翻译陶杰《当时只道是寻常》

法国小品的优点，是表面上没有甚么事情发生，其实是很重大的变化在发生。就像红楼梦，吃螃蟹、喝酒、行酒令、对联、做生日、八十回的故事，以今日的标准，一点也不Eventful，但掩卷追思，一个家族帝国，原来在不动声色之间衰落崩溃了。孤女林黛玉，自从进入贾府之后，她的生命从此改观了。 Tranquility on the surface, thunderstorm underneath -- French feature films can be squarely credited with this nature. Trivial themes are likewise common in The Dream of the Red Mansion—eating crabs, drinking liquor, playing a drinkers’ wager game, composing couplets, celebrating a birthday… a storyline as voluminous as 80 chapters could be accused of delivering, under today’s standard, nothing eventful at all. But when you finish the book and ponder about/on/over what you have read, you will see how a sizeable noble family was falling and collapsing imperceptibly. For Lin Daiyu, the parentless heroine, her fate took a sharp turn after being interwoven with that of the Jia Family’s. 真正的杰作，如山岳、如海洋，以短小的人生来观览，山还是山，海依旧是海，但以一百万年的时间比例尺，其实山在暗暗飘移，海在悄悄加深，地壳在千万年的荒老之间默默地变化，只是我们的肉眼太浅，从来不曾察觉。 A masterful work bears the semblance of a magnificent landscape. When put into the perspective of transient mortality, the mountains and seas are what they are. But through a scale of hundreds of thousands of years, secretly, furtively, the mountains are drifting, seas are deepening, and the earth’s crust is changing in their numerous years of solitude. They are nonetheless indiscernible to our shallow eyes. 一出小品，不同亿万金元大制作，情节不需要枪战、追逐、凶杀来表现繁多乱眼的所谓“事件”。事件可以是很静态的，大千法相，就像山颜海貌，表面上风纹不动，但其实早已韶华暗换，沧海桑田。 Unlike a blockbuster with a multi-billion-dollar budget, a French film does not resort to gunfight, car chase and murder to flaunt dazzling “events”. Events can be static; because the countless guises of the world are like the seemingly motionless shape of the earth, they are as apt to change as the traces are nowhere to be recognized. Seas turning into fields, adolescence cast away, all in a never-ending process. 当你老了，回顾一生，就会发觉：甚么时候出国读书、甚么时候决定做第一份职业、何时选定了对象而恋爱、甚么时候结婚，其实都是命运的巨变。只是当时站在三岔路口，眼见风云千樯，你作出抉择的那一日，在日记上，相当的沉闷和平凡，当时还以为是生命中普通的一天。 When you are old, looking back on your life and you will see, the moments you decided to study abroad, to get the first job, to choose a person to love and to find the love of your life, all lead to vital bifurcations of your destiny. However, the day when it came to the crunch, when you were standing at the junctions of roads and witnessing the rapid changes of winds and clouds, slipped into your diary as an entry so plain and dull—as it was only an ordinary day. 但一场巨变，已经发生了。地动山移，浑然不觉，当时只道是寻常。世上的生死荣哀，不就是在空寂之中缘起缘灭的吗？ We’re unaware of the earth’s movement as well as mountains’ migration, yet a spectacular change thus ensued. The choice of a lifetime had never tugged at your heartstrings then. Behold, is it not that the life, death, pride and grief of this world all wax and wane in silence and obscurity?