【精英翻譯】的部落格

Message in a Bottle 　浪漫瓶中信

精英翻譯社轉自http://paper.udn.com/udnpaper/POH0062/286983/web/

　　Sending a message to somebody is easy: just use a cellphone to send a text or a computer to send an email. However, it has not always been so simple. For hundreds of years, people wrote messages on pieces of paper, put them into bottles, and tossed them into the ocean. They would then hope that the message would reach its destination. Most of the time, the message in a bottle would disappear, never to be seen again. On a few occasions, the message did arrive, and sometimes there were some surprising results.

傳訊息給某人很簡單：只要用手機發條簡訊或是用電腦寄封電子郵件即可。然而，傳遞訊息並非一直以來總是那麼簡單。數百年來，人們在紙上寫下訊息，再把它們塞進瓶子裡，最後扔向大海。他們希望訊息最終能抵達目的地。通常，瓶中信會消失，再也不會被發現。在一些時候，訊息真的成功抵達了，而且有時會帶來讓人意想不到的結果。

　　In 1914, a sailor tossed a bottle containing a message to his wife over the side of a ship. He died two days later. Then in 1999, the bottle was found floating in the Thames River in London. The message was delivered to his daughter, who was then 86 years old and living in New Zealand. On another occasion, a young Scottish girl threw a message in a bottle into the sea. When a 10-year-old Dutch boy found the message, he searched for the author, and many years later asked for her hand in marriage. The romance of finding a message in a bottle has inspired many songs, poems, novels, and movies, and because of these stories, we can see why.

　　1914 年，一名水手從船邊扔下一個含有給他妻子訊息的瓶中信到海裡。兩天後他就過世了。接著在1999年，那個瓶子被發現在英國倫敦的泰唔士河上漂著。那個瓶中信於是便送到了他住在紐西蘭、當時已八十六歲的女兒手裡。另外，還有一個年輕的蘇格蘭女孩往海裡扔了一個瓶中信。一個十歲的荷蘭小男孩發現了那個瓶中信，於是他便開始尋找瓶中信的主人，多年以後，他還向她求婚了。發現瓶中信的羅曼史啟發了許多歌曲、詩、小說和電影，也因為這些浪漫故事，我們就能明白究竟了。