※ 引述《GY169 (GY169)》之铭言： : 中译「试读」的连结在此： : http://www.books.com.tw/exep/prod/booksfile.php?item=0010463560#serial : 你看到的「内文1」是第二章的最开头，中文有五段，但原文有七段。表面上只漏两段，事实上，原文的一段可能有十句话，中文可能只译两三句。 : 往下看其余四页，更加发现删得更厉害，我有点傻眼。 以下是对应中译的原文，仅供翻译讨论 :-) Chapter 2 Cardinal He was called Cardinal from his habit of wearing a red leather topcoat that he'd stolen from the costume rack of a traveling theatre. It had been winter, and he'd taken it because the ensemble included boots and gloves as well as the coat, and at the time he was lacking all three. The boots and gloves had since been replaced, but he had preserved the coat, despite wearing it through all weathers. Though few men in his line of work sought to identify themselves in any way at all, he found that, in truth, those who sought him out〞for employment or punishment〞would find him even if he wore the drabbest grey wool. As for the name, however ironic or mocking, it did bestow a certain veneer of mission〞given his life was a persistent and persistently vicious struggle〞onto his itinerant church of one, and though he knew in his heart that he (like everyone) must lose at the finish, the vain title made him feel less through the course of his days like an animal fattened in a pen. He was called Chang for more immediate reasons, if equally ironic and mocking. As a young man he'd been deeply slashed by a riding crop over the bridge of his nose and both eyes. He'd been blinded for three weeks, and when his vision finally cleared〞as much as it was ever going to clear〞he was greeted with the blunt scars that crossed and then protruded out from the corners of each eyelid, as if a child's caricature of a slant-eyed menacing Chinaman had been scrawled with a knife over his features. His eyes were thereafter sensitive to light, and tired easily〞reading anything longer than a page of newspaper gave him a headache that, as he had learned many times over, only the deep sleep of opiates or, if such were unavailable, alcohol, might assuage. He wore spectacles with round lenses of dark smoked glass in all circumstances. It was a gradual process by which he accepted these names, first from others, and then finally used them himself. The first time he replied ※Chang§ when asked his name, he could too easily recall the taunting comments as he waited day after day in the sickroom for his sight to return (it was a name to be always accompanied by a bitter smile), but even those associations seemed more real〞more important to carry forward〞than an earlier identity marked with failure and loss. More, the names were now a part of his working life〞the rest were distant landmarks on a sea voyage, faded from sight and usage. The riding crop had also damaged the inside of his nose, and he had little sense of smell. He knew abstractly that his rooming house was more objectionable than his own experience told him〞he could see the nearby sewers, and knew by logic that the walls and floors had fully absorbed the fetid airs of their surroundings. But he was not uncomfortable. The garret room was cheap, isolated, with rooftop access and, most importantly, in the shadow of the great Library. For the smell of his own person, he contented himself with weekly visits to the Slavic baths near the Seventh Bridge, where the steam soothed his ever red-rimmed eyes. At the Library, Cardinal Chang was a common sight. It was knowledge that put him ahead of his competitors, he felt〞anyone could be ruthless〞but his eyes prevented long hours spent in research. Instead, Chang made the acquaintance of librarians, engaging them in long interrogative conversations about their given responsibilities〞specific collections, organizational theories, plans for acquisition. He pursued these topics in calm but relentless inquiry, so that eventually〞through memory and rigorous mental association〞it had become possible for him to isolate at least three-quarters of what he needed without actually reading a word. As a result, though he haunted its marbled halls nearly every day, Cardinal Chang was most often found pacing a Library corridor in thought, wandering through the darkened stacks by memory, or exchanging keen words with a blanching though professionally tolerant archivist as to the exact provenance of a new genealogical volume he might need to consult later in the day. Before the incident with the riding crop and the young aristocrat who wielded it, Chang had been a long-time student〞which meant that poverty did not trouble him, and that his wants, then from necessity and now by habit, were few. Though he had abandoned that life completely, its day to day patterns had marked him, and his working week was divided into a reliably Spartan routine: the Library, the coffeehouse, clients, excursions on behalf of those clients, the baths, the opium den, the brothel, and bill collecting, which often involved revisiting past clients in a different (to them) capacity. It was an existence marked by keen activity and open tracts of ostensibly lost time, occupied with wandering thought, thick sleep, narcotic dreams, with willful nothingness. When not so pacified, however, his mind was restless. One source of regular consolation was poetry〞the more modern the better, as it usually meant a thinner text. He found that by carefully rationing out how many lines he read at a time, and closing his eyes to consider them, he could maintain a delicately steady, if perhaps finally grinding, pace through the whole of a slim volume. He had been occupying himself in such a manner, with Lynch＊s new translation of the Persephone fragments (found in some previously unplundered Thessalonikan ruin), when he looked up and saw the woman on the train. He smiled to think of it, as he lay just awake on his pallet, for the lines he＊d been reading at the time〞※battered princess / that infernal bride§〞had seemed to exactly illustrate the creature before him. The filthy coat, the blood-smeared face, her curls crusted and stiff, her piercing grey eyes〞a meeting of such beauty and such spoilage〞he found it all perfectly impressive, even striking. He had decided at the time not to follow, to allow the incident its own distinction, but now he wondered about finding her, remembering (with a stirring of lust) the lines fallen tears had traced down her cheeks. After consideration, Chang decided he would ask at the brothel〞any new whore so covered in blood would certainly havesomeone talking about her. --

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