童鞋们好，这篇文章很多人都喜欢，有读《藏地密码》的赶脚呀。你们也快看看吧。看英文哦。看不懂再去瞄一眼为大家做的翻译。鬼魂兰花的图片就是本文的图片，是不是真的很像鬼呀？还有这篇文章居然还透着一丝丝人生哲理，真是美文，好好欣赏吧，文学的美妙是现实生活和天堂的通道之一哦。
【真题来源】
2014年6月7日SAT阅读真题长单关于鬼魂兰花。另：译文只追求让学生理解，甚至会尽量保留英文的句子结构顺序，并没有依据“雅致优美”的原则来翻译。当然主要是臣妾做不到啊）
【原文简介】
The Orchid Leaf is a 1998 non-fiction book by Americanjournalist and author Susan Orlean, based on her investigation of the 1994 arrestof John Laroche and a group of Seminoles in south Florida for poaching rareorchids in the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve.
【真题原文】
But I was determined to see orchids, so Tonyand I went deep into the Fakahatchee to try to find them. We walked from morning until late in the afternoon with little luck. The light was hot and theair was airless. My legs ached and my head ached and I couldn’t stand thesticky feel of my own skin. I began having the frantic, furtive thoughts of adeserter and started wondering what Tony would do if I suddenly sat down and refused to keep walking. He was a car-length ahead of me; from what I couldtell he felt terrific. I mustered myself and caught up. As we marched along Tony told me about his life and mentioned that he was an orchid collectorhimself and that he had a little home orchid lab, where he was trying to produce a hybrid that would have the wraparound lip of an Encyclia but would bethe color of a certain Cattleya that is maroon with small lime-green details.He said that he would find out if he had succeeded in seven or eight years,when the hybrid seedling would bloom. I said nothing for the next mile or so.When we stopped to rest and Tony tried to figure out what was wrong with hiscompass, I asked him what he thought it was about orchids that seduced humansso completely that they were compelled to steal them and then be willing towait for nearly a decade for one of them to flower.
【参考译文】但是我决定去见识见识兰花了，所以托尼和我进入Fakahatchee去试图找到这些花。我们从早晨走到下午快傍晚时分，一无所获。阳光很灼热，空气令人窒息。我的腿和头都很疼，几乎快忍受不了皮肤上黏黏湿湿的感觉。我开始产生一个被遗弃的人常有的诡异疯狂的想法，我在想如果我突然坐下来，拒绝前行的话，托尼会对我做些什么。他在我前面两三米走着，我感觉他很兴奋，我鼓了鼓劲，追上了他。当我们一边大步走着，托尼告诉我了他的生平，他提到他收集兰花，他有个兰花实验室，在那里他试图培育一个混合品种，这个品种要有围柱兰(Encyclia)的包着的花瓣，但是却是卡特莱兰花(Cattleya)的颜色，绛紫色中带有一些柠檬绿。他说，有个七八年就能看出自己能否做到了，那个时候这个混合品种的幼苗就会开花。接下来这一英里我什么都没说话。当我们停下来休息的时候，托尼检查他的指南针出了什么毛病。我就问他兰花到底是哪里好，居然会诱惑着人们去偷它，然后甘心等十年的时间等待它去开花。
【真题原文】 “Oh, mystery, beauty,unknowability, I suppose,” he said, shrugging. “Besides, I think the realreason is that life has no meaning. I mean, no obvious meaning. You wake up,you go to work, you do stuff. I think everybody’s always looking for somethinga little unusual that can preoccupy them and help pass the time.”
【参考译文】“哦，神秘，美丽，不可知性，我想是吧。”他耸肩说到。“初次之外，我觉得真正的原因就是生活没有意义，我是说，没有明显的意义。你醒来，你工作，你做事情。我觉得每个人总是想去寻找一些不寻常的东西，这些东西可以让他们着迷，帮着打发掉时间。
【真题原文】The orchid I really wantedto see was Polyrrhiza lindenii, the ghost orchid. Laroche had taken more ofother orchid and bromeliad species when he went poaching, but he told me thatthe ghost orchids were the ones he had wanted the most. Polyrrhiza Lindenii isthe only really pretty orchid in the Fakahatchee. Technically it is an orchidof the Vandaneae tribe, Sarcanthinae subtribe; Polyrrhiza is its genus (the genus is sometimes also called Polyradicion). The ghost is a leafless speciesnamed in honor of the Belgian plantsman Jean-Jules Linden, who first discoveredit in Cuba in 1844. It was seen for the first time in the United States in 1880in Collier County. The ghost orchid usually grows around the trunks of pop ashand pond apple and custard apple trees. It blooms once a year. It has nofoliage – it is nothing but roots, a tangle of flat green roots about the widthof linguine, wrapped around a tree. The roots are chlorophyllus; that is, theyserve as both roots and leaves. The flower is a lovely papery white. It has the intricate lip that is characteristic of all orchids, but its lips is especiallypronounced and pouty, and each corner tapers into a long, fluttery tail. In picturesthe flower looks like the face of a man with a Fu Manchu mustache. These tailsare so delicate that they tremble in a light breeze. The whiteness of theflower is as startling as a spot light in the grayness and greenness of aswamp. Because the plant has no foliage and its roots are almost invisibleagainst tree bark, the flower looks magically suspended in midair. People say aghost orchid in bloom looks like a flying white frog—an ethereal and beautifulflying white frog. Carlyle Luer, the author of The Native Orchids of Florida,once wrote of the ghost orchid: “should one be lucky enough to see a flower,all else will seem eclipsed.”
【参考译文】我真正想看到的兰花叫做Polyrrhiza Lindenii, 鬼魂兰花。Laroche已经通过偷猎的方式(poaching)把其他种类的兰花和凤梨科植物(bromeliadspecies)大多都占有了，但是他和我说，他最想要的还是鬼魂兰花。鬼魂兰花是F这个地方最漂亮的兰花。实际上它是Vandaneae族的一种兰花，属于Sarcanthinae。Polyrrhiza是它的属类(这一植物属类又被叫做Polyradicion)。鬼魂兰花是一种没有叶子的种类，它的名字是为了纪念比利时花卉栽培者Jean-Jules Linden, 是他首次1844年在古巴发现的这种兰花。在美国，人们是在1880年Collier镇第一次观赏到它。鬼魂兰花通常生长在pop ash树，和Pond苹果树，还有custard苹果树周围。通常一年开一次花，没有叶子，只有根部，平平地绿色的缠绕在一起的根部,大概象意大利扁面条(linguine)那么宽，包在树干上。根部都是既可以当根也可以当叶子的。花朵的颜色是可爱的纸张一样的白色，它有这所有兰花一样特点的错综缠结(intricate)的花瓣，但是它的花瓣尤其明显(pronounced)而且噘出来(pouty),它的锥形的花瓣延伸出来形成了长长的微微颤动的尾巴。在画面上，花朵就好像一个留着傅满洲(人名)胡子的男人的脸。这些尾巴是如此精细纤巧，以至于在微风中轻轻颤动。花朵的白色就像灰色和绿色沼泽里的聚光灯一样令人吃惊。因为这种植物没有叶子，它的根部在树皮上几乎都看不到，花朵就像是悬在半空中一样。人们说开花了的鬼魂兰花就像是一只在飞的白色青蛙，一个象空气一样的(ethereal)漂亮的白色青蛙。Carlyle Luer, 《佛罗里达州的兰花》的作者，是这样写道鬼魂兰花的：如果一个人足够幸运能够见到它，其他所有的事物在你眼中都黯然失色。“
【真题原文】Near a large sinkhole Tonypointed out some little green straps on a young tree and said they were ghostorchids that were done blooming for the year. We walked for another hour, andhe pointed out more green ghost-orchid roots on more trees. The light wasflattening out and I was muddy and scratched and scorched. Finally we turnaround and walked five thousand miles or so back to Tony’s jeep. It had been ahard day and I hadn’t seen what I’d come to see. I kept my mind busy as wewalked out by wondering if the hard-to-find, briefly seen, irresistiblybeautiful, impossible-to-cultivate ghost orchid was just a fable and not a realflower at all. Maybe it really was a ghost. There are certainly ghosts in theFakahatchee—ghosts of rangers who were murdered years ago by illegal plumehunters, and loggers who were cut to pieces in fights and then left to cool andcrumble into dirt, and for years there has been an apparition wandering theswamp, the Swamp Ape, which is said to be seven feet tall and weigh sevenhundred pounds and have the physique of a human, the posture of an ape, thebody odor of a skunk, and an appetite for lima beans. There is also ananonymous, ghostly human being whom the Fakahatchee rangers call the GhostGrader, who brings real – not imaginary – construction equipment into the swampevery once in a while and clears off the vine-covered roads.
【参考译文】在一个巨大的落水洞旁，托尼指着一颗小树上的绿色带子说到，这些就是曾经开过花的鬼魂兰花。我们又走了一个小时，他给我指了更多树上的鬼魂兰花的根部看。光线变成水平的了，我浑身都是泥，又痒又热。最后我们返回，走了五千英里，回到了托尼的吉普车上。今天真不容易，我没见到我想见的花。在我们出来的时候，我脑子里总是在想是否这个很难寻觅，只是被人偶尔见到，有着无可比拟的美丽，很难培植的鬼魂兰花只不过是个无稽之谈，不是一个真实存在在世间的花朵。也许它真的是个鬼魂。在F这个地方，应该真是有很多鬼魂。被带着羽毛的非法猎人杀死的游骑兵(ranger)，在打斗中被砍死的樵夫，尸体冷了下来，腐烂到泥土中。一年又一年，这个鬼影频频出现在沼泽旁。沼泽猿猴据说有7英尺高重700磅，有着像人一样的身形，猿猴一样的姿态，臭鼬的气味，喜欢吃青豆。还有一种无名的，像鬼一样的人，F这个地方的人管他叫做“给鬼分类的人”，他隔一段时间就会为沼泽带来了真实的不是虚幻的建筑材料，然后把枝藤布满的道路清理一下。
【真题原文】If the ghost orchid wasreally only a phantom it was still such a bewitching one that it could seducepeople to pursue it year after year and mile after miserable mile. If it was areal flower I wanted to keep coming back to Florida until I could see one. Thereason was not that I love orchids. I don’t even especially like orchids. WhatI wanted was to see this thing that people were drawn to in such a singular andpowerful way. Everyone I was meeting connected to orchid poaching had circledtheir lives around some great desire – Laroche had his crazy inspirations andorchid lovers had their intense devotion to their flowers and the Seminoles had their burning dedications to their history and culture—a desire that thenanswered questions for them about how to spend their time and their money andwho their friends would be and where they would travel and what they did whenthey got there. It was religion. I wanted to want something as much as peoplewanted these plants, but it isn’t part of my constitution. I think people myage are embarrassed by too much enthusiasm and believe that too much passionabout anything is naïve. I suppose I do have one un-embarrassing – I want toknow what it feels like to care about something passionately. That night Icalled Laroche nd told him that I had just come back from looking for ghostorchids in the Fakahatchee but that I had seen seen nothing but bare roots. Isaid that I was wondering whether I had missed this year’s flowers or whetherperhaps the only place the ghost orchid bloomed was in the imagination ofpeople who’d walked too long in the swamp. What I didn’t say was that strongfeelings always make me skeptical at first. What else I didn’t say was that hislife seemed to be filled with things that were just like the ghost orchid—wonderfulto imagine and easy to fall in love with but a little fantastic and fleetingand out of reach.
【参考译文】如果鬼魂兰花真的仅仅是虚幻鬼影，那它真是太有魔法了，以至于可以勾引人们去一年又一年一英里又一英里不辞劳苦的追寻它。如果它是一个真实的花朵，我倒是真的很想经常来佛罗里达来寻找它直到有一天能够找到它。倒不是说我特别喜欢兰花，我甚至并不是特别喜欢兰花。我想要的仅仅就是看到这个东西，这个用独特的(singular)有力的方法将人们吸引至此的东西。每个我遇到的人都和偷猎兰花有关联。他们的一生都围着这个愿望去打转。Lacroche有他疯狂的念头，兰花爱好者对兰花报以着坚定的忠诚，塞米诺尔人(北美印第安人)对他们的历史和文化的炙热的专注。这个愿望回答了他们的很多人生疑问：如何度过一生，把钱花在哪里，交什么样的朋友，去哪里，到了那里后做些什么。这对于他们就是宗教。我也很想像他们一样这样的渴望获得某个事情，但是可惜我的人生体系里没有这种东西。我想，像我这个年龄的人们会为过分的热情而感到尴尬不自在，会认为对什么东西过分热衷是幼稚的表现。我想我现在有了一个不让我感到尴尬的事情，那就是我想知道特别在意一个事情的感觉是怎样的。那天晚上，我给Laroche打了电话，跟他说我刚刚从寻找鬼魂兰花的旅行中回来，但是我除了见到一些鬼魂兰花的根部之外，别的一无所获。我说我想知道是否我已经错过了今年的花朵，或者是否所谓的鬼魂兰花开放之地只是人们在沼泽里行走太久之后的幻觉所致。我没有说出口的是一直萦绕在我心头的怀疑之心。我还没有说出口的是他的生活充斥着就像是鬼魂兰花一样的东西：想象起来很美好，很容易沉迷进去，但是太虚幻，转瞬即逝，遥不可及。
【真题原文】I could hear a soft puckery gulp as he inhaled cigarette smoke. Then he said, “Jesus Christ, ofcourse there are ghost orchids out there! I’ve stolen them, for Christsake! Iknow exactly where they are.” The phone was silent for a moment, and then hecleared his throat and said, “You should have gone with me.”
【参考译文】我能够听到收缩的吞咽，当他吸入香烟的时候。接着他说：“上帝，当然那里有鬼魂兰花，我就偷过它们。我知道它们在哪里。”电话那边沉默了一小会儿，接着他清了清嗓子说，“你本应该和我一起去的。”
