Willy McNamara - The Writer 汉译

I can live for two months on a compliment.

Nineteenth-century life had dealt the ten-year-old London lad a bad hand. While his father languished in debtors’ jail, painful pangs of hunger gnawed at his stomach. To feed himself, the boy took a job pasting labels on blacking bottles in a grim, rat-infested warehouse. He slept in a dismal attic room with two other street urchins, while secretly dreaming of becoming a writer. With only four years of schooling, he had little confidence in his ability. To avoid the jeering laughter he expected, he sneaked out in the dead of night to mail his first manuscript.

Story after story was refused, until finally one was accepted. He wasn’t paid for it, but still, one editor had praised his work.

The recognition he received through the printing of that one story changed his life. If it hadn’t been for the encouragement of that one editor, he might have spent his entire working life in a rat-infested factory.

You may have heard of this boy, whose books brought about so many reforms in the treatment of children and the poor: his name was Charles Dickens, author of A Christmas Carol.

作家

19世纪伦敦有个10岁的孩子，命运不好，生活很艰苦。他的父亲还不起债被关进监狱受煎熬，他自己常常饿得肚子阵阵发痛。为了糊口，他受雇于一家仓库给发黑的瓶子贴标签，那仓库阴森森的，里面老鼠横行。晚上他和其他两个流浪儿在一座凄凉的阁楼里过夜，可是他却一个人默默地梦想成为作家。他只上过4年学，对自己的能力并没有多少信心。为避免可能遭到别人耻笑，他半夜里悄悄溜出去寄第一次文稿。

他写的短篇小说一篇篇被退稿，最后终于有一篇被接受了。他没有得到稿酬，不过还是有一位编辑称赞了他的作品。

刊登那篇小说使他获得认可，因而改变了他的生活。如果没有那位编辑给予鼓励，也许他就会终其一生在老鼠横行的工厂里干活了。

你也许听说过这个孩子，他的作品引发了多种改革，改善了对贫儿和穷人的待遇。他的名字是查尔斯·狄更斯，《圣诞颂歌》就是他写的。