翻译练习：What Are The Best First Lines In Fiction(结束)

What Are The Best First Lines In Fiction(结束)

最好的小说开场是什么（结束）

白鲸

Shorter by a word is Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again". Much of what makes it so evocative, so very intriguing, stems from what we subsequently learn about the narrator and Manderley. Since we're talking length, one of literature's most famous openers is just three words long. But isn't part of what makes Herman Melville's "Call me Ishmael" so startling to do with the digressive - and, yes, impressive - marathon that is the rest of Moby Dick?

比《简·爱》少一个词的是达夫妮杜莫里埃的《蝴蝶梦》的开场白。“昨晚我梦到我又回到了曼德雷庄园”。这部作品之所以如此引起共鸣，引人入胜，主要是后续阅读中对叙事者和曼德雷庄园的了解。既然我们谈到了开场白的长度，另一部文学史上最著名的开场白只有三个词。但是让赫尔曼·梅尔维尔的“叫我伊士梅尔”这样离题的开头——不过，的确挺令人印象深刻——成为长篇大著的，不正是《白鲸记》剩余的部分吗？

There's a feeling that choosing a book by its opening line is somehow more respectable than judging it by its cover. But both are a form of advertising and just as there's something to be said for being swayed by a novel's jacket (an entire team of professionals have laboured to ensure that it sends precisely the right message), so we'd be dolts to place too much emphasis on its opening sentence. After all, some excellent novels have entirely forgettable, if not actively off-putting, first lines. Here's Ian McEwan's feted The Child In Time: "Subsidising public transport had long been associated in the minds of both Government and the majority of its public with the denial of inpidual liberty"

人们觉得通过开场白来选择一本书有时会比从封面来评判会更靠谱。不过两者都是广告的形式，就象在说被一本小说的表面所打动那样（整个专业团队都在努力保证广告能够精确地传达正确的消息），如果我们过分强调作品的开场白，那就是犯傻了。毕竟，有一些优秀的小说的开场白已经完全被遗忘了，即使它并不招人讨厌。伊恩·麦克伊文广受赞誉的《时间中的孩子》：“长期以来，政府和公众都认为补贴公共交通有剥夺个人自由之嫌。”就是这样的例子。

It seems fair to say that while we carry the best opening lines around with us, like locket -sized mementoes of dear friends, we are equally prepared to forgive all but the very worst. This isn't always so with last lines, and there's a strong case to be made for these being of equal if not greater importance. After all, a reader has invested time, thought and emotion in a book by the time they turn the final page. As for A Tale of Two Cities, no spoiler alerts are required to confirm that Dickens nailed his closing sentence, too: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known".

可以这样说，当我们记住那些最好的开场白句子，就像装着亲密朋友照片的吊坠项链那样，但我们同样准备好原谅那些对我们来说最糟的开场白。而对于文章的结尾，我们并不总是这样的态度，有很明显的证据证明，即使结尾不是更重要的，也是与开场同样重要的部分。毕竟，一个读者翻到最后一页时，他投入了时间，思考与情感。至于《双城记》，无需剧透警告的必要，我们确认狄更斯也成功地完成了他的结尾：“平生所为，仅此最美，平生所归，仅此最佳”。