The Great Gatsby翻译摘录

/*Taking our scepticism for granted*/, he rushed to the bookcases and returned with Volume One of the “Stoddard Lectures.”

We were sitting at a table with a man of about my age and a rowdy little girl, who /*gave way upon the slightest provocation to uncontrollable laughter*/.

/* constrained to assure her of my surprise迫不及待*/

Don’t give it another thought, old sport.

Duster (clothing)

I recognized first the /*unusual quality of wonder不平常的惊奇的口吻*/, and then the man — it was the late patron of Gatsby’s library.

“Back out,” he suggested after a moment. “Put her in reverse.”
“倒车，”过了一会儿他又出点子，“用倒车档。”
A wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby’s house, making the night fine as before, and /*surviving明月依旧，而欢声笑语已经从仍然光辉灿烂的花园里消失了*/ the laughter and the sound of his still glowing garden.

Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because /*she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible. 乔丹呗克本能地回避聪明机警的男人，现在我明白了这是因为她认为，在对越轨的行动不以为然的社会圈子里活动比较保险。*/

Even Jordan’s party, the quartet from East Egg, were rent asunder by dissension. One of the men was talking with curious intensity to a young actress, and his wife, after attempting to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent way, broke down entirely and resorted to flank attacks — at intervals she appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond, and hissed: “You promised!” into his ear.

when Ferret wandered into the garden it meant he was cleaned out and Associated Traction would have to fluctuate profitably next day.
/*每当菲来特逛进花园里去，那就意味着他输得精光，第二人联合运输公司的股票又得有利可图地涨落一番*/

nd their last names were either the melodious names of flowers and months or the sterner ones of the great American capitalists whose cousins, if pressed, they would confess themselves to be.
/*她们的姓要么是音调悦耳的花名和月份的名字，要么是美国大资本家的庄严的姓氏，只要有人追问，她们就会承认自己是他们的远亲。*/

So my first impression, that he was a person of some undefined consequence, had gradually faded
As an overseer, he suddenly found himself a person of consequence...
作为工头，他突然觉得自己是个重要人物。

“I’ll tell you God’s truth.” His right hand suddenly ordered divine retribution to stand by.
/*“上帝作证，我要跟你说老实话。”他的右手突然命令上天的惩罚做好准备*/

You're pulling my leg! 你在愚弄我

hunting big game

“Major Jay Gatsby,” I read, “For Valour Extraordinary.”

I was able to do the commissioner a favor once, and he sends me a Christmas card every year

'built with a wish out of non-olfactory money' means that the city is made from people that have earned money from pure, hard work, and not from money reeking of corruption and greed

I can’t forget /*so long as I live我只要活着就不会忘记*/ the night they shot Rosy Rosenthal there

//TODO:of
“It was four o’clock in the morning then, and if we’d of raised the blinds we’d of seen daylight.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Wolfsheim, “I had a wrong man.”

I think that, except for my presence, he would have taken one short glance beneath our own table.

There was the smile again, but this time I /*held out against it.这次我无动于衷*/

He’s quite a character around New York — /*a denizen of Broadway百老汇的地头蛇*/

“/*Fixed the World’s Series?非法操纵纵世界棒球联赛*/” I repeated.

You see, he’s a regular tough underneath it all.他其实是非常顽强的

and you should have heard the elaborate way he worked up to it.
可惜你没听到他是怎样煞费苦心、转弯抹角才说到了正题

Suddenly I wasn’t thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more, but of this clean, hard, limited person,/* who dealt in universal scepticism对世问的切都抱怀疑态度*/, and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm.

And Daisy ought to have something in her life 黛西生活里也应当有点安慰

She’s not to know about it 事光是不让她知道的

I realize now that under different circumstances that conversation might have been one of the /*crises转折点*/ of my life.

shy away from sth
to avoid something that you dislike, fear, or do not feel confident about:
I've never shied away from hard work.
Evidently he thought that I was shying away from the “gonnegtion” mentioned at lunch, but I assured him he was wrong.

“Who is ‘Tom’?” she asked innocently. “谁是‘汤姆’？”她装傻地问道。

“Will they do?” I asked.这行吗？

I had to follow the sound of it for a moment, up and down, with my ear alone, before any words came through.

“We haven’t met for many years,” said Daisy, /*her voice as matter-of-fact as it could ever be她的声音尽可能地平板。*/

The automatic quality of Gatsby’s answer /*set us all back*/ at least another minute.
It means to delay/cost. They haven't seen each other in a while, so they have a lot to catch up on, but Gatsby's "automatic" answer (without any feelings involved), delayed that for "at least another minute".

However, as /*calmness wasn’t an end in itself因为平静本身并不是目的，我一有机会就找了个借口，站起身来要走。*/, I made an excuse at the first possible moment, and got to my feet.

Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.
美国人虽然愿意、甚至渴望去当农奴，可是一向是坚决不肯当乡下佬的。

if something such as a machine or clock runs down, or if you run it down, it gradually stops working because it has no power
Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock.
由于反作用，他像一架发条上得太紧的时钟一样精疲力竭了

His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.
他的神奇的宝物已经减少了一件

It was a /*random shot碰碰运气*/, and yet the reporter’s instinct was right.

As though they cared!仿佛承他们的情似的！

They meet all kinds of crazy fish 她们遇上各式各样的怪物

“I’d rather look at all these famous people in — in oblivion.”
以一个默默无闻的人的身份看看这么多有名的人

~ (at/under sth) (formal) to feel annoyed and impatient about sth, especially because it limits what you can do （尤指因受限制而）恼怒，烦恼，焦躁

He soon chafed at the restrictions of his situation.
他很快便因为处处受到限制而感到恼火。

“Well, he certainly must have strained himself to get this menagerie together.”我说，他一定花了很大的气力才搜罗到这么一大帮牛头马面

He was silent, and I guessed at his unutterable depression.
但我猜他有满腔说不出的郁闷

He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: “I never loved you.”
他所要求于黛西的不下于要她跑去跟汤姆说：“我从来没有爱过你。”

Something was up. And yet I couldn’t believe that they would choose this occasion for a scene — especially for the rather harrowing scene that Gatsby had outlined in the garden.
一定出了什么事。然而我却不能相信他们竞然会选这样一个场合来大闹一场——尤其是盖茨比早先在花园里所提出的那种令人难堪的场面。

“The master’s body!” roared the butler into the mouthpiece. “I’m sorry, madame, but we can’t furnish it — it’s far too hot to touch this noon!”

I don’t care!” cried Daisy, and began to clog on the brick fireplace.
“我不在乎！”黛西大声说，同时在砖砌的壁炉前面跳起舞来

“Oh, let’s have fun,” she begged him. “/*It’s too hot to fuss.天太热了，别闹吧*/” He didn’t answer.

“/*Have it your own way随你的便吧*/,” she said. “Come on, Jordan.”

“I don’t see the idea of going to town,” broke out Tom savagely. “Women get these notions in their heads ——”
“我真不明白进城去干什么，”汤姆怒气冲冲地说，“女人总是心血来潮……”

He paused. The immediate contingency overtook him, pulled him back from the edge of the theoretical abyss

as if he had just got some poor girl with child

There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind
一个简单的头脑陷入慌乱时是非同小可的

“/*It’s a swell suite这个套间真高级*/,” whispered Jordan respectfully, and every one laughed.

“/*Why not let her alone何必找她的碴呢*/, old sport?” remarked Gatsby.

I’ll be damned if I see how you got within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries to the back door.
可是我真他妈的想不通你怎么能沾到她的边，除非你是把食品杂货送到她家后门口的

The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.
他的话刺痛了盖茨比的心

I guess your friend Walter Chase wasn’t too proud to come in on it
你的朋友瓦尔特·蔡斯和我们合伙并不觉得丢人嘛
Ain't too proud to plead, baby, baby
为你我放下了所有气节，baby，baby

He was his wife’s man and not his own.他听他老婆支使，自己没有一点主张

“You’ve got to pull yourself together,” he said with soothing gruffness.
“你一定得镇定下来。”他说，粗犷的声音中带着安慰。

She stood it pretty well 她表现得挺坚强

He was clutching at some last hope and I couldn’t bear to shake him free.
他在抓着最后一线希望不放，我也不忍叫他撒手。

He had intended, probably, to take what he could and go — but now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail.
他起初很可能打算及时行乐，然后一走了之——但是现在他发现他已经把自己献身于追求一种理想

What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do
如果我能够告诉她我打算去做些什么而从中得到更大的快乐，那么又何必去做大事呢？

For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes. All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the Beale Street Blues while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the gray tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor.
毕竟黛西还年轻，并且她那人为的世界充满了兰花、愉快的势利风尚和乐队——是那些乐队定当年的节奏，用新的曲调总结人生的哀愁和温情。萨克斯省通宵呜咽着《比尔街爵士乐》绝望的哀吟，同时一百双金银舞鞋扬起闪亮的灰尘。每天晚茶时分，总有一些房间由于这种低而甜的狂热乐曲而不停地震颤，同时鲜亮的面庞飘来飘去，好像是被哀怨的喇叭吹落在舞地里的玫瑰花瓣。

She wanted her life shaped now 她现在就要解决自己的终身大事

What could you make of that, except to suspect some intensity in his conception of the affair that couldn’t be measured?
你怎么理解这句话呢，除非猜测在他对这件事的看法中有一种无法估量的强烈感情？

over the vanishing city where she had drawn her breath.
她曾生活过的城市

I couldn’t have talked to her across a tea-table that day if I never talked to her again in this world.
我那天不可能跟她在茶桌上面对面聊天，即使她从此永远不跟我讲话也不行

The hard brown beetles kept thudding against the dull light
硬壳的棕色甲虫不停地往暗淡的电灯上乱撞

No telephone message arrived, but the butler went without his sleep and waited for it until four o’clock — until long after there was any one to give it to if it came.
一直等到四点——等到那时即使有电话来也早已没有人接了

Most of those reports were a nightmare — grotesque, circumstantial, eager, and untrue. When Michaelis’s testimony at the inquest brought to light Wilson’s suspicions of his wife I thought the whole tale would shortly be served up in racy pasquinade — but Catherine, who might have said anything, didn’t say a word. She showed a surprising amount of character about it too — looked at the coroner with determined eyes under that corrected brow of hers, and swore that her sister had never seen Gatsby, that her sister was completely happy with her husband, that her sister had been into no mischief whatever. She convinced herself of it, and cried into her handkerchief, as if the very suggestion was more than she could endure. S. Wilson was reduced to a man “deranged by grief” in order that the case might remain in its simplist form. And it rested there.
那些报道大多数都是一场噩梦——离奇古怪，捕风捉影，煞有介事，而且不真实。等到米切里斯在验尸时的证词透露了威尔逊对他妻子的猜疑以后，我以为整个故事不久就会被添油加醋在黄色小报上登出来了——不料凯瑟琳，她本可以信口开河的，却什么都不说，并且表现出惊人的魄力——她那描过的眉毛底下的两只坚定的眼睛笔直地看着验尸官，又发誓说她姐姐从来没见过盖茨比，说她姐姐和她丈夫生活在一起非常美满，说她姐姐从来没有什么不端的行为。她说得自己都信以为真了，又用手帕捂着脸痛哭了起来，仿佛连提出这样的疑问都是她受不了的，于是威尔逊就被归结为一个“悲伤过度神经失常”的人，以便这个案子可以保持最简单的情节。案子也就这样了结了。

if a friend of mine died, no matter how, I stuck with them to the end.
如果一个朋友死了，不管怎么死的，我总是出力出到底

“Look here, this is a book he had when he was a boy. It just shows you.”
“你瞧瞧，这本书是他小时候着的。真是从小见大。”

Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on
上帝保佑雨中的死者

“Nevertheless you did throw me over,” said Jordan suddenly. “You threw me over on the telephone. I don’t give a damn about you now
“不管怎样，还是你甩掉我的，”乔丹忽然说，“你那天在电话L把我甩了。我现在拿你完全不当回事了

The Great Gatsby翻译摘录

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