TE|| To Franklin’s grave

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导读

Louie Kamookak's HMS Terror Found

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To Franklin’s grave
寻找富兰克林之墓

本文英文部分选自经济学人Obituary版块

Louie Kamookak died on March 22nd,The Inuit oral historian and finder of Sir John Franklin’s lost ships was 58

路易·卡姆卡可于3月22日逝世,享年58岁,因纽特族的口述历史学家,约翰·富兰克林爵士失踪船队的发现者

注释:

1.因纽特人 Inuit, a race of people from northern Canada and parts of Greenland and Alaska. The name is sometimes also wrongly used to refer to people from Siberia and S and W Alaska. 因纽特人(加拿大北部以及格陵兰和阿拉斯加部分地区的一个种族的人,有时误指西伯利亚及阿拉斯加南部和西部的人)摘自《牛津高阶英汉双解词典》

http://news.163.com/14/0824/16/A4E5CU9O00014SEH.html

http://ca.bytravel.cn/art/bks/bksydzzyntr/

2.约翰·富兰克林爵士 Sir John Franklin (1786年4月15日-1847年6月11日): 英国船长及北极探险家,在搜寻西北航道之旅中失踪,他和其他队员的下落在其后十多年间成谜。

https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BA%A6%E7%BF%B0%C2%B7%E5%AF%8C%E5%85%B0%E5%85%8B%E6%9E%97/3726607?fr=aladdin

THE spot Louie Kamookak most wanted to see was one he had heard of when he was seven or so. He and his family were living out on the land then, in the northernmost parts of Canada, in canvas tents, hunting seals. One bedtime his great-grandmother Hummahuk told him a story of her own childhood. Her father had taken her to the north of King William Island to get driftwood, and there on a gravel ridge they had also picked up brown things, dark things: musket balls, spoons, forks, a silver dinner knife. She also remembered a big chain, or a big rope, going from the beach into the ocean. This image intrigued young Louie even more, for at the end of such a chain there surely had to be a ship. It stayed in his head from then on.

路易·卡姆卡可最想看到的是他七岁左右就听说过的那个地方。当时,他们全家人还居住在遥远的加拿大极北地区,在帆布帐篷里,以捕猎海豹为生。一次睡前,他的曾祖母哈姆玛哈可(Hummahuk)给他讲述了自己童年的故事。她的父亲带着她去北方的威廉王(King William)岛捡拾浮木,在一片砾石脊上,他们拾到了些棕色的、邪恶的东西:火枪子弹、勺子、叉子、一把银餐刀。她还记得一条大链子,或者大绳子,从海滩一直延伸到海里。这样的画面更加引起了小路易的兴趣,因为这样的链子尽头肯定与一艘船相连。此后,这幅景象就一直萦绕在他的脑海里挥之不去。

On King William Island, just by the North-West Passage, stories abounded of the qallunaat or white men who had come looking for the fabled north route to Asia or, after failed expeditions, for each other. Sir John Franklin had led three voyages; his last, in 1845, ended in the slow loss to the ice of both his ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and all their crews. Dozens of search parties found no trace of them. Until 2006, almost no people from the south thought to ask the Inuit about their disappearance. But Inuit elders, though they had no written history, knew of many clues.

在威廉王岛上,就在西北航道上,流传着许多关于白人(qallunaat)的故事,他们来到这里寻找传说中通往亚洲的北方航线,或者搜寻寻找航线失败的白人探险队。约翰·富兰克林爵士一生领导了三次航行;1845年进行最后一次航行时,他的两艘船幽冥号(HMS Erebus)和惊骇号(HMS Terror)都被困在冰中,全体船员也都慢慢地死去,航行以失败而告终。此后,数十个搜寻队都没有找到他们的踪迹。直到2006年,几乎都没有任何南方人想到向因纽特人询问他们失踪的线索。虽然因纽特人没有文字记载的历史,但是年长的因纽特人却知道很多线索。

注释:

Qallunaat : People who are not Inuit, typically white people, considered as a group

https://www.definitions.net/definition/Qallunaat

Mr Kamookak spent his life gathering these. His method was simple. He visited local elders and listened while they spoke. Compared with tales of Amundsen, who had forced a ship through the North-West Passage in 1906, the Franklin stories were weaker, bits and pieces. A mast rising out of the sea, then a whole ship seen against the sunset. One ship sinking quickly, the other staying afloat through two winters. A party of qallunaat dragging a large boat on a sled. Desperate survivors blundering into Inuit tents, their faces black and the flesh gone from their gums. The arrival of white men had brought two of the coldest winters ever known, and cannibal spirits still haunted parts of the coast.

卡姆卡可先生一生都在收集这些资料。他的研究方法很简单,就是去拜访当地长者,认真聆听他们的讲述。1906年,阿蒙森(Amundsen)驾船横渡西北航道(Northwest Passage)。与他相比,富兰克林的相关事迹传言较少,零零碎碎。海面上升起了桅杆,落日余晖下,海上逐渐显现出一整艘船。有一艘船很快地沉入了海中,另外一艘却在海上漂浮了两个冬季。一群白人把一艘大艇拽上了雪橇。拼命逃生的幸存者们却误入了因纽特人的帐篷,把他们吓得脸色发黑,嘴里正啃着的肉也掉了。白人的到来之后,他们经历了两个最寒冷的冬季,而且吃人的鬼魂似乎一直在海岸线上出没。

Words on the wind

风中的传言

One scene especially struck him. A hunting party had seen from a distance a ceremony involving white men and big bangs, like gunshots. It seemed to be a burial, but not in the Inuit way of leaving the body out on the land, wrapped in caribou skins, as his great-grandmother had been left. This was the burial of some shaman who, when the hunters ventured near, had turned to a slab of stone. He felt it must have been Franklin, who had died in June 1847: placed in a vault below a tall wooden structure which other Inuit had wrested from the ground for sleds, but which had probably been a cross.

有一幕场景给卡姆卡可留下了很深的印象。一支搜寻队从远处看见了一群白人在举行一种仪式,传来巨大声响,像是枪声。他们似乎在举办葬礼,但不像因纽特人那样把尸体放在地上,用鹿皮裹着,就像他的曾祖母去世时那样。这是萨满巫师的葬礼,只要搜寻者靠近,他们就会变成石碑。卡姆卡可觉得这就是在1847年六月去世的富兰克林,他被葬在高大木制建筑的墓室中,其他因纽特人曾夺取这里的木头制作雪橇,但这也许正是个十字架。

In the way of oral history there were no names, no dates. His next job, therefore, was to match the spoken fragments with place-names—Mercy Bay, Starvation Cove—and with texts. He had few of those, but school had got him interested in reading, and one of his grandfathers, a white man who worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company, had been a Franklin searcher and written articles about him. He could start there. After a lucky meeting with Cameron Treleaven, an antiquarian bookseller from Calgary, he was sent a whole library of explorers’ accounts. His ramshackle house outside Gjoa Haven, with hot water drawn from a camping stove, also had the best internet connection in town. Here he read and read.

在口述的历史中,没有记录名字或者日期。因此,他的下一个工作就是把那些人们所说的片段与各个地点、名字以及文字记载相匹配——比如默西湾、饥饿谷。他几乎没有找到这样的口述史,但是求学时光让他热爱读书,他的一位祖父是在哈得逊湾公司工作的白人,恰好是富兰克林的探寻者之一,写过很多关于富兰克林的文章。他可以从祖父的资料开始研究,他很幸运地在一个会议上遇到了卡梅隆·特雷莱文(Cameron Treleaven),一个来自卡尔加里的古董书商,卡梅隆送了他一大批探险者的档案。他那在约阿港摇摇欲坠的房子,只能从露营炉内打到热水,却有着镇上最好的网络信号。在这里,他不断地阅读。

In the summers he also went out on his snow machine or ATV to look for traces left behind. With his trapper’s knowledge, he guided other searchers as he bounced over the rocky tundra and along the shore. He found a few tantalising things: a length of ancient, foreign rope in a circle of stones, and a shaman’s belt on which hung a rusty pair of pocket scissors. Year by year he relived the ordeal of the trudging, starving sailors and the route they might have taken southwards to grassier country, as well as a sense of where the ships had gone down. Instinct, as much as learning, led him to guide the Canadian government searchers to Erebus in 2014 and, two years later, to Terror. The official team had no idea for a while which the first ship was. With a huge grin, he knew at once: Erebus.

到了夏天,他也会开着雪地机或沙滩车外出寻找那些尚未被发现的蛛丝马迹。用他捕猎的知识,他带领其他探寻者穿过洛矶山脉,走过各个海岸。他发现了一些让人颇有兴味的东西:一圈石头中间有一段年代久远的外国绳子以及一个悬挂着一对锈迹斑斑的袖珍剪刀的萨满巫师皮带。一年又一年,他模拟了当时饥饿难耐的船员们的艰苦跋涉,想象着他们可能会向南去往蔓草丛生的国家,感受着沉船的大概方位。凭借着直觉和研究,他带领加拿大政府的探索者们在2014年找到了幽冥号,两年后又找到了惊骇号。官方探索队全然不知第一艘找到的是什么船。但是他咧嘴大笑,第一时间说出了幽冥号的名字。

By this time he was himself an elder, passing on stories to the young in his deep, emphatic way, always word for word the same. Few things delighted him more than taking students out on the land in the summer, squeezing his bulky frame into a tent, eating dried fish and fried bannock (with Cheez Whiz as a favourite extra), recounting the lore of the past. Some mysteries had been solved but others remained, none more powerful than that burial of the shaman. If it was indeed Franklin it might bring fame to Gjoa Haven, and jobs for the young. It would also allow Franklin’s body to be returned to England, honouring him as an ancestor should be. He always imagined that he had been a good man.

到那时,他自己也已经是一位长者了,他用低沉厚重的语调逐字逐句地向年轻人传递这些故事。如今,最让他开心的就是夏天带学生们外出,把他庞大的身躯挤进帐篷里,吃着鱼干和煎薄饼(加上一点他最喜欢的芝士),回溯过去的所知所学。有一些谜团已被揭开,但有一些仍然隐藏在迷雾中,这其中最有分量的就是有关所谓的萨满巫师葬礼。如果墓地里面埋葬的这位萨满真的就是富兰克林,这说不定可以使得约阿港名声大噪,为那里的年轻人带来工作机会。这也可能使得英国人能运回富兰克林的遗体,使得他受到作为一名先辈应有的尊重。他总认为富兰克林是一个好人。

For all his searching, he had never found the spot. But possibly his great-grandmother had. On that same journey when she had found the silver dinner knife, she had seen a mound that was the length of a human, and a stone with strange markings. The others would not go near it, or talk of it. Only her fading memory remained, in words that were blown away across the tundra. For him they were as tangible and forceful as any printed page, in any bound book.

尽管卡姆卡可所有的搜寻努力都没能发现任何这方面的线索,但她的祖母或许曾经找到过,就在那一次她发现银质餐叉的旅途中,她曾发现一个有一人高的坟头,和一块刻满了奇怪文字的石碑。那里的其他人都不愿意接近亦或是谈论到这一区域。只有他祖母那些模糊不清的记忆在这片冻原上流传,但这对于卡姆卡可来说,却是和任何精装书本里保留的书面记录一样,确凿而强有力。

翻译组:

Cece,女,消防工作者,CATTI三笔

Neil,  男,外贸民工,经济学人爱好者

Amber,女,文学研究生,经济学人爱好者

Lucia,女,翻译学硕士三年制,经济学人爱好者

校核组:

Yi, 女,财务民工,经济学人爱好者

Shirly,女,笔译研究生,经济学人爱好者

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3观点 |评论|思考

本次观点由Lee独家奉献

Lee,男,医学英译  Timberland爱好者

浩瀚的宇宙,广袤的的地球,激发人类无穷尽的好奇心,披荆斩棘,探索发现。富兰克林爵士热衷于找寻西北航道,1845年5月,他与127人乘两艘船“幽冥号”及“惊恐号”出发,从此一去不回。

一百多年后,七岁的路易·卡姆卡可有一次听奶奶讲睡前故事,奶奶说她曾和她爸去捡浮木,发现了勺子,叉子和一把银色的晚餐刀还有一条通向大海的绳索...这些残存的片段记忆影响了路易·卡姆卡可的人生,从这刻起,到一个白发老者,他都在寻找奶奶记忆中通向大海绳索的另一头。多年的知识积累,使他对新发现的感知成为一种本能。穷极一生,只为做好一件事必有所获,终于在2014年他引导加拿大政府搜索到“幽冥号”并在两年后又找到“惊恐号”。爱因斯坦曾说“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”好奇心与想象力驱使人类进步。一将功成万骨枯,富兰克林爵士率领的队伍为后世开辟航道提供了宝贵资料。

网上查阅资料时发现,相当于富兰克林爵士,网上对路易·卡姆卡可的生平事介绍迹少很多,关于富兰克林舰队搜寻工作相关人员皆宜以“相关专家”一笔带过,私以为,这并不减少路易·卡姆卡可的伟大,极一生之所能,受好奇心的驱使,满怀热情地做好一件事,这样的人生是完整的,愿芸芸众生中的你我,如富兰克林般坚韧不拔,如路易·卡姆卡可般默默耕耘一方土地,无愧于一生。

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