Love in Translation <节选1>
I moved to Geneva to be with my husband, Olivier, who had moved there because his job required him to. My restaurant French was just passable. Drugstore French was a stretch. ikea French was pretty much out of the question, meaning that, since Olivier, a native speaker, worked twice as many hours a week as Swiss stores were open, we went for months without things like lamps.
We had established our life together in London, where we met on more or less neutral ground: his continent, my language. It worked. Olivier was my guide to living outside the behemoth of American culture; I was his guide to living inside the behemoth of English.
我搬到Geneva和我的丈夫Olivier一起住，他因为工作原因需要搬来。我的餐馆式法语只是过得去，药店法语就有点难度，宜家法语则是不可能。由于Olivier一周的工作时间要超过宜家营业时间的两倍，我们过了几个月都没有台灯的日子。于是我们在伦敦开始了生活，我们找到了对方的中间地，他的大陆，我的语言。这对我们十分合适。Oliver是我在美国文化之外生活的向导，我是他生活在英文里的语言向导。
He had learned the language over the course of many years. When he was in his teens, his parents sent him to Saugerties, New York, for a homestay with some acquaintances of an American they knew. Olivier landed at JFK, where a taxi picked him up. This was around the time of the Atlanta Olympic Games.
“What is the English for ‘female athlete’?” he asked, wanting to be prepared to discuss current events.
“ ‘Bitch,’ ” the driver said.
他学习英语很多年。当他还是个青少年的时候，他的爸妈把他送到纽约，和他们认识的一个美国家庭一起住。Olivier降落在肯尼迪机场,一辆出租车接他，当时正是亚特兰大奥运会。“女运动员用英语怎么说？”他问，想要和司机讨论现在的新闻。“Bitch（婊子），”那个司机回答说。
They drove on toward Ulster County, Olivier straining for a glimpse of the Manhattan skyline. The patriarch of the host family was an arborist named Vern. Olivier remembers driving around Saugerties with Charlene, Vern’s wife, and a friend of hers, who begged him over and over to say “hamburger.” He was mystified by the fact that Charlene called Vern “the Incredible Hunk.”
Five years later, Olivier found himself in England, a graduate student in mathematics. Unfortunately, his scholastic English—“Kevin is a blue-eyed boy” had been billed as a canonical phrase—had done little to prepare him for the realities of the language on the ground. “You’ve really improved,” his roommate told him, six weeks into the term. “When you got here, you couldn’t speak a word.” At that point, Olivier had been studying English for more than a decade.
他们往Ulster County驶去，Olivier努力想要看到曼哈顿的天际线。那个居住家庭的家长是一个叫做vern的树艺家。Olivier记得和Vern和他的妻子Charlene，还有朋友一起在周围驾车，他们一遍一遍地请求他说“汉堡包”，他很迷惑Charlene叫Vern做“不可思议的块头/帅哥”。
五年之后，Olivier发现自己成了一个在英国的数学研究生。但是他的“ 凯文是一个蓝色眼镜的男孩”这种教条式的学术英语并不足以让他面对这篇土地上的语言。“你提高了很多，”他的室友在学期六个星期之后告诉他，“当你刚到这的时候，你几乎不能说一个词。”在那个时候，他已经学习英语二十年。
After England, he moved to California to pursue a Ph.D., still barely able to cobble together a sentence. His début as a teaching assistant for a freshman course in calculus was greeted by a mass defection. On the plus side, one day he looked out upon the residue of the crowd and saw a female student wearing a T-shirt that read “Bonjour, Paris!”
By the time we met, Olivier had become not only a proficient speaker but a sensitive, agile one. Upon moving to London, in 2007, he’d had to take an English test in order to obtain his license as an amateur pilot. The examiner rated him “Expert”: “Able to speak at length with a natural, effortless flow. Varies speech flow for stylistic effect, e.g. to emphasize a point. Uses appropriate discourse markers and connectors spontaneously.”
在英国之后，他搬到加州读博士，仍然不可以说一句通顺的语句。他作为助教在本科生一年级课微积分上的首次出场是有质量缺陷的。好的一面是，有一天他在人群的周边看到了一个女学生穿着“你好，巴黎”的体恤衫。
当我们遇见的时候，Olivier不止是不仅可以熟练地说英语而且成了一个敏感脆弱地说英语的人。当他搬到轮对的时候，为了获得业余飞行员的执照他必需要参加一个英文测试。考官把他评为“专家”，“可以自然流畅地地说长段，根据重点或是效果有变化的语音语调。自然地使用合适的标签和连接词。”
I knew Olivier only in his third language—he also spoke Spanish, the native language of his maternal grandparents, who had fled over the Pyrenees during the Spanish Civil War—but his powers of expression were one of the things that made me fall in love with him. For all his rationality, he had a romantic streak, an attunement to the currents of feeling that run beneath the surface of words. Once, he wrote me a letter—an inducement to what we might someday have together—in which every sentence began with “Maybe.” Maybe he’d make me an omelette, he said, every day of my life.
我只在他的第三们语言里认识了Olivier,他也说西班牙语，他的祖父母的母语，他的祖父母在西班牙内战期间飞到了Pyrenees,他在西班牙语里的表达的力量让我爱上了他。在他的理性之中，他有一种浪漫的条纹，一种在语言表层之下对现在感情暗流的和谐。有一次他给我写了一封信，心中期许我们有一天会一起拥有的，没一句开头都是“也许”，也许他会每天给我做一个煎蛋，他说。
摘自
Love in Translation_The New Yorker
We had established our life together in London, where we met on more or less neutral ground: his continent, my language. It worked. Olivier was my guide to living outside the behemoth of American culture; I was his guide to living inside the behemoth of English.
我搬到Geneva和我的丈夫Olivier一起住，他因为工作原因需要搬来。我的餐馆式法语只是过得去，药店法语就有点难度，宜家法语则是不可能。由于Olivier一周的工作时间要超过宜家营业时间的两倍，我们过了几个月都没有台灯的日子。于是我们在伦敦开始了生活，我们找到了对方的中间地，他的大陆，我的语言。这对我们十分合适。Oliver是我在美国文化之外生活的向导，我是他生活在英文里的语言向导。
He had learned the language over the course of many years. When he was in his teens, his parents sent him to Saugerties, New York, for a homestay with some acquaintances of an American they knew. Olivier landed at JFK, where a taxi picked him up. This was around the time of the Atlanta Olympic Games.
“What is the English for ‘female athlete’?” he asked, wanting to be prepared to discuss current events.
“ ‘Bitch,’ ” the driver said.
他学习英语很多年。当他还是个青少年的时候，他的爸妈把他送到纽约，和他们认识的一个美国家庭一起住。Olivier降落在肯尼迪机场,一辆出租车接他，当时正是亚特兰大奥运会。“女运动员用英语怎么说？”他问，想要和司机讨论现在的新闻。“Bitch（婊子），”那个司机回答说。
They drove on toward Ulster County, Olivier straining for a glimpse of the Manhattan skyline. The patriarch of the host family was an arborist named Vern. Olivier remembers driving around Saugerties with Charlene, Vern’s wife, and a friend of hers, who begged him over and over to say “hamburger.” He was mystified by the fact that Charlene called Vern “the Incredible Hunk.”
Five years later, Olivier found himself in England, a graduate student in mathematics. Unfortunately, his scholastic English—“Kevin is a blue-eyed boy” had been billed as a canonical phrase—had done little to prepare him for the realities of the language on the ground. “You’ve really improved,” his roommate told him, six weeks into the term. “When you got here, you couldn’t speak a word.” At that point, Olivier had been studying English for more than a decade.
他们往Ulster County驶去，Olivier努力想要看到曼哈顿的天际线。那个居住家庭的家长是一个叫做vern的树艺家。Olivier记得和Vern和他的妻子Charlene，还有朋友一起在周围驾车，他们一遍一遍地请求他说“汉堡包”，他很迷惑Charlene叫Vern做“不可思议的块头/帅哥”。
五年之后，Olivier发现自己成了一个在英国的数学研究生。但是他的“ 凯文是一个蓝色眼镜的男孩”这种教条式的学术英语并不足以让他面对这篇土地上的语言。“你提高了很多，”他的室友在学期六个星期之后告诉他，“当你刚到这的时候，你几乎不能说一个词。”在那个时候，他已经学习英语二十年。
After England, he moved to California to pursue a Ph.D., still barely able to cobble together a sentence. His début as a teaching assistant for a freshman course in calculus was greeted by a mass defection. On the plus side, one day he looked out upon the residue of the crowd and saw a female student wearing a T-shirt that read “Bonjour, Paris!”
By the time we met, Olivier had become not only a proficient speaker but a sensitive, agile one. Upon moving to London, in 2007, he’d had to take an English test in order to obtain his license as an amateur pilot. The examiner rated him “Expert”: “Able to speak at length with a natural, effortless flow. Varies speech flow for stylistic effect, e.g. to emphasize a point. Uses appropriate discourse markers and connectors spontaneously.”
在英国之后，他搬到加州读博士，仍然不可以说一句通顺的语句。他作为助教在本科生一年级课微积分上的首次出场是有质量缺陷的。好的一面是，有一天他在人群的周边看到了一个女学生穿着“你好，巴黎”的体恤衫。
当我们遇见的时候，Olivier不止是不仅可以熟练地说英语而且成了一个敏感脆弱地说英语的人。当他搬到轮对的时候，为了获得业余飞行员的执照他必需要参加一个英文测试。考官把他评为“专家”，“可以自然流畅地地说长段，根据重点或是效果有变化的语音语调。自然地使用合适的标签和连接词。”
I knew Olivier only in his third language—he also spoke Spanish, the native language of his maternal grandparents, who had fled over the Pyrenees during the Spanish Civil War—but his powers of expression were one of the things that made me fall in love with him. For all his rationality, he had a romantic streak, an attunement to the currents of feeling that run beneath the surface of words. Once, he wrote me a letter—an inducement to what we might someday have together—in which every sentence began with “Maybe.” Maybe he’d make me an omelette, he said, every day of my life.
我只在他的第三们语言里认识了Olivier,他也说西班牙语，他的祖父母的母语，他的祖父母在西班牙内战期间飞到了Pyrenees,他在西班牙语里的表达的力量让我爱上了他。在他的理性之中，他有一种浪漫的条纹，一种在语言表层之下对现在感情暗流的和谐。有一次他给我写了一封信，心中期许我们有一天会一起拥有的，没一句开头都是“也许”，也许他会每天给我做一个煎蛋，他说。
摘自
Love in Translation_The New Yorker
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