英语世界翻译竞赛原文.docx

A Garden That Welcomes Strangers By Allen Lacy I do not know what became of her, and I never learned her name. But I feel that I knew her from the garden she had so lovingly made over many decades.我并不知道她的近况，以前也不曾得知她的名字。然而我却觉得我从她几十年倾心照料的花园里了解了她。The house she lived in lies two miles from mine a simple, two-story structure with the boxy plan, steeply-pitched roof and unadorned lines that are typical of houses built in the middle of the nineteenth century near the New Jersey shore.她住在一所离我家两英里远的房子里典型的十九世纪中页新泽西海边建筑：简单的双层结构，布局方正，房檐弯曲，线条古朴。Her garden was equally simple. She was not a conventional gardener who did everything by the book, following the common advice to vary her plantings so there would be something in bloom from the first crocus in the spring to the last chrysanthemum in the fall. She had no respect for the rule that says that tall-growing plants belong at the rear of a perennial border, low ones in the front and middle-sized ones in the middle, with occasional exceptions for dramatic accent.她的花园也同样简单。她并不像传统的花园主那样万事随书，她只遵循一些常见的建议来增加她的植物，因此从春天的第一朵番红花到秋天的最后一朵菊花，她的花园总是有绽放的花朵。高者置于长青植物之后，矮者置于之前，而中等高度的置于中间，其中偶尔穿插一些例外来形戏剧化的特色，这样的规则她从不遵循。In her garden, everything was accent, everything was tall, and the evidence was plain that she loved three kinds of plant and three only: roses, clematis and lilies, intermingled promiscuously to pleasant effect but no apparent design.在她的花园里，处处都是特色，植物都很高，很明显她只钟爱三种植物：玫瑰，铁线莲和百合，并没有特意设计，只是随意地混合生长的它们产生了一种令人愉悦的效果。She grew a dozen sorts of clematis, perhaps 50 plants in all, trained and tied so that they clambered up metal rods, each rod crowned intermittently throughout the summer by a rounded profusion of large blossoms of dark purple, rich crimson, pale lavender, light blue and gleaming white.她种了十几种铁线莲,也许总共有50株植物,通过整枝和捆绑它们就会爬上金属杆, 在整个夏天，每个金属杆都会陆续被一圈缤纷而丰富的的深紫色,深红色,淡紫色,浅蓝色和明亮的白色的大花朵加冕Her taste in roses was old-fashioned. There wasnt a single modern hybrid tea rose or floribunda in sight. Instead, she favored the roses of other ages the York and Lancaster rose, the cabbage rose, the damask and the rugosa rose in several varieties. She propagated her roses herself from cuttings stu rugosa rose ck directly in the ground and protected by upended gallon jugs.她欣赏玫瑰的口味是老式的。没有一株现代杂种香水玫瑰或丰花玫瑰。相反,她喜欢其他时代的玫瑰约克玫瑰和兰开斯特玫瑰,洋玫瑰，大马士革玫瑰等几个品种。她自己繁殖她的玫瑰，通过将玫瑰直接扦插在地上并用倒立的加仑壶来保护。Lilies, I believe were her greatest love. Except for some Madonna lilies it is impossible to name them, since the wooden flats stood casually here and there in the flower bed, all thickly planted with dark green lily seedlings. The occasional paper tag fluttering from a seed pod with the date and record of a cross showed that she was an amateur hybridizer with some special fondness for lilies of a warm muskmelon shade or a pale lemon yellow.百合,我相信是她的最爱。除了一些白百合花其他的都不可能叫出它们的名字,因为木制的花盆随意地立在花坛上,所有的花盆里都密密地种植着深绿色的百合幼苗。偶尔的从种荚中飘出的写着日期的纸标签和杂交的记录显示,她是一个特别喜欢温暖的渐变香瓜色或淡柠檬黄色百合花的业余杂交者。She believed in sharing her garden. By her curb there was a sign: “This is my garden, and you are welcome here. Take whatever you wish with your eyes, but nothing with your hand.”她乐于分享自己的花园。在她花园的路边有一块牌子，上面写着：“这是我的花园，欢迎来这里参观。你可以把这里的美景尽收眼底，但不要随手拿走这里的东西。”Until five years ago, her garden was always immaculately tended, the lawn kept fertilized and mowed, the flower bed free of weeds, the tall lilies carefully staked. But then something happened. I dont know what it was, but the lawn was mowed less frequently, then not at all. Tall grass invaded the roses, the clematis, the lilies. The elm tree in her front yard sickened and died, and when a coastal gale struck, the branches that fell were never removed.直到五年前，她的花园还总是被悉心地照料着。草坪肥沃平坦，花坛鲜有杂草，高高的百合花也被小心翼翼地系在桩上。但是，相继发生了一些事情。我不知道具体是什么事情，但是修剪草坪的次数渐渐得少了，随后就干脆不修剪了。高高的杂草侵犯了玫瑰花、铁线莲和百合花的生长区域。她前庭院的榆树渐渐枯萎凋亡，当海风来袭，吹下来的树枝也再也没被移走。With every year, the neglect has grown worse. Wild honeysuckle and bittersweet run rampant in the garden. Sumac, ailanthus, poison ivy and other uninvited things threaten the few lilies and clematis and roses that still struggle for survival.每过一年，这种坐视不管就愈发严重。野生的忍冬花和蜀羊泉肆意地在花园里疯长。漆树、臭椿、毒漆藤和一些其它的不速之客威胁着所剩无几的几株苟延残喘的玫瑰花、铁线莲和百合花。Last year the house itself went dead. The front door was padlocked and the windows covered with sheets of plywood. For many months there has been a for sale sign out front, replacing the sign inviting strangers to share her garden.去年，这所房子本身也“死”去了。前门被锁上，窗户也被几张胶合板覆盖。几个月来，低价出售的牌子一直挂在前面，替换掉了之前邀请陌生人分享她的花园的牌子。I drive by that house almost daily and have been tempted to load a shovel in my car trunk, stop at her curb and rescue a few lilies from the smothering thicket of weeds. The laws of trespass and the fact that her house sits across the street from a police station have given me the cowardice to resist temptation. But her garden has reminded me of mortality; gardeners and the gardens they make are fragile things, creatures of time, hostages to chance and to decay.Last week, the for sale sign out front came down and the windows were unboarded. A crew of painters arrived and someone cut down the dead elm tree. This morning there was a moving van in the driveway unloading a swing set, a barbecue grill, a grand piano and a houseful of sensible furniture. A young family is moving into that house.I hope that among their number is a gardener whose special fondness for old roses and clematis and lilies will see to it that all else is put aside until that flower bed is restored to something of its former self.(选自 Patterns: A Short Prose Reader, by Mary Lou Conlin, published by Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983.)建筑类词汇：boxysteeply-pitched roofunadorned lines common植物类术语：crocuschrysanthemumfloribundaclematisthe York and Lancaster rosethe cabbage roseMadonna l