經典科幻文學:《基本上無害 Mostly Harmless》第24章4

It wasn’t his job to worry about that, though. It was his job to do his job, which was to do his job. If that led to a certain narrowness of vision and circularity of thought then it wasn’t his job to worry about such things. Any such things that came his way were referred to others who had, in turn, other people to refer such things to.

不過爲這事情煩心並不是他的工作，他的工作是做他的工作，而他的工作的內容就是做他的工作，如果這導致了視野狹隘循環論證什麼的，那他的工作也不是爲這些事情操心，遇上這種事情，他會交給其他人處理，而這些其他人又會再把它們交給其他的其他人。

Many, many light years from here, indeed from anywhere, lies the grim and long abandoned planet, Vogsphere. Somewhere on a fetid, fog-bound mud bank on this planet there stands, surrounded by the dirty, broken and empty carapaces of the last few jeweled scuttling crabs, a small stone monument which marks the place, where it is thought, the species Vogon Vogonblurtus first arose. On the monument there is carved an arrow which points away into the fog, under which are inscribed in plain, simple letters the words ‘The buck stops there.’

在距離這裏許多許多光年的地方——事實上那兒距離哪裏都有許多許多光年——有一顆老早就被拋棄的星球，這顆陰沉沉的行星就是沃貢星，在上頭某個濃霧瀰漫，（、）臭氣熏天的岸邊，爛泥裏豎立着一塊石頭做的小紀念碑。星球上最後幾隻倉皇而逃的寄居蟹留下了自己的空殼，散落在紀念碑周圍，模樣又髒又破，這座紀念碑紀念的是大家猜測中沃貢人（人種學的學名叫沃貢人普魯圖斯）首次上岸的地方。紀念碑上刻着一個箭頭，指向外頭的霧氣，箭頭底下用簡潔樸素的字體寫着“到此爲止”。

Deep in the bowels of his unsightly yellow ship, the Vogon Captain grunted as he reached for a slightly faded and dog-eared piece of paper that lay in front of him. A demolition order.

在那艘奇醜無比的黃色飛船肚子裏，沃貢船長一面咕噥一面伸出手去，拿起面前那張稍微有點捲曲褪色的紙片。一道清楚指令。

If you were to unravel exactly where the Captain’s job, which was to do his job which was to do his job, actually began, then it all came down at last to this piece of paper that had been issued to him by his immediate superior long ago. The piece of paper had an instruction on it, and his purpose was to carry out that instruction and put a little tick mark in the adjacent box when he had carried it out.

我們已經解釋過了，船長的工作就是幹他的工作，不過如果你硬要弄明白這工作到底是從哪裏開始的，那麼最終答案就是這張紙，很久之前由他的頂頭上司下達，上頭有一道命令，而他的目標就是要執行這命令，然後，等完成之後，再在旁邊的小框裏打一個小勾。