《宋氏快译》英汉对照(63):希拉里如何学会信任自己

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《宋氏快译》英汉对照(63):希拉里如何学会信任自己

How Hillary Learned to Trust Herself
Thursday, Jan. 10, 2008 By JOE KLEIN

希拉里如何学会信任自己

In the spring of 1995, I was part of a small press pack that accompanied a wounded Hillary Clinton on her first major international trip as First Lady, to south Asia.She was extremely wary of us at first, but that didn't last very long, as the exotic sights and sounds overwhelmed us all. It was, I suspect, a turning point in Clinton's life.

1995年春,我当时是一个采访小组的成员,有幸随同感情受挫的希拉里-克林顿前往南亚地区,开展她首次以第一夫人身份进行的大型国际之旅。起初她对我们的戒备之心非常强,但这并未持续多久,因为异国情调的景致与喧嚣繁响使我们都兴奋不已。窃以为这在希拉里-柯林顿的一生中可谓一个转捩点。


Back home, she had faced dangerous, vitriol-spewing crowds at the end of the health-care battle, but each time she stepped off the big plane with the grand words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA emblazoned on its side, the crowds were huge and adoring.

回国之后,她在保健战役进入尾声时,一直要面对口诛笔伐的高危人群,但是每当她从那架带有美利坚合众国大字的大型飞机中走出来的时候,她的崇拜者总是人潮如涌。

And as she went from place to place, visiting local programs that helped women overcome the vicious prejudices visited upon them by male-dominated cultures, a metamorphosis took place: gradually, she seemed to put the health-care debacle behind her and realize there was other work to be done, if not as co-President, then as First Lady.

她的足迹遍布各方,经常去考察各地制定的那些向妇女提供帮助的计划,这些计划旨在帮助妇女应对由男性主导的文化所强加给她们的恶性偏见。而一种质变往往就在这时发生:渐渐地,她似乎妙手回春,使保健方面的解冻现象紧随其后,应运而生,而与此同时她也意识到,如果当时不是以共同总统,亦即第一夫人身份出现,她还将有其它工作要做。

There were all these women who needed a public voice.One day in Ahmadabad, India, she visited a remarkable economic program for untouchable women who were ragpickers. They sang We Shall Overcome for her in Gujarati, and tears filled her eyes. All us cynics in the press corps went weepy too.

需要一位公众代言人的妇女比比皆是。 一天她在印度的阿赫马达巴德考察一项专为拾荒女贱民制定的相当可观的经济计划。她们用古吉拉特语为她高歌一曲《我们会克服》,她当时热泪盈眶。就连我们采访组里所有这些冷血动物也随之潜然泪下。

注释:
Untouchable,贱民,是印度最底层的社会阶层,又称“不可接触的贱民”。 Cynics,玩世不恭者,喜好挖苦人的人。根据上下文似乎译成“冷血动物”显得更顺畅些。


As the trip went on, a funny thing happened. Off the record, of course. She would come back to the press section of the plane, dressed in a sweatshirt, wearing her Coke-bottle eyeglasses, and schmooze.I have a picture of the two of us, heads thrown back, laughing at some long-forgotten joke as we headed home.

随着访问的继续,一种有趣的情况发生了。她对新闻媒体开始展现开放的态度。这当然是前所未有的。(每次出访一结束,)她就回到飞机上新闻部门的所在处,身穿运动衫,戴着可乐瓶色的眼睛,和大家闲聊。我有一张我俩在回家时一起拍的照片,回着头,为一些早已遗忘的笑话开怀大笑。

All of which came to mind as Clinton experienced a similar metamorphosis in New Hampshire last week—an unclenching that took place under far more difficult circumstances, with the whole world watching her every move. It was a rocky path with an unexpected ending.She made mistakes, said a few things in the heat of battle that she probably regrets. But she also allowed herself some tentative moments of spontaneity—not just her now famous near tears in Portsmouth, but moments of humor and anger and grace as well.

当希拉里-克林顿上周在新罕州经历一次类似的蜕变时,所有那些往事又重新回到脑际 - 就是她在更加困难的环境中,而且她的一举一动都处在整个世界的众目睽睽之下所表现出的怡然及松弛。这是一条无法预测结局的崎岖之路。她犯过错误,她在激烈的口水战中说过一些她可能后悔莫及的话。但她也有那种让自己尝试性地任意流露情感的时刻 - 这不仅包括现在她在朴次茅斯近乎落泪的那一著名时刻,还有流露幽默、愤怒以及宽容的时刻。

My favorite came in a confrontation with the television talk-show host Chris Matthews during a press conference—a press conference!—in Nashua.Matthews was pushing her on Iraq. How was she different from Barack Obama? Back and forth it went, Clinton parrying every thrust easily. Finally, Matthews capitulated. "Please, come on the show," he said.Clinton chuckled and said sarcastically, "Well, right!" Then she joked, "I don't know what to do with men who are obsessed with me." And then she went over, gave him a hug, patted his cheek and said, "Christopher ... baby ..." Matthews seemed to melt.He asked her how she was doing. "I'm good!" she replied brightly.

我最喜欢的人(指希拉里)就在纳什瓦记者招待会上遭遇了电视访谈节目主持人克里斯-马修斯– 那是一次记者会!马修斯是在以伊拉克问题向她施压。她是如何体现与巴拉克-奥巴马迥然相异的呢?在一进一退之间,希拉里-克林顿应对自如,刀枪不入。最终落败投降的当然是马修斯。他说:“请你来参加节目。”她边笑边反唇相讥:“嗯,那好哇!”然后她就开玩笑地说:“我不知道在面对自己一个男粉丝的时候该做些什么。”然后她就走上前去和他拥抱,还拍拍他的脸蛋儿说:“克里斯托弗 ----宝贝儿----”纳修斯似乎已经被融化。他向她表示问候。她则神采奕奕地回答道:“我很好!”

注释:
此段有些词句译得有些随意,如:刀枪不入(parrying every thrust easily,很容易地就把每一次攻击回避了);男粉丝(men who are obsessed with me,迷恋我的男人); 脸蛋儿( cheek,面颊,两腮)。

But she wasn't good. She was shell-shocked, reeling from her loss in Iowa and polls that showed her cratering in New Hampshire.The search for some way to counter Obama's easy brilliance, her search for a true public voice, was proving much harder than her discovery of a new mission back in India in 1995.And then it happened, in the oddest possible way.It happened at a listless rally on Monday afternoon in the town of Dover, where her husband had resurrected his cratering campaign in 1992 by declaring, "I'll be there for you until the last dog dies."

但她也并非一帆风顺。她在艾奥瓦州落败,然而一夜之间民调表明她在新罕州将会旗开得胜,这种骤变使她倍感震惊。事实证明,寻求某种方法来应对奥巴马的轻松获胜,寻觅一位真正代表公众的代言人,其难度要远甚于她在1995年在印度发现一种新的使命。不过这种骤变却在随后以一种最为古怪的方式发生了,是于周一下午在丹佛城一次了无生机的集会上发生的,她丈夫于1992年就是在那里的初选中起死回生的,他曾宣布“我将为你们在那里一直坚持到最后一只狗死掉为止。”

With the last dog on life support, Senator Clinton was introduced by a woman named Francine Torge, who said something startling and dreadful: "Some people compare one of the other candidates to John F. Kennedy. But he was assassinated, and Lyndon Baines Johnson was the one who actually [completed Kennedy's work]." That clearly remained in Clinton's mind, because a few hours later, she was tastelessly comparing Obama to Martin Luther King Jr. in an interview with Fox News.King's dream "became a reality," she said, "because we had a President who said we are going to do it and actually got it accomplished."

借助于最后一只生死相助之狗的作用,希拉里由一个名叫弗朗辛-多哥的女人推介亮相。那个女人说了一些令人惊恐万状的话: “有些人把其他一位候选人与约翰-肯尼迪相比。但他被暗杀了,而林登-贝恩斯-约翰逊就是一个其实(已经完成肯尼迪事业的人)。” 这番话显然一直在柯林顿心中挥之不去,因为几个小时后,她就在福克斯新闻访谈节目中不适当地将奥巴马与小马丁-路德-金相比。马丁-路德-金的梦“已经变成现实,”她说, “因为我们有一位总统说过我们要做这件事,而实际上这件事已经被完成。”

注释:

林登•贝恩斯•约翰逊(1908.8.27—1973.1.22)是美国第36任总统,生于得克萨斯州,是父亲塞缪尔和母亲莉伯卡的五个孩子中的长子。父亲是州议员。约翰逊在西南师范毕业后从事过多种职业。1948年当选参议员,1951年成为民主党议员领袖。1960年被提名为民主党总统候选人,竞选获胜。1963年11月12曰,肯尼迪遇刺身亡,约翰逊继任总统。继任后,他提出有关人权、减税、反穷困和资源保护的立法,得以批准。1964年竞选连任成功。他提出了建立“伟大社会”的口号,并出台了一些实际措施,也取得了某些成效。但他因袭前届政府的政策,并且扩大了印支战争。1965年,还派兵对多米尼加共和国进行了干预。特别是扩大印支战争,受到美国人民的强烈反对。约翰逊为了摆脱困境,不得不与印支方面进行谈判,以便结束战争。任期届满之后,约翰逊不再竞选总统。退休后,他在得克萨斯的一个牧场住了下来。在他去世的第二天,越南停战协定在巴黎签字。

The specter of Lyndon Johnson, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and all the other dull, disastrous, detail-oriented Democratic politicians of the recent past had haunted her campaign from the start. Earlier that day she had even attacked Obama using Mondale's famous line about Gary Hart, "Where's the beef?" But now she seemed to be shedding her private dismay that she could never be a charismatic politician like Obama or Kennedy, or her husband, and embracing her inner Johnson—at least the can-do policy-wonk version of that notoriously strange President.

林登-约翰逊的幽灵、沃尔特-蒙代尔、迈克尔-杜卡基斯,以及所有其他那些前不久还依然活跃的枯燥乏味的、灾难性的、定位过细的民主党政客,从一开场就在她的竞选活动中作祟。当天早些时候,她甚至还利用蒙代尔针对加里-哈特的那句名言“牛肉在哪里”来攻击奥巴马。但现在,她似乎要将自己隐秘的沮丧之情加以遮掩,即,她可能永远也不会成为一位像奥巴马或肯尼迪,乃至她的丈夫那样魅力无穷的政客,看来她也只能去拥抱内心中的约翰逊 - 至少可以秉承那位声名狼藉的总统所推行的可行性政策之“旺克”版(the can-do policy-wonk version)。

But she would be Johnson with a twist, with passion and with a specific constituency in mind: all those women who had to juggle jobs, children, careless, selfish men, and menopause—and, all too often, divorce. The working women of America, like the woman who had asked the simple, touching question in Portsmouth that had started her tears flowing: "How do you do it? Who does your hair?"

不过,她可以是一位怪诞、热情、心里总是对某一位特定选区持有特殊情结的约翰逊:而所有这些妇女,都不得不像玩杂耍那样一心多用地去兼顾工作、孩子、粗心、自私男人、绝经 - 还有像家常便饭似的离婚。美国的劳动妇女,都像在朴次茅斯提出简单动人,而又使其流泪的问题的那种女人: "你是怎么做的?谁为你理发?”

Those women responded by coming out for her in droves in New Hampshire. They represent a very moving counterforce to the legions of young people Obama has activated across the country. Both Clinton and Obama have a solid base now—and both have a similar problem: trying to reach past that base, especially to the working-class (white) men who may well decide the general election in states like Ohio.

在新罕州,这些妇女的反应是为她而成群结队地走出家门。她们代表了一股与奥巴马在全国调动起来的青年大军相左的活性对抗力量。克林顿和奥巴马目前都拥有一个坚实的基础 - 也都面临一个类似的问题:就是试图超过这一基础,特别想征服工薪阶层的(白人)男子,因为他们很可能会左右俄亥俄那样的州内大选局面。


Clinton's "beef" may prove the more sturdy product in a party that thinks, as labor leader Andrew Stern once said, that electing a President is College Bowl, but it's really American Idol. Obama may be inspirational, but Clinton is now inspired. "I listened to you," she said at the beginning of her spare, elegant acceptance speech. "And in the process, I found my own voice."

正如工党领袖安德鲁-斯特恩曾经说过的,在一个认为选举总统就是“学院碗”的党派内,不过这的确是美国人所尊崇的对象,克林顿的“牛肉”可能真的是更坚实可靠的产品。奥巴马可能令人鼓舞,而克林顿现在就已经受到鼓舞。“我对你们是言听计从,”她在一次简单而得体的接受提名演讲中说。“在(竞选)过程中,我才能够开口说话。”

注释:
College Bowl ,“学院碗”,大学橄榄球赛。Find one’s voice,(吓得或羞得说不出话之后)能够说话,能够开口了。


If she is smart—smarter about herself than she has been in the past—she will continue to run her campaign in the open, as she did the last few days in New Hampshire, answering questions from the press and public, allowing her humor (and a bit of anger) to shine. She will, finally, trust her own instincts and stop relying so much on polls and market testing. A big election like this one is won on macrovision, not the microtrends that her strategist Mark Penn keeps touting.

如果她聪明 - 比她以往在对待她自己问题上表现得更聪明些 - 她就会继续公开参选,就像她过去几天在新罕州所做的那样,在回答新闻界和公众问题时,让她的幽默(和少许愤怒)出彩发光。她最终将会相信自己的直觉,不要再依赖如此之多的民调和行情测试。赢得这样的一次大选,靠的是宏观的眼力,而不是其战略家马克-本所不断吹嘘的跟风随大流。

And in facing an idealistic opponent, she will remember that she, not her husband, was the one who came up with the famous line "I still believe in a place called Hope."

在面对一位理想主义的对手时,她应该记住,遭遇那条著名的路线“但我仍相信,在一个被称之为希望的地方”的人是她,而不是她的丈夫 。

But we in the press have to be smarter too. We were wildly stupid in the days before the New Hampshire primary, citing Clinton meltdown after Clinton meltdown—the tears, the flash of anger in the debate—that never really happened.

但是,我们在报刊上也要更聪明。在新州预选之前的几天里,我们都愚蠢至极,一遍又一遍地引述克林顿的崩溃形象 – 辩论中的眼泪以及刹那间的愤怒 – 其实那根本就没有真正发生过。

We really need to calm down, become more spin-resistant, even if our sleep-deprived sources tend to overreact to every slip and poll dip in the campaign.

即使我们掌握一些令人激动得失眠的信息资源,促使我们对竞选中出现的每一件意外或民调的偏斜做出过度反应,我们也真的需要冷静下来,对欺骗行为的抵制能力要变得更强一些。

If we are lucky, this will be a long and complicated race—which is exactly what this country deserves right now—and we need to watch it with our very best, most patient eyes, just as the public seems to be doing.

如果我们幸运的话,这将是一次漫长而复杂的竞选活动 - 而这个国家目前正应该如此- 我们要像公众们似乎正在做的那样,必须以最敏锐的目光耐心地去观察。



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