评论
打印
Home is where You are Happy
家是让你快乐的地方
Every immigrant leads a double life.
每个移民都过着一种双重生活，
Every immigrant has a double identity and a double vision,being suspended between an old and a new home,an old and a new self.
每个移民也都拥有双重身份和双重视野，他们的心总是在故土和新家中徘徊，在过往的自己和崭新的自己之间找寻平衡。
The very notion of a new home, of course,is in a sense as impossible as the notion of new parents:
当然，从某种意义上来说，新家和新父母一样，这一说法本身就是不成立的。
parents are who they are; home is what it is.
父母就是父母，家乡就是家乡。
Yet home, like parentage, must be legitimized through love;otherwise, it is only a fact of geography or biology.
然而，有爱才能称其为真正的家乡，就像父母与子女之间一样，都需要用爱来使之成为可能；否则，家乡和父母就仅仅是一个地理或者生物上的概念了。
Most immigrants to America found their love of their old homes betrayed:
来到美国的大多数移民虽然曾热爱家乡，但家乡却背叛了他们的爱；
They did not really abandon their countries;
并不是他们抛弃了家乡而是家乡抛弃了他们；
their countries abandoned them,and in America, they found the possibility of a new love,the chance to nurture new selves.
而在美国，他们却发现，对新家园也能产生热爱，塑造一个全新的自我不是没有可能。
Not uniformly, not without exceptions.
并不完全统一，也不无例外，
Every generation has its Know-Nothing movement.
每一代都有它不可知的运动。
Its understandable fear and hatred of alien invasion is as true today as it always was,but in spite of all this,the American attitude remains unique.
这种对外族入境的担心和厌恶任何时候都存在，这是可以理解的，但尽管如此，美国人的态度却是独一无二的。
Throughout history, exile has been a calamity;
纵观人类历史，流放异乡已经成为人类历史上的灾难之一，
America turned it into a triumph and placed its immigrants in the center of a national epic.
而只有美国将此灾难转变成了胜利，移民成了美国民族史诗的中心组成部分。
The epic is possible because America is an idea as much as it is a country.
美国之所以能谱写这样的一首史诗，是与美国本身分不开的。
America has nothing to do with loyalty to a dynasty and very little to do with loyalty to a particular place,but everything to do with loyalty to a set of principles.
美国是一个国家，也是一种理念。王朝拥戴，圣地朝拜和美国都没有一丁点关系，美国人所尊崇的是一套原则。
To immigrants, those principles are especially real because so often they were absent or violated in their native lands.
对于移民来说，这些原则来得特别真切，因为在他们的故土上，这些原则不是被频繁践踏，就是已经不复存在。
It was no accident in the '60s and '70s,when alienation was in flower,that it often seemed to be "native" Americans who felt alienated,while aliens or the children of aliens upheld the native values.
因此，在六七十年代那个充斥着疏离感的时候，似乎感到疏离的往往是美国人，异乡人和他们的子女反而能够坚守其本土价值观—这也是在情理之中的。
"Home is where you are happy."
家就是能让你开心的地方。
Sentimental, perhaps, and certainly not conventionally patriotic,but is appropriate for a country that wrote the pursuit of happiness into its founding document.
听起来也许有些伤感，但这句话里已不再含有缠头的爱国情结了。不过，这句话对于这个将追求幸福写入宪法的国家来说是再恰当不过了，
That pursuit continues for the immigrant in America,and it never stops, but it comes to rest at a certain moment.
美国的移民们继续着他们对幸福的追求，从不止步。
The moment occurs perhaps when the immigrant's double life and double vision converge toward a single state of mind,when the old life, the old home fade into a certain unreality:
也许，这一刻就是移民的双重身份和双重视野开始趋于专一心智之时，此时，他们对家乡以及家乡生活的怀念逐渐淡化，
places one merely visits, practicing the tourism of memory.
家乡已经成为某种幻影—仅仅是一个旅游目的地，借此追忆往事而已。
It occurs when the immigrant learns his ultimate lesson:above all countries, America, if loved, returns love.
这时，移民也学到了他们人生的终极一课：在所有国家中，美国—如果得到了爱，必定回报以爱。
