旅行的藝術
06/05/2016 7:41 am
The art of travel 旅行的藝術
喜歡旅行的人必讀的一本好書，但是不太好讀，因為和預期的旅行書差很多，我試著翻譯了第一篇，這一關卡通過，再過來就比較好讀了。
Chapter 1,
It was hard to say when exactly winter arrived. The decline was gradual, like that of a person into old age, inconspicuous from day to day until the season became an established, relentless reality. First came a dip in evening temperatures, then days of continuous rain, confused gusts of Atlantic wind, dampness, the fall of leaves and the changing of the clocks—though there were still occasional moments of reprieve, mornings when one could leave the house without a coat and the sky was cloudless and bright. But they were like false signs of recovery in a patient upon whom death has already passed its sentence. By December the new season was entrenched, and the city was covered almost every day by an ominous steel-grey sky, like one in a painting byMantegnaa orVeronesee, the perfect backdrop to the crucifixion of Christ or to a day beneath the bedclothes. The neighbourhood park became adesolatee spread of mud and water, lit up at night by rain-streaked street lamps. Passing it one evening during a downpour, I recalled how, in the intense heat of the previous summer, I had stretched out on the ground and let my bare feet slip out of my shoes tocaresss the grass, and how this direct contact with the earth had brought with it a sense of freedom and expansiveness, summer breaking down the usual boundaries between indoors and out and allowing me to feel as much at home in the world as in my own bedroom.
很難斷定冬天到底是哪一天開始的。天氣是逐漸不察覺中慢慢的轉冷，就像歲月也是一天天在不察覺中流逝，然後有一天我們突然要面對年老的殘酷事實。首先是傍晚氣溫的驟降，接著連續的雨天，偶陣大西洋東北風，天氣變潮溼，秋天的落葉以及夏季日光節約時間的結束..當然偶爾也會有溫暖的天氣，早上出門時可以不穿外套，天空也變的耀眼的晴朗。但是這種假象如同臨終病人的突然迴光反照。直到十二月新的季節正式開始了，整個城市籠罩在不祥的鐵灰色裡，正像名畫耶穌被釘十字架受難時刻的陰霾背景，或者也可以形容成城市被覆蓋在大片床單下。社區公園地佈滿雨水泥濘顯得荒涼孤寂，黑夜路燈亮光下的雨絲也變得明顯。
我想起有一晚穿過傾盆大雨的公園時，突然懷念起炎熱的前一年夏天，公園草地上我脫鞋光腳直接觸摸柔和大地上的感覺，是那麼自由廣闊，夏天的暖和劃開了室外室內的界線，讓我分辨不出外面世界和臥室的不同，
But now the park was foreign once more, the grass a forbidding arena in the incessant rain. Any sadness I might have felt, any suspicion that happiness or understanding was unattainable, seemed to find ready encouragement in the sodden dark-red brick buildings and low skies tinged orange by the city's streetlights.
此時的公園再次變的陌生，青草地在連續不斷的雨天裡成為禁區。
我曾經有的一絲憂鬱，曾經對幸福或人生意義的懷疑，在雨水浸濕的暗紅磚房，以及被路燈映照成淡橘色低空間，似乎已找到安慰。
Such climatic circumstances, together with a sequence of events that occurred at around this time (and seemed to confirm Chamfort's dictum that a man must swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead), conspired to render me intensely susceptible to the unsolicited arrival one late afternoon of a large, brightly illustrated brochure entitled ‘Winter Sun'.
Its cover displayed a row of palm trees, many of them growing at an angle, on a sandy beach fringed by a turquoise sea, set against a backdrop of hills where I imagined there to be waterfalls and relief from the heat in the shade of sweet-smelling fruit trees.
The photographs reminded me of the paintings of Tahiti that William Hodges had brought back from his journey with Captain Cook, showing a tropical lagoon in soft evening light, where smiling local girls cavorted carefree (and barefoot) through luxuriant foliage—images that had provoked wonder and longing when Hodges had first exhibited them at the Royal Academy in London in the sharp winter of 1776, and that continued to provide a model for subsequent depictionss of tropical idylls, including those in the pages of ‘Winter Sun'. Those responsible for the brochure had darkly intuited how easily their audience might be turned into prey by photographs whose power insulted the intelligence and contravened any notions of free will:
overexposed photographs of palm trees, clear skies and white beaches. Readers who would have been capable of scepticism and prudence in other areas of their lives reverted , in contact with these elements, to a primordial innocence and optimism.
The longing provoked by the brochure was an example, at once touching and bathetic, of how projects (and even whole lives) might be influenced by the simplest and most unexamined images of happiness; of how a lengthy and ruinously expensive journey might be set into motion by nothing more than the sight of a photograph of a palm tree gently inclining in a tropical breeze. I resolved to travel to the island of Barbados.
在這樣的氣候加上最近發生的一連串事件，其中有一天下午收到的大張鮮豔印有"冬天太陽"名稱的旅遊傳單，這些事件適時的引起了我強烈的衝動。 （似乎印證了Chamfort 的格言，一個人事先要每天早上吞下一隻癩蛤蟆，以保證當天不會碰到更噁心的事）
傳單上有一排棕櫚樹在青綠色海水邊的沙灘上，其中有些樹長的有斜度，後面背對著小山丘，我幾乎可以感覺山丘上面的瀑布，淡淡芳香的果樹，使炎熱的氣候變得清涼。
這張攝影讓我想起，William Hodges和庫克船長在Tahiti旅程中，從島上帶回來的一幅畫 ，傍晚溫和燈光下的礁湖，當地女郎歡樂的赤腳舞動在繁密濃綠的葉間，-那影像讓人迷惑嚮往，當初Hodges 首次1776年的嚴冬展示在倫敦皇家學院，從此那幅畫成為人們描繪所有熱帶田園畫的藍本，當然也包括這傳單上主題為"冬天太陽"的影像。
設計傳單的負責人輕易的以這影像讓人陷入圈套，它的力量掩埋了人類的智慧並且抑制了自主能力：接觸這些過量曝光的棕櫚樹，湛藍的天空，和白色沙灘之後，一向有能力在生活中多疑及精明的讀者，變回原始的純真和樂觀。傳單有效的煽動了對它的嚮往是個實例，曾經對感動但平凡的人事物，無動於衷的人，可能受到這樣簡單不起眼的愉快形象影響，這樣簡單熱帶微風中的棕櫚樹影像，竟然可以讓人衝動的著手既費時又昂貴的旅遊。我就是這樣而決定去Barbados旅遊。
喜歡旅行的人必讀的一本好書，但是不太好讀，因為和預期的旅行書差很多，我試著翻譯了第一篇，這一關卡通過，再過來就比較好讀了。
Chapter 1,
It was hard to say when exactly winter arrived. The decline was gradual, like that of a person into old age, inconspicuous from day to day until the season became an established, relentless reality. First came a dip in evening temperatures, then days of continuous rain, confused gusts of Atlantic wind, dampness, the fall of leaves and the changing of the clocks—though there were still occasional moments of reprieve, mornings when one could leave the house without a coat and the sky was cloudless and bright. But they were like false signs of recovery in a patient upon whom death has already passed its sentence. By December the new season was entrenched, and the city was covered almost every day by an ominous steel-grey sky, like one in a painting byMantegnaa orVeronesee, the perfect backdrop to the crucifixion of Christ or to a day beneath the bedclothes. The neighbourhood park became adesolatee spread of mud and water, lit up at night by rain-streaked street lamps. Passing it one evening during a downpour, I recalled how, in the intense heat of the previous summer, I had stretched out on the ground and let my bare feet slip out of my shoes tocaresss the grass, and how this direct contact with the earth had brought with it a sense of freedom and expansiveness, summer breaking down the usual boundaries between indoors and out and allowing me to feel as much at home in the world as in my own bedroom.
很難斷定冬天到底是哪一天開始的。天氣是逐漸不察覺中慢慢的轉冷，就像歲月也是一天天在不察覺中流逝，然後有一天我們突然要面對年老的殘酷事實。首先是傍晚氣溫的驟降，接著連續的雨天，偶陣大西洋東北風，天氣變潮溼，秋天的落葉以及夏季日光節約時間的結束..當然偶爾也會有溫暖的天氣，早上出門時可以不穿外套，天空也變的耀眼的晴朗。但是這種假象如同臨終病人的突然迴光反照。直到十二月新的季節正式開始了，整個城市籠罩在不祥的鐵灰色裡，正像名畫耶穌被釘十字架受難時刻的陰霾背景，或者也可以形容成城市被覆蓋在大片床單下。社區公園地佈滿雨水泥濘顯得荒涼孤寂，黑夜路燈亮光下的雨絲也變得明顯。
我想起有一晚穿過傾盆大雨的公園時，突然懷念起炎熱的前一年夏天，公園草地上我脫鞋光腳直接觸摸柔和大地上的感覺，是那麼自由廣闊，夏天的暖和劃開了室外室內的界線，讓我分辨不出外面世界和臥室的不同，
But now the park was foreign once more, the grass a forbidding arena in the incessant rain. Any sadness I might have felt, any suspicion that happiness or understanding was unattainable, seemed to find ready encouragement in the sodden dark-red brick buildings and low skies tinged orange by the city's streetlights.
此時的公園再次變的陌生，青草地在連續不斷的雨天裡成為禁區。
我曾經有的一絲憂鬱，曾經對幸福或人生意義的懷疑，在雨水浸濕的暗紅磚房，以及被路燈映照成淡橘色低空間，似乎已找到安慰。
Such climatic circumstances, together with a sequence of events that occurred at around this time (and seemed to confirm Chamfort's dictum that a man must swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead), conspired to render me intensely susceptible to the unsolicited arrival one late afternoon of a large, brightly illustrated brochure entitled ‘Winter Sun'.
Its cover displayed a row of palm trees, many of them growing at an angle, on a sandy beach fringed by a turquoise sea, set against a backdrop of hills where I imagined there to be waterfalls and relief from the heat in the shade of sweet-smelling fruit trees.
The photographs reminded me of the paintings of Tahiti that William Hodges had brought back from his journey with Captain Cook, showing a tropical lagoon in soft evening light, where smiling local girls cavorted carefree (and barefoot) through luxuriant foliage—images that had provoked wonder and longing when Hodges had first exhibited them at the Royal Academy in London in the sharp winter of 1776, and that continued to provide a model for subsequent depictionss of tropical idylls, including those in the pages of ‘Winter Sun'. Those responsible for the brochure had darkly intuited how easily their audience might be turned into prey by photographs whose power insulted the intelligence and contravened any notions of free will:
overexposed photographs of palm trees, clear skies and white beaches. Readers who would have been capable of scepticism and prudence in other areas of their lives reverted , in contact with these elements, to a primordial innocence and optimism.
The longing provoked by the brochure was an example, at once touching and bathetic, of how projects (and even whole lives) might be influenced by the simplest and most unexamined images of happiness; of how a lengthy and ruinously expensive journey might be set into motion by nothing more than the sight of a photograph of a palm tree gently inclining in a tropical breeze. I resolved to travel to the island of Barbados.
在這樣的氣候加上最近發生的一連串事件，其中有一天下午收到的大張鮮豔印有"冬天太陽"名稱的旅遊傳單，這些事件適時的引起了我強烈的衝動。 （似乎印證了Chamfort 的格言，一個人事先要每天早上吞下一隻癩蛤蟆，以保證當天不會碰到更噁心的事）
傳單上有一排棕櫚樹在青綠色海水邊的沙灘上，其中有些樹長的有斜度，後面背對著小山丘，我幾乎可以感覺山丘上面的瀑布，淡淡芳香的果樹，使炎熱的氣候變得清涼。
這張攝影讓我想起，William Hodges和庫克船長在Tahiti旅程中，從島上帶回來的一幅畫 ，傍晚溫和燈光下的礁湖，當地女郎歡樂的赤腳舞動在繁密濃綠的葉間，-那影像讓人迷惑嚮往，當初Hodges 首次1776年的嚴冬展示在倫敦皇家學院，從此那幅畫成為人們描繪所有熱帶田園畫的藍本，當然也包括這傳單上主題為"冬天太陽"的影像。
設計傳單的負責人輕易的以這影像讓人陷入圈套，它的力量掩埋了人類的智慧並且抑制了自主能力：接觸這些過量曝光的棕櫚樹，湛藍的天空，和白色沙灘之後，一向有能力在生活中多疑及精明的讀者，變回原始的純真和樂觀。傳單有效的煽動了對它的嚮往是個實例，曾經對感動但平凡的人事物，無動於衷的人，可能受到這樣簡單不起眼的愉快形象影響，這樣簡單熱帶微風中的棕櫚樹影像，竟然可以讓人衝動的著手既費時又昂貴的旅遊。我就是這樣而決定去Barbados旅遊。
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