石黑一雄诺贝尔奖晚宴英文演讲

导读

出生于日本长崎的英籍作家石黑一雄获得诺贝尔文学奖。拥有日语名字和一张不折不扣的亚洲面孔，却讲着一口纯正英音。在演讲致辞中，他回忆了母亲当年用日语给他讲"诺贝尔奖"的故事。

 

 

 

 

演讲片段欣赏

 

I remember the large face of a foreigner, a Western man, illustrated in rich colours dominating the whole page of my book. Behind this looming face to one side, was smoke and dust from a explosion; On the other side, rising from the explosion, white birds climbing to the sky.

我还依稀记得一张巨大的外国人脸占据了我某本书整张页内画面，那是一位展现了浓墨重彩的西方男子的脸。在这张赫然耸现的脸背后，一边是爆炸过后的浓烟滚滚与沙尘，铺天盖地，腾空而起；而另外一边是一群因爆炸而受惊的白色鸟儿，扑腾翅膀飞向天空。

 

I was five years old, lying on my front on a traditional Japanese tatami mat. Perhaps this moment left an impression, because my mother’s voice, somewhere behind me, was filled with a special emotion. As she told a story of a man who’d invented dynamite then concerned about its applications, had created the Nobel Sho - I first heard of it by its Japanese name.

那时5岁的我，躺在日本传统的榻榻米地板上。这一幕，在记忆中刻下深深的烙印，身后似乎传来母亲的话语声，她带着某种特别的情绪，给我讲了一个故事。有个人改良发明了炸药，可炸药被用于战争，他对此感到痛心疾首，于是便创立了“诺贝尔奖”——这是我第一次听到这个奖的日本名称。

 

The Noble Sho, she said, was to promote heiwa - meaning peace or harmony. This was just fourteen years after our city, Nagasaki, had been devastated by the atomic bomb, and young as I was, I knew heiwa was something important, that without it, fearful things might invade my world.

我妈妈告诉我：诺贝尔奖是要促进heiwa，也就是平安和谐。那时，距离我的家乡长崎被原子弹摧毁刚刚过去14年。当时的我年纪尚小，可我也知道“和平”的重要意义，没有了和平，可怕的灾祸便会入侵我的世界。

 

The Nobel Prize, like many great ideas, is a simple one, something a child can grasp - and that is perhaps why it continues to have such a powerful hold on the world’s imagination. The pride we feel when someone from our nation wins a Nobel Prize is different from the one we feel witnessing one of our athletes winning an Olympic medal.

诺贝尔奖与许多伟大的想法一样，都起源于某个简单的构想，简单到连一个孩子也轻松理解，也许这就是为何，诺贝尔奖继续在全世界人们心中占据如此重要的位置。当自己国家的人获得诺奖时心中的自豪感，与看到本国运动员收获奥运奖牌时油然而生的骄傲截然不同。

 

We don’t feel the pride of our tribe demonstrating superiority over other tribes. Rather, it’s the pride that comes from knowing that one of us has made a significant contribution to our common human endevour. The emotion aroused is a larger one, a unifying one.

我们内心并不会有优越感，认为我们的民族优于其他民族，恰恰相反，获得诺贝尔奖的自豪感，源于得知我们当中的某个人对全人类的共同努力作出了重大贡献，从而引发出一种更广泛的情感，一种相通的情感。

 

We live today in a time of growing tribal enmities, of communities fracturing into bitterly opposed groups, like literature, my own field. The Nobel Prize is an idea that, in times like these helps us to think beyond our dividing walls, that reminds us of what we must struggle for together as human beings. It’s the sort of idea mothers will tell their small children, as they always have, all around the world, to inspire them and to give themselves hope.

如今我们生活在各民族间的敌意日益加深的时代，原本融合互助的社群反目分裂成各门各派对立的社群，比如我自己的文学领域。在如今这个时代，诺贝尔奖是这样一种构想：它助我们跨越那道隔阂之墙，时刻提醒我们，人们必须共同携手奋斗。关于诺贝尔奖的意义，母亲们会这样告诉孩子，正如全世界各地的父母一直在做的那样，诺奖激励鼓舞着下一代，给他们带来希望。

 

Am I happy to receive this honour? Yes, I am. I am happy to receive the Nobel Sho, as I instinctively called it when, minutes after receiving my astounding news. I telephoned my mother, now 91 years old. I more or less grasped its meaning back then in Nagasaki, and I believe I do so now. I stand here awed that I’ve been allowed to become part of its story.

能够获得如此荣誉，我是否感到高兴呢？答案是肯定的。我非常高兴能够获得“诺贝尔奖”，在得知这令人惊喜的消息之后，我立刻给91岁的母亲打了个电话，我本能地脱口而出用了“Noble Sho”这个词。在长崎，孩提时代的我或多或少理解诺贝尔奖的意义，而我坚信现在的自己有更深刻的理解。如今站在这里，我对自己也有幸成为诺贝尔奖故事中的一部分而心生敬畏。