第 五 届 CASIO 杯 翻 译 竞 赛

主办：上海市文学艺术界联合会 上海世纪出版股份有限公司
承办：上海翻译家协会 上海译文出版社《外国文艺•译文》杂志
协办：卡西欧(上海) 贸易有限公司
组委会成员：
吴贻弓 中国文联副主席 上海市文联主席 中国电影家协会主席
草 婴 中国翻译协会名誉理事 中国资深翻译家
夏仲翼 复旦大学教授、博导
戴炜栋 中国翻译协会副会长、上海翻译家协会会长 上海外国语大学教授、博导
陆谷孙 上海翻译家协会副会长 原复旦大学外文学院院长、教授、博导
韩卫东 上海译文出版社党委书记、社长

征文启事

由上海翻译家协会和上海译文出版社《外国文艺•译文》杂志共同承办、以推进我国翻译事业的繁荣发展

，发现和培养翻译新人为宗旨的CASIO杯翻译竞赛，继成功举行了四届之后，已成为翻译界的知名赛事。

今年，本届竞赛特设两个语种——英语和法语。具体参赛规则如下：
一、本届竞赛为英语、法语翻译竞赛。
二、参赛者年龄：45周岁以下。
三、 竞赛原文刊登在2008年第3期（2008年5月出版）的《外国文艺•译文》杂志、上海译文出版社网

站www.yiwen.com.cn、上海翻译家协会网站www.sta.org.cn　及卡西欧网站　www.casio.com.cn/dic　
四、 本届翻译竞赛评选委员由各大高校、出版社等专家学者组成。
五、 参赛译文必须用电脑打印，寄往：上海市福建中路193号上海译文出版社《译文》杂志编辑部，

邮政编码200001。信封上注明：CASIO杯翻译竞赛。为了体现评奖的公正性和客观性，译文正文内请勿书

写姓名等任何与译者个人身份信息相关的文字或符号，否则译文无效。请另页写明详尽的个人信息，如姓

名、性别、出生年月日、工作学习单位及家庭住址、联系电话、E-MAIL地址等，恕不接受以电子邮件和传

真等其他形式发来的参赛稿件，参加评奖的译文恕不退还。
六、 参赛译文必须独立完成，合译、抄袭或请他人校订过的译文均属无效。
七、 截稿日期为2008年7月31日（以邮寄当日邮戳为准）。
八、 为鼓励更多的翻译爱好者参与比赛，提高翻译水平，两个语种的竞赛各设一等奖1名（证书及价

值7000元的奖金和奖品），二等奖2名（证书及价值3000元的奖金和奖品），三等奖3名（证书及价值2000

元的奖金和奖品），优胜奖20名（证书及价值300元的奖品），此外还设优秀组织奖1名（价值5000元的奖

金和奖品）。各奖项在没有合格译文的情况下将作相应空缺。
九、 《译文》将于2008年第6期（2008年11月出版）公布评选结果并刊登优秀译文，竞赛结果同时在

上海译文出版社和上海翻译家协会网站上公布。
十、 以上条款的解释权归上海译文出版社所有。

英语评委：（按姓氏笔画）
冯庆华 上海外国语大学副校长、教授、博导 上海翻译家协会理事
吴 洪 上海译文出版社副总编 上海翻译家协会常务理事
张春柏 华东师范大学外语学院院长、教授、博导 上海翻译家协会常务理事
黄源深 上海对外贸易学院教授、博导 上海翻译家协会副会长
翟象俊 复旦大学外文学院教授 上海翻译家协会副会长

法语评委：（按姓氏笔画）
许 钧 南京大学研究生院副院长、南京大学学术委员会副主任、教授、博导 中国法语教学研究会副会

长
周克希 上海译文出版社编审 上海翻译家协会常务理事
郑克鲁 上海师范大学教授、博导 上海翻译家协会副会长 中国法国文学研究会副会长
徐和瑾 复旦大学教授 上海翻译家协会理事 中国法国文学研究会理事
曹德明 上海外国语大学校长、教授、博导 中国法语教学研究会会长

英语原文：

Optics

Manini Nayar

When I was s~ven, my friend Sol was hit by lightning and died. He
was on a rooftop quietly playing marbles when this happened. Burnt to
cinders, we were told by the neighbourhood gossips. He\'d caught fire,
we were assured, but never felt a thing. I only remember a frenzy of
ambulances and long clean sirens cleaving the silence of that damp
October night. Later, my father came to sit with me. This happens to
one in several millions, he said, as if a knowledge of the bare statistics
mitigated the horror. He was trying to help, I think. Or perhaps he
believed I thought it would happen to me. Until now, Sol and I had
shared everything; secrets, chocolates, friends, even a birthdate. We
would marry at eighteen, we promised each other, and have six chil-
dren, two cows and a heart-shaped tattoo with \'Eternally Yours\'
sketched on our behinds. But now Sol was somewhere else, and I was
seven years old and under the covers in my bed counting spots before
my eyes in the darkness.
After that I cleared out my play-cupboard. Out went my collection
of teddy bears and picture books. In its place was an emptiness, the
oak panels reflecting their own woodshine. The space I made seemed
almost holy, though mother thought my efforts a waste. An empty
cupboard is no better than an empty cup, she said in an apocryphal
aside. Mother always filled things up - cups, water jugs, vases, boxes,
arms - as if colour and weight equalled a superior quality of life.
Mother never understood that this was my dreamtime place. Here I
could hide, slide the doors shut behind me, scrunch my eyes tight and
breathe in another world. When I opened my eyes, the glow from the
lone cupboard-bulb seemed to set the polished walls shimmering, and
I could feel what Sol must have felt, dazzle and darkness. I was
sharing this with him, as always. He would know, wherever he was,
that I knew what he knew, saw what he had seen. But to mother I only
said that I was tired of teddy bears and picture books. What she
thought I couldn\'t tell, but she stirred the soup-pot vigorously.
One in several millions, I said to myself many times, as if the key,
the answer to it all, lay there. The phrase was heavy on my lips, stub-
bornly resistant to knowledge. Sometimes I said the words out of con-
text to see if by deflection, some quirk of physics, the meaning would
suddenly come to me. Thanks for the beans, mother, I said to her at
lunch, you\'re one in millions. Mother looked at me oddly, pursed her
lips and offered me more rice. At this club, when father served a clean
ace to win the Retired-Wallahs Rotating Cup, I pointed out that he was
one in a million. Oh, the serve was one in a million, father protested
modestly. But he seemed pleased. Still, this wasn\'t what I was looking
for, and in time the phrase slipped away from me, lost its magic
urgency, became as bland as \'Pass the salt\' or \'Is the bath water hot?\' If
Sol was one in a million, I was one among far less; a dozen, say. He
was chosen. I was ordinary. He had been touched and transformed by
forces I didn\'t understand. I was left cleaning out the cupboard. There
was one way to bridge the chasm, to bring Sol back to life, but I would
wait to try it until the most magical of moments. I would wait until the
moment was so right and shimmering that Sol would have to come
back. This was my weapon that nobody knew of, not even mother,
even though she had pursed her lips up at the beans. This was
between Sol and me.
The winter had almost guttered into spring when father was ill.~
One February morning, he sat in his chair, ashen as the cinders in
the grate. Then, his fingers splayed out in front of him, his mouth
working, he heaved and fell. It all happened suddenly, so cleanly, as if
rehearsed and perfected for weeks. Again the sirens, the screech of
wheels, the white coats in perpetual motion. Heart seizures weren\'t
one in a million. But they deprived you just the same, darkness but no
dazzle, and a long waiting.
Now I knew there was no turning back. This was the moment. I had
to do it without delay; there was no time to waste. While they carried
father out, I rushed into the cupboard, scrunched my eyes tight,
opened them in the shimmer and called out \'Sol! Sol! Sol!\' I wanted to
keep my mind blank, like death must be, but father and Sol gusted in
and out in confusing pictures. Leaves in a storm and I the calm axis.
Here was father playing marbles on a roof. Here was Sol serving ace
after ace. Here was father with two cows. Here was Sol hunched over
the breakfast table. The pictures eddied and rushed. The more frantic
they grew, the clearer my voice became, tolling like a bell: \'Sol! Sol!
Sol!\' The cupboard rang with voices, some mine, some echoes, some
from what seemed another place - where Sol was, maybe. The cup-
board seemed to groan and reverberate, as if shaken by lightning and
thunder. Any minute now it would burst open and I would find myself
in a green valley fed by limpid brooks and red with hibiscus. I would
run through tall grass and wading into the waters, see Sol picking
flowers. I would open my eyes and he\'d be there, hibiscus-laden,
laughing. Where have you been, he\'d say, as if it were I who had
burned, falling in ashes. I was filled to bursting with a certainty so
strong it seemed a celebration almost. Sobbing, I opened my eyes. The
bulb winked at the walls.
I fell asleep, I think, because I awoke to a deeper darkness. It was
late, much past my bedtime. Slowly I crawled out of the cupboard, my
tongue furred, my feet heavy. My mind felt like lead. Then I heard my
name. Mother was in her chair by the window, her body defined by a
thin ray of moonlight. Your father Will be well, she said quietly, and he
will be home soon. The shaft of light in which she sat so motionless
was like the light that would have touched Sol if he\'d been lucky; if he
had been like one of us, one in a dozen, or less. This light fell in a
benediction, caressing mother, slipping gently over my father in his
hospital bed six streets away. I reached out and stroked my mother\'s
arm. It was warm like bath water, her skin the texture of hibiscus.
We stayed together for some time, my mother and I, invaded by
small night sounds and the raspy whirr of crickets. Then I stood up
and turned to return to my room. Mother looked at me quizzically.
Are you all right, she asked. I told her I was fine, that I had some
c!eaning up to do. Then I went to my cupboard and stacked it up
again with teddy bears and picture books.
Some years later we moved to Rourkela, a small mining town in the
north east, near Jamshedpur. The summer I turned sixteen, I got lost
in the thick woods there. They weren\'t that deep - about three miles
at the most. All I had to do was cycle for all I was worth, and in
minutes I\'d be on the dirt road leading into town. But a stir in the
leaves gave me pause.
I dismounted and stood listening. Branches arched like claws over-
head. The sky crawled on a white belly of clouds. Shadows fell in
tessellated patterns of grey and black. There was a faint thrumming all
around, as if the air were being strung and practised for an overture.
And yet there was nothing, just a silence of moving shadows, a bulb
winking at the walls. I remembered Sol, of whom I hadn\'t thought in
years. And foolishly again I waited, not for answers but simply for an
end to the terror the woods were building in me, chord by chord, like
dissonant music. When the cacophony grew too much to bear, I re-
mounted and pedalled furiously, banshees screaming past my ears, my
feet assuming a clockwork of their own. The pathless ground threw up
leaves and stones, swirls of dust rose and settled. The air was cool and
steady as I hurled myself into the falling light.