分类：文艺

New York low life
平凡的纽约人

Bottoms up
杯酒人生

Feb 25th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

Reporting At Wit’s End: Tales from The New Yorker.
By St. Clair McKelway. Bloomsbury; 619 pages; $18 and £10.99.
《谈笑看纽约: 纽约客杂志的人物故事》
作者：圣克莱尔.马克威 布鲁姆斯伯里出版社；619页；18美元/10.99英镑。

WHEN she learned that the bank was about to foreclose on her mortgage, Katherina Schnible, a slightly lame 72-year-old, remained in her third floor apartment in a little frame house in Brooklyn, refusing to open the door to anybody but her son. Then came the day when she heard a heavy footfall on the first landing, heard somebody running frantically up the first flight of stairs, heard a man’s voice shouting something. The footsteps came closer and then, right outside her door, the voice yelled “Fire!” Mrs Schnible opened her door and hobbled into the hall. “Hello, Mrs Schnible,” said the man standing there. “Here’s a summons for you.”

当她得知自己抵押贷款的住房将被银行没收后，凯瑟琳.史妮波（一位72岁、步伐略有些蹒跚的老人）待在她位于布鲁克林一栋构架房第三层的公寓里，无论谁来都拒不开门开，除了她儿子。直到有一天，她听到楼梯口传来沉重的脚步声，听到有人慌慌张张跑上第一层的楼梯，还听到有人在叫喊着些什么。脚步声越来越近，接着，就在她的门口，传来一声“起火啦!”史妮波女士打开房门，踉踉跄跄的跑到大厅。“您好，史妮波女士，”一位站在那儿的男士说道。“这是您的传票。”

The man on the stairs was Harry Grossman, the “champion process-server of all time”, and the story is among countless told to readers of the New Yorker by St. Clair McKelway, a wry observer of the city’s low life, from the 1930s into the 1960s. A reporter of the old school, McKelway was never portentous and rarely judgmental. As Adam Gopnik, a current writer for the New Yorker, shrewdly notes in his introduction to this collection of essays, he was not at all interested in trends; in the idea that more and more people were acting this way. Instead the classic McKelway piece says: “Very, very few people act this way, which is what makes the ones who do so interesting.”

站在楼梯间的人，是哈利.格雷斯曼——有史以来最出众的传票递送员。而以上的这个故事，是由圣克莱尔.马克威为《纽约客》杂志读者讲述的众多故事中的一则。圣克莱尔.马克威从上世纪三十年代到六十年代，一直以犀利眼光关注着城市底层的民众。作为一名保守型记者，马克威从不装腔作势，也极少评头论足。正如亚当.哥普尼克（现为《纽约客》撰稿人）为该故事集撰写的序言中的精炼总结——他（马克威）不是那种对潮流感兴趣的人（言下之意就是越来越多的人喜欢追求入流的东西）。然而，马克威的一个经典之作中有这么一句：“绝大、绝大多数的人是不赶潮流的，这就使那些喜欢追求时髦的人让人很感兴趣。”

In these essays they include the good as well as the bad. A beat cop interprets the force’s shop talk for McKelway: his shift is a tour, his uniform a bag, his winter overcoat a benny, an influential friend a rabbi and his wife, even to her face, the cook. Firebugs substitute old nags for thoroughbred horses before they set stables alight and then claim for valuable horseflesh from the insurers. A counterfeiter of banknotes cannot spell and renders the first American president as “Wahsington”. Yet for 20 years he gets away with passing off his funny money because he never succumbs to greed. He spends only a few dollars at a time and at different locations.

这些人物故事里，既有倒霉事儿，也有走运的事儿。”一名社区巡警如是为马克威转述警察们私下有关工作的趣谈：值班等于溜圈。制服让你裹成蚕茧，冬衣让你夹成汉堡包。一个影响你的朋友是“夫子”，而老婆则是厨子（即使当着老婆面，他们也这么叫）。纵火犯在放火烧马棚之前，会将棚里的良驹偷换成老马，之后便以损失良马为由，向保险公司索要赔偿。有个造假钞的，不识字，把美国国父的名字印成“花生顿”。不过那搞笑的钞票流通了二十年，他都从来没有被抓过。因为他从来不被贪婪所诱惑——他每次消费都只用几块钱，而且得手就走，绝不恋战。

All these stories are lucid. McKelway was often not. His fondness for booze helped ruin his five marriages and even worried his colleagues on the New Yorker, which is saying something. On joining the magazine, Brendan Gill, a contemporary, noticed that everybody there seemed to be feeling sick. “Later, I learned that many of them were sick with hangovers of varying degrees of acuteness.”

这些故事内容都很直白。但是马克威的脑子可不总是那么清白。他酗酒成性，已经让他五段婚姻都以失败告终，甚至还殃及他在《纽约客》的同事——这可很说明问题。布兰顿.吉尔（和他同时代的人）刚入职该杂志时，发现那里的每一个人好像都有点没睡醒。“后来我才搞清楚，原来他们很多人都还没有从前一晚的醉意中清醒过来。

It was McKelway’s good fortune to be tutored by Harold Ross, the editor of the New Yorker from 1925 to 1951. Like so many of his staff, Ross maintained the highest standards of journalism while sinking awesome amounts of liquor. His editing precision was legendary and he was so literal-minded that he even corrected literary quotations. In revising a piece that quoted Tennyson, for instance, he altered “nature red in tooth and claw” to “nature red in claw and tooth”, reasoning that a predator’s claws would be bloodied before its teeth. Ross insisted that “nothing was indescribable”; that the most complex idea or gizmo could be made intelligible.

马克威能有机会获得哈罗德.罗斯（《纽约客》1925年至1951年的总编）的真传，算是他这辈子的一大幸事。罗斯和他众多的同事一样，在灌下海量酒精的同时，仍能保证文稿有行业的一流水平。他审稿的精细程度令人叫绝。他字斟句酌，毫不含糊，他甚至会改正稿子里引用的名人名言的错误。举个例子，有一次，他审的稿子引用l丁尼生的话，文中写到“大自然的红牙血爪”。他先将“红牙血爪”改回为“血爪红牙”，然后解释道，食肉动物在用牙齿撕咬食物前，它的爪子肯定已经先沾满了血迹。罗斯坚持认为“任何事物都可以用语言表达的”，即使是最复杂的思想和事物都有可能被表达描述出来。

This exactness of observation and fascination with detail runs through McKelway’s essays. So does an acceptance of human frailty. As a sinner himself, McKelway tolerates, almost celebrates, the sins of others. He can only smile when the wife of an embezzler says: “Well, he’s a very fine man except for that one quirk.”

这种观察的精确和对细节的追求，贯穿马克威笔下的所有故事。他的文章中也贯穿了一种对于人类弱点的包容。因为自己就是一个有罪之人，所以马克威对于他人的罪过不但能容忍，甚至乐见于此。倘若一个贪污犯的妻子说“呃，除了那个毛病，他其实是个非常好的人。”他可能只会对此莞尔一笑。

译者：fhf208188
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International law
国际法

Pillar of wisdom
智慧的基石

Feb 11th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

The Rule of Law. By Tom Bingham. Allen Lane; 213 pages; £20. Buy from Amazon.co.uk

《法治》，作者汤姆•宾厄姆（Tom Bingham），艾伦•雷恩出版社出版；20英镑。可从Amazon.co.uk网站购买

TOM BINGHAM holds that what has come to be known as the rule of law is “the nearest we are likely to approach to a universal secular religion”. The key word is “universal”. Nigel Lawson, Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor of the exchequer, once described the National Health Service (NHS) as being similarly important to the British, but as Barack Obama’s attempts to reform America’s health-care system demonstrate, the NHS is not the envy of the world. For most people who live under the rule of law its blessings can be clearer and less ambiguous even than those conferred by liberal democracy or free markets.

汤姆•宾厄姆认为我们眼中的法治是“我们可能企及的一种普世的世俗宗教”。关键词是“普世的”。撒切尔夫人担任首相期间的英国财政大臣尼格尔•劳森(Nigel Lawson)曾把国民健康服务机制（NHS）称为是对每个英国人都是同等重要的，但正如巴拉克•奥巴马尝试改革美国的医保体制所展现的一样，国民健康服务机制也并非是整个世界钦羡的对象。对生活在法治社会的大多数人而言，其所带来的福祉比自由民主抑或自由市场给予的将更加实在。

Uniquely, Lord Bingham has held all three of Britain’s great judicial offices: Master of the Rolls[1], Lord Chief Justice and Senior Law Lord until his retirement in 2008. In recent times no British jurist other than Lord Denning has wielded more influence on the development of the law. In this short but important book, Lord Bingham begins by outlining the historical milestones (from the Magna Carta to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948) that have contributed to understanding what is meant by the rule of law and what he believes are eight essential principles that underpin it.

宾厄姆勋爵曾先后担任英国的三个重要司法职位：上诉法院民事庭庭长，首席大法官，高级司法议员，直到2008年退休。这是英国历史上是独一无二的。近些年来，除了丹宁勋爵，英国没有哪个法学家对法律的发展发挥这么大的影响。在这本短小而又重要的书中，宾汉勋爵开篇就梳理了历史上的重大事件（从《英国大宪章》到1948年批准的《世界人权宣言》），帮助我们理解法治内涵以及他认为的奠定法治基础的八项基本原则。

Among these are the accessibility of the law, equality before the law, the right to a fair trial, the legal accountability of servants of the state and so on. Most of Lord Bingham’s eight principles are uncontroversial, although some will feel that, in defining his preference for a “thick” over a “thin” definition of the rule of law, he goes too far by including social injustices, such as a right to education, which he feels “no one living in a free democratic society…should be required to forgo”.

这八项基本原则包括，法的可及性，法律面前人人平等，获得公正审判的权利，政府职员的法律责任等等。宾厄姆勋爵的八项基本原则大多数没有争议，尽管有人会认为，宾厄姆勋爵在解释他在定义“法治”这一概念上避“简”就“繁”的偏好时，走得太远，把针对社会不公的问题也囊括在内，比如受教育权。－－他认为“生活在自由民主社会的任何一个人都不应被迫放弃”该项权利。

However, it is when he gets to his final point, the requirement that states should regard their obligations under international law as no less forceful than those under national laws, that he really makes his mark. In a cool, but deadly dissection of the assault on the rule of law that was launched by the so-called “war on terror”, Lord Bingham deals first with the question of whether the allied invasion of Iraq was legal. He has no doubt that it was not. He argues persuasively that neither Security Council resolutions 678 nor 1441 could bear the weight that the British government was forced to place on them when confronted by the failure to obtain a further resolution explicitly authorising the use of force. One cannot help feeling that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith might have had a hotter time under examination by Lord Bingham than by the Chilcot panel.

但是，当他谈到最后一点，即要求政府应该将他们在国际法中的义务与国内法的义务同等对待时，这一点使他真正在法制史上留下了重重的一笔。宾厄姆勋爵对所谓的“反恐战争”对法治发起的攻击进行了冷静的分析，击中了其要害。他先是谈及了对伊拉克的联合入侵是否合法的问题。他毫不怀疑得指出，这是不合法的。无论是安理会的678号决议还是1441号决议，都不足以使英国政府在没获得一个明确授权使用武力的决议时出兵伊拉克。人们不禁会想，布莱尔和总检察长戈德史密斯勋爵如果遇到了宾厄姆勋爵而非柴考特调查小组，两人的日子将更加难过。

His greatest concern is the way in which the threat of terrorism has been used to justify the encroachment on civil liberties. Lord Bingham takes to task governments both in Britain and abroad who subvert the rule of law in the name of security, using Orwellian euphemisms such as control orders (house arrest without trial), extraordinary rendition (kidnapping) and enhanced interrogation techniques (torture). And he quotes Benjamin Franklin with approval: “He who would put security before liberty deserves neither.”

宾厄姆勋爵最担心的是假借恐怖主义的威胁之名，侵犯公民自由的行为。宾厄姆勋爵训斥了英国其其它国家政府以安全为幌子亵渎法治，指出这些政府用些奥威尔式的委婉语，比如控制令（未经审判的软禁）、非常规引渡（绑架）、讯问的高级技巧（严刑逼供）等。他引用了本杰明•富兰克林的话：“谁若将安全置于自由之首，谁就即无安全亦无自由。”对此，他深表赞同。

Lord Bingham ends by asking what makes the difference between good and bad government. It is, of course, the rule of law. He concludes: “It remains an ideal, but an ideal worth striving for, in the interests of good government and peace, at home and in the world at large.”

宾厄姆勋爵在其结尾处，问了一个问题。什么可以区别政府治理的好坏。显然，是法治。他的结论是，“这仍是一个理想，但其是一个值得追求的理想，为了良好的政府治理和和平，不管是在英国还是整个世界。”

[1] The Keeper or Master of the Rolls and Records of the Chancery of England, known as the Master of the Rolls, is the second most senior judge in England and Wales, after the Lord Chief Justice. The Master of the Rolls is the presiding officer of the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal.

[2] The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales is the head of the judiciary of England and Wales. Historically, he was the second-highest judge of the Courts of England and Wales, after the Lord Chancellor, but that changed as a result of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, which removed the judicial functions from the office of Lord Chancellor. The Lord Chief Justice is also the presiding judge of the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal.

[3] Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, commonly known as Law Lords, were appointed under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876 to the House of Lords of the United Kingdom in order to exercise its judicial functions, which included acting as the highest court of appeal for most domestic matters. The House of Lords, however, lost its judicial functions upon the establishment of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in October 2009; those in office became Justices of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and lost their right to speak and vote in the House of Lords until their retirement as Justices of the new court

译者：davidship
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A country’s agonising birth

备受苦难而生的国家

Feb 25th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

Ready to die for freedom 准备为自由献身

“If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die”: How Genocide Was Stopped in East Timor. By Geoffrey Robinson. Princeton University Press; 317 pages; $35 and £24.95. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

《你们走了，我们会死的！——东帝汶种族灭绝终结记》，杰弗里•鲁滨逊著，普林斯顿大学出版社出版，317页，售价35美元或24.95英磅，可从Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk网站购买。

FEW countries have suffered as much, merely to be counted as countries, as did Timor-Leste, the former Indonesian province of East Timor. Under the Indonesian occupation from 1975 to 1999, perhaps one-third of the population died before their time. Survivors suffered hunger, deprivation, torture and systematic terror. Against the odds, on August 30th 1999 the East Timorese found themselves with the chance of a vote to choose between independence or autonomy under Indonesian rule. Turnout was 98.6%. Of those, four in five voted for independence.

很少有什么国家，只不过为了要（被人们）当做国家（看待）， 就像东帝汶（前印尼的东帝汶省）那样， 遭受过那么多的苦难。在1975年到1999年印尼占领期间，大约三分之一的人死亡。幸存者遭受饥饿、贫困、酷刑和有组织的恐怖袭击。临此困境，1999年8月30日，东帝汶人利用公投机会作出抉择——是独立为一个国家还是成为印尼统治下的一个自治省。投票率达到98.6％，其中，五分之四赞成独立。

The author of this fine book, Geoffrey Robinson, was there that day, as a member of the United Nations mission that organised the poll. Before that, as an academic and human-rights researcher, he was one of a small doughty band of foreigners who helped keep East Timor alive as an international issue, at a time when most governments preferred to cultivate good ties with Suharto, Indonesia’s dictator.

本佳作的作者杰弗里•鲁滨逊，作为联合国主持全民公投特派团成员之一，当时就在东帝汶。此前，他作为一位学者和人权研究员，曾是一个勇敢的外国人小团体的成员，在那时大多数政府都宁愿与印尼独裁者苏哈托建立良好关系[的背景下]，他为将东帝汶持续作为国际关注的重大问题提供了积极的帮助。

Mr Robinson was also there in the nightmarish aftermath of the referendum: as Indonesian-sponsored militias trashed the country, hundreds died and terrified refugees took shelter in the UN compound in Dili. That period provides the book’s title. “If you leave us here, we will die,” was what a Timorese woman in the compound told a visiting UN delegation.

在全民公投所招致的恶梦般创伤期间，罗宾逊先生也在东帝汶：亲印尼民兵组织捣毁了这个国家、成百上千的人死亡、恐惧的难民们涌到联合国在帝力的避难营避难。这一时期为本书提供了书名 “你们走了，我们会死的”——这是在避难营的一位东帝汶妇女向到访的联合国代表团诉说时的一句话。

But in fact the title sells both East Timor and the book seriously short. That a second genocide was averted in the country should not conceal the ugly truth that the outside world ignored and connived at the first, in the terrible years after Indonesia’s invasion. And the title misrepresents the book because, though enlivened by the narrative of Mr Robinson’s own time as a participant in and eyewitness to the events described, it is also a subtle and nuanced work of history and analysis.

其实，这本书的书名不仅对东帝汶而且就是对这本书本身都作了低估。该国第二次种族灭绝得以幸免这一事实不应当（用来）掩盖（此前）在印尼入侵之后那些恐怖的岁月里，外间的世界是如何对这第一次种族灭绝视而不见（甚至）默许纵容的丑陋真相。因为该书是讲究微妙曲折的历史之作，理论分析之作， 所以该书书名配不上书中的内容， 尽管作者亲历其境，目击暴行， 描写生动。

It contrasts the way the world looked the other way in 1975 with the swift intervention by an Australian-led peacekeeping force in 1999. That was in part a consequence of press attention, the courage of the East Timorese and a unique, brief period in history when “liberal interventionism” seemed to have a future. It also owed something to a collective sense of guilt over past atrocities in Srebrenica, Rwanda and East Timor itself.

本书比较了1975年世界对[暴行]视而不见和1999年澳大利亚为首的维和部队实施的快速干预方式。[认为]该快速干预在某种程度上说，是媒体关注、东帝汶人民的勇气和“自由干涉主义”似乎有了前途这一空前绝后、稍纵即逝的历史时刻共同作用的结果，该快速干预也部分地归因于外间世界的一种集体负疚感， 这种负疚感来自过去对发生于斯雷布雷尼察、卢旺达和东帝汶本身的罪行视而不见。

As for Indonesia, the behaviour of its soldiers and their local allies was sadly not an aberration. The outcome was predictable as soon as the flawed UN mandate put the security for the referendum in the hands of the main threat to it: the Indonesian army. Mr Robinson traces the violence back to the Suharto regime’s original sin, the massacre of hundreds of thousands as it took power in 1965-66.

可悲的是， 就印尼而言， 其士兵及当地盟军的暴行并不是什么脱离常轨的行为。一旦联合国那份有缺陷的训令把公民投票的安保权力交给对公民投票构成主要威胁的印尼军队手中，这个血腥的结果就完全可以预见了。罗宾逊先生追溯[印尼]暴力，直至苏哈托政权的原罪上——1965年至1966年苏掌权时期对数十万人的大屠杀。

The strategies of violence, he notes, were “implicitly legitimised”,not just because of the state’s involvement, but because the criminals were never punished. Ten years on not a single Indonesian official has been convicted of any crime in East Timor, and the idea of an international tribunal has been, in effect, ditched.

罗宾逊指出：那一次暴力所采取的策略已经被“暗暗地合法化了”，——不仅是因为插手是以国家的名义，还因为罪犯从未受到惩罚。 在长达10多年时间里，在东帝汶没有一个印尼裔官员因任一犯罪行为被判决有罪，而关于建立国际法庭的想法在事实上已束之高阁。

译者：微言大义
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The Dead Sea scrolls
死海古卷

Voice of reason
理性的声音

Feb 18th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

The Story of the Scrolls: The Miraculous Discovery and True Significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls. By Geza Vermes. Penguin; 260 pages; £9.99. Buy from Amazon.co.uk

《古卷的故事：死海古卷的神奇发现和真正意义》。格左•维尔麦希著，企鹅出版社出版；260页；9.99英镑。可从Amazon.co.uk购买。　

The power of the written word
文字的力量

WITHIN a century or so of Christianity’s emergence, Jews and Christians were having heated disputes over certain prophetic passages in the Hebrew scriptures. They were arguing not only over the meaning of those verses, but over their precise wording. Each side suspected the other of doctoring manuscripts in order to support its own interpretations.

在基督教出现后一个世纪左右的时间里，犹太教徒和基督徒们[注１]就希伯来语圣经中某些预言性的章节进行了激烈的辩论。他们不仅就那些经节的意思，也就那些经节准确的字词进行争论。每一方都怀疑对方篡改了手稿以便支持自己的阐释。

At least until the late 20th century, it was almost impossible for modern scholars to throw any light on the substance of these disputes: in other words, to say which party was correct in its claims as to which wording was the oldest. There are clearly some small but significant differences between the Hebrew used by most Jews for at least 1,400 years or so—the Masoretic text—and the Septuagint, a translation into Greek made for Hellenistic Jews in Egypt about 800 years earlier, using a Hebrew original which has been lost. But nobody could really explain the source of these differences. Was it the case that the translators deliberately set out to mislead, or did later editors alter the Hebrew?

起码在二十世纪晚期以前，现代的学者们几乎不可能弄清这些争论的实质内容：换句话说，几乎不可能断定哪一方对于哪一个用词最为古老的看法是否正确。大部分犹太人使用了至少1400年左右的希伯来语圣经――即马所拉本圣经――和七十士希腊文圣经之间显然有一些细微但重要的不同之处。（七十士本圣经是为讲希腊语的在埃及的犹太人所作的希腊语翻译，成书时间较马所拉本圣经早大约800年，其所用的希伯来语原文现已失传。）但没人真能解释这些不同之处的来源。是翻译者们有意去误导读者，还是后来的编辑者改动了希伯来语圣经？

Debate about this and many other delicate matters was transformed by the discovery, starting in 1947, of nearly 900 documents, in a series of caves in the desolate landscape east of Jerusalem. The scrolls, the first of which was found by a young goatherd, are a mixture of biblical and quasi-biblical texts, plus some previously unknown writings, all apparently possessed by (and perhaps produced by) a dissident Jewish community just before and during the time of Jesus Christ.

关于这一点和其它许多微妙问题的争论因为将近900份文件从1947年开始陆续被发现而改观。发现这些文件的地点是位于耶路撒冷以东荒凉地带的一组岩洞。最先发现其中一册古卷的是一个年轻的羊倌。古卷中既有圣经上的文本也有类似圣经的文本，还有一些先前不为人所知的著作；这些卷册显然是由一个持异见的犹太人群体拥有(或许也制作)，拥有(制作)的年代略早于并贯穿耶稣基督的时代。

The analysis of such ultra-sensitive material requires calm judgment—and Geza Vermes, a retired Oxford professor, is widely credited with having the coolest head among the scholars who have devoted their careers to studying the scrolls and sharing their insights. Some of his writing is controversial. He has, for example, strong personal opinions on the “historical Jesus”, and like anybody who enters that field he has attracted both admirers and detractors. But in this short personal memoir, he sticks mainly to the known facts about the scrolls, and the arguments they have caused. On this matter, he is careful and fair-minded.

分析这样极度敏感的材料需要心平气和的判断――而在专事研究死海古卷并与他人分享见解的学者中，格左•维尔麦希这位牛津大学的退休教授被广泛的认为是头脑最为冷静的一位。他所写的文字有的也具争议性。比如，他对“历史上的耶稣”持有强烈的个人观点；和其他任何进入该领域的人一样，他也吸引了崇拜者和诋毁他的人。但在这本短小的个人回忆录中，他基本上只讲述了关于那些古卷已知的事实和古卷所引起的争论。在这件事上，他小心谨慎，公平持正。

It may help that his personal story stands at the tragic interface between Christianity and Judaism in the 20th century. As the 85-year-old Mr Vermes recalls, his Hungarian Jewish parents died in the Holocaust, even though the family, which was not religious, had converted to Catholicism in the 1930s. Young Geza was saved by the family’s Catholic contacts and went on to study in western Europe. Ordained as a Catholic priest and educated at Catholic universities, he later reverted to his Jewish roots. As a lifelong analyst of the scrolls, whose efforts to maximise scholarly access have been gratefully recalled by younger biblical scholars, such as Britain’s Philip Davies, Mr Vermes is well placed to dissect the precise significance of this unique discovery, and to assess the many theories it triggered.

他亲身经历了基督教和犹太教在二十世纪悲剧性的关系，这可能对他有所助益。现已85岁的维尔麦希回忆说，他匈牙利裔的犹太双亲都死于大屠杀，虽然他们一家――他们并不笃信宗教――之前在一九三十年代都皈依了天主教。年轻的格左被其家庭交往的天主教徒所救，接着去了西欧学习。他被授予了天主教神父的职务，也在不同的天主教大学受过教育，但后来他还是回归了他的犹太传统。作为一位毕生分析死海古卷的专家，他努力让尽可能多的学者能够接触这些文本――比他年轻的圣经学者们（比如英国的菲利普•戴维斯）回忆起他的这些努力时都心存感激――由他来剖析这一独特发现的精确意义和评价这一发现所引发的多个理论非常合适。

One popular conspiracy theory held that the Catholic scholars who did the initial analysis of the scrolls kept their conclusion secret because it challenged the Christian faith. Mr Vermes, who was close to that research effort, finds good reason to criticise it for slowness and carelessness—but no ground to assert a conspiracy. Nor does he accept oversimplified theories that directly link the community which gave rise to the scrolls with the advent of Christianity. The manuscripts are relevant to the study of Christian beginnings, but they are not the whole story.

根据一个流传甚广的阴谋论的说法，对死海古卷进行了最初分析的天主教学者们对他们的结论秘而不宣，因为该结论挑战了基督教的信仰。维尔麦希先生对于那次研究有近距离的了解，他有理有据的对该次研究的缓慢和粗疏做了批评，但他不认为阴谋论的说法有根据。他也不接受那些把留下了死海古卷的群体和基督教的出现直接联系起来的过于简单化的理论。那些手稿对关于基督教起源的研究有用，但它们并非事情的全部。

For Mr Vermes, the Dead Sea scrolls provide both reassurance and difficult questions for believing Christians and Jews alike. The reassuring news for Jews is that the scrolls, comprising versions of the Hebrew scriptures in use about 2,000 years ago, are mostly pretty close to the later Masoretic version.

在维尔麦希先生看来，死海古卷对于虔信的基督徒和犹太教徒来说，都是既安顿了他们的信心，也提出了不易回答的问题。让犹太教徒安心的消息是这些古卷包含了大约两千年前人们所用的不同版本的希伯来语圣经，而这些版本和后来的马所拉本圣经大体上相当接近。

Although Mr Vermes does not spell this out in detail, there is also some intriguing news for Christians: certain “Old Testament” passages which they hold dear—but which are mysteriously absent in the Masoretic version—do feature in the scrolls. They don’t seem to have been late Christian inventions. The challenging thing for both faiths to accept is that multiple versions of the Hebrew scriptures appear to have been in circulation for a very long time—to a degree that casts doubt on the existence of one original set of words. Indeed, the very idea there was a single Ur-text from which later versions diverge either more or less is hardly tenable, as Mr Vermes persuasively argues.

虽然维尔麦希先生没有细说，关于死海古卷也有对基督徒来说颇有意思的消息：“旧约”[注２]中某些他们珍视的段落――但是这些段落却神秘的没有出现在马所拉本圣经中――确实在死海古卷中就有了。它们看上去不像是基督徒后来编造的。上述两个宗教可能都难以接受的是希伯来语圣经的多个版本看来都已经流传了很长时间，以致于让人怀疑是否真的存在一个原初的文本。其实，就如维尔麦希先生让人信服的论证的那样，认为先有一个单一的原始文本，后来的版本或多或少的脱离了该个原始文本的这一想法是难以站住脚的。

Many believers in revealed religion, especially those who regard text as the primary medium of revelation, will find that hard. But if they do accept it, it will be much easier for believers in different religions to have civilised debates without coming to blows. As someone who has significantly advanced that cause, Mr Vermes can look back on a life well lived.

许多相信启示宗教的人们，尤其是那些把文字视为启示之主要媒介的信徒，会觉得这难以接受。但是如果他们真的接受了这个观点，不同宗教的信徒间将更容易进行文明的争论而不用彼此挥拳相向。作为有力的推动了这一事业的人，维尔麦希先生的生命没有虚度。

[注１]：本篇译文将Christianity译为基督教，将Christian译为基督徒。之所以说到这看似无需说明的一点，是因为国内有些人用“基督教”来指Protestantism（新教）。那种翻法是不准确的。

[注２]：基督徒一般称希伯来语圣经为“旧约”，是相对“新约”而言，因为按照基督徒一般都接受的观点，神在“新约”圣经里和人定立了一个新的约，即主耶稣为人赎去了罪过，人可以（也只能）通过主耶稣得到神的拯救，从而得进神的国度。“旧约”中的约是神和神的选民以色列人之间的约－－以色列人应该守神定的律法，作为回报，神则应该佑护以色列人（换句话说，连神都是有义务的）。“旧约”似乎不属于别的人群，但“新约”中的救赎和永远的生命却可以属于来自任何一个族群的人。犹太人对基督徒把他们读的圣经称作“旧约”是不满意的（which can be an understatement)，所以若要公允，“旧约”一词确实是应该加上引号的。

译者：Uniquorn
欲与译者本人对该文进行切磋，请到如下链接：http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=31276

New fiction 1
新小说 1
The young and the restless
年轻与躁动

Jan 28th 2010
From The Economist print edition

British and American fiction gets off to a promising start in 2010
2010年英美小说开局呈祥

The Unnamed. By Joshua Ferris. Reagan Arthur; 310 pages; $24.99. Viking; £12.99. Buy from Amazon.com
《莫名者》.约书亚·费里斯. 里根亚瑟出版社；310页；24.99美元.海盗图书网；12.99英镑. 从亚马逊网购买

VLADIMIR NABOKOV, who liked to observe other people, once declared that “professional book reviewers are veritable bookmakers”. They gleefully declare who’s in, who’s out, and ask: “Where are the snows of yesteryear?” Hot young novelists, many believe, are meant to follow a predictable script. First, burst onto the scene with some bold, voice-of-the-generation debut—preferably with a comely author photo. Then, years later, deliver to the expectant public a sophomore effort that is, alas, disappointing. Critics favour lamenting squandered promise to praising yet another fine book from someone with unlined skin.

热衷于评点他人作品的弗拉迪米尔·纳博科夫曾经宣称：“只有书评家才算是一本书真正的作者”。他们一边评判着别人的优劣得失，一边问着“去年白雪，如今安在？”乐此不疲。很多人认为，当红的年轻小说家们注定都会蹈循一条老路：起初，他们的一炮走红都是凭借着其富有时代锐气的处女作——往往还配有一张作者靓照；而几年后，他们给期待中的读者交出的第二部作品则往往，唉，让人大失所望。批评家们都眼巴巴地等着将自己的溢美之词送给能够写出第二部好作品的年轻作家。
Not all writers oblige. Occasionally, a well-known name, such as Peter Carey, an Australian, will go through a fallow period only to enjoy a return to form; a rare few, having written a debut of note, then go on to pen an even better second book.

然而并不是所有的作家都极具天赋。一些有名气的作家，比如澳大利亚人彼特·凯里，偶尔也需要过一段清闲时光只为找回良好的状态；很少有人能够在拿出一部为人称道的处女作之后，还能再写出更好的作品来。

Joshua Ferris became an international success in 2007 with “Then We Came to the End”, a smart and breezy satire of office life in an advertising firm. Told in the collective first person, it was a stylish rendering of workplace ambivalence in the wake of the dotcom bust. (“We were delighted to have jobs. We bitched about them constantly.”) It wasn’t perfect, but it was fresh, with pages that turned freely and unpretentiously. At 32, Mr Ferris—gracious, photogenic, based in Brooklyn—was anointed a writer to watch.

约书亚·费里斯于2007年凭借《我们快到头了》一书红遍全球，这是一部轻松明快的喜剧小说，描述一家广告公司的白领办公室生活。全书以第一人称的视角，将互联网泡沫年代人们的矛盾与苦闷进行了精细的刻画。（“我们曾经快乐地工作；我们现在不停地抱怨。”）并非完美无缺，但却新颖别致，情节的起承转合顺畅自然，朴实无华。费里斯——这位优雅、俊俏、现居住于布鲁克林的年轻人——32岁时就已被奉为天才作家。

Readers have not had long to wait for “The Unnamed”, his second novel. Anyone keen on another comedy of manners will be disappointed. So too will those who hoped to write off Mr Ferris as a victim of literary hype.

读者们并没有等待太久，他的第二部小说《莫名者》很快便已问世。以为这又会是一部时尚喜剧小说的人要失望了，同样会失望的还有那些试图把费里斯定性为又一颗文坛流星的批评家们。

From the opening page, he makes it plain that this is a very different book. “It was the cruellest winter. The winds were rabid off the rivers. Ice came down like poisoned darts…They were waiting for him. They didn’t know they were waiting for him.” The novel seizes readers by the lapels with a story that feels serious and mysterious. Tim Farnsworth, a successful Manhattan lawyer in his 40s, returns home one night and declares to his wife, Jane, “It’s back.” What’s back? A strange, unknown disease—one that compels the hero to walk helplessly, incessantly, until he drops from exhaustion. After a reprieve, Tim is once again a victim of his wayward body, “the frightened soul inside the runaway train of mindless matter, peering out from the conductor’s car in horror.”

一开篇，作者就清楚地表明这是一部很不寻常的书。“那是一个酷冷的冬日，寒风从冰河上呼啸而过，飞落的冰碴如同带毒的短箭……他们在等着他，它们不知道他们在等着他。”故事在一种凝重、诡秘的气氛中展开，紧紧抓住了读者的心。40岁的蒂姆·法恩斯沃斯是曼哈顿一名成功的律师，一天晚上他回到家对他的妻子简说：“又来了”。什么又来了？是他身上某种奇怪而未知的疾病——某种迫使主人公不停行走直至力竭而昏厥的疾病，又发作了。在经过了一个短暂的和缓之后，蒂姆又一次成为他那个倔强身躯的受害者，“失控的列车发疯似地向前飞驰，驾驶室里受惊的灵魂惊恐地盯着窗外。”

Tim is otherwise “horse-healthy” and content, a self-assured workaholic, devoted husband and father to a teenage daughter. But in a flash he is uncontrollably off, leaving his wife to find him passed out in a municipal parking place, a hospital or behind some chemist’s shop in the middle of the night. “Was she up for this?” Jane asks herself. These spells last for months at a time, and caring for him is a full-time job. But Jane has no choice: he could die out there. So she reads survivalist manuals, prepares his pack (a first-aid kit, snacks, GPS, a poncho—to carry at all times), and then waits for the call to pick him up. The only alternative is to tie him to the bed and ignore his screams.

蒂姆本来身体很健康，生活也算富足，是一个工作狂，也是一位称职的丈夫和一个未成年女儿的父亲。而他突然间就失去了自我控制，使得他的妻子每于午夜时分在停车场、医院或者药店门口找到已昏厥在地的他。“我该怎么办呢？”简自问道。她丈夫每次发作起来都持续几个月，而照顾他就成了她唯一要做的工作。简没有其他选择：在外面他随时会死。于是她读了生存专家指南，给丈夫准备了防护包（装有急救设备、零食、定位仪，以及随时会用到的雨衣等物），然后等着电话去接他。除此之外，还有一个办法就是把他捆绑到床上，任由他叫喊。

Doctors around the world have no idea what the problem is. Tim, alone in his mutinous body, is left wondering whether the trouble is in his head. Readers wonder about this too. Here Mr Ferris achieves a clever balance: Tim behaves strangely, but isn’t that natural for anyone who loses the life he understood? Isn’t madness inevitable when suffering from something no one can explain? A subplot about a murder trial, which yields a haunting exchange between Tim and a possible suspect on a bridge at night, raises more questions about his mental stability. Yet Jane stops speculating that her husband might be crazy after she goes through the menopause. She could only imagine how infuriating it would be if a doctor insisted her hot flushes were “all in her head”.

全世界的医生都搞不清原因在哪儿；蒂姆，连同他那个不听话的身躯，也不知道自己脑袋到底出了什么状况；读者们同样也不能明白。这里，作者费里斯的小说达到了一种很高明的对比协调：蒂姆的行为十分怪异，然而对于那些对自我失去掌控的人来说，这样的怪异难道不也很正常么？遭受到某种让人无法解释的疾病之后，难道不是必然要走向疯诞？小说中有一个次要情节涉及一起谋杀案，其中蒂姆和杀人疑犯之间有一场夜间发生在桥上的神秘对话，这个情节使得读者对蒂姆的精神状况催生出更多的疑问。然而，后来当简经历了更年期的时候，她便不再去怀疑她丈夫是不是发疯了，因为她已能够想象如果哪个医生非要坚称她的烦躁情绪都是“来自于大脑”，她将会多么的抓狂。

Mr Ferris keeps his prose direct and uncluttered, with only occasional flourishes (Tim’s feet “were like two engorged and squishy hearts”; a diner’s “fluorescent brutality” is “the national colour of insomnia and transience”). His fondness for his characters sometimes veers towards the sentimental. Still, he exercises a mature writer’s restraint, content to leave questions unanswered. He also has a fine ear for speech, and a good sense of what feels real, even when chronicling the surreal.

费里斯保持着他文笔的直率和简洁，但偶尔也会有几处花里胡哨的句子（蒂姆的双脚“就像两颗憋闷而潮湿的心”；那位就餐者的“闪着荧光的粗暴”就像“失眠症一样是一种民族特色”）。他对那位主人公的偏爱有时也稍显矫情。但他依然有着成熟作家的节制，比如在小说中设置疑惑而又并不作答。他对言说有着极高的领悟力，而且对现实世界时刻保持着敏锐，即便他是在编写超现实主义的小说。

Mr Ferris insists that “The Unnamed” is not a work of magical realism, but of “realist magic”. By inventing an incurable disease, he can meditate on its impact—on a marriage, on a career, on a character’s self-esteem—without dragging in the baggage of a familiar illness. This also amplifies the horror, leaving readers just as perplexed about what is afflicting Tim. Is this a physical or mental problem? Can a line be drawn between the two? In the last third of the book, Tim gives himself over to his need to walk. Raving and deteriorating, he lets his legs take him across the country, living a hobo’s life without possessions or attachments (“To own something was to keep it on his back or risk losing it forever”). Yet Tim’s dilemmas still feel real and his needs sympathetic. How does he go on? How does anyone?

费里斯一再说到，《莫名者》的风格不是魔幻现实主义，而是现实主义魔幻。通过发明一种不可治愈的疾病——不是牵强地通过一种常见的病——他才能够对受到这种疾病冲击的婚姻、职业以及主人公的自尊进行一番沉思。而这样做也能放大那种恐惧感，使得读者对发生在主人公身上的事情感到莫名的惊恐与不解，读者会问，问题到底是出在生理上呢还是心理上？作者能不能再多一些着墨描写呢？在本书的最后三分之一，蒂姆完全放任了自己的行走欲望。狂乱疯癫，每况愈下，蒂姆任由自己的双腿带着他游走于天南海北，过着无依无靠的浪人生活（“拥有某物就要一直把它背在肩上，否则就会永远地失去”）然而蒂姆的苦难又是那么的真切，那么的让人同情。他如何继续下去？我们每个人又如何继续下去？

This is a story about a man with a walking problem, but it is also a larger tale about struggling with uncertainty. Scattered throughout the novel are some odd events: blizzards, floods, fires, dying bees. Mr Ferris is reminding us of how little we know about the world we live in, and how little we know about ourselves within it, and yet we persist. This is not to say that Tim’s walking is some clunky metaphor. Mr Ferris is wise enough not to teach a lesson. Rather, he has teased ordinary circumstances into something extraordinary, which is exactly what we want our fiction writers to do.

这是一个关于患有行走强迫症的人的故事，而它也同样是一部与不确定性进行抗争的史诗。小说中处处充满着古怪的意象：暴风雪、洪水、火灾、垂死的蜜蜂等等。作者费里斯在提醒我们，对于我们生活在其中的这个世界以及我们自己，我们都还了解得太少，但我们却仍在安于现状。这并不是说，蒂姆的行走是某种笨拙的隐喻。费里斯先生很明智，他没有在小说里进行说教，而是通过戏谑的方式将人生中的寻常境况变得不同寻常，而这正是我们希望小说家们都去做的。

译者：eco彬彬
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Art.view
Eastern eyes

The rarefied world of Chinese export porcelain
中国瓷器，一个珍贵而稀有的世界
Jan 13th 2010
From Economist.com

                                                  Sotheby’s

THE West’s trade with China has been at the forefront of globalisation since the days of Marco Polo. Pieces of eight, minted out of South American silver, crossed the Pacific and were used up and down the coast of Asia. Indeed, interruptions in this silver trade ultimately helped bring on the collapse of the Ming dynasty in China in the early 17th century. Later exchanges of tea, spices and then opium served to enrich Western merchants, particularly from Britain.
西方同中国的贸易自从马可波罗时代开始，就走在了全球化的最前端。以产于南美的银铸造的西班牙古银币跨越了太平洋，被往返于亚洲沿岸的人所使用。这种金属银贸易的打断最终加速了十七世纪早期明朝的灭亡。之后，茶叶、香料和鸦片的贸易使得西方—尤其是英国—的商人变得更加富裕。
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Albert Camus, 50 years on
阿尔贝•加缪逝世50周年

Prince of the absurd
荒诞之王

Jan 7th 2010
From The Economist print edition

In search of the real Camus
寻觅真实的加缪

Albert Camus: Solitaire et Solidaire. By Catherine Camus. Michel Lafon; 206 pages; 39.90. Buy from Amazon.fr 《阿尔贝•加缪：隐居者》卡特琳娜•加缪。米歇尔拉封出版社；206业；定价39.9欧元

Les Derniers Jours de la Vie d’Albert Camus. By José Lenzini. Actes Sud; 144 pages; 16.50. Buy from Amazon.fr 《阿尔贝•加缪一生的最后岁月》若斯•伦兹尼；144页；定价16.5欧元

Albert Camus, Fils d’Alger. By Alain Vircondelet. Fayard; 396 pages; 19.90. Buy from Amazon.fr 《阿尔贝•加缪，阿尔及利亚之子》阿兰•威孔德莱特，费亚荷出版社；396页；定价19.9欧元

Albert Camus. By Virgil Tanase. Gallimard; 416 pages; 8.10. Buy from Amazon.fr《阿尔贝•加缪》维吉尔•塔纳斯；416页；定价8.10欧元
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Google
谷歌

Facing the frenemy
面对友敌
Nov 12th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.
Google一下:我们所能知道的世界尽头

By Ken Auletta. Penguin Press; 384 pages; $27.95. Buy from Amazon.com

SOMETIMES it seems as if Google has never come across an industry it doesn’t want to disrupt. Best known for its hugely popular search engine, the internet giant has spread its tentacles into an ever-growing array of businesses, including advertising, telecoms and, most recently, digital-navigation software. The company’s habit of selling services cheaply or giving them away for free has endeared it to consumers. But its tactics have enraged competitors, who complain their new rival is out to destroy the economics of entire industries.

有时候看起来Google好像对任何行业都想插上一脚。因其广受欢迎的搜索引擎而广为人知，这家网络巨头把触角伸向了越来越多领域，包括广告、电信以及最近涉及的电子导航软件。该公司一惯的低价甚至免费服务的做法深得客户欢心。但这种战略惹恼了竞争者，他们抱怨这个新来的对手根本就是存心来搞垮整个行业。
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British military history
英国军史

Paterfamilias Monty

先父蒙蒂

Oct 22nd 2009
From The Economist print edition

Where the Hell Have You Been? Monty, Italy and One Man’s Incredible Escape. By Tom Carver. Short Books; 356 pages; £16.99. Buy from Amazon.co.uk

    《你到底去了哪里？意大利、蒙蒂及其惊奇逃亡》。汤姆•卡弗著。肖特出版社。 356页。售价：16.99英镑。购买请登录Amazon.co.uK
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Central Asia’s five stans
中亚“五斯坦”

Nations without a cause
游魂般的国度

Sep 24th 2009
From The Economist print edition

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