好英语网“人渣”、“私刑”和特朗普的魔鬼英语
You campaign in poetry, according to a popular saying, and govern in prose.
俗话说，诗歌竞选，散文理政。
Donald Trump will be impeached in doggerel. I mean his own.
唐纳德·特朗普的弹劾将是打油诗。我是说，他自己的打油诗。
The other day he turned to the bounteous trove of the English language for a pejorative worthy of his critics’ awfulness, at least as he sees it. He decided on “human scum.”
He sought to capture the horror and injustice befalling him. What he came up with was “lynching.”
他试图描述落在自己头上的恐惧和不公。他想出的是“私刑”(lynching)。
There’s being crude with language, there’s being loose with it, and then there’s being Trump, who uses words the way a toddler does marbles, grabbing the ones that are most bluntly colorful and tossing them into the air just because he can.
有人粗俗地对待语言，有人随意地对待语言，还有像特朗普这样，说话的方式就像一个蹒跚学步的孩子玩弹珠一样，抓起那些色彩最鲜明的弹珠，把它们扔向空中，只是因为他可以这么做。
Trump is as inept at English as he is at governing. He’s oxymoronic: a nativist who can’t really speak his native tongue.
特朗普既不擅长治理国家，也不擅长英语。他是一个矛盾修辞：一个不太会说母语的本土主义者。
Too harsh? I direct you to “perfect.” That is how, over and over, he has characterized his telephone conversation with the president of Ukraine, and seldom has a term existed in such tension with truth.
太苛刻了？我让你看看他怎么用“完美”。他一遍又一遍地用这个词来描述自己和乌克兰总统的电话交谈，很少有哪个词与事实有着如此紧张的关系。
“Perfect” is Nadia Comaneci on the uneven bars at the 1976 Olympics. “Perfect” is Frank Sinatra singing “Summer Wind.”
“完美”是1976年奥运会高低杠上的纳迪娅·科马内奇(Nadia Comaneci)。“完美”是弗兰克·辛纳屈(Frank Sinatra)演唱的《夏日之风》(Summer Wind)。
“Perfect” is not an insistence that a foreign government smear a political rival when you’re just emerging from a two-year investigation into whether you had another foreign government do precisely that. But then Trump seems to have placed his dictionary on the same unreachable shelf where his conscience gathers dust.
“完美”不是当你刚刚从一项为期两年、涉嫌勾结外国政府抹黑政治对手的调查中脱身，就坚持要求外国政府抹黑政治对手。但那时特朗普似乎把他的字典放在了那个够不着的书架上，和他那积满灰尘的良心放在一起。
As the impeachment inquiry intensifies and the evidence against him accumulates, his vocabulary becomes more perverse — in its estrangement from reality, in its desperation, in its broken-record repetitiveness, in its sheer clumsiness.
随着弹劾调查的深入，针对他的证据越来越多，他的用词也变得更加反常——与现实背离、绝望、前所未有的重复，以及纯粹的拙劣。
The screeching of the raccoons in Central Park is more coherent and less feral. They’re merely nervous when my dog approaches. Trump is petrified as Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff close in.
中央公园里浣熊的尖叫都比他更有条理、更斯文。我的狗靠近时，它们只是紧张而已。当南希·佩洛西(Nancy Pelosi)和亚当·希夫(Adam Schiff)靠近时，特朗普吓呆了。
“Crazy Nancy,” he said at a recent rally in Dallas, where his epic self-pity and all-consuming grudges took center stage. “Think of that. That crazy Nancy. She is crazy. And shifty Schiff. How about this guy? He makes up my conversation, which was perfect. He makes up my conversation. He sees what I said. It doesn’t play well because it was perfect.” Give the president a thesaurus and a therapist, though not necessarily in that order.
“疯狂的南希，”他最近在达拉斯的一次集会上说，那次集会上，他那巨大的自怜和吞噬一切的怨恨占据了中心舞台。“想想看。那个疯狂的南希。她是疯了。还有鬼鬼祟祟的希夫。这人可真行。他编造了我的谈话，我的话是完美的。他编造了我的谈话。他明白我说的是什么意思。他瞎编的效果不好，因为我的话是完美的。”给总统一本同义词典和一个心理治疗师吧，虽然不见得一定按这个顺序。
He added: “The do-nothing Democrats have betrayed our country, and that great betrayal is over. We are finally again, and we’ve been doing it now for almost three years.” Doing what? Again how? This wasn’t a speech; it was a puzzle. “Can you believe we’ve been doing this for three years? Can you believe it? I’ve been a politician for three years. I can’t believe that.” Trust me, President Trump. Your incredulity is no match for mine.
他还说：“无所作为的民主党人背叛了我们的国家，这种巨大的背叛已经结束。我们终于再一次，我们已经做了快三年了。”做了什么？“再一次”什么？这不是演讲，这是猜谜。“你能相信我们已经这么做了三年了吗？你能相信吗？我从政已经三年了。我真不敢相信。”相信我，特朗普总统。你的难以置信跟我的没法比。
It has been the case from the start that Trump communicates like no president before him. That’s principally because he mismiscommunicates like no president before him. And while his verbal errors and infelicities are largely accidental, they’re hardly incidental.
特朗普从一开始就是这样，和他之前任何一位总统的沟通方式都不一样。这主要是因为他造成的误解是以前的总统从未有过的。虽然他的语言错误和失当很大程度上属于偶然，但它们绝不是不重要的。
They’re a semantic complement to his flouting of tradition and junking of norms. They help prevent him from being tagged as one of the elitists he rails against. No snob would spell so sloppily or use capital letters with such abandon. No snob would be so lavish with schoolyard slurs. No snob would thrash and flail his way through sentences the way he does. On Twitter in particular, Trump doesn’t exclaim; he expectorates. You can feel the spittle several time zones away.
他蔑视传统、摒弃规范，这些错误就是在语言方面的体现。它们可以防止他被贴上他所抨击的精英人士的标签。没有哪个自以为高人一等的人会拼写得这么潦草，也不会如此随意地使用大写字母。没有哪个自以为高人一等的人会在校园里大肆诽谤。没有哪个自以为高人一等的人会像他那样胡乱造句。尤其是在Twitter上，特朗普不是大声惊呼；而是随口乱喷。隔着几个时区，你都能感觉到他的唾沫。
And Twitter suits him not just because of its immediacy and reach. It’s a format so abridged and casual that botched grammar isn’t necessarily equated with stupidity; it could simply be the consequence of haste or convenience. Formally written letters follow rules and demand etiquette. For Twitter all you need is a keypad and a spleen.
推特适合他，不仅仅是因为它的即时性和覆盖面。这种形式如此简略和随意，拙劣的语法并不一定等同于愚蠢；可能只是一时匆忙或者图方便的结果。正式的信函遵循规则和应有的礼仪。要用Twitter，你只需要一个键盘和一点怒气。
But Trump seems even more splenetic of late. He raged for nearly 90 minutes in Dallas a week and a half ago. He raged for more than 70 in that wild cabinet meeting on Monday, when he claimed three times in a row, as if stuttering, that being president had cost him between $2 billion and $5 billion; erroneously said that he was the first president to forgo a salary; ridiculously boasted that Miami’s airport might be the world’s busiest (it’s not even in the top 20); dismissed the emoluments clause of the Constitution as “phony”; and careered from one fantasy to the next, covering so much territory with so little truthfulness that media fact checkers devoted long articles to correcting the record.
但是最近，特朗普似乎更加暴躁了。一周半前，他在达拉斯大发雷霆，吵嚷了将近90分钟。在周一召开的那场疯狂的内阁会议上，他愤怒地说了70分钟，当时他连续三次，就像结巴了似的，声称担任总统一职让他损失了20亿至50亿美元。他错误地说自己是第一个放弃薪水的总统；可笑地吹嘘说迈阿密机场可能是世界上最繁忙的机场（它甚至前20都进不了）；将宪法中的薪酬条款斥为“虚头巴脑”；他从一个幻觉冲向下一个幻觉，涉及那么多的领域，几乎没有一点真实性，以至于媒体事实核查人员写了长篇大论的文章来纠正。
In a speech in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, he crowed that “we’re building a wall on the border of New Mexico. And we’re building a wall in Colorado.” He added that “we’re building a wall in Texas, and we’re not building a wall in Kansas, but they get the benefit of the walls that we just mentioned.”
周三在匹兹堡的一次演讲中，他得意地说，“我们正在新墨西哥州的边境盖墙。我们正在科罗拉多盖墙。”他还说，“我们正在得克萨斯盖墙，我们没有在堪萨斯州盖墙，但他们可以从我们刚刚提到的那些墙获益。”
Jared Polis, Colorado’s governor, responded with a tweet that noted that “Colorado doesn’t border Mexico. Good thing Colorado now offers free full day kindergarten so our kids can learn basic geography.” Trump should join them, not just for stuff about maps but also for the lessons on reading comprehension and the vocabulary-building exercises.
科罗拉多州州长贾里德·波利斯(Jared Polis)发推回应称，“科罗拉多州不与墨西哥接壤。”好在科罗拉多州现在提供免费的全日制幼儿园，这样我们的孩子就可以学习基本的地理知识。特朗普应该加入他们的行列，不仅是学习地理，还有阅读理解和词汇量。
His own recent tweets included that doozy that identified his defense secretary not as Mark Esper but as Mark Esperanto, a mistake too grand to be chalked up to autocorrect. No, it’s more likely the sign of a haunted mind.
他自己最近发布的推文中，有一条很醒目的消息称，他的国防部长不是马克·埃斯珀(Mark Esper)，而是马克·世界语(Mark Esperanto)，这个错误严重到用软件自动纠正当借口已经不够了。不，这更像是魔鬼附体。
I’ve written before that Trump, “in terms of the transparency with which he shows us the most eccentric and ugliest parts of himself,” may inadvertently be “the most honest president in my lifetime.” His language is obviously central to that. It’s a glimpse into his fury and fears.
我之前写过，特朗普“在向我们展示他最古怪、最丑陋的一面时，这样的透明度”可能会无意中令他成为“我这辈子见过的最诚实的总统”。他的语言显然是其中的核心。可以令人窥见他有多么愤怒和恐惧。
It becomes sloppier when he’s panicked, more visceral when he’s vulnerable, more wildly hyperbolic and wickedly imprecise when he’s making a counterfeit show of strength.
当他惊慌失措的时候，他会变得更马虎；当他脆弱的时候，他会变得更由衷；当他虚假地展示力量的时候，他更会变得极度夸张、极不精确。
He’s in a bad spot now, and “perfect” reflects that, an adjectival overreach so ludicrous that it doesn’t make you rethink the negative (and accurate) interpretations of the phone call; it makes you think Trump has lost his marbles.
他现在的处境很糟糕，而“完美”这个词恰恰说明了这一点。这个形容词的滥用简直太过夸张，你看了不会去思考关于那个电话的负面（且精确）的解读；只会觉得特朗普疯了。
“Lynching” raises the temperature dozens of degrees from “hoax” and “witch hunt,” his go-to phrases for Robert Mueller’s investigation. “Human scum” is the howl of a trapped animal. And his unfinished thoughts, enigmatic references and sentence fragments reflect his confusion about how to wriggle free.
“私刑”比“骗局”和“猎巫”又升级了不少，后面两个词是他对罗伯特·穆勒(Robert Mueller)调查的常用措辞。“人渣”是被困动物的嚎叫。他未说完的思想，谜一般的用典和零散的句子反映了他不知如何挣脱困境。
His torture of English is rooted in the torture of being Trump — with all those wants, all that need, all that vanity, all that spite. He’s never eloquent and barely articulate but always expressive, because you say a lot when you say it all wrong.
他对英语的苦恼根植于身为特朗普的苦恼——所有那些想要的、那些需要的、那些虚荣的、还有那些恶意。他从来都不能言善辩，也并不善于表达，但他总是在表达，因为当你什么都错时，你的话就会很多。
