TE||Heartsong

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导读

感谢本次思维导图作者

Abigail,女,英专学生党,TE爱好者

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听力|精读|翻译|词组

Heartsong

心灵之歌

英文部分选自经济学人Obituary版块

Heartsong

心灵之歌

Charles Aznavour,French-Armenian troubadour,died on October 1st, aged 94

亚美尼亚裔法国抒情歌王查尔·阿兹纳弗,逝于10月1日,享年94岁

FOR a small guy, Charles Aznavour liked his stage to be big. Really big. He would slip through the curtains at the back and slide into the spotlight, left hand in his pocket, ready to face his audience head-on. Wearing a black rollneck or a skinny tie, he projected an almost jaunty insouciance with his little crooked smile. But his fans knew he was a survivor, someone who got knocked down a lot but always rose again—someone a lot like them. As he lifted the microphone, his face showed a defiant chin, a circumflex of dark eyebrows, closed eyes. For a moment their lids were as white and as curved as a beach in Cuba (one of the many countries that broadcast hours of his music in the days after he died). His dark eyelashes fluttered like palm trees. And then came that voice, crashing on to the heart’s shore.

Hier encore, j’avais vingt ans…

Yesterday when I was young

The taste of life was sweet like rain upon my tongue,

I teased at life as if it were a foolish game

The way an evening breeze would tease a candle flame

查尔·阿兹纳弗虽身材矮小,却钟情于大舞台。很大很大的那种。他会不声不响地穿过(舞台)后的帷幔,悄然出现在舞台的聚光灯光下,左手插兜,怡然自得地面对他的观众。身着黑色翻领衬衫或是一条细领带,他展露笑颜,愉悦中带着点点儿漫不经心。但是粉丝们都知道,他如何历经艰难,备受打击,他们也知道他总能东山再起、再次绽放于舞台,正如他们自己一样。他拿起麦克风,下巴微微上扬,黑色的眉毛弯弯,双目合拢。恍惚之间,他的眼睑像极了那白沙绵延的古巴海滩(许多国家在他离世后好几天里一直播放他的歌曲,古巴是其中一个)。他黑色的睫毛扑闪,似那(轻拍着的)棕榈树(叶)。香颂阵阵,直抵人们的心灵彼岸。

如果昨天还在,我还是20岁…

昨天我还很年轻,

生活的甜蜜就像舌尖细雨,

我游戏人生就像那是一场愚蠢的游戏,

就像晚风轻吹戏谑着蜡烛的火苗

He was born Shahnour Vaghinag Aznavourian near the Latin Quarter in Paris in 1924, and christened “Charles” by a French nurse who could not pronounce his name. His Armenian parents had taken refuge there while they waited for visas to America. Meanwhile, his father took over a restaurant that featured live music and offered free food to the less well-off. When the business inevitably went bust his mother took in work as a seamstress. But it was singing and performing for other émigrés that consumed the family. Both parents had been trained in the theatre. He made his inadvertent stage debut at three when he wandered in from the wings towards the lights.

1924年,阿兹纳弗出生于巴黎拉丁区附近,本名为Shahnour Vaghinag Aznavourian,因为一位法国护士不会念他的名字,便称他为查尔斯。他的父母都是亚美尼亚人,当时在法国避难,等待去美国的签证。同时,他父亲接管了一家餐厅,其特色就是现场音乐表演,并为穷人免费提供食物。生意难免失败,他的母亲做起了裁缝。但是为其他移民歌唱表演才是使他们着迷的事。双亲都在剧院接受过专业训练。三岁时他偶然间从舞台侧面晃悠到了聚光灯下,便开启了自己的舞台生涯。

At the age of nine he heard Maurice Chevalier sing Donnez-moi la main mam’zelle et ne dites rien (“Give me your hand, miss, and say nothing”). And so he set his young heart on being a singer. But first he took acting classes at l’Ecole des Enfants du Spectacle, known as the Collège Rognoni after the elderly member of the Comédie Française who had founded it the year that Mr Aznavour was born.

九岁时,他听到了墨利斯·雪佛莱吟唱那句著名的Donnez-moi la main mam’zelle et ne dites rien(给我你的手,小姐,相顾无言)。从此,他便立志成为一名歌手。成为歌手前,他先在儿童表演学院接受了表演教育。这家学院名为罗尼奥尼学院,正是以创始者—法国戏剧院的一位资深成员—的名字命名的。学院创始那年正是阿兹纳弗出生那年。

His school years, already rickety as he tried to combine homework with touring in provincial theatres, came to an end with the start of the second world war when he was 15. He learned to smoke cigarettes backstage, all the better to fit into life in the theatre. And after the fall of France in 1940, as he later told the Paris Review, he grew adept at selling occupying German soldiers black-market lingerie and chocolate as well as bicycles abandoned at railway stations by fleeing Parisians.

他的学校生涯早就飘摇涣散了,因为他一直试图把学业和地方剧院的巡回表演调和起来。15那年,二战开始了,他的学校生活也随之结束。他学会了在后台吸烟,只是为了更好地融入剧院生活。他后来告诉巴黎评论(记者),1940年法国被占领后,他逐渐习惯了和占领区的德国士兵做黑市交易,把诸如女式内衣,巧克力,和逃难的巴黎人丢弃在地铁站的自行车贩卖给他们。

After the war it was Edith Piaf who encouraged him to write songs, and included several of his works in her concert repertoire. Soon he began touring himself. Inevitably, given the age, he also tried the cinema. He worked with some of the great directors, among them François Truffaut in Tirez sur le pianiste (“Shoot the Piano Player”). But acting was never his thing. What really  was songs and songwriting.

战争结束后,伊迪丝·琵雅芙(Edith Piaf)鼓励他写歌,后来她把他创作的几支曲子作为她演唱会的保留曲目。 不久,他就开始自己巡回演出。年龄合适时,他难免也会尝试电影。 他和一些伟大的导演合作过,其中就包括弗朗索瓦·特吕弗,在他的Tirez sur le pianiste(“射杀钢琴师”)中担纲出镜。但演戏终究不是他的菜。 真正令他复活的是演唱和歌曲创作。

Troubadour is a French word. In the high Middle Ages, travelling singer-poets wrote of chivalry and courtly love. He was the 20th-century version—a troubadour of transience, a poet of impermanence. Like many people born in Europe between the mid-1920s and the mid-1930s, he learned at far too tender an age that the difference between being OK and not OK, between safety and death, between peace and war, is mostly wafer thin. Piaf, who persuaded him to have a nose job and then told him she preferred him as he had been before, famously regretted nothing. He regretted plenty. You could hear it in his words. “My shortcomings are my voice, my height (he measured just five foot three inches, 1.6 metres), my gestures, my lack of education, my frankness and my lack of personality.”

Troubadour(游吟诗人)是一个法语单词。 在中世纪的全盛时期,游吟诗人写下了骑士精神和宫廷爱情。 而他,则活脱脱是一位20世纪的Troubadour——一个堪称奇迹的吟游诗人,一个反复无常的诗人。 就像许多出生于20世纪20年代中期到30年代中期的欧洲人一样,他在异常稚嫩的年纪便体会到了在对与错,安全与死亡,和平与战争之间如履薄冰的感觉。琵雅芙(Piaf)说服他做了鼻子整形,然后却告诉他,她还是更喜欢以前的他,她如此坦诚,从不为任何事而后悔。相较之下,他可以说是遗憾甚多,其实你可以从他的话里感受到这一点: “我的缺点是我的声音,我的身高(他身高只有5英尺3英寸,1.6米),我的姿态,教育水平低,过于坦诚又毫无个性。”

His lyrics, written for more than 1,000 songs that sold well over 100m albums, told an even more plaintive story of longing and loss. In Reste (“Stay”), he implores a lover, “satiated, breathless, languid, dizzy”, to stay a while, their limbs entwined, in the warmth of the night. “I lost, and so I drank”, he explains in J’ai bu. “You never understood that I was lost, and so I drank.” Always that regret, that sense of loss of friends and lovers of the past, and even, as he sang fondly in Mes emmerdes, of “my troubles”.

他的抒情诗(歌词)里诉说了更多关于渴望和失去的悲伤故事,他写了1000多首这样的歌,专辑畅销逾亿张。在《留下来(Reste)》中,他乞求一位 “已经厌烦、已不再爱、无精打采、心不在焉的” 爱人,多留一会儿,在夜晚的温情里,他们的手臂挽在一起。“我失去了,所以我醉了”,他在《J’ai bu》中解释到,“你从来无法理解,我已迷失,所以我醉了。”他一直都是这样以一种悔恨的,失去过去的爱人和朋友的感觉唱歌,甚至在他温柔地演唱《我的烦恼》(Mes emmerdes)时也是这种感觉。

Bob Dylan admired him (“I saw him in 60-something at Carnegie Hall, and he just blew my brains out,” he said in 1987), but many Americans never really took to the French crooner, perhaps because his lyrics were so execrably translated or perhaps because they regarded his songs as schmaltzy rather than soulful.

鲍勃·迪伦十分钦佩他(他在1987年说道“我在卡内基音乐厅看到了60多岁的他,他的演唱令我折服”),但许多美国人从未真正喜欢过这位低声吟唱的法国歌者,也许是因为他的歌词很难翻译,或是因为他们觉得他的歌过于伤感,而非深情。

But the French, the Armenians (for whom he sang and raised money after a deadly earthquake in 1988), the Cubans and the French-speaking north Africans never stopped loving the little guy, the chanteur who recalled their fleeting youth, their lost selves. He would have smiled his little crooked smile had he heard that at a service of national homage, attended by three French presidents, Emmanuel Macron stood by the flag-draped coffin placed in front of Napoleon’s tomb at Les Invalides, compared his literary gifts to those of Guillaume Apollinaire and declared: “In France, poets never die.”

但法国人、美国人(在1988年一次致命的地震后,他还曾为美国人唱歌筹钱)、古巴人和北非法语区的人民,他们从未停止过喜爱这位小个子的歌者,他让他们想起了那稍纵即逝的青春和迷失的自我。在一场三位法国总统都参与了的国葬中,在荣军院的拿破仑墓前,埃曼努尔·马克龙站在用国旗覆盖的棺材边,将他的文学天赋与纪尧姆·阿波利奈尔(一位诗人)相比,并宣布:“在法国,诗人永远不会去世”。若他泉下有知,听到这句,也必定会微展笑颜吧。

翻译组:

YI,财务一枚,经济学人爱好者

cece,消防人,经济学人爱好者

Lili, 女,互联网民工,榴莲爱好者

Yao,英专本科生,准上外小硕,只读不背的经济学人爱好者

校核组:

Forest,女,意义之网编织中,经济学人爱好者

Dave,肌肉男大学教师,文学翻译,CATTI一笔二口

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观点|评论|思考

本次观点由Amber全权执笔

Amber,博物馆人,总爱忘事儿,老友记粉

对于中国许多听众来说,Charles Aznavour也许是一个陌生的名字。但是对于喜爱法语歌曲的乐迷来说,一定不陌生。

我不是传统意义上的音乐迷,在查阅了许多关于Charles Aznavour的资料后,也认为以我的了解不足以去评价他。不想再以中文长篇累牍的文字堆积生平资料(经济学人里地道的文字已经展现的淋漓了)。

就谈谈一个普通人对于他音乐的一些想法吧。Charles Aznavour最受欢迎的代表作有《我已见过我自己》(Je m'voyais déjà),《你是我的太好了》(For me formidable),《昨日依旧》(Hier encore),《波西米亚人》(La bohème),《带我走》(Emmenez-moi)等,他的歌也大多写着爱情。

其中我个人最喜欢的歌曲是《For me formidable》。浓厚欢快的法式风情仿佛要从耳机里蹦出来,在慵懒的午后,是苏菲玛索般的女人,卷着头发提着竹篮,手里拿着法式长棍,穿着宽松的牛仔裤朝你挥手微笑。尽管尽情地嘲笑我这直男般的幻想吧,Charles Aznavour撩人又性感的声音让情丝暧昧缭绕,让你情不自禁欲罢不能。毕竟,谁又能拒绝爱情呢。

《For me formidable》

You are the one for me, for me, for me, formidable

You are my love very, very, very, véritable

Et je voudrais pouvoir un jour enfin te le dire

Te l' écrire

Dans la langue de Shakespeare

My daisy, daisy, daisy, désirable

Je suis malheureux d' avoir si peu de mots

à t'offrir en cadeaux

Darling I love you, love you, darling I want you

Et puis c' est à peu près tout

You are the one for me, for me, for me, formidable

You are the one for me, for me, for me, formidable

But how can you

See me, see me, see me, si minable

Je ferais mieux d'aller choisir mon vocabulaire

Pour te plaire

Dans la langue de Molière

Toi, tes eyes, ton nose, tes lips adorables

Tu n'as pas compris tant pis

Ne t'en fais pas et viens-t-en dans mes bras

Darling I love you, love you,

Darling, I want you

Et puis le reste on s'en fout

You are the one for me, for me, for me, formidable

Je me demande même

Pourquoi je t'aime

Toi qui te moques de moi et de tout

Avec ton air canaille, canaille, canaille

How can I love you

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