双语 ● Somewhere a Room of One’s Own 我的小天地
Somewhere a Room of One’s Own 我的小天地
◎ Susan Branch
My room at home was too small for me. I barely had room for all the little knickknacks I’d collected over the years. There were so many things I had to pack away in boxes and store in closets all over the house. Oftentimes I didn’t quite remember exactly where everything was.
对我来说，我的房间太小了。我几乎没有多余的空间放置那些多年收集的小玩意儿。我有太多的东西需要装箱，需要藏进家里的各个壁橱里。我时常想不起那些东西究竟放在哪儿。
There were all the notes my girlfriends and I passed throughout junior high, along with all the goofy poems my first boyfriend paid his friends to write and passed along to me as his originals. I also had a separate box for rose petals collected from past birthdays, Valentine’s Days, anniversaries, and proms. I kept all my pictures in neatly organized albums on the bottom shelf of my bookcase. I had jewelry that I never wore but I thought I might someday need stashed away all over my room. I also saved birthday and Christmas cards, leaves that had fallen from the trees the previous fall, and medals I won for participating in piano recitals. On another shelf of my bookcase I even had a brick I found on the playground at my elementary school.
那些东西包括：初中时期我和好姐妹们的点点滴滴；初恋男友写给我的那些青涩的情诗（其实是他花钱请朋友写的）。我还有另外一个箱子，专门用来放置过去的生日会、情人节、周年纪念日以及舞会上收到的蔷薇花。我的相册就整齐地摆放在书架的最底层。我有珠宝首饰，但我从来都不戴。可是会有那么一天，为了找寻它们，我会翻遍整个房间。我也会收藏生日卡和圣诞卡，早秋时节从树上飘落的叶子，还有我在钢琴比赛上获得的那些奖杯。甚至在我的书架上，还有一个位置是专属于那块从小学里捡来的砖块。
I’m not exactly sure why I saved everything, but I have some sort of idea. I never wanted to forget the great times I’d had growing up. I always feared I’d become one of those adults who couldn’t relate to children because they simply couldn’t remember having been children themselves. I wanted to remember the flowers my brother gave me when no other boy would. I wanted to someday look back at pictures of my first trip to Panama City. For some strange reason, I wanted to remember the day my playmates and I found that broken brick on the playground and thought our school was being broken into.
其实我并不确定自己为什么要收藏这些东西。然而，一些想法始终萦绕着我。也许我不愿忘却成长过程中经历的那些欢乐时光。我生怕自己会和那些大人一样，他们无法亲近孩子，只因他们早已忘记自己曾经也是孩子。我想记住：没有男生送花给我的时候，是哥哥送花给我。我想在某一天，看着照片回忆自己第一次去巴拿马旅行的点点滴滴。也许有一些奇怪的原因，我想记住我跟玩伴在操场上发现那块破砖块的日子。那时的我们还天真地以为学校也会裂成碎片。
So I kept my life stored away in my bedroom, tucked neatly into boxes, stacked high up in my closet, on display on my bookcases, stashed discreetly away in my underwear drawer in hopes I’d never forget anything. I loved my room because it was all about me. I didn’t have to share it with anyone else. My memories didn’t have to mingle with a sibling’s or roommate’s. My room at home was just that ... my room, full of my things.
所以，我将我的生活封存在我的卧室里：它们整齐地摆放在盒子里；它们高高地叠放在衣橱里；它们陈列在我的书架上；它们被我偷偷地藏在那个用来收纳内衣的抽屉里，这样我就不会忘记了。我爱我的房间，只因它的一切都与我有关。我不必和他人共享这一切。我的回忆也不会和兄弟姐妹或者室友的回忆纠缠不清。我的房间就是……我的房间，满满的都是属于我的东西。
Now that I’m away from home, enrolled in college, and sharing ten cubic feet with another girl, my old bedroom doesn’t seem so small. I try my hardest to make my half of the room personal to me, but in a space so small, that proves almost impossible. Occasionally her books will find their way to my half of the desk, or her shoes will be near my closet. Sometimes crumbs from the crackers she’s eating litter my half of the carpet, and every so often, her hair brush begins to hang around with mine.
也许是离开了家，踏进了大学校园，还要和另一个女孩共用一个十平米大的房间。我突然觉得家里的那间卧室也不是很小了。我尽了最大的努力让一半的房间只属于我。然而，如此狭小的空间里，我的想法根本无法实现。她的书本偶尔也会在我的桌面上出现，或者她的鞋子就摆在我的衣橱前面。有时我的毯子上稀稀疏疏满是她吃饼干时掉下的碎屑。她的梳子也常常到我梳子的“地盘”上瞎逛。
I don’t have room for all the little memories I cherish. I only brought a handful of pictures from home, left behind all my yearbooks, as well as my dried flowers and “who loves who” notes. Perhaps the worst part about the whole ordeal is that I don’t have room to start any new collections. The threat is there that I won’t have anything to remind me of my college years. That’s a really scary thought for me. This place where I sleep and study isn’t my room. It’s just a room.
这样，我珍爱的那些记忆便无处“安身”了。我只带了一些照片，把我所有的毕业纪念册、干花以及那些写着“谁喜欢谁”的短笺留在了家里。也许最惨痛的事情莫过于没有空间开始我的新收藏了。恐怖的是我的大学生活将无从回忆。这对我来说太可怕了。我睡觉学习的地方并不专属于我，它只是一个房间而已。
404 South Carrick Hall is just a place to sleep, study, and watch my roommate watch TV. It’s filled with textbooks, CD-ROMs, and dishes... things that aren’t supposed to be in a bedroom. There’s only room for one stuffed animal and three posters which have a hard time staying on brico-block walls. I hate the fact that there’s a microwave and refrigerator in the room where I sleep, and I hate that I’m responsible for filling them.
卡里克大厅南区404号房仅仅只是一个学习睡觉的地方。当然，我还可以在那静静地看着我的室友看电视。房间里堆满了教科书、CD和饭盒……这些东西本不该出现在卧室里。这里只能容下一个吃饱的人和三张从墙上剥落的海报。我讨厌睡觉的房间里还有微波炉和冰箱。更可恶的是我还要负责“喂饱”它们。
Maybe even worse than my new room’s lack of personality is the lack of privacy it offers. Occasionally, and especially during home-coming, my roommate comes in after I’ve gone to sleep. She doesn’t mean to wake me up, but when she starts her nightly contact-removal ritual, I can’t help but hear what seems like thousands of different cleaning solution bottles bumping around the sink. I’ve been known to bother her too. During the day when I’m trying to study, my typing interferes with her enjoyment of “The Loveboat”, “Days of Our Lives”, and “Another World”.
新房间缺少个性不说，更糟糕的是它没有任何隐私可言。有些时候，特别是该睡觉的时候，室友会在我睡下之后推门进来。我知道她不是故意要把我吵醒。可当她开始那一连串的睡前动作时，我的耳朵便不听使唤了，我仿佛听到了水池旁传来成千上万个洗面奶瓶子互相撞击的声音。当然，我知道自己也曾打扰过她。正当我想学习的时候，打字的声音却妨碍她欣赏那些美妙的音乐，像《爱之船》、《我们的日子》和《另一个世界》。
My roommate is not the only one who deprives me of privacy and makes 404 a room that is not really my own. The girls next door to me see me as a back-up grammar check when their computers don’t catch every mistake. I can’t lock them out because it’s not my room to lock. I can’t say “Go away”, because they’ve gotten to be really good friends and I can’t be rude to people I care about.
室友并不是唯一一个会夺走我的隐私，并把404变成不属于我的房间的人。住在隔壁的女孩们，她们把我看成备用的语法拼音检查机，因为电脑无法找出每一个错误。我无法上锁，只因它不是我一个人的房间。我不能说“走开”，只因她们早已成为我的好友，再说我也无法无礼对待我在乎的人。
The lack of privacy thing really bothers me. Not only do I live in a room that acts as a bedroom, study, kitchen, living room, and bathroom, I don’t even get to be miserable in it by myself. Sometimes misery does not love company. Rather, it is created by company. If I can’t decorate my room to my liking, I should at least be able to suffer in it alone. But dormitories are not for being alone—I’ve been told—they’re about learning to get along with others. (Maybe I’ll see the positive results of this nightmare when I’m giving advice to my own children when they begin college, but for the moment, I’m completely oblivious to them.)
隐私的缺失的确让我很懊恼。我所生活的房间不仅是卧室，也是书房、厨房、客厅和浴室。待在里面，我甚至无法悲伤。有时悲伤不喜欢同伴，但却源自同伴。如果我无法随心所欲地装扮我的房间，至少我可以享受孤独。可宿舍不是为了孤独而存在的，这我早就知道，宿舍里的人们需要学会与人共处。（多年之后给刚刚踏入大学的子女们提意见时，也许我会记起这个“噩梦”给我带来的那些好处。可是当下，我什么都不愿记住。）
There is some good news, however. Though she annoys me to no end, sometimes my roommate is just the person I want to see. I didn’t get to know her habits so well without her taking in a few of mine. She oftentimes knows what I’m going to say even before I do, and most of the time she knows exactly when not to say anything to me at all. She’s friend as well as foe, and I’d probably miss her if she left. The same sentiments apply to my neighbors. It’s really quite flattering that they, even if somewhat mistakenly, consider me some sort of grammar goddess.
然而，偶尔也会有好的一面。虽然她的吵闹永无止境，可有时她正是那个我想见到的人。我不如她了解我那样了解她。她常常知道我想说却还未说出口的话，而且她也知道什么时候应该闭嘴。她是朋友，也是敌人。如果她离开了，我一定会想她。对于隔壁的女孩们，我有着同样的情感。她们把我当作语法纠错女神确实有点阿谀奉承的意思。
And perhaps most important is the next thought. While I don’t live in a room that’s completely mine anymore, and probably won’t ever again, I do find comfort in the knowledge that somewhere there’s a pink, green, and white bedroom with a brick on the bookshelf, a diary in the underwear drawer, and an air of privacy that belongs strictly to me. It may not be my room as often as I’d like, but it will wait for me, just like I sit and wait for it.
也许最重要的是那些紧随其后的想法。然而，我再也不愿住进一间完全不属于我的房间里，而且我再也不会那样做。我终于懂得住在一间粉色、绿色和白色漆成的房间里是多么幸福！房间书架上摆放着一块砖头，收纳内衣的抽屉里藏着一本日记，还有那份完全属于我的私人空间。它也许不是我所喜欢的房间，但是它就在那儿安静地等着我，就像我也会静静地坐在那儿等着它一样。
