原文：https://site.douban.com/commercialpress/widget/notes/4199526/note/618956733/
之前看到有人转发一个翻译比赛的链接，点进去发现要翻译的选段来自约翰伯格，又想到自己还从未尝试过译散文，于是就……
虽说只是轻学术散文吧，我还是按照我通常翻译时的习惯首先考虑尽可能还原原文句式，如果还原出来的效果非常不符合中文表述习惯才会作微调，所以感觉译出来还挺僵硬死板的。再加上我并没有什么笔头功夫，所以措辞也蛮平庸的。三年前写文章时我还会雕琢修辞，最近这三年自己业余作的纯理论翻译完全改变了我的行文习惯。现在只追求达意，其他就都不顾了。看来还是翻译哲学书适合我啊。
“Philosophy is really homesickness, it is the urge to be at home everywhere.”—Novalis
“哲学实乃乡愁，它驱使我们四海为家。”——诺瓦利斯
【1】The transition from a nomadic life to a settled one is said to mark the beginning of what was later called civilization. Soon all those who survived outside the city began to be considered uncivilized. But that is another story—to be told in the hills near the wolves.
【1】据称从游牧向定居的的转变标志着那后来被称作文明之物的开端。从那时起，所有留存于城市之外的人便开始被视作未开化者。但这已是另一个不同故事的主题了。
【2】Perhaps during the last century and a half an equally important transformation has taken place. Never before our time have so many people been uprooted. Emigration, forced or chosen, across national fron-tiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time. That industrialization and capitalism would require such a trans-port of men on an unprecedented scale and with a new kind of violence was already prophesied by the opening of the slave trade in the sixteenth century. The Western Front in the First World War with its conscripted massed armies was a later confirmation of the same practice of tearing up, assembling, transporting, and concentrating in a “no-man’s land.” Later, concentration camps, across the world, followed the logic of the same continuous practice.
【2】在过去的一个半世纪里，或许还有一个同样重要的转变亦已发生。在我们这个时代，被迫离乡背井之人的数量堪称前所未有。迁徙，无论出于自愿抑或迫于无奈，无论需穿越国界抑或由乡村迁入城市，都是我们时代的典型体验。十六世纪黑奴贸易的开展早已预告了工业化与资本主义所需的这一波及范围史无前例并伴随着新形暴力的人口运输。一战中，西部战线的海量征兵实乃发生在黑奴贸易中的拆散、召集、运输以及随后在“无人之境”重新集中的同一个现象的翻版。尔后遍布世界的集中营也是这一现象的延续。
【3】All the modern historians from Marx to Spengler have identified the contemporary phenomenon of emigration. Why add more words? To whisper for that which has been lost. Not out of nostalgia, but because it is on the site of loss that hopes are born.
【3】从马克思到斯宾格勒的近现代历史学家都已谈论过当代的这一移民现象。为何我还要再对此多作补充？为了向那已远离我们而去之物低吟。但这并非出于乡愁，而是因为那里是我们的希望诞生之处。
【4】The term home (Old Norse Heimer, High German heim, Greek kōmi, meaning “village”) has, since a long time, been taken over by two kinds of moralists, both dear to those who wield power. The notion of home became the keystone for a code of domestic morality, safeguarding the property (which included the women) of the family. Simultaneously the notion of homeland supplied a first article of faith for patriotism, per-suading men to die in wars which often served no other interest except that of a minority of their ruling class. Both usages have hidden the origi-nal meaning.
【4】长久以来，“家”（古挪威语中的“Heimar”、高地德语中的“Heim”、希腊语中的“kōmi”都意指“乡村”）这个词为两种受掌权者青睐的道德家所掌控。“家”这一概念成为了家庭道德法典的基本原则，保卫着家庭的财产（这财产包括了女人）。与此同时，“家园”这一概念为爱国主义提供了最初的信念寄存，用以劝服人们在战争中捐躯，尽管这通常只是进一步维系了作为本国统治阶级的少数者的利益。这两种对“家”的用法都掩盖了其原初的意义。
【5】Originally home meant the center of the world—not in a geo-graphical, but in an ontological sense. Mircea Eliade has demonstrated how home was the place from which the world could be founded. A home was established, as he says, “at the heart of the real.” In traditional soci-eties, everything that made sense of the world was real; the surrounding chaos existed and was threatening, but it was threatening because it was unreal. Without a home at the center of the real, one was not only shelter-less, but also lost in nonbeing, in unreality. Without a home everything was fragmentation.
【5】“家”的原初意义是“世界的中心”——但这并不是指地理意义上的，而是存在论意义上的。米尔乔亚·埃利亚德已演证过家为何是世界的基础。他说，家被安置“在实在的中心”。在传统社会中，一切能为世界赋予意义的东西都是实在的；周遭实存的纷乱都凶险万分，但之所以如此是因为它们是非实在的。在实在的中心若没有一个家，那么我们便不仅无处容身，更有可能迷失于非存在、非现实之中。离了家，一切都是破碎的。
【6】Home was the center of the world because it was the place where a vertical line crossed with a horizontal one. The vertical line was a path leading upwards to the sky and downwards to the underworld. The hori-zontal line represented the traffic of the world, all the possible roads lead-ing across the earth to other places. Thus, at home, one was nearest to the gods in the sky and to the dead in the underworld. This nearness promised access to both. And at the same time, one was at the starting point and, hopefully, the returning point of all terrestrial journeys.
【6】家之所以是世界的中心乃因为它是水平线与垂直线相交之处。垂直线是一条引领我们向上直指天际、向下直抵冥府的通途。水平线则代表世间的交通，是能引领我们横越地表抵达远方的一切可能的道路。因此，在家中，我们能同时与天际中的诸神和冥界里的死者保持最为接近的关系。与二者间的接近关系保证了我们能同时亲近二者。且与此同时，我们处于一切位于世间的旅程的起点。但愿这也是终点。
【7】The crossing of the two lines, the reassurance their intersection promises, was probably already there, in embryo, in the thinking and beliefs of nomadic people, but they carried the vertical line with them, as they might carry a tent pole. Perhaps at the end of this century of un-precedented transportation, vestiges of the reassurance still remain in the unarticulated feelings of many millions of displaced people.
【7】两条线的相交与相交所允诺的慰藉，或许早已在萌芽状态中、在游牧人群的思维与信念中扎根，但他们随身携带着“垂直线”，一如他们或许随身携带帐篷的支架。也许在这前所未有的大迁徙的世纪的尾巴，上述慰藉仍余留在千百万流离失所之人未表达的感受中。
【8】Emigration does not only involve leaving behind, crossing water, living amongst strangers, but also, undoing the very meaning of the world and—at its most extreme—abandoning oneself to the unreal which is the absurd.
【8】背井离乡不仅意味着将旧日子抛在身后，穿山越岭横渡江河，生活在陌生人中间，它还取消了世界的意义，并在最极端的情况下，使我们陷入非实在中，这是十分荒唐的。
【9】Emigration, when it is not enforced at gunpoint, may of course be prompted by hope as well as desperation. For example, to the peasant son the father’s traditional authority may seem more oppressively absurd than any chaos. The poverty of the village may appear more absurd than the crimes of the metropolis. To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one’s fellow coun-trymen. All this can be true. But to emigrate is always to dismantle the center of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.
【9】非强制性的移民不仅可能出于期望，也可能出于绝望。例如对农民的儿子而言，父亲那承袭自传统的威权便比任何他乡的纷乱都更加令人感到难以承受的荒唐；乡村中的贫穷或许比都市里滋生的犯罪更加令人感到荒唐；在陌生人中间经历生死或许不及被自己的同乡所迫害与折磨那般荒唐。这些的的确确都是事实。但移民总是意味着要拆毁世界的中心，亦即迁入一个由碎片组成的无序世界中。
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