舞蹈相關(guān)外文翻譯（節(jié)選）

1、<p>　　5000單詞，21800英文字符，7900漢字</p><p>　　Learning to Dance（Excerpts）</p><p>　　Bathroom Dance</p><p>　　When I try on one of the nurse's caps my friend Helen nearly dies. </

2、p><p>　　‘Oh!’ she cries, ‘take it off! I’ll die! Oh if you could see yourself, Oh!’ she creams and Miss Besser looks at me with six years of reproach stored in the look.</p><p>　　We are all sewing

3、Helen’s uniform in the Domestic Science room. Three pin-striped dress with long sleeves, buttoned from the wrist to the elbow, double tucks and innumerable button holes; fourteen white aprons and fourteen little caps whi

4、ch have to be drawn up to make those neat little caps which have to be rubbed along the seam with a wet toothbrush before the tapes can be drawn up to make those neat little pleats at the back. Helen looks so sweet in he

5、rs. I can’t help wishing, when I see mysel</p><p>　　Helen ordered her material before persuading me to go to the hospital with her. So, when I order mine it is too late to have my uniform made by the class.

6、It is the end of term, the end of our last year at school. My material is sent home.</p><p>　　Mister Jackson tells me, in the last Sunday evening meeting, that he wants the deepest responsibility for standar

7、ds and judgments in his pupils, especially those who are about to leave the happy family which is how he likes to think of his school. We must not, he says, believe in doing just what we please. We must always believe in

8、 the nourishment of the inner life and in the loving discipline of personal relationships. We must always be concerned with the relentless search for truth at whatever</p><p>　　My mother says the stuff is pi

9、llow ticking. She feels there is nothing refined about nursing. The arrival of the striped material has upset her. She says she has other things in mind for me, traveling on the Continent, Europe, she says, studying art

10、and ancient building and music.</p><p>　　‘But there’s a war on,’ I says.</p><p>　　‘Oh well, after the war.’</p><p>　　She can see my mind is made up and she is sad and cross for some

11、 days. The parcel, with one corner torn open, lies in the hall. She is comforted by the arrival of a letter from the Matron saying that all probationer nurses are required to bring warm sensible knickers. She feels the M

12、atron must be a very nice person after all and she has my uniform made for me in the shop and pays extra to have it done quickly.</p><p>　　Helen’s mother invites me to spend a few fays with Helen before we g

13、o to St Cuthberts.</p><p>　　The tiny rooms in Helen’s home are full of sunshine. There are bright-yellow curtains gently fluttering at the open windows. The garden is full of summer flowers, roses and lupins

14、 and delphiniums, light blue and dark blue. The front of the house is covered with a trellis of flowers, some kind of wisteria which is sweetly fragrant at dusk.</p><p>　　Helen’s mother is small and quiet an

15、d kind. She is anxious and always concerned. She puts laxatives in the puddings she makes.</p><p>　　I like Helen’s house and garden, it is peaceful there and I would like to be there all the time but Helen w

16、ants to do other things. She is terribly in love with someone called David. Everything id David these few days. We spend a great deal of time outside a milkbar on the corner near David’s house or walking endlessly in the

17、 streets where he is likely to go. No one, except me, knows of this great love. Because I am a visitor in the house I try to be agreeable. And I try to make an effort to und</p><p>　　‘I can’t think what is t

18、he matter with Helen,’ Mrs Ferguson says softly one evening when Helen rushes from the room to answer the telephone in case it should be David. We are putting the blackout screens which Mrs. Ferguson has made skillfully

19、to go behind the cheerful yellow curtains every night. ‘I suppose she is excited about her career,’ she says in her quiet voice, picking up a little table which was in Helen’s ways.</p><p>　　Everyone is so k

20、een on careers for us. Mister Jackson, at school, was always reading aloud from letters sent by old boys and girls who are having careers, poultry farming, running boys’ clubs and digging with the unemployed. He liked th

21、e envelopes to match the paper, he said, and sometimes he held up both for us all to see.</p><p>　　Helen is desperate to see David before we leave. We go to all the services at his mother's church and to

22、 her Bible class where she makes us hand round plates of rock cakes to the Old Folk between the lantern slides. But there is no David. Helen writes him a postcard with a silly passionate message. During the night she cri

23、es and cries and says it is awful being so madly in love and will I pretend I have sent the postcard. Of course I say I won’t. Helen writes begs me, she keeps on begging, sayin</p><p>　　In the morning I writ

24、e another card saying that I am sorry about the stupid card which I have sent and I show it to Helen, saying , ‘We’ll need to wash our hair before we go.’</p><p>　　‘I’ll go up first,’ she says. While she is

25、in the bathroom using up all the hot water, I add a few words to my postcard, a silly passionate message, and I put Helen’s name on it because of being tired and confused with the bad night we had. I go out and post it b

26、efore she comes down with her hair all done up in a towel, the way she always does.</p><p>　　Mrs Ferguson comes up to London with us when we set off for St Cuthberts. Helen has to dash back to the house twic

27、e, once for her camera and the second time for her raincoat. I wait with Mrs Ferguson on the corner and she points out to me the window in the County Hospital where her husband died the year before. Her blue eyes are the

28、 saddest eyes I have ever seen. I say I am sorry about Mr. Ferguson’s death, but because of the uneasiness of the journey and the place where we are going, I know tha</p><p>　　Helen comes rushing up the hill

29、, she has slammed the front door, she says, forgetting that she put the key on the kitchen table and will her mother manage to climb through the pantry window in the dark and whatever are we waiting for when we have only

30、 a few minutes to get to the train.</p><p>　　David, unseen, goes about his unseen life in the narrow suburb of little streets and houses. Helen seems to forget him easily, straight away.</p><p>

31、　　Just as we are sitting down to lunch there is an air-raid warning. It is terrible to have to leave the plates of food which have been placed in front of us. Mrs Ferguson has some paper bags in the handbag.</p>&

32、lt;p>　　‘Mother!’ You can’t!’ Helen’ face is red and angry. Mrs Ferguson, ignoring her, slides the salads and the bread and butter into the bags. We have to stand for two hours in the air-raid shelter. It is very noisy

33、 the A.R.P. warden says and they will not let us leave. It is too crowded for us to eat in there and, in any case, you can’t eat when you are frightened.</p><p>　　Later, in the next train, we have to stand a

34、ll the way because the whole train is filled with the army. Big bodies, big rosy faces, thick rough greatcoats, kitbags, boots and cigarette smoke wherever we look. We stand swaying in the corridor pressed and squeezed b

35、y people passing, still looking for somewhere to sit. We can’t eat there either. We throw the sad bags, beetroot soaked, out onto the railway lines.</p><p>　　I feel sick as soon as we go into the main hall a

36、t St Cutberts. It is the hospital smell and the smell of the bread and butter we try to eat in the nurses’ dining room. Helen tries to pour two cups of tea but the tea is all gone. The teapot has a bitter smell of emptin

37、ess.</p><p>　　Upstairs in Helen’s room on the Peace corridor as it is called because it is over the chapel, we put on our uniforms and she screams with laughter at the sight of me in my cap.</p><p

38、>　　‘Oh, you look just like you did at school,’ she can’t stop laughing. How can she laugh like has when we are so late. For wartime security the railway station names have been removed and, though we were counting the

39、 stops, we made a mistake and went past our station and had to wait for a bus which would bring us back.</p><p>　　‘Lend me a safety pin,’ I say, ‘one of my buttons has broken in half.’ Helen, with a mouthful

40、 of hair grips, busy with her own cap, is melancholy in there, dark, because a piece of black-out material has been pinned over the window and is only partly looped up. The afternoon sun of autumn is sad too when I peer

41、out of the bit of window and see the long slanting shadows lying across unfamiliar fields and roads leading to unknown places.</p><p>　　My school trunk, in my room before me, is a king of betrayal. When I op

42、en it books and shoes and clothes spill out. Some of my pressed wildflowers have come unstuck and I put them back between the pages remembering the sweet, wet grass near the school where we searched for flowers. I seem t

43、o see clearly shining long fingers pulling stalks and holding bunches. Saxifrage, campion, vetch, ragged robin, star of Bethlehem, wild strawberry and sorrel. Quickly I tidy the flowers-violet, buttercup, king</p>

44、<p>　　‘No Christian names on duty please,’ staff nurse Sharpe says, so, after six years in the same dormitory, Helen and I make a great effort. Ferguson-Wright, Wright-Ferguson.</p><p>　　‘Have you fini

45、shed with the floor mop-Ferguson?’</p><p>　　‘Oh, you have it first-Wright ’</p><p>　　‘Oh! No! by all means, after you Ferguson.’</p><p>　　‘No, after you Wright.’</p><p>

46、;　　Staff nurse Sharpe turns her eyes up to the ceiling so that only the whites show. She puts her watch on the window still saying, ‘Quarter of an hour to get those baths, basins and toilets really clean and the floors d

47、one too. So hurry!’</p><p>　　‘No Christian names on duty,’ we remind each other.</p><p>　　We never sleep in our rooms on the Peace corridor. Every night we have to carry out blankets down to the

48、 basement where we sleep on straw mattresses. It is supposed to be safe there in air raids. There is no air and the water pipes make noises all night. As soon as I am able to fall asleep Night Sister Bean is banging with

49、 the end of her torch saying, ‘Dive-thirty a.m. nurses, five-thirty a.m.’ And it is time to take up our blankets and carry them back upstairs to our rooms.</p><p>　　I am working with Helen in the children’s

50、ward. Because half the hospital is full of soldiers the ward is very crowded. There are sixty children; there is always someone laughing and someone crying. I am too slow. My sleeves are always rolled up when they should

51、 be rolled down and buttoned into the cuffs. When they should be rolled down and buttoned into the cuffs. When my sleeves are down and buttoned it seems they have to be rolled up again at once. I can never remember the n

52、ames of the childr</p><p>　　The weeks go by and I play my secret game of comparisons as I played it at school. On the Peace corridor are some very pretty nurses. They are always washing each other’ hair and

53、hanging their delicate underclothes to dry in the bathroom. In the scented steamy atmosphere I can’t help comparing their clothes with mine and their faces and bodies with mine. Every time I am always worse than their fa

54、ces and they all look so much more attractive in their uniforms, especially the cap suits them well. </p><p>　　‘N‘What did Matron want?’ Ferguson is waiting for me when I go to the ward to fetch my gas mask

55、and my helmet. Iurse Wright!’ Night Sister Bean calls my name at breakfast.</p><p>　　‘Yes Sister.’ I stand up as I have seen the others do.</p><p>　　‘Matron’s office nine a.m.,’ she says and goe

56、s on calling the register.</p><p>　　I am worried about my appointment with the Matron. Something must be wrong.</p><p>　　am anxious not to lose these as I am responsible for them and will have t

57、o give them back if I leave the hospital or if the war should come to an end.</p><p>　　‘What did Matron want?’ Ferguson repeats her question, giving me time to think.</p><p>　　‘Oh it is nothing

58、much,’ I reply.</p><p>　　‘Oh come on! What did she want you for!? Are you in trouble?’ she asks hopefully.</p><p>　　‘Oh no, it’s nothing much at all.’ I wave my gas mask. ‘If you must know she w

59、anted to tell me that she is very pleased with my work and she’ll be very surprised if I don’t win the gold medal.’ Ferguson stares at me, her mouth wide open, while I collect my clean aprons. She does not notice that on

60、e of them is hers. It will give me an extra one for the work. I go to the office to tell the ward sister that I have been transferred to the theatre.</p><p>　　Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,</p>

61、<p>　　Enwrought with golden and silver light,</p><p>　　O’Connor, the theatre staff nurse, is singing. She has an Irish accent and a mellow voice. I would like to tell her I know this poem too.</p&g

62、t;<p>　　The blue and the dim and the dark cloths</p><p>　　Of night and light and the half light,</p><p>　　In the theatre they are all intimate. They have well-bred voices and ways of spea

63、king. They look healthy and well poised and behave with the ease of movement and gesture which comes from years of good breading. They are a little circle in which I am not included. I do not try to be. I wish every day,

64、 though, that I could be a part of their reference and their joke.</p><p>　　In a fog of the incomprehensible and the obscure I strive, more stupid than I have ever been in my life, to anticipate the needs of

65、 the theatre sister whose small, hard eyes glitter at me above her white cotton mask. I rush off for the jaconet.</p><p>　　‘Why didn’t you look at the table?’ I piece together her angry masked hiss as I stan

66、d offering a carefully opened and held sterilized drum. One frightened glance at the operating table tells me it is catgut she asked for.</p><p>　　‘Boil up the trolley,’ the careless instruction in the soft

67、Irish voice floats towards me at the end of the long morning. Everything is on the instrument trolley.</p><p>　　‘Why ever didn’t you put the doctors’ soap back on the sink first?’ The theatre is awash with b

68、oiled-over soap suds. Staff nurse O’Connor, lazily amused, is just scornful enough. ‘And,’ she says, ‘what in God’s Holy Name is this?’ She fishes from the sterilizer a doll-sized jumper. She holds it up in the long-hand

69、led forceps. ‘I see trouble ahead,’ she warns, ‘better not let sister see this.’ It is the chief surgeon’s real Jaeger woolen vest. He wears it to operate. He has only two and is very p</p><p>　　Theatre sist

70、er and staff nurse O’Connor, always in masks, exchange glances of immediate and understanding. They, when not in masks, have loud voices and laugh. They talk a great deal about horses and dogs and about Mummy and Daddy.

71、They are quite shameless in all this Mummy and Daddy talk.</p><p>　　The X-ray staff are even more well-bred. They never wear uniform and they sing and laugh and come into the theatre in whatever they happen

72、to be wearing-backless dinner dresses, tennis shorts or their night gowns. All the time they have a sleepy desirable look of mingled charm and efficiency. War-time shortages of chocolate and other foodstuffs and efficien

73、cy. War-time shortages of chocolate and other foodstuffs and restrictions on movement, not going up to London at night for instance, do not s</p><p>　　I can’t compare myself with these people at all. They ne

74、ver speak to me except to ask me to fetch something. Even Mr Potter, the anaesthetist who seems kind and has a fatherly voice, never looks in my direction. He says, holding out his syringe, ‘Evipan’ or ‘Pentothal’, and t

75、alks to the others. Something about his voice, every day, reminds me of a quality in my father’s voice; it makes me wish to be back at home. There is something hopeless in being hopeful that one person can actually match

76、 and</p><p>　　Sometimes Mr Potter tells a joke to the others and I do not know whether I should join in the laugh or not.</p><p>　　I like Snorter’s clothes and wish that I had some like them. I

77、possess a three-quarter-length oatmeal coat with padded shoulders and gilt buttons which my mother thinks is elegant and useful as it will go with everything. It is so ugly it dose not matter what I wear it with. The blu

78、e shirt I have is too long, the material is heavy, it sags and makes me tired.</p><p>　　‘Not with brown shoes!’ Ferguson shakes her head.</p><p>　　It is my day off and I am in her room. The empt

79、iness of the lonely day stretches ahead of me. It is true that the blue skirt and the brown shoes, they are all I have, do look terrible together.</p><p>　　Ferguson and her new friend, Carson, are going out

80、to meet some soldiers to go on something called a pub crawl. Ferguson, I know, has never had anything stronger than ginger beer to drink in her life. I am watching her get ready. She has frizzed her hair all across her b

81、aby round forehead. I can’t help admiring her, the blaze of lipstick alter her completely.</p><p>　　Carson comes in balancing on very high-heeled shoes. She has on a halo hat with a cheeky little veil and so

82、me bright-pink silk stockings.</p><p>　　‘What lovely pink stocking!’ I say to please her.</p><p>　　‘Salmon, please,’ Carson says haughtily. Her hair is curled too and she is plastered all over w

83、ith ornaments, brooches, necklaces, rings and lipstick, a different colour from Ferguson’s. Ferguson looks bare and chubby and schoolgirlish next to Carson.</p><p>　　Both of them are about to go when I sudde

84、nly feel I can’t face the whole day alone.</p><p>　　‘It’s my day off too,’ I say, ‘a(chǎn)nd I don’t know where to go.’</p><p>　　Ferguson pauses in the doorway.</p><p>　　‘Well, why don’t

85、you come with us.’ Carson says. Both of them look at me.</p><p>　　‘The trouble is, Wright,’ Carson says kindly, ‘the trouble is that you’ve got no sex appeal.’</p><p>　　After they have gone I si

86、t in Ferguson’s room for a long time staring at myself in her mirror to see if it shows badly I have no sex appeal.</p><p>　　I dream my name is Chevalier and I search for my name on the typed lists on the gr

87、een baize notice boards. The examination results are out. I search for my name in the middle of the names and only find it later at the top.</p><p>　　My name, not the Chevalier of the dream, but my own name

88、is at the top of the lists when they appear.</p><p>　　I work hard in all my free time at the lecture notes and at the essays ‘Ward Routine’, ‘Nursing as a Career’, ‘Some Aspects of the History of Nursing’ an

89、d ‘The Nurse and her patient’.</p><p>　　The one on ward routine pleases me most. As I write the essay, the staff and the patients and the wards of St Cuthberts seem to unfold about me and I begin to understa

90、nd what I am trying to do in this hospital. I rewrite the essay collecting the complete working of a hospital ward into two sheets of paper. When it is read aloud to the other nurses, Ferguson stares at me and does not t

91、ake her eyes off me all through the nursing lecture which follows.</p><p>　　I learn every bone and muscle in the body and all the muscle attachments and all the systems of the body. I begin to understand the

92、 destruction of disease and the construction of cure. I find I can use phrases suddenly in speech or on paper which give a correct answer. Formulae for digestion or respiration or for the action of drugs. Words and phras

93、es like gaseous interchange and internal combustion roll from my pen and the name at the top of the lists continues to be mine.</p><p>　　‘Don’t tell me you’ll be top in invalid cookery too!’ Ferguson says an

94、d she reminds me of the white sauce I made at school which was said to have blocked up the drains for two days. She goes on to remind me how my pastry board, put up at the window to dry, was the one which fell on the hea

95、dmaster’s wife while she was weeding in the garden below, breaking her glasses and altering the shape of her nose forever.</p><p>　　My invalid carrot is the prettiest of them all. The examiner gives me the h

96、ighest mark.</p><p>　　‘But it’s not even cooked properly!’ Ferguson is outrages when she tastes it afterwards. She says the sauce is disgusting.</p><p>　　‘Oh well you can’t expect the examiner t

97、o actually eat all the things she is marking,’ I say.</p><p>　　Ferguson has indigestion, she is very uncomfortable all evening because, in the greedy big taste, she has nearly the whole carrot.</p>&l

98、t;p>　　It is the custom, apparently, at St Cuthberts to move the nurses from one corridor to another. I am given a larger room in a corridor called Industry. It is over the kitchens and is noisy and smells of burning s

99、aucepans. This room has a big tall window. I move my bed under the window and, dressed in my school jersey, I lie on the bed for as long as possible for the night. Some evenings I fall into a deep and refreshing sleep ob