方方日记英文版的副标题，被悄悄改成了这个——

转自：Amazon.com、独到英语；编辑：应用语言学通讯

Wuhan Diary: 

Dispatches from a Quarantined City

From one of China’s most acclaimed and decorated writers comes a powerful first-person account of life in Wuhan during the COVID-19 outbreak and the toll of this deadly calamity on families and individual lives.
On January 25, 2020, acclaimed Chinese writer Fang Fang began publishing an online diary to help herself and others understand what was happening in Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak. Deeply personal and informative, her posts reveal in real-time the widespread impact of the virus and the government’s mandatory quarantine on the city’s residents. Each day, she gives voice to the fears, frustrations, anger, and hope of millions of ordinary Chinese, reflecting on the psychological impact of forced isolation, the role of the internet as both community lifeline and source of misinformation, and most tragically, the lives of neighbors and friends taken by the deadly virus.

In a nation where authorities use technology to closely monitor citizens and tightly control the media, writers often self-censor. Yet the stark reality of this devastating situation drives Fang Fang to courageously speak out against social injustice, corruption, abuse, and the systemic political problems which impeded the response to the epidemic. For treading close to the line of “dissident,” she pays a price: the government temporarily shuts down her blog and deletes many of her published posts. 

A fascinating eyewitness account of events as they unfold, Wuhan Diary captures the challenges of daily life and the changing moods and emotions of being quarantined without reliable information. As Fang Fang documents the beginning of the global health crisis in real time, she illuminates how many of the countries dealing with the novel coronavirus pandemic have repeated similar patterns and mistakes.

Blending the eerie and dystopian, the profound and the quotidian, Wuhan Diary is a remarkable record of our times and a unique look at life in confinement in an authoritarian nation.

About the Author

One of contemporary China’s most celebrated writers, Fang Fang was born into an intellectual family in Nanjing in 1955, and spent most of her childhood in Wuhan, where she witnessed many of the political movements of Mao’s China, from the Great Leap Forward to the Cultural Revolution. She graduated from Wuhan University with a degree in Chinese literature, and her novels, novellas, short stories, and essays have appeared in nearly 100 different editions. She has been the recipient of numerous honors, including the Lu Xun Literary Prize, and the Chinese Literature and Communications Prize for Outstanding Writer. 

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基本信息

• 纸书页数： 208

• 出版社: HarperVia (2020年6月30日)

• 出版日期: 2020年6月30日

• 语种： English

• ASIN: B086JXGZFB

昨天，方方的《武汉日记》翻译成了英文和德文版，上架亚马逊预售，引起了热烈的讨论。

其中一个引爆点，就是书的副标题。

书刚上架的时候，我们看到的副标题是“Dispatches from the Original Epicenter”。翻译过来是“来自疫情最初震中的报道”。

很多自媒体把副标题翻译成了“来自病毒起源地的报道”，并大做文章。

“科学家都不确定病毒来源地是哪里，方方竟然说是武汉”，这样的批评声漫天盖地。

有些公号把副标题翻译成“病毒的源头”，别的不说，英语水平是有点问题。

但这个副标题的问题在于，将武汉形容成这场全球疫情的震中，引起的联想，和本身的书籍内容没有太多关联，纯粹是个标题党。这背后可能别有用意，有在国际上带节奏，污名化武汉、污蔑中国抗疫举措之嫌疑。

可是，今天我再上出版社Harpers Collins官方网站上查阅这本书时，惊奇地发现，原来的那个副标题被悄悄地修改了！

改成了“Dispatches from a Quarantined City” （来自一座隔离中的城市的报道）。书籍封面也已经换上了这一新标题。

亚马逊预购页面上这本书的封面和题目也已经改了。

今天的亚马逊预购页面截图

这个标题显然温和多了。

A quarantined city，一座隔离中的城市，远比“最初的疫情震中”要中立的多。

把重点放在quarantine"隔离"，而不是疫情震中，这可以防止地域污名化，也和方方最初的“封城日记”这一题目更加符合。

不定冠词a，也更加弱化了语气，指武汉只是众多城市中的一个，毕竟现在全球多国城市都处在全面封城之中。

这个新的副标题是作者本人，还是编辑，还是别人主张改的，就不得而知了。

纯属从语言的角度讨论。期待有更多语言爱好者加入留言讨论。欢迎各位朋友转发!

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