《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 12 (22):讀報紙 學意大利語大綱

I've been trying to read through one newspaper article every day, no matter how long it takes. I look up approximately every third word in my dictionary. Today's news was fascinating. Hard to imagine a more dramatic headline than "Obesità! I Bambini Italiani Sono i PiùGrassi d'Europa!" Good God! Obesity! The article, I think, is declaring that Italian babies are the fattest babies in Europe! Reading on, I learn that Italian babies are significantly fatter than German babies and very significantly fatter than French babies.(Mercifully, there was no mention of how they measure up against American babies.) Older Italian children are dangerously obese these days, too, says the article. (The pasta industry defended itself.) These alarming statistics on Italian child fatness were unveiled yesterday by—no need to translate here—"una task force internazionale." It took me almost an hour to decipher this whole article. The entire time, I was eating a pizza and listening to one of Italy's children play the accordion across the street. The kid didn't look very fat to me, but that may have been because he was a gypsy. I'm not sure if I misread the last line of the article, but it seemed there was some talk from the government that the only way to deal with the obesity crisis in Italy was to implement a tax on the overweight . . .? Could this be true? After a few months of eating like this, will they come after me?

我每天嘗試把報紙上的一篇文章從頭到尾讀一遍，無論花多少時間。我大概每三個字查一次字典。今天的消息很有意思。很難想像有比 “Obesit? I Bambini Italiani Sono i PiùGrassi d' Europa!”更戲劇性的新聞標題。老天爺！肥胖症！我想這篇文章在宣稱意大利的嬰兒是歐洲最胖的嬰兒！我往下念，得知意大利嬰兒比德國嬰兒胖得多，比法國嬰兒更是胖上許多（幸好未提及和美國嬰兒較量的結果。）文章指出，較大的孩子近來的肥胖情況亦很嚴重。（麪食工業爲自己辯護。）這些意大利幼童肥胖症的驚人統計數字，昨日由一個國際專責小組所發表。我花了將近一個鐘頭轉譯整篇文章。這期間，我吃着比薩餅，聽着意大利孩童中的一位在對街演奏手風琴。這孩子在我看來並不太胖，但或許因爲他是吉普賽人。我不確定是否誤讀文章的最後一行字，但看來政府似乎談到，解決意大利肥胖危機的唯一方式是課徵“超重稅”……？這是真的嗎？這麼吃了幾個月後，他們會不會來找我麻煩？

It's also important to read the newspaper every day to see how the pope is doing. Here in Rome, the pope's health is recorded daily in the newspaper, very much like weather, or the TV schedule. Today the pope is tired. Yesterday, the pope was less tired than he is today. Tomorrow, we expect that the pope will not be quite so tired as he was today.

每天看報來了解教宗的狀況也很重要。在羅馬，報上天天刊載教宗的健康狀況，就像天氣預報，或電視節目表。今天，教宗很累。昨天，教宗比今天不累。明天，預料教宗將不像今天這麼累。

It's kind of a fairyland of language for me here. For someone who has always wanted to speak Italian, what could be better than Rome? It's like somebody invented a city just to suit my specifications, where everyone (even the children, even the taxi drivers, even the actors on the commercials!) speaks this magical language. It's like the whole society is conspiring to teach me Italian. They'll even print their newspapers in Italian while I'm here; they don't mind! They have bookstores here that only sell books written in Italian! I found such a bookstore yesterday morning and felt I'd entered an enchanted palace. Everything was in Italian—even Dr. Seuss. I wandered through, touching all the books, hoping that anyone watching me might think I was a native speaker. Oh, how I want Italian to open itself up to me! This feeling reminded me of when I was four years old and couldn't read yet, but was dying to learn. I remember sitting in the waiting room of a doctor's office with my mother, holding a Good Housekeeping magazine in front of my face, turning the pages slowly, staring at the text, and hoping the grown-ups in the waiting room would think I was actually reading. I haven't felt so starved for comprehension since then. I found some works by American poets in that bookstore, with the original English version printed on one side of the page and the Italian translation on the other. I bought a volume by Robert Lowell, another by Louise Glück.

對我來說，這裏是語言的仙境。對於一向想說意大利語的人而言，哪個地方能比羅馬更好？就像有人爲了配合我的需要而創造出一座城市，城裏每個人（甚至連兒童、計程車司機、電視廣告的演員）都用這神奇的語言在說話。就好似整個社會同心協力教我意大利語。他們甚至趁我待在這兒的時候印意大利文報紙；他們一點也不介意大費周章！他們這裏有些書店只賣意大利文寫的書！昨天早上我發現這樣一家書店 ，覺得自己進了一座魔法宮殿。所有的書都是意大利文——甚至蘇斯博士（s）也是。我逛遍整間書店，觸摸每一本書 ，希望任何人看見我 ，都以爲我的母語是意大利語。喔，我多麼希望意大利語朝我開放它自己！這感覺讓我回想起四歲時仍不識字，卻渴望學會閱讀。我記得和母親坐在診所的候診室，拿着一本《好管家》（Good Housekeeping）雜誌擺在面前，慢慢地翻着，盯着內文，希望候診室裏的大人們以爲我確實在讀。從那以後，我從未感到如此渴望理解。我在這家書店看見美國詩人的作品，書頁的一邊印着英文版原文，另一邊印着意大利文翻譯。我買了一本洛 威爾（Robert Lowell）的書，另買一本格麗克（Louise Glck）的。