《海外英语》“大师谈翻译”擂台（2013年1月）

《独家新闻》选段

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《独家新闻》是英国著名作家Evelyn Waugh（1903～1966）的代表作之一。故事讲述的是一个乡下的业余作者威廉·布特在阴差阳错之下，被派往即将发生战争的“伊士马利”（一个并不存在的非洲国家）作外派记者。威廉毫无经验，不会像其他记者那样胡编乱造，十几天里没发回一篇像样的报道，招致报社的强烈不满。但是就在收到解雇通知之前，威廉获得了一个内幕消息，而这个消息成了爆炸性的“独家新闻”，令报社对威廉另眼相看。威廉回到英国时已是家喻户晓的英雄，并将被授予贵族的爵位，没想到首相的手下又一次张冠李戴，把爵位颁给了另外一个布特。然而威廉对这些早已不在意，他拒绝了报社的高薪合同，返回自己的庄园，继续过他的乡下人生活。下面这一段就描述了威廉前往“伊士马利”之前的情景，欢迎将译文发送至oenglish@163.com，将有机会得到方华文老师的精心点评和修改。PS: 投稿时请在主题上注明“大师谈翻译”字样，并在稿件中注明姓名、电话、地址！翻译原文我们会在杂志官网、沪江部落、人人网同时发布。

比赛原文：

William was the centre of interest in the motor omnibus, and in his heart he felt a rising, wholly pleasurable excitement. His new possessions creaked and rattled on the roof, canoe against astrolabe, humidor against ant-proof clothes box; the cleft sticks lay in a bundle on the opposite seat; the gardens of South London sped past. William sat in a happy stupor. He had never wanted to go to Ishmaelia, or, for that matter, to any foreign country, to earn fifty pounds a week, or to own a jointed flagstaff or a camp operating table; but when he told Mr. Salter that he wanted nothing except to live at home and keep his job, he had hidden the remote and secret ambition of fifteen years or more. He did, very deeply, long to go up in an aeroplane. It was a wish so far from the probabilities of life at Boot Magna, that William never spoke of it; very rarely consciously considered it. No one at home knew of it except Nannie Bloggs. She had promised him a flight if she won the Irish Sweepstake, but after several successive failures she had decided that the whole thing was a popish trick and refused to take further tickets, and with her decision William’s chances seemed to fade beyond the ultimate horizon. But it still haunted his dreams and returned to him, more vividly, in the minutes of transition between sleep and wakefulness, on occasions of physical exhaustion and inner content, hacking home in the twilight after a good day’s hunt, fuddled with port on the not infrequent birthdays of the Boot household. And now its imminent fulfillment loomed through the haze that enveloped him as the single real and significant feature. High over the chimneys and the giant monkey-puzzle, high among the clouds and rainbows and clear blue spaces, whose alternations figured so largely and poetically in Lush Places, high above the most ecstatic skylark, above earth-bound badger and great crested grebe, away from people and cities to a region of light and void and silence, that was where William was going in the Air Line omnibus; he sat mute, rapt, oblivious of the cleft sticks and the portable typewriter.