譯文特區

文學作品練習素材:張愛玲-雨傘下

張愛玲《雨傘下》

下大雨，有人打著傘，有人沒帶傘。沒傘的挨著有傘的，鑽到傘底下去躲雨，多少有點掩蔽，可是傘的邊緣滔滔流下水來，反而比外面的雨更來得凶。擠在傘沿下的人，頭上淋得稀濕。
當然這是說教式的寓言，意義很明顯：窮人結交富人，往往要賠本，某一次在雨天的街頭想到這一節，一直沒有寫出來，因為太像訥廠先生茶話的作風了。

Under an Umbrella
Eileen Chang

It’s pouring. Some people are carrying umbrellas and some people are not. Those who don’t have an umbrella press against those who do, squeezing beneath the edges of passing umbrellas to avoid the rain and afford themselves a little shelter. But the water cascading from the umbrellas turns out to be worse than the rain itself, and the heads of the people squeezed in between are soaked to the skin.

This is a parable, of course, the moral of which is perfectly clear: when poor folks associate with the rich, they usually get soaked. I thought of it one rainy day but never wrote it down, because it sounds too much like the style of the tabloid “tea talks” of Mr. Nachang.

(1) A celebrated columnist in the Shanghai tabloids of the 1930s and 1940s.

（Andrew F. Jones 譯)

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