把酒店帶回家 Bringing The Hotel Home

最近，又一次參加了由一個美國翻譯網站舉辦的全球翻譯比賽，結果再一次名落孫山，三甲不入，在第一輪已經出局，參賽會員只有11人，結果接近包尾大班。這個雖然是美國網站，但多是中國大陸人士在那邊討生活，非會員也可投票輪選優勝者。為了不太突出自己的參賽背景，改用簡體字，結果如上次一樣，在衍詞用字方面，無法掩藏，不被接受。以下就是參賽譯文，獻醜了。

Bringing the Hotel Home把酒店帶回家

http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/lifestyle/bringing-hotel-home?page=full

We're accustomed to glamour in London SE26: Kelly Brook and Jason Statham used to live above the dentist. But when Anouska Hempel's heels hit the cracked cement of the parking space outside my flat, it's hard not to think of those Picture Post photographs of royalty visiting bombed-out families during the second world war. Her mission in my modest tract of suburbia is, however, about more than offering sympathy. Hempel—the woman who invented the boutique hotel before it bore any such proprietary name—has come to give me information for which, judging by the spreads in interiors magazines and anxious postings on online DIY forums, half the property-owners in the Western world seem desperate: how to give an ordinary home the look and the vibe of a five-star, £750-a-night hotel suite. To Hem­pelise, in this case, a modest conversion flat formed from the middle slice of a three-storey Victorian semi.

我們對倫敦SE26區迷人的貴氣並不陌生：過往Kelly Brook和Jason Statham曾住在牙醫事務所的樓上。但當Anouska Hempel的鞋跟，踩著寓所外停車位的破裂水泥塊時，不其然便想起在第二次世界大戰期間，刊登在Picture Post新聞畫報上，皇室成員去慰問被炸至無家可歸家庭的照片。身處在我這個頗為寬敞的近郊，她登門造訪的目的，當然不只是驅寒送暖而已。Hempel – 是一名首創精品小旅店的女士，在此之前，業內還未用她的名字，作為這種旅館的叫法 - 已專程前來，給我有關資料，從室內設計雜誌廣傳的訊息，和在網上DIY自己動手幹論壇熱切的發帖中判斷，在西方世界半數的業主，似乎都渴望取經：如何把一個普通的家居，轉變成有五星級酒店格局及聲價的套房，還可收取 £750英鎊一晚的房租。要進行Hem­pel化，在這種情況下，切開一幢三層高維多利亞式、大小適中的半獨立樓房，把中層改裝就是。

 "You could do it," she says, casting an eye around my kitchen. "Anyone could do it. Absolutely no reason why not. But there has to be continuity between the rooms. A single idea must be followed through." She looks out wistfully over the fire escape. "And you'd have to buy the house next door, of course." That's a joke. I think.

她說∶“你是可以辦得到的。”眼睛同時就緊盯住廚房的週圍。“任何人都可以辦得到。絕對看不出有什麼原因是不能辦到。但房間與房間當中，必須要有連貫性。有構想就一定要貫徹始終。”她特意地朝著緊急逃生的防火梯外望。 “你當然更要把隔壁的房子買下來。”我認為她是在說說笑而已。

...It's worth pausing, though, to consider the oddness of this impulse. The hotel room is an amnesiac space. We would be troubled if it bore any sign of a previous occupant, particularly as many of us go to hotels in order to do things we would not do at home. We expect a hotel room to be cleaned as thoroughly as if a corpse had just been hauled from the bed. (In some cases, this will actually have happened.) The domestic interior embodies the opposite idea: it is a repository of memories. The story of its inhabitants ought to be there in the photos on the mantelpiece, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves. If hotel rooms were people, they would be smiling lobotomy patients or plausible psychopaths.

 ... 雖然這是一股古怪的衝動，但真的值得停一停、想一想。旅館客房就好像是一個失去了記憶的空間。如還有前面租客遺留下來的任何痕跡，真的是自找麻煩了，特別是很多人入住旅館的目的，就是為了幹在家中不能幹的事情。我們預料一間旅館客房，是要徹底的乾淨清潔，就好像抬走床上的屍體一樣，不留半點蛛絲馬跡。 ( 在某些情況下，這實際上是發生過的。) 家居的內部設計，是與的旅館房間所蘊藏的概念是恰恰相反，是美好回憶的寶庫。在壁爐架上要有住客故事的照片，牆上要掛畫，圖書是整齊地放在書架上。倘若旅館客房是如人一樣，就要像腦葉動過手術的患者，老是笑臉迎人，或是精神錯亂病者，說話表面上是頭頭是道。