今天，第三十六届韩素音国际翻译大赛获奖名单公布了，很遗憾名落孙山，再度陪跑。

今年是我第二次参赛，去年指导的学生得了韩素音英译汉优秀奖，自己没有任何斩获；今年又一次颗粒无收。说实话，心里多少是有些遗憾和不甘的。

但我并不气馁，打算明年再来。韩素音大赛参赛选手的年龄上限是45岁，我想，如果在接下来的十几年里不间断地参赛，总该会有获奖的机会吧~

官方公布了参考译文。链接如下：

http://service./hsy/user/detail?cid=kuimed787&vid=rty34m960

感兴趣的朋友可以去找来看看。

怎么说呢？对于官方参考译文，有些难以置评，英译汉参考译文中至少有多处硬伤。比如下面这个例子：

一句话中，“头顶上”这个词就出现了两次。

毕竟是官方给出的参考译文，我也不好多说什么。

一个从我们学校毕业、目前正在读博的学生，想跟我要一下我的参赛译文。我起初不太好意思给她，因为毕竟没有获奖，没能入得了评委们的法眼。不过，最后想了想还是给她了。

我也顺便在公众号上发出来，虽然存在诸多瑕疵，有很多地方可以改进和优化；且当做是一种警醒吧~

附上韩素音大赛英译汉原文和我的参赛译文。为方便阅读，采取了英中对照的模式。

The Solace of Open Spaces

旷野之慰藉A front is pulling the huge sky over me, and from the dark a hailstone has hit me on the head. I’m trailing a band of two thousand sheep across a stretch of Wyoming badlands, a fifty-mile trip that takes five days because sheep shade up in hot sun and won’t budge until it’s cool. Bunched together now, and excited into a run by the storm, they drift across dry land, tumbling into draws like water and surge out again onto the rugged, choppy plateaus that are the building blocks of this state. 时值五月，我学着我家狗狗的样子，在鼠尾草旁蜷曲而眠，避开风的侵扰，安享了一段小憩。锋面正拖拽着头顶的天空，黑暗中一颗冰雹敲打在了我的头上。我正赶着两千头羊穿越怀俄明州绵延的荒地，这段五十英里的旅程却需要长达五天的跋涉，因为烈日当头时，羊群要停下来乘凉，得等到天气变得凉爽才肯继续前行。此刻，羊群集结在一起，这场暴风雨令它们兴奋不已，横冲直撞，仿佛流水一般掠过干旱的土地，泻入沟壑，而后涌上崎岖不平的高原——而这些高原，正是怀俄明州的基石。The name Wyoming comes from an Indian word meaning “at the great plains,” but the plains are really valleys, great arid valleys, sixteen hundred square miles, with the horizon bending up on all sides, into mountain ranges. This gives the vastness a sheltering look. “怀俄明”之名来自于印第安语，其义为“在大平原上”，而这里所谓的“平原”实际上是宽广无垠的干旱山谷，绵延一千六百平方英里，地平线向四周蜿蜒攀升，融入层层山脉之中。因此，这片广袤的土地看起来像是得到了天然的庇护。Winter lasts six months here. Prevailing winds spill snowdrifts to the east, and new storms from the northwest replenish them. This white bulk is sometimes dizzying, even nauseating, to look at. At twenty, thirty, and forty degrees below zero, not only does your car not work, but neither do your mind and body. The landscape hardens into a dungeon of space. During the winter, while I was riding to find a new calf, my jeans froze to the saddle, and in the silence that such cold creates I felt like the first person on earth, or the last.

此地的严冬长达半年之久。盛行的寒风将暴雪裹挟向东，而自西北而来的新降风暴则更加助长了它们的势头。这片洁白的庞然大物，有时看起来会令人感到眩晕，甚至心生厌恶。在零下二十、三十甚至四十度的低温，不仅你的汽车无法运转，就连你的头脑和身体也都会停止工作。这里俨然冻结成了一座空旷的地笼。冬日里，在我骑马找寻新生的牛犊之际，我的牛仔裤便会冻在马鞍上，而这种严寒所带来的寂静，让我觉得自己仿佛是第一个出现在这个星球上的人，抑或是这个星球上的最后一人。Today the sun is out—only a few clouds billowing. In the east, where the sheep have started off without me, the benchland tilts up in a series of eroded red-earthed mesas, planed flat on top by a million years of water; behind them, a bold line of muscular scarps rears up ten thousand feet to become the Big Horn Mountains. A tidal pattern is engraved into the ground, as if left by the sea that once covered this state. Canyons curve down like galaxies to meet the oncoming rush of flat land. 今日，太阳高照，仅有些许云朵在空中翻涌。在东方，羊群已经先我一程出发，层层交叠的红土剥蚀台地倾斜而上，经过百万年的流水侵蚀，顶部已经被削平；在这些台地背后，一条粗壮的断崖线高耸入云，直达万尺，形成了大角山脉。大地被刻上了如同潮汐一般的图案，仿佛是曾经覆盖这片土地的海洋所留下的痕迹。峡谷蜿蜒而下，宛若星河般与迎面而来的平原汇聚在一起。To live and work in this kind of open country, with its hundred-mile views, is to lose the distinction between background and foreground. When I asked an older ranch hand to describe Wyoming’s openness, he said, “It’s all a bunch of nothing—wind and rattlesnakes—and so much of it you can’t tell where you’re going or where you’ve been and it don’t make much difference.” John, a sheepman I know, is tall and handsome and has an explosive temperament. He has a perfect intuition about people and sheep. They call him “Highpockets,” because he’s so long-legged; his graceful stride matches the distances he has to cover. He says, “Open space hasn’t affected me at all. It’s all the people moving in on it.” The huge ranch he was born on takes up much of one county and spreads into another state; to put 100,000 miles on his pickup in three years and never leave home is not unusual. A friend of mine has an aunt who ranched on Powder River and didn’t go off her place for eleven years. When her husband died, she quickly moved to town, bought a car, and drove around the States to see what she’d been missing. 在这样一片绵延上百英里的辽阔旷野上生活和工作，眼前再无背景和前景之分。我请一位年长的牧场佣工描述怀俄明州的辽阔，他跟我讲：“除了风和响尾蛇之外，这里啥也没有，这种虚无甚至让你分不清自己要去哪里或是从哪里来，不过这也无所谓。”约翰是我认识的一位牧羊人，高大英俊，但性情暴躁。他对人和羊都有着极为精准的直觉。人们都叫他“瘦高个儿”，因为他的腿真的太长了；他那优雅的阔步，恰与他需要跋涉的漫长路途甚是匹配。他说：“辽阔的空间对我完全没有任何影响，真正影响到我的是那些不断涌入这里的人。”他出生的那片牧场，占据了一个县的大部分土地，甚至延伸到了另一个州。他开着自己那辆皮卡车三年内行驶了10万英里，但却从未离开家园，这也常有的事。我一位朋友的姑姑在波德河地区放牧了11年之久，从未离开过她的牧场。在丈夫过世之后，她很快就搬到了城镇，然后买了一辆车，自驾周游各州，一览自己曾经错过的风景。Most people tell me they’ve simply driven through Wyoming, as if there were nothing to stop for. Or else they’ve skied in Jackson Hole, a place Wyomingites acknowledge uncomfortably because its green beauty and chic affluence are mismatched with the rest of the state. Most of Wyoming has a “lean-to” look. Instead of big, roomy barns and Victorian houses, there are dugouts, low sheds, log cabins, sheep camps, and fence lines that look like driftwood blown haphazardly into place. People here still feel pride because they live in such a harsh place, part of the glamorous cowboy past, and they are determined not to be the victims of a mining-dominated future. 我听很多人讲，他们曾驱车从怀俄明州穿行而过，似乎那里并没有什么值得停留的地方。或者，他们曾在杰克逊霍尔滑冰场滑过雪，而这是一处不太受到怀俄明州人青睐的地方，因为这里的葱茏美景和时尚富裕都与这个州的其他地区格格不入。怀俄明州内大部分地区的建筑都呈现出一种“简易棚”的观感。那里没有空间宽敞的大型谷仓，也没有维多利亚时代的房屋建筑，有的只是各种各样的地下掩体、低矮棚屋、原木小屋、羊圈营地，以及像是由被风随意吹到一处的浮木搭建而成的篱笆。这里的人们依然感到骄傲，因为他们生存的地方环境这般恶劣，在一定程度上诠释着那段迷人的牛仔历史。他们决心不做采矿主导型未来的牺牲品。Most characteristic of the state’s landscape is what a developer euphemistically describes as “indigenous growth right up to your front door”—a reference to waterless stands of salt sage, snakes, jack rabbits, deerflies, red dust, a brief respite of wildflowers, dry washes, and no trees. In the Great Plains the vistas look like music, like Kyries of grass, but Wyoming seems to be the doing of a mad architect—tumbled and twisted, ribboned with faded, deathbed colors, thrust up and pulled down as if the place had been startled out of a deep sleep and thrown into a pure light.

一家开发商曾委婉地将该州最具代表性的景观描述为“原生植被直抵家门”——在无水盐地矗立着的鼠尾草丛、各种蛇类、长耳野兔、鹿蝇、红色的泥土、花期短暂的野花、干涸的河床，连一棵树都见不着。大平原上的景色如同音乐般美妙，仿佛是由草地谱写而成的垂怜之曲，而怀俄明州则像是出自一位疯狂的建筑师的手笔——它杂乱扭曲，夹杂着临终时褪色黯淡的色调，高高耸起而又陡然沉下，仿佛这片土地从深沉的睡梦中惊醒，投入到纯洁的光芒之中。I came here four years ago. I had not planned to stay, but I couldn’t make myself leave. John, the sheepman, put me to work immediately. It was spring, and shearing time. For fourteen days of fourteen hours each, we moved thousands of sheep through sorting corrals to be sheared, branded, and deloused. I suspect that my original motive for coming here was to “lose myself” in new and unpopulated territory. Instead of producing the numbness I thought I wanted, life on the sheep ranch woke me up. The vitality of the people I was working with flushed out what had become a hallucinatory rawness inside me. I threw away my clothes and bought new ones; I cut my hair. The arid country was a clean slate. Its absolute indifference steadied me.

四年前，我来到此地。原本并没有打算留在这里，但我却根本没有办法离开。我一到这里，牧羊人约翰就立马要我投身工作。时值春季，到了要给羊剪毛的时候。在连着14天里，我们每天工作14小时，把数以千计的羊赶过分拣围栏，给它们剪毛、打标和除虱。我怀疑，我来这里的最初动机是要在这片新奇且人迹罕至的土地上“迷失自我”。牧场上的生活非但没有带给我预想中期待的那份麻木，反而让我幡然醒悟。与我一同做事的人们身上散发出的活力，驱散了我内心深处那种近乎幻觉的荒凉感。我扔掉了旧衣服，买了新的行头，也剪短了头发。这片干旱的土地如同一块洁净的白板，使我重获新生，而它的绝对冷漠则使我保持镇定。Sagebrush covers 58,000 square miles of Wyoming. The biggest city has a population of fifty thousand, and there are only five settlements that could be called cities in the whole state. The rest are towns, scattered across the expanse with as much as sixty miles between them, their populations two thousand, fifty, or ten. They are fugitive-looking, perched on a barren, windblown bench, or tagged onto a river or a railroad, or laid out straight in a farming valley with implement stores and a block-long Mormon church. In the eastern part of the state, which slides down into the Great Plains, the new mining settlements are boomtowns, trailer cities, metal knots on flat land.

怀俄明州有5万8千平方英里的土地被灌木蒿丛覆盖着。该州最大的城市仅有5万人口，而整个州只有五个定居点能够称得上是城市。而其余的定居点则均为小镇，分布在该州广袤的地域中，彼此之间相距长达六十英里，其人口数多则2000，少则有的50，甚至有的小镇只有10人定居。他们看起来如同一群逃亡者，栖息在饱受风吹雨打的荒凉悬崖上，或者依附河流或铁路而居，又或者直接分布在种植作物的山谷之中，此地有许多农具店和一座占地一个街区的摩门教教堂。在该州东部逐渐延伸至大平原的地区，新兴的矿业定居点形成了一些繁荣的小镇、“拖车城市”，以及在平坦的土地上形成的金属节点。Despite the desolate look, there’s a coziness to living in this state. There are so few people (only 470,000) that ranchers who buy and sell cattle know one another statewide; the kids who choose to go to college usually go to the state’s one university, in Laramie; hired hands work their way around Wyoming in a lifetime of hirings and firings. And despite the physical separation, people stay in touch, often driving two or three hours to another ranch for dinner.

尽管看起来一片荒凉，但在这个州的生活却给人一种安逸感。这里人烟如此稀少（仅有47万人），就连整个州内买牛卖牛的人都相互熟识；选择去上大学的孩子们通常会去坐落于拉勒米市的本州唯一一所大学里就读；雇佣工人在一生中辗转于怀俄明州，经历了一次又一次的雇佣和解雇。人们尽管地理上相隔甚远，但却保持着联系，经常驱车两三个小时前往另一处牧场共进晚餐。Seventy-five years ago, when travel was by buckboard or horseback, cowboys who were temporarily out of work rode the grub line—drifting from ranch to ranch, mending fences or milking cows, and receiving in exchange a bed and meals. Gossip and messages traveled this slow circuit with them, creating an intimacy between ranchers who were three and four weeks’ ride apart. One old-time couple I know, whose turn-of-the-century homestead was used by an outlaw gang as a relay station for stolen horses, recall that if you were traveling, desperado or not, any lighted ranch house was a welcome sign. Even now, for someone who lives in a remote spot, arriving at a ranch or coming to town for supplies is cause for celebration. To emerge from isolation can be disorienting. Everything looks bright, new, vivid. After I had been herding sheep for only three days, the sound of the camp tender’s pickup flustered me. Longing for human company, I felt a foolish grin take over my face; yet I had to resist an urgent temptation to run and hide.

75年前，当时的人们依靠马车或骑马出行。驱赶完牛群在回家途中临时失业的牛仔们，从一个牧场漂流到另一个牧场，修补篱笆或挤牛奶，以此换取床铺和餐食。八卦和消息随着他们的缓慢循环而传播开来，使每隔三四周便会在骑行途中聚首的牧场主之间营造出了亲密的联系。我认识一对老夫妇，他们建造于世纪之交的农舍曾被一伙强盗用作偷马的中转站。他们回忆道，无论你是不是亡命之徒，在旅途中，任何亮着灯光的牧场都会欢迎你的到来。即使到了现在，对于生活在偏远地区的人而言，到达一处牧场或者去镇上采购物资都是值得庆祝的事情。从孤立状态脱身而出可能会让人感到迷失方向。一切都显得明亮、鲜活和生动。仅仅牧羊三天后，营地管理员开皮卡车的声音就已经令我感到很不安。我渴望有人类的陪伴，感觉自己满脸浮现出一种愚蠢的笑容；然而，我不得不勉力抵挡想要逃跑和躲藏起来的诱惑。Things happen suddenly in Wyoming, the change of seasons and weather; for people, the violent swings in and out of isolation. But good-naturedness is concomitant with severity. Friendliness is a tradition. Strangers passing on the road wave hello. A common sight is two pickups stopped side by side far out on a range, on a dirt track winding through the sage. The drivers will share a cigarette, uncap their thermos bottles, and pass a battered cup, steaming with coffee, between windows. These meetings summon up the details of several generations, because, in Wyoming, private histories are largely public knowledge.

在怀俄明州，季节和天气的变化往往突然发生；对于人们来说，进出孤立状态的剧烈波动亦是如此。但善良和严厉往往同时存在，友好则是一种传统。路上路过的陌生人会相互挥手打招呼。在荒原的远处，两辆皮卡并排停在一起，停在从鼠尾草丛中蜿蜒穿过的土路上，而这便是这里十分常见的景象。司机们会一起抽烟，打开他们的保温瓶，然后在车窗间传递一个破旧的杯子，里面装着热气腾腾的咖啡。这些相遇唤起了几代人的生活细节，因为在怀俄明州，私人的历史在很大程度上是众所周知的。Because ranch work is a physical and, these days, economic strain, being “at home on the range” is a matter of vigor, self-reliance, and common sense. A person’s life is not a series of dramatic events for which he or she is applauded or exiled but a slow accumulation of days, seasons, years, fleshed out by the generational weight of one’s family and anchored by a land-bound sense of place. 由于牧场工作很考验身体，如今在经济方面也会带来压力，成为“草原上的主人”需要拥有活力、自力更生，还要具备常识。一个人的一生不是一连串戏剧性事件，会因此收获掌声或遭到放逐，而是日复一日、季复一季、年复一年的缓慢积累，被家族的世代沉淀所丰富，被一种与土地紧密联系的归属感所锚定。