As he lay dying 在他弥留之际

英年早逝的天才对命运最后的抗争...

在知道保罗·卡拉尼迪之前，鬼先生一直以为，那种把剑桥、耶鲁、斯坦福当自己二姑妈家游荡的人只存在于玛丽苏小说中；在了解他的故事之后，我才醒悟到有些人的人生就是开了外挂。这样一位优秀得群众不知道怎么形容的人，却在36岁罹患癌症，一年之后离开人世……不禁让人叹一句“天妒英才”。

然而，保罗小哥毕竟还是不同的。在知道自己癌症的消息之后，他着手开始写下了这样一本回忆录……是什么样的回忆录一经出版就高居美英亚马逊榜首？这样一位实践了悲情宿命的现世天才，在人生的最后留下了怎样的文字？

让本文为你揭晓。

出处：经济学人

类型：书籍介绍/讣告

风格：严肃

难度：中

A neurosurgeon examines his life

神经外科医生审视一生

An intimate, essential memoir on meaning

一本探究“意义”的私人回忆录

Feb 6th 2016 | From the print edition

When Breath Becomes Air. By Paul Kalanithi. Random House; 238 pages; $25. Bodley Head; £12.99.

书名：当呼吸成为空气

作者：保罗•卡拉尼迪

兰登书屋版：238页，售价25美元

鲍利海版：12.99英镑

Translated by Ghost II 

Proofread by  janewfj，祁嘉礼

Edited by  陈思维

1.MANY people avoid discussing death. Doctors face it daily, reading scans blotted by tumours the way others scour market data. But years of training cannot dull the pang when, glancing at a scan and seeing a patient’s dim chances, those prospects happen to be his own. Paul Kalanithi died at 37. He had spent years training to be a neurosurgeon; his doctor first ascribed his sharp pains and dwindling frame to the demands of residency. But instead it was cancer, which had spread from his lungs to his spine and liver. Faced with such news, Kalanithi said, a person’s understanding of time changes. In his last months of life he chose to become a father. He also chose to write. His essays were published by Stanford University, where he worked, and by the New York Times. “When Breath Becomes Air” is a deeper exploration of the themes he raised, less a memoir than a reflection on life and purpose. It is an unusual little book, written by an unusual man.

死亡，是许多人不愿谈及的一个话题。对于医生来说，死亡却是每天都要面对的事情，他们就像其他人分析市场数据那样，解读着肿瘤的扫描结果。当一位医生从扫描片子中发现患者生机渺茫，而这名患者恰恰是他自己时……再多年的从医经历也无法让他的痛苦减轻稍许。保罗•卡拉尼迪逝世时年仅37岁。为了成为一名神经外科医生，卡拉尼迪进行了多年的训练学习。他的主治医生最初认为，他经受病痛折磨、身体日渐消瘦是实习过劳所致[1]。但确诊结果却显示，癌症才是这一切的根源，而且癌细胞已经从肺部扩散到了脊柱和肝脏。卡拉尼迪说，听到这种噩耗，任何人对“时间”的理解都会发生改变。在生命的最后几个月里，卡拉尼迪决定和妻子要个孩子，并决定开始写作。他的文章由工作单位斯坦福大学发表，并在《纽约时报》上刊出。而本文推介的这本《当呼吸成为空气》，就是对卡拉尼迪所述命题的深入探讨。这本书与其说是卡拉尼迪的回忆录，不如说是他对生命意义的思索；虽然算不上鸿篇巨制，却是一本由非凡之人写就的非凡之书。

此段生词+语法分析+背景

译注[1]：当时卡拉尼迪正处于实习期的最后一年。

本段生词

scour   vt.

1) If you scour something such as a sink, floor, or pan, you clean its surface by rubbing it hard with something rough. = scrub

* scour the pots and pans 把壶和锅刷乾净

* A storm had scoured the South and Midwest the night prior, canceling our flight around midnight after hours of delays. - Washington Post Jan 27, 2016

2) If you scour something such as a place or a book, you make a thorough search of it to try to find what you are looking for. = search

* Police scoured the woods (looking) for the body. 警方到树林各处（寻）找那具屍体.

* Rio organizers have been scouring Olympics venues daily for two weeks, looking for standing water where mosquitoes breed. - Washington Times Jan 31, 2016

[注意：scour后面加的是搜索的那个地方，而不是要找的东西，如果还要写要找的东西可以像上面的例句一样用looking for分词短语]

pang   n.

A pang is a sudden strong feeling or emotion, for example of sadness or pain.

* pangs of jealousy, remorse, guilt, conscience,etc 一阵阵忌妒﹑ 悔恨﹑ 负咎﹑ 自责等的痛苦.

* Kondo’s other main strategy finesses the pangs of letting go by calling for a considered, thankful hail and farewell—a ceremony, not a ham-fisted trash-bagging. - The New Yorker Dec 8, 2015

residency

A doctor's residency is the period of specialized training in a hospital that he or she receives after leaving university. (AM) (美) (医师的) 实习期间住院实习医师的身分[其他用法同residence]

liver

n. （人或动物的）肝脏

语法

1) 关于本文的这句，解释一下有关“一般现在时”的误区：

Faced with such news, Kalanithi said, a person's understanding of time changes.

有的童鞋可能表示，这句怎么时间不统一？保罗既然是过去说said，那他说的内容不该也用过去时态changed吗？

并不是。一般现在时本质的思维特征是：从过去到现在直至将来的一段时间内发生的动作或存在的状态。

两种基本用法是：

①表示普遍真理或事实。注意这一点里，除了我们熟知的“地球绕着太阳转”之外这种客观真理之外，机构介绍啦、一些主观的人生感悟啦，只要是想表达“不随着世事变迁而改变”这一特征的，都会用一般现在时。

比如一则寓言，前半部分讲故事，后半部分抒发感想，那么前部分要用一般过去时，后部分用一般现在时；

再比如本文，保罗这个感想也是不会随着时间变化的，只要人面对自己得癌症的消息，他对时间的理解总是会change的；在比如，我们恋爱的时候，说的都是I love you.不是I’m loving you.（虽然你们昨天才在一起、很可能明天就要分手，是吧？）

②重复性的动作或状态。这个比较好理解，常见的副词always, often等都是标志词。

课后习题：儿歌“太阳当空照，花儿对我笑，小鸟说……”翻译成英文要用什么时态？为什么捏？（理论部分出自《英语语法新思维之走近语法》）

背景

斯坦福大学有自己的医疗机构，名为斯坦福大学医学中心（Stanford University Medical Center），包括斯坦福医院和露西尔帕卡德儿童医院（Lucile Packard Childrens Hospital）。单说斯坦福医院，这所医院在《美国新闻与世界报道》周刊的美国最佳医院排名中一直有一席之地。它也是斯坦福大学医学院的主要教学医院，在培养医生和其他医疗工作人员中扮演了十分重要的角色。保罗小哥就是在这里实习的。

2.Kalanithi was a doctor by training and a philosopher by temperament, the type of person who, inspired by Aldous Huxley, used his university-admissions essay to argue that happiness was not the point of life. As a 20-year-old camp counsellor, he read a book called “Death and Philosophy” while using his inert body in a children’s game. At university he studied literature, “the richest material for moral reflection”, and human biology, for laying out “the most elegant rules of the brain”. This was a person obsessed by the way people find meaning.

卡拉尼迪的职业是医生，但他身上更多的是一种哲学家的气质。他曾受阿道司•赫胥黎（Aldous Huxley）启发，在大学入学论文中对“幸福并不是生活的要义”进行了论证 。 20岁当夏令营辅导员那年，卡拉尼迪一边笨手笨脚地和孩子们做着游戏，一边还在阅读《死亡与哲学》。而到了大学，卡拉尼迪的专业是文学（“当一个人想要对是非对错进行思考的时候，文学就是他最取之不尽的素材宝库”）和人类生物学（因为人类生物学阐明了“大脑最精妙的运行规则”）。这些人类探索“意义”的种种方式，都让卡拉尼迪深深着迷。本段生词

the point

n. [只单数]

the matter under discussion; the essential thing 谈论的事; 要点; 核心问题

* Let's stop discussing trivial details and come/get to the point. 咱们别再谈琐碎细节了, 说正事吧.

* The point (at issue) is this.... 问题的要点是这样的....

Camp Counselor

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inert   a.

1) without power to move or act

* She lay there inert; I thought she must be dead. 她躺在那儿一动不动, 我想她一定死了.

* Dread fades to sadness as your eyes linger on these inert specimens, the last samples of what once were animated creatures. – Salon Jan 18, 2016

2) [贬] 迟钝的; 迟缓的; 呆滞的

* an inert management team 死气沉沉的管理阶层.

* The musical performance, however, was prone to mishaps, with some flashes of intensity but many inert stretches. - New York Times Jan 21, 2016

3) 惰性的（气体等物质）

* The report is unclear on what is meant by 'inert'; however, inert materials are rare, particularly those that must remain so for thousands of years. – Nature Jan 12, 2016

3.Kalanithi writes about the small events that are the meat of human experience: his wanderings through the Arizona desert as a boy, his joy at reading Thoreau and Camus, conversations with his wife and the strange sense of normality felt while dissecting a cadaver. At work he faced not intimations of mortality but the constant reality of it. He describes his mild shame when, having abandoned an ice-cream sandwich to treat a dying patient, unsuccessfully, he gingerly reclaims the melting dessert. He writes about what science can explain and “its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honour, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue”.

在书中，卡拉尼迪记述了他生命中那些细小而珍贵的回忆：童年时在亚利桑那沙漠的游历、阅读梭罗和加缪时的愉悦、与爱妻的对话、解剖尸体时内心那种奇特的平静……作为一名医生，卡拉尼迪平时面对的不是人之将死的预兆，而是死亡这一赤裸裸的现实。为了救治一位垂死的患者，卡拉尼迪扔掉了一块冰激凌三明治；抢救失败后，他又小心翼翼地把已经化掉的冰激凌三明治捡了回来，又觉得有些不好意思……卡拉尼迪不仅写到了科学能够解释的一切，还写到了科学无能为力的领域——“科学无法解释人生中最核心的那些东西，包括希望、恐惧、爱恨、美、嫉妒、荣耀、脆弱、奋斗、挣扎、美德。”本段生词

meat

n.[U] chief or important part (of sth) （某物之）主要或重要部分

* This chapter contains the meat of the writer's argument. 这一章包含着作者论证的主要部分.

normality

n.Normality is a situation in which everything is normal.

* When something happens that shakes up your life, you probably look forward to a return to normality, meaning the usual happenings of everyday life.

* Meeting the Russian leader on Wednesday evening, he said he hoped to bring some "confidence and normality" to a difficult political climate. – BBC Feb 3, 2016

intimation

n.[fm]an indirect suggestion or sign that something is likely to happen or be true透露，暗示

* He has given us no intimation of his intentions/what he intends to do. 他没有向我们透露他的意图.

* To that positive and patriotic message, Mr. Trump responded with his trademark sneer and umpteenth intimation that Mr. Obama, a Christian, is a closet Muslim. - Washington Post Feb 4, 2016

mortality

n.1) The mortality in a particular place or situation is the number of people who die. = death rate

* Infant mortality was 20 deaths per thousand live births in 1986. 1986年的婴儿死亡率为生育成活率的千分之二十.

The nation's infant mortality rate has reached a record low.

2) the condition of being human and having to die不免一死

* My mother's death forced me to face the fact of my own mortality .

4.Most interestingly, he writes about language, about the parts of the brain that control it and its centrality to what makes us human. This is an urgent missive, the power of words revered by a man whose words were leaving him. He describes the birth of his daughter movingly—frail, he lay swaddled as his wife laboured beside him—and the soul-filling love for his new baby. This vital book is dedicated to her.

最神奇的是，卡拉尼迪在书中写到了语言，以及大脑中管控语言能力的部分，并认为人之所以成为人，语言能力是至关重要的。这部分的写作时间非常紧迫，当时卡拉尼迪的病症日益严重，语言能力也在逐渐丧失，这些推崇人类语言能力的文字就是由这样一个即将丧失语言能力的人书写的。卡拉尼迪还深情地写到了女儿出生时的场景：当时他的妻子在拼命地生产，卡拉尼迪就待在旁边，虚弱地蜷缩在毯子中，他对这个新生的小生命爱得那样深沉。这本书也是他献给女儿的书。本段生词

missive

n.a letter or other message that someone sends.[文或谑]

* They write back with a level of gratitude totally disproportionate to my lame missives. - The New Yorker Jan 27, 2016

* When he wrote to his family members, the missives were often rambling and nonsensical. - Washington Post Jan 20, 2016

revere

vt.If you revere someone or something, you respect and admire them greatly.

* revere virtue, human life, the church's teaching 崇尚美德﹑ 尊重人的生命﹑ 崇奉教义

* The tuatara is revered in Māori culture and few people are given permission to visit the islands where they reside. – Reuters Feb 4, 2016

——为了一棵树而走遍森林的时候到了

1. 题目溯源

1) As He Lay Dying

此题目应该源自于一本20世纪的意识流小说As I Lay Dying，中译本《我弥留之际》，这本小说被认为是20世纪最好的小说之一。

再往前溯源的话，这句话最初是出自荷马所著《奥德赛》的第11卷。当时奥德修斯下到冥府，遇到了已经挂掉的阿伽门农，阿伽门农对他大倒苦水，说自己的死亡是被她的坏老婆害的。其中就有这么一句话"As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes（也就是他老婆） would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades（哈迪斯是希腊神话中的冥王，于是乎这个词也指代冥府）."

From:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_I_Lay_Dying

http://www.shmoop.com/as-i-lay-dying/title.html

2) When Breath Becomes Air

出自十七世纪诗人Fulke Greville的诗Caelica 83. 这首诗摘录如下：

You that seek what life is in death,

Now find it air that once was breath.

New names unknown, old names gone:

Till time end bodies, but souls none.

Reader! then make time, while you be,

But steps to your eternity.

也是一首很有生死韵味的诗啊~

2. 保罗其人

先挂出保罗小哥的官网http://paulkalanithi.com/

上面有他的简介，他在各期刊发表的三篇文章，还有本书的预定方式，还有……自己去看啦！

再一次本鬼不得不说：保罗小哥是个开外挂的学霸啊！！！开外挂的学霸啊！！！开外挂的学霸啊！！！下面从他的官网摘录一段，本鬼哭瞎在电脑前，名校就好像他家开的一样，斯坦福剑桥耶鲁轮着来……

【Paul grew up in Kingman, Arizona, before attending Stanford University, from which he graduated in 2000 with a B.A. and M.A. in English Literature and a B.A. in Human Biology. He earned an M.Phil in History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine from the University of Cambridge before attending medical school. In 2007, Paul graduated cum laude from the Yale School of Medicine, winning the Lewis H. Nahum Prize for outstanding research and membership in the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society. He returned to Stanford for residency training in Neurological Surgery and a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience, during which he authored over twenty scientific publications and received the American Academy of Neurological Surgery’s highest award for research.】

真的是超级闪耀的一生呢。



译者/诗人/摄影师//多重人格/颜值担当

邮箱：ghost_ii@yeah.net

当魏老板第一次让我自我介绍并提供照片（并说他发自肺腑地想“给译者找对象”）的时候，其实我是拒绝的。因为不能你让我爆照，我就马上爆照，我不能让读者困惑，你们这东半球最好的翻译公共号，怎么就duang地一下就变成交友平台了？

但是现在我还是乖乖地献上了照片，并不是说我想交友了（或者屈服于魏老板的淫威），而是觉得，译者在很多时候不应该是一个隐形的身份。标准化文件的翻译姑且不提，但翻译像TE这样文化内涵丰富到不知道哪里去的文章，是一个非常体现译者翻译观的过程，不同译者的译文势必有非常大的不同。

究竟什么是好的译文？答案的数量恐怕比哈姆雷特还多。如果为了将每个词汇的含义逐一呈现，那么行文可能就有失流畅；如果要确保译文的流畅易读，甚至有一些格律、情感表达上的追求的话，那么由于中英文的巨大差异，译文势必不可能和原文精确对应。至于这两者怎么权衡，每一位译者心中可能都会有不同的标准，因此译文不可能脱离译者的个人特色。

既然如此，那么译者不妨现出自己的身形来，陈述自己如此翻译的依据，也接受不同观点的探讨；既为自己的译文骄傲，也为自己的译文负责。

当然，说了这么多，很可能我只是想掩饰自己交友的真实目的。所以欢迎各位读者姥爷将本文多多转发给你认识的单身朋友英语学习者，译者的单身问题译者说的发展离不开各位姥爷的帮助。也欢迎各位在留言中畅所欲言，各位姥爷有关译文、英语学习、谈人生谈理想谈朋友的一切留言，我们都会认真查看。最后，人见人爱的魏老板也还单身呢！

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