer" and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at the type-writer. "You've got to want to write," I say to them, "not want to be a writer." 追夢 亞歷克斯·哈利 很多年輕人告訴我，他們想當作家。我總是鼓勵這

3、些人，但我也會解釋，“當作家”和寫作是有區(qū)別的。在多數情況下，這些人是在夢想名利，而不是在打字機前獨自度過漫長的時間。我對他們說，“你得渴望寫作，而不是渴望當作家。”close 2RT The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor-paying affair. For every writer kissed by fortune, there are thousands more whose longing is never rewarded. Even those who succeed often know long

4、periods of neglect and poverty. I did. 孤獨、冷清、低薪，這就是寫作的現實寫照。幸運之神會眷顧一些作家，但數以千計的人心中的渴望永遠無法滿足。就算是成功者，大多也曾長期無人問津、窮困潦倒，包括我。close 3RT When I left a 20-year career in the Coast Guard to become a freelance writer, I had no prospects at all. What I did have was a friend with whom I'd grown up in Henning, Te

5、nnessee. George found me my home — a cleaned-out storage room in the Greenwich Village apartment building where he worked as superintendent. It didn't even matter that it was cold and had no bathroom. Immediately I bought a used manual typewriter and felt like a genuine writer. 我離開工作了20年的美國海岸警備隊成為一

6、名自由作家時，前途一片渺茫。唯一擁有的是一個兒時的朋友喬治，他跟我在田納西州的亨寧一起長大。喬治在格林尼治村公寓看門，他在那里幫我找了間騰出來的儲藏室。那兒很冷，又沒有衛(wèi)生間，可是我不在乎。我馬上買了一部二手的打字機，感覺就像一個真正的作家了。close 4RT After a year or so, however, I still hadn't received a break and began to doubt myself. It was so hard to sell a story that I barely made enough to eat. But I knew I w

7、anted to write. I had dreamed about it for years. I wasn't going to be one of those people who die wondering, "What if?" I would keep putting my dream to the test — even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the Shadowland of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to

8、 live there. 然而，過了一年左右還沒有時來運轉，我開始懷疑自己。作品很難賣出去，我只能勉強維持生計，但我知道，我渴望寫作，多少年來我一直夢想著寫作。我不要像有些人一樣，臨死時還想，“假如······”我要堅持不懈地試驗著我的夢，哪怕衣食無著，害怕失敗，也決不放棄。這是希望的陰影地帶，每個有夢的人都必須學會在那里安居。close 5RT Then one day I got a call that changed my life. It wasn't an agent or editor offering a big contract. It was the opposite,

9、a kind of siren call tempting me to give up my dream. On the phone was an old acquaintance from the Coast Guard, now stationed in San Francisco. He had once lent me a few bucks and liked to egg me about it. "When am I going to get the ＄15, Alex?" he teased. 一天，我接到一個電話，我的一生從此改變。不是經紀人或編輯打來要和我簽一份大額合同。

10、剛好相反，這個電話像海妖的歌聲，誘使我放棄夢想。打電話的是海岸警備隊的一個老熟人，警備隊現在設在舊金山。他借過一些錢給我，不時提起這件事?！拔沂裁磿r候才能拿回那15塊錢啊，亞歷克斯？”他揶揄道。close 6RT "Next time I make a sale." “等我下次賣了稿子吧?！眂lose 7RT "I have a better idea," he said. "We need a new public-information assistant out here, and we're paying ＄6,000 a year. If you want it, you ca

11、n have it." 他說，“我有個更好的主意。我們這里要新招一個公共信息助理，年薪六千。想要的話，這位子就是你的了。”close 8RT Six thousand a year! That was real money in 1960. I could get a nice apartment, a used car, pay off debts and maybe save a little something. What's more, I could write on the side. 一年六千！在1960年，那可是一大筆錢了。我可以買套不錯的房子，一輛二手車，還清所有的債，

12、甚至還可以有點積蓄，而且我還可以在業(yè)余時間寫作。close 9RT As the dollars were dancing in my head, something cleared my senses. From deep inside a bull-headed resolution welled up. I had dreamed of being a writer — full time. And that's what I was going to be. "Thanks, but no," I heard myself saying. "I'm going to stick it

13、 out and write." 鈔票在我腦海中舞動，但我的頭腦驀地清醒了。從內心深處，一個固執(zhí)的決定涌上心頭。我的夢想是要當作家，全職作家。我一定要實現夢想?！爸x謝，我不去，”我聽到自己在這樣說，“我要堅持寫作?！眂lose 10RT Afterward, as I paced around my little room, I started to feel like a fool. Reaching into my cupboard — an orange crate nailed to the wall — I pulled out all that was there: two c

14、ans of sardines. Plunging my hands in my pockets, I came up with 18 cents. I took the cans and coins and jammed them into a crumpled paper bag. There Alex, I said to myself. There's everything you've made of yourself so far. I'm not sure I ever felt so low. 放下電話，我在小小的房間里踱著步，開始覺得自己像個傻瓜。我把手伸進壁櫥（一個釘在墻

15、上的裝桔子的板條箱），拿出里面所有的東西：兩個沙丁魚罐頭。我把手伸進口袋，找到了18分錢。我把罐頭和硬幣塞進一個皺巴巴的紙袋。我對自己說，看吧，亞歷克斯，這就是你的全部家當了。我覺得前所未有的沮喪。close 11RT I wish I could say things started getting better right away. But they didn't. Thank goodness I had George to help me over the rough spots. 我希望我可以說，情況馬上有了好轉，可是沒有。幸虧還有喬治幫我渡過難關。close 12RT Th

16、rough him I met other struggling artists, like Joe Delaney, a veteran painter from Knoxville, Tennessee. Often Joe lacked food money, so he'd visit a neighborhood butcher who would give him big bones with small pieces of meat, and a grocer who would hand him some withered vegetables. That's all Joe

17、needed to make his favorite soup. 通過他，我認識了一些正在苦苦奮斗的藝術家，比如喬·德萊尼，繪畫多年，來自田納西的諾克斯維爾。喬經常窮得連食物都買不起，所以他會去附近的一家肉店，那屠夫會給些沾著肉末的大骨頭；他還去雜貨店，店主會給他一些蔫了的蔬菜。用這些，喬就可以做他喜愛的湯了。close 13RT Another Village neighbor was a handsome young singer who ran a struggling restaurant. Rumor had it that if a customer ordered stea

18、k, the singer would dash to a supermarket across the street to buy one. His name was Harry Belafonte. 村里還有一位鄰居，是個英俊的年輕歌手，開一家生意清淡的餐館。據說，要是顧客點了牛扒，這歌手就會沖到街對面的超市里買一份回來。他的名字叫哈里·貝拉方特。close 14RT People like Delaney and Belafonte became role models for me. I learned that you had to make sacrifices and liv

19、e creatively to keep working at your dreams. That's what living in the Shadowland is all about. 德萊尼和貝拉方特等人成了我的楷模。我懂得了，要追求夢想，就得做出犧牲，有創(chuàng)意地生活。在夢想的陰影里生活就是這樣的。close 15RT As I absorbed the lesson, I gradually began to sell my articles. I was writing about what many people were talking about then: civil r

20、ights, black Americans and Africa. Soon, like birds flying south, my thoughts were drawn back to my childhood. In the silence of my room, I heard the voices of Grandma, Cousin Georgia, Aunt Plus, Aunt Liz and Aunt Till as they told stories about our family and slavery. 我品味著這個教訓，這時我文章的銷路也慢慢好起來。我寫的是當

21、時街頭巷尾大眾談論的話題：公民權利、美國黑人、非洲。很快，就像南歸的鳥兒一樣，我的思緒回到了童年。在寂靜的房間里，我仿佛可以聽見親人的聲音，祖母、喬治亞表姐、普盧思阿姨、利茲阿姨、蒂爾阿姨，在向我講述我們的家族歷史和奴隸制度。close 16RT These were stories that black Americans had tended to avoid before, and so I mostly kept them to myself. But one day at lunch with editors of Reader's Digest, I told these sto

22、ries of my grandmother and aunts and cousins. I said that I had a dream to trace my family's history to the first African brought to these shores in chains. I left that lunch with a contract that would help support my research and writing for nine years. 以前，美國黑人對這些故事避而不談，所以我也很少向別人說起。但有一天，我與《讀者文摘》的編

23、輯們共進午餐時，我講了祖母、阿姨和表姐她們的故事。我說，我有一個夢想，就是要追溯我的家族史，找到那戴著枷鎖來到美國海岸的第一個非洲人。午餐結束時，我已經得到一份合同，資助我的調查與寫作，為期九年。close 17RT It was a long, slow climb out of the shadows. Yet in 1970, 17 years after I left the Coast Guard, Roots was published. Instantly I had the kind of fame and success that few writers ever expe

24、rienced. The shadows had turned into dazzling limelight. 爬出陰影所在，是一個漫長而艱難的過程。不過，到了1970年，我離開海岸警備隊十七年之后，《根》發(fā)表了。一夜之間，我擁有了大多數作家都不曾擁有的名望和成功。陰影已經變成了令人目眩的聚光燈。close 18RT For the first time I had money and open doors everywhere. The phone rang all the time with new friends and new deals. I packed up and mov

25、ed to Los Angeles, where I could help in the making of the Roots TV mini-series. It was a confusing, exciting time, and in a sense, I was blinded by the light of my success. 平生第一次，我有錢了，機會之門處處為我敞開。電話響個不停，總是有新的朋友，還有新的合約。我收拾好，搬到洛杉磯，協(xié)助拍攝《根》的電視系列短篇。這段時間，我應接不暇，令我精神振奮。在某種意義上，我被成功的光環(huán)蒙蔽了雙眼。close 19RT Then

26、one day, while unpacking, I came across a box filled with things I had owned years before in the Village. Inside was a brown paper bag. 有一天，整理行裝時，我看到一個箱子，裝的是多年前我在格林尼治村時的家當。里面有一只棕色的紙袋。close 20RT I opened it, and there were two corroded sardine cans, a nickel, a dime and three pennies. Suddenly the

27、past came flooding in like a tide. I could picture myself once again huddled over the typewriter in that cold, bleak, one-room apartment. And I said to myself, The things in this bag are part of my roots, too. I can't ever forget that. 我打開來，看到兩個銹跡斑斑的沙丁魚罐頭，一枚五分硬幣，一枚十分硬幣，三枚一分硬幣。突然，往事潮涌而來。我仿佛看到自己又蜷縮在打

28、字機前，在那個凄冷的單間里。我對自己說，這袋子里的東西也是我的一部分根。我可不能忘了。close 21RT I sent them out to be framed. I keep that clear plastic case where I can see it every day. I can see it now above my office desk in Knoxville, along with the Pulitzer Prize, a portrait of nine Emmys awarded to the TV production of Roots, and the

29、 Spingarn medal — the NAACP's highest honor. I'd be hard pressed to say which means the most to me. But only one reminds me of the courage and persistence it takes to stay the course in the Shadowland. 我請人把這些東西鑲起來。我把這個透明塑料盒放在每天都能看到的地方。我現在就可以看到它，就放在諾克斯維爾的辦公桌上方，放在一起的還有普利策獎杯，一張有電視版《根》所獲九個艾美獎的照片，還有斯賓甘獎牌 —— “全國有色人種協(xié)進會”（NAACP）的最高榮譽。要是問我，哪一個對我意義最大，我會感到很難回答。但這中間，只有一樣東西會提醒我，在夢想的陰影里堅持自己的方向需要怎樣的勇氣和毅力。close 22RT It's a lesson anyone with a dream should learn. 這個教訓，每一個有夢的人都應該汲取。close