英文散文翻译示例——The Roots of My Ambition(Excerpt)/我的自强之源（节选）
文/罗素·贝克
译/袁光荣
My mother, dead now to this world but still roaming free in my mind, wakes me some mornings before daybreak. "If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a quitter."
I have heard her say that all my life. Now, lying in bed, coming awake in the dark, I feel the fury of her energy fighting the good-for-nothing idler within me who wants to go back to sleep instead of tackling the brave new day.
Silently I protest: I am not a child anymore. I have made something of myself. I am entitled to sleep late.
我母亲现已离开人世，但仍时时浮现在我心中，有时早晨天还未亮她就把我唤醒。“如果有什么东西我不能容忍，那就是畏难而退的人。”
我一生不断听到她说这句话。现在，躺在床上，在黑暗中慢慢醒来，想重回梦乡而不愿奋勇面对崭新的一天，我感觉到了她气冲冲地奋力与我体内那个没出息的懒汉作斗争。
我默默地抗议：我不再是个孩子了。我已经小有成就，我有资格睡会儿懒觉。
"Russell, you've got no more gumption than a bump on a log."
She has hounded me with these battle cries since I was a boy in short pants.
"Make something of yourself."
"Have a little ambition, buddy."
The civilized man of the world within me scoffs at materialism and strivers after success. He has read the philosophers and social critics. He thinks it is vulgar and unworthy to spend one's life pursuing money, power, fame, and—"Sometimes you act like you're not worth the powder and shot it would take to blow you up with."
“罗素，你一点进取心也没有，简直和一个二流子没两样。”
她用这些话激励我前进，从我还是个穿短裤的孩子时就开始了：
“你要干出些成就来！”
“要有点志气，孩子。”
在我的内心世界里，那个老于世故而且“有教养的”家伙嘲笑实利主义和孜孜不倦追求成功者。“他”读过当今哲学家和社会评论家的书，认为把一生花在追求金钱、权势和名声上是庸俗而且无价值的，就在这时我听到——“有时，你的表现简直让人觉得连拿子弹把你毙掉都嫌浪费。”
Life had been hard for my mother ever since her father died, leaving nothing but debts. The family house was lost, the children scattered. My mother's mother, fatally ill with tubercular infection, fell into a suicidal depression and was institutionalized. My mother, who had just started college, had to quit and look for work.
Then, after five years of marriage and three babies, her husband died in 1930, leaving my mother so poor that she had to give up her baby Audrey for adoption. Maybe the bravest thing she did was give up Audrey, only ten months old, to my Uncle Tom and Aunt Golddie. Uncle Tom, one of my father's brothers, had a good job with railway and could give Audery a comfortable life.
自外祖父死后，母亲的日子一直过得很艰难。他除债务外什么也没留下，祖宅失去了，儿女东奔西散。外祖母染上了致命的肺病，情绪颓废，一心要自杀，被送进了疯人院。母亲那时刚进大学，不得不辍学找工作。
然后，在结婚五年生了三个小孩以后，丈夫于1930年死去，留下她一贫如洗，不得不把婴儿奥德丽送给别人收养。可能，她做的最有勇气的事就是把只有十个月的奥德丽送给汤姆叔叔和戈尔迪婶婶。汤姆叔叔是我父亲的弟弟，在铁路上有一份好工作，能使奥德丽过上舒适的日子。
My mother headed off for New Jersey with my other sister and me to take shelter with her brother Alen, poor relatives dependent on his goodness. She eventually found work patching grocers's smocks at ten dollars a week in a laundry.
Mother would have liked it better if I could have grown up to be President or a rich businessman, but much as she loved me, she did not deceive herself. Before I was out of grade school, she could see I lacked the gifts for either making millions or winning the love of the crowds. After that she began nudging me toward working with words.
Words ran in her family. There seemed to be a word gene that passed down from her maternal grandfather. He was a schoolteacher, his daughter Lulie wrote poetry, and his son Charlie became New York correspondent for the Baltimore Herald. In the turn-of-the-century American South, still impoverished by the Civil War, words were a way out.
母亲带着我和另一个妹妹前往新泽西州投靠艾伦舅舅，做靠别人好心度日的穷亲戚。最终，她在一家洗衣店找到了工作——补缀杂货店的工作服，一周挣十美元。
如果我长大后能成为总统或巨商，母亲可能会更喜欢。但是，虽然她极爱我，也不至于欺骗自己。我还在小学阶段，她就看出我缺乏赚大钱和赢得众人拥戴的天赋。于是，她开始促使我对文字工作发生兴趣。
文字在她家一脉相承。从她的外祖父起，似乎就有文字基因代代相传。他是个中学教师，女儿露莉会写诗，儿子查理成为巴尔的摩《先驱报》驻纽约记者。时值新旧世纪之交，内战后的美国南部仍然贫困，文字工作倒是一条出路。
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