​​爱丽丝·门罗，洞悉人心的大师

今天你考CATTI了吗？2020年11月CATTI一级笔译实务英译汉真题选自2013年10月份纽约时报（The New York Times）介绍当年诺贝尔文学奖获得者爱丽丝·门罗（Alice Munro）及其作品的文章。我们一起来看看一笔的难度吧。

无注释原文（较真题内容有所改编）：

Master of the Intricacies of the Human Heart

The New York Times

Alice Munro, the winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, once observed: “The complexity of things — the things within things — just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.”

That is also a perfect description of Ms. Munro’s quietly radiant short stories — stories that have established her as one of the foremost practitioners of the form. Set largely in small-town and rural Canada and often focused on the lives of girls and women, her tales have the swoop and density of big, intimate novels, mapping the crevices of characters’ hearts with cleareyed Chekhovian empathy and wisdom.

Fluent and deceptively artless on the page, these stories are actually amazingly intricate constructions that move back and forth in time, back and forth between reality and memory, opening out, magically, to disclose the long panoramic vistas in these people’s lives (the starts, stops and reversals that stand out as hinge moments in their personal histories) and the homely details of their day-to-day routines: the dull coping with “food and mess and houses” that can take up so much of their heroines’ time.

Ms. Munro’s stories possess an emotional amplitude and a psychological density that stand in sharp contrast to the minimalistic work of Raymond Carver, and to Donald Barthelme’s playful, postmodernist tales. Her understanding of the music of domestic life, her ability to simultaneously detail her characters’ inner landscapes and their place in a meticulously observed community, and her talent for charting “the progress of love” as it morphs and mutates through time — these gifts have not only helped Ms. Munro redefine the contours of the contemporary short story, but have also made her one of today’s most influential writers, celebrated by authors as disparate as Lorrie Moore, Jonathan Franzen, Deborah Eisenberg and Mona Simpson.

In short fiction that spans four and a half decades — beginning with the collection “Dance of the Happy Shades” (1968), through classic volumes like “The Moons of Jupiter” (1982), “The Progress of Love”(1986), “Friend of My Youth”(1990) and “Open Secrets” (1994), up to “Dear Life” (2012), which she has said will be her last — Ms. Munro has given us prismatic portraits of ordinary people that reveal their intelligence, toughness and capacity to dream, as well as their lies, blind spots and lapses of courage and good will. Such descriptions are delivered not with judgmental accountancy, but with the sort of “unsparing unsentimental love” harbored by a close friend or family member.

Like Ms. Munro, many of the women in these stories grew up in small towns in Canada and, at some point, faced a decision about whether to stay or to leave for the wider world. Their lifetimes often span decades of startling social change — from a time and place when tea parties and white gloves were de rigueur to the days of health food stores and stripper bars.

For that matter, Ms. Munro’s women, much like John Updike’s men, often find themselves caught on the margins of shifting cultural mores and pulled between conflicting imperatives — between rootedness and escape, domesticity and freedom, between tending to familial responsibilities or following the urgent promptings of their own hearts.

In story after story, passion is the magnet or the motor that drives women’s choices. Love and sex, and marriage and adultery are often mirrors that reveal a Munro heroine’s expectations — her fondest dreams and cruel self-delusions, her sense of independence and need to belong.

Ms. Munro is adept at tracing the many configurations that intimacy can take over the years, showing how it can suffocate a marriage or inject it with a renewed sense of devotion. She shows how sexual ardor can turn into a “tidy pilot flame” and how an impulsive tryst can become a treasured memory, hoarded as a bulwark against the banalities of middle age.

Illness and death frequently intrude upon these stories, and the reader is constantly reminded of the precariousness of life — and the role that luck, chance and reckless, spur-of-the-moment choices can play. Some of Ms. Munro’s characters embrace change as a liberating force that will lift them out of their humdrum routines, or at least satisfy their avid curiosity about life. Others regard it with fearful dismay, worried that they will lose everything they hold dear — or at least everything familiar.

- ◆ -

注：中文文本为纽约时报官方翻译仅供参考

含注释全文：

Master of the Intricacies of the Human Heart

爱丽丝·门罗，洞悉人心的大师

The New York Times

Alice Munro, the winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, once observed: “The complexity of things — the things within things — just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.”

2013年诺贝尔文学奖获得者爱丽丝·门罗(Alice Munro)，她曾说过：“事物的复杂性，即蕴含在事物之中的事物，似乎无穷无尽。我的意思是，没有任何事是轻松简单的。”

observe

1）熟词僻义，表示“评述；说，讲；评论”，英文解释为“If you observe that something is the case, you make a remark or comment about it, especially when it is something you have noticed and thought about a lot.”举个🌰：

She observed that it would soon be time to stop for lunch.

她说很快就到停下来吃午饭的时间了。

2）表示“庆祝”，英文解释为“If you observe an important day such as a holiday or anniversary, you do something special in order to honour or celebrate it.”如：where he will observe Thanksgiving with family members. 在那里他将与家人一起庆祝感恩节。

That is also a perfect description of Ms. Munro’s quietly radiant short stories — stories that have established her as one of the foremost practitioners of the form. Set largely in small-town and rural Canada and often focused on the lives of girls and women, her tales have the swoop and density of big, intimate novels, mapping the crevices of characters’ hearts with cleareyed Chekhovian empathy and wisdom.

这番话亦是门罗那些宁静闪光的短篇小说的绝好写照，这些作品为她奠定了短篇小说界一流作者的地位。她的小说主要发生在加拿大的乡村小镇，描绘女孩与女人们的生活，带着契诃夫式（Chekhovian）洞悉一切的同情与智慧勾勒出笔下人物心灵的罅隙，亦有着长篇小说所具备的冲击力与厚重。

radiant

表示“喜气洋洋的；容光焕发的；光彩照人的”，英文解释为“obviously very happy, or very beautiful”举个🌰：

He gave a radiant smile when he heard her news.

当他听到她的消息时，脸上绽放出灿烂的笑容。

swoop

表示“（鸟等的）向下猛冲，俯冲；突然袭击；突击搜查；突然行动”，英文解释为“an act of moving suddenly and quickly through the air in a downward direction, as a bird does；an act of arriving somewhere or attacking sth/sb in a way that is sudden and unexpected”。

crevice

crevice /ˈkrɛvɪs/ 表示“（岩石或墙壁的）裂缝，裂隙，裂口；深的皱纹；身体上的皱痕”，英文解释为“a narrow crack in a rock or wall；a deep line in an old person's face, or a deep fold in someone's body”举个🌰：

Sweat poured out of every crevice of the fat man's body.

那个胖子身上的每一条褶皱里都涌出了汗水。

Fluent and deceptively artless on the page, these stories are actually amazingly intricate constructions that move back and forth in time, back and forth between reality and memory, opening out, magically, to disclose the long panoramic vistas in these people’s lives (the starts, stops and reversals that stand out as hinge moments in their personal histories) and the homely details of their day-to-day routines: the dull coping with “food and mess and houses” that can take up so much of their heroines’ time.

她的短篇小说行文流畅，文风表面质朴无华，实则结构精美复杂，在时间之中往复穿梭，在现实与记忆之间转换；故事神秘展开，揭开笔下人物生平的全貌景观（在关键的转折点中突出个体人物生活史中的开端、停顿与逆境），乃至日常生活中的平凡琐碎细节：她会平淡地描述 “食物、琐事与家务”，这些事占去了她笔下女主人公的大部分时间。

intricate

表示“错综复杂的”，英文解释为“containing many small parts or details that all work or fit together”，如：intricate patterns 繁复的图案。

panoramic

panoramic /ˌpænəˈræmɪk/表示“全景的；远景的”，英文解释为“If you have a panoramic view, you can see a long way over a wide area.”举个🌰：

The terrain's high points provide a panoramic view of Hangzhou.

这一地带的制高点可以看见杭州的全景。

vista /ˈvɪstə/

表示“（农村、城市等的）景色，景观”，英文解释为“a beautiful view, for example, of the countryside, a city, etc.”

表示“（未来可能发生的）一系列情景，一连串事情”，英文解释为“a range of things that might happen in the future”举个🌰：

This new job could open up whole new vistas for her.

这项新工作可能给她开辟全新的前景。

reversal

表示“颠倒；彻底转变；反向”，英文解释为“a change to an opposite arrangement, process, or way of doing something”举个🌰：

Some carers and dependants find it difficult to adapt to a role reversal.

有些照料者和被照料者觉得难以适应角色对换。

heroine

heroine和hero相对；heroine可以表示“女主角，女主人公”，英文解释为“the woman or girl who is the main character in a book, film, play etc”， 也可以指“女英雄（a woman who is admired for doing something extremely brave）”，以及“受崇拜的女人，女偶像（a woman who is admired very much for a particular skill or quality）”等，同理hero则可以指“男主角，男主人公”。

类似的表达还有：

📍protagonist /prəʊˈtæɡənɪst/ 表示“（戏剧、电影或故事的）主要人物，主角，主人公”，英文解释为“the most important character in a play, film, or story”；

📍main character 主要人物；主要角色；

📍star表示“主角，主演”（the person who has the main part, or one of them, in a film, play, show etc）；

Ms. Munro’s stories possess an emotional amplitude and a psychological density that stand in sharp contrast to the minimalistic work of Raymond Carver, and to Donald Barthelme’s playful, postmodernist tales. Her understanding of the music of domestic life, her ability to simultaneously detail her characters’ inner landscapes and their place in a meticulously observed community, and her talent for charting “the progress of love” as it morphs and mutates through time — these gifts have not only helped Ms. Munro redefine the contours of the contemporary short story, but have also made her one of today’s most influential writers, celebrated by authors as disparate as Lorrie Moore, Jonathan Franzen, Deborah Eisenberg and Mona Simpson.

门罗的小说既有情感的广度，亦有心理的深度，与雷蒙德·卡佛(Raymond Carver)的简约风格，乃至唐纳德·巴塞尔姆(Donald Barthelme’s)戏谑的后现代主义故事形成鲜明对比。她深深了解蕴含在家庭生活中的音乐；在描绘笔下人物内心世界细节的同时，无微不至地勾勒出社区的状态，并点出人物在社区中的位置；此外她还擅长书写“爱的进程”，在时间的演进中为爱的变形与变异画出图谱。这些特质令她重新定义了当代短篇小说的外延，也使她成为当今世上最重要的作家之一，洛丽·摩尔(Lorrie Moore)、乔纳森·弗兰岑(Jonathan Franzen)、黛博拉·埃森堡(Edborah Eisenberg)与莫娜·辛普森(Mona Simpson)等风格各异的作家都对她赞不绝口。

possess

表示“拥有；具有”，英文解释为“to have or own something, or to have a particular quality”举个🌰：

I don't possess a single DVD (= I don't have even one DVD).

我一张DVD光盘都没有。

amplitude

表示“广阔，广大；充足，丰富”，英文解释为“a large amount or wide range”举个🌰：

The sheer amplitude of the novel invites comparisons with Tolstoy.

这部小说鸿篇巨制、气势恢宏，仅此就足以和托尔斯泰的作品相提并论。

meticulously

meticulously副词，meticulous 形容哦 /mɪˈtɪkjʊləs/ 表示“严谨的，一丝不苟的；非常注意细节的”，英文解释为“very careful and with great attention to every detail”举个🌰：

Many hours of meticulous preparation have gone into writing the book. 为写此书，已投入了大量时间做细致的前期准备。

morph /mɔːf/

1）表示“（尤指很大的、质的）改变；变化”，英文解释为“If one thing morphs into another thing, especially something very different, the first thing changes into the second.”举个🌰：

Mild-mannered KangKang morphs into a confident, grinning hero.

温良恭谨的康康变了，变成了一位充满信心、笑口常开的豪杰人物。

2）表示“（使）图像变形；将（图像）进行合成处理”，英文解释为“to gradually change one image into another, or combine them, using a computer program”

📍比如疫情期间，不少客运航空变成货运：Passenger airlines morph into cargo carriers.

mutate

表示“转变”，英文解释为“to change from one thing or type of thing into another”举个🌰：

He has mutated from an awkward teenager into a sophisticated young man.

他从一个稚嫩的少年变成了一个久经世故的男人。

contour

contour /ˈkɒntʊə/表示“轮廓；外形；曲线”，英文解释为“the shape of a mass of land or other object, especially its surface or the shape formed by its outer edge”，如：the rugged contour of the coast 崎岖不平的海岸线，举个🌰：

He studied the contours of her face.

他仔细端详她的面部轮廓。

disparate

表示“迥然不同的，不相干的”，英文解释为“consisting of things or people that are very different and not related to each other”举个🌰：

Scientists are trying to pull together disparate ideas in astronomy.

科学家正试图把天文学界各种迥然不同的观点汇集起来。

In short fiction that spans four and a half decades — beginning with the collection “Dance of the Happy Shades” (1968), through classic volumes like “The Moons of Jupiter” (1982), “The Progress of Love”(1986), “Friend of My Youth”(1990) and “Open Secrets” (1994), up to “Dear Life” (2012), which she has said will be her last — Ms. Munro has given us prismatic portraits of ordinary people that reveal their intelligence, toughness and capacity to dream, as well as their lies, blind spots and lapses of courage and good will. Such descriptions are delivered not with judgmental accountancy, but with the sort of “unsparing unsentimental love” harbored by a close friend or family member.

门罗创作短篇小说已有45年，最早的作品集是1968年的《快乐影子舞》(Dance of the Happy Shades)，其间有《木星的卫星》(The Moons of Jupiter，1982)、《爱的进程》(The Progress of Love, 1986)、《青年时代的朋友》(Friend of My Youth, 1990)和《公开的秘密》(Open Secrets, 1994)等经典小说集，直到2012年的《亲爱的生活》(Dear Life)——她说《亲爱的生活》将是她的最后一本小说集。在这些作品中，门罗为普通人的生活描绘出五光十色的画像，展现他们的智慧、坚韧与梦想的能力，与此同时也有他们的谎言和盲点，乃至勇气和善意的偶尔缺失。她的描写不带评判色彩，只有“不夹偏私，冷静理性的爱”，如同来自亲密的朋友或家庭成员。

prismatic

表示“射出七色光彩的，五光十色的，灿烂耀眼的”，英文解释为“consisting of many different bright colours, like those separated from white light by a prism”举个🌰：

When the sun rose a hundred prismatic hues were reflected from it.

太阳升起的时候，反射出七色的光彩。

lapse

表示“过失，小失误”，英文解释为“a temporary failure”，如：a lapse of concentration 走神，a memory lapse 一时想不起来，举个🌰：

The management's decision to ignore the safety warnings demonstrated a remarkable lapse of judgment.

管理层作出的对安全警告不予理会的决定是决策上的明显失误。

unsparing

表示“无情的；不避讳的，不隐藏的”，英文解释为“showing no kindness and no wish to hide the unpleasant truth”举个🌰：

The documentary went through all the graphic details of the operation in unsparing detail.

该纪录片记录下了手术过程中所有翔实的细节，未经删节。

harbor

表示“心怀，怀有（想法或感情）”，英文解释为“to think about or feel something, usually over a long period”举个🌰：

He's been harbouring a grudge against her ever since his promotion was refused.

自从升职要求被拒绝后，他就一直对她怀恨在心。

Like Ms. Munro, many of the women in these stories grew up in small towns in Canada and, at some point, faced a decision about whether to stay or to leave for the wider world. Their lifetimes often span decades of startling social change — from a time and place when tea parties and white gloves were de rigueur to the days of health food stores and stripper bars.

和门罗一样，她小说中的女人们也多在加拿大小镇上成长，在某个时刻面临留在家乡还是奔赴广大世界的抉择。她们在数十年的人生中往往历经社会巨变，从举办茶会、社交场合必须戴白手套的年代和地点一路走到健康食品店与脱衣舞酒吧（stripper bars）的时代。

de rigueur

表示“（在时尚、习惯等方面）必需的，必备的，不可缺少的”，英文解释为“demanded by fashion, custom, etc.”举个🌰：

Where I work, suits are de rigueur for all employees.

在我工作的地方，西装是所有员工的必备之物。

stripper

表示“脱衣舞表演者”，英文解释为“someone whose job is removing all their clothing to entertain other people”。

For that matter, Ms. Munro’s women, much like John Updike’s men, often find themselves caught on the margins of shifting cultural mores and pulled between conflicting imperatives — between rootedness and escape, domesticity and freedom, between tending to familial responsibilities or following the urgent promptings of their own hearts.

因此，门罗笔下的女人很像约翰·厄普代克(John Updike)笔下的男人，经常发现自己被困在文化道德转型的边缘，在互相矛盾的义务中挣扎——坚守与逃避、家庭与自由，对家族的责任与内心冲动的迫切召唤。

mores

表示“风俗，习惯，行为方式 ”，英文解释为“the traditional customs and ways of behaving that are typical of a particular (part of) society”，如：middle-class mores 中产阶级的习惯。

In story after story, passion is the magnet or the motor that drives women’s choices. Love and sex, and marriage and adultery are often mirrors that reveal a Munro heroine’s expectations — her fondest dreams and cruel self-delusions, her sense of independence and need to belong.

在一个个故事里，激情就像磁石或马达，吸引和驱动着女人们做出选择。对于门罗的女主人公们来说，爱情与性爱，婚姻与外遇通常就像镜子一样映照出她们的渴望——她们最美好的梦想与最残酷的自欺，她们的独立意识与对归属感的需求。

Ms. Munro is adept at tracing the many configurations that intimacy can take over the years, showing how it can suffocate a marriage or inject it with a renewed sense of devotion. She shows how sexual ardor can turn into a “tidy pilot flame” and how an impulsive tryst can become a treasured memory, hoarded as a bulwark against the banalities of middle age.

门罗还擅长描写多年亲密关系的多种复杂情况，显示这样的关系如何扼杀一段婚姻，或为婚姻注入新的奉献精神。她展示了性爱可以变为“蔓延的火势”；一时冲动的幽会可以成为珍贵的回忆，汇聚为对抗平庸中年生活的堡垒。

adept

adept /əˈdɛpt/ 表示“娴熟的”，英文解释为“Someone who is adept at something can do it skilfully.”举个🌰：

He's usually very adept at keeping his private life out of the media.

他通常十分擅长于使他的私生活远离媒体。

🎬电影《太空堡垒卡拉狄加：利刃》（Battlestar Galactica Razor）中的台词提到：And since it's so adept at mimicking human feeling, 既然它能如此逼真地模仿人类情感

suffocate

suffocate /ˈsʌfəˌkeɪt/ 1）表示“束缚，阻止…的发展；遏制”，英文解释为“to prevent something or someone from improving or developing in a positive way”。

2）表示“（使）窒息而死；（使）闷死”，英文解释为“to (cause someone to) die because of not having enough oxygen”。

Illness and death frequently intrude upon these stories, and the reader is constantly reminded of the precariousness of life — and the role that luck, chance and reckless, spur-of-the-moment choices can play. Some of Ms. Munro’s characters embrace change as a liberating force that will lift them out of their humdrum routines, or at least satisfy their avid curiosity about life. Others regard it with fearful dismay, worried that they will lose everything they hold dear — or at least everything familiar.

疾病与死亡也是她小说中经常出现的主题，读者经常会感受到生命的珍贵，以及运气、机遇和轻率莽撞的选择在人生中扮演的角色。门罗笔下的一些人物把改变视为解放自身的力量，可以让他们摆脱一成不变的生活，或者至少能满足他们对人生敏锐的好奇心。另一些人则将改变视为可怕的不幸，担心会失去手中珍贵的一切，至少那是他们所熟悉的一切。

intrude

表示“闯入，侵扰”，英文解释为“to go into a place or situation in which you are not wanted or not expected to be”举个🌰：

I didn't realize your husband was here. - I hope I'm not intruding.

我不知道您丈夫在这里——但愿我没有打扰你们。

spur-of-the-moment

表示“（决定、行动等）一时冲动的，心血来潮的”，英文解释为“used to say that a decision, action, etc. is sudden and done without any planning”举个🌰：

We hadn't planned to go away - it was one of those spur-of-the-moment decisions.

我们本来没打算走的——这是一时冲动作出的决定。

谢谢你看到这里呀

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