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Eric Blair was too young for the trenches, but while at Eton, he did his bit by writing bad recruitment poems.
艾瑞克·布萊爾還太年輕，不能上戰場，但在伊頓那段時間，他靠寫糟糕的招募詩歌盡了綿薄之力。
When the war was over, he may have felt guilty, like a lot of his generation -- guilt for missing the slaughter.
在戰爭結束后，他也許會有所內疚，像那個時代的其他人一樣，為錯過戰火紛飛而內疚。
The next step after Eton should have been Oxford. But like Churchill, his fate was decided by a premature verdict of stupidity.
伊頓之后的下一站本該是牛津。但和丘吉爾一樣，他被草率地認為過于愚蠢，因而改變了命運。
His father believed that he was too dim to win a scholarship.
他的父親認為他獲得獎學金的希望渺茫。
Even if Eric had had the chance, it's likely he would have rejected the smoothly-moneyed escalator through privilege. Instead, it was off to the colonies.
即便艾瑞克有那樣的機會，他也很有可能拒絕通過錢權換來的平步青云。相反，他去了殖民地。
There's no sign that Eric thought he'd been hard done by, though. He might have shared some of Churchill's idealism about the do-good empire.
盡管如此，他卻并未有抱怨不公。他或許會贊同丘吉爾的觀點，帝國偉大而又仁慈。
Five years in the Burmese police, perhaps the most thankless branch of the entire colonial service, smartly cured him of that.
而在緬甸警局五年，做著或許是整個殖民地最吃力不討好的工作，徹底改變了他的思想。
Doing his job as efficiently as he could, rounding up petty criminals, looking the other way when they were beaten, he wore his power like a hair shirt.
兢兢業業，盡職盡責，逮捕犯了小錯的罪犯，犯人被打時只能轉身不看，執法同時是內心的不安。
The Burmese he caught and jailed, he knew, didn't think of themselves as criminals, but as victims of foreign conquerors.
他知道，他所逮捕和監禁的緬甸人并不將自身看做是罪犯，而是外國侵略者的犧牲品。
All over the empire, there were men who hated their part in it as heartily as he did, but were trapped in a conspiracy of silence or the cowardice of acquiescence.
帝國上下，有很多同他一樣厭惡自己的所作所為，但都由于怯懦而保持緘默，任其發生。
One incident more than any other brought his imperial imprisonment home to him.
有件事情讓他明白，帝國對于他就是一座監獄。
An elephant had broken its chains and gone on the rampage at a local bazaar. Blair picked up his rifle.
一頭大象掙脫了鐵鏈，在當地集市中橫沖直撞。布萊爾拿起他的步槍。
Shall I call the hunters? No, rouse no one. I'll try and get him myself.
我要找獵人來嗎？不，不要叫任何人。我要親自抓住它。
When he found the beast, peacefully throwing grass and bamboo shoots into its mouth, it was obvious there was no reason to kill it, except the huge crowd expected him to.
當他發現這頭野獸時，它正安靜地將草和竹筍卷入口中，顯然，除了迫于圍觀者的壓力外，找不到什么理由將它殺死。
I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward irresistibly.
我感到如芒在背，他們在逼著我動手。
It was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness and futility of the white man's dominion in the east.
也正是在這一刻，當我端著步槍，第一次認識到了白人在東方的統治是多么虛無和徒勞無益。
Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of an unarmed native crowd, seemingly the lead actor of the piece. But in reality I was only an absurd puppet.
我，一個拿著槍的白種人，站在一群手無寸鐵的本地人面前，貌似是這出戲的主角。但事實上我只是一個可笑的傀儡。
When I pulled the trigger, I did not hear the bang or feel the kick, but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd.
當我扣動扳機時，我既沒有聽見槍聲，也沒有感受到后座力，但我聽見從人群中爆發出不懷好意的歡呼。
In that instant, in too short a time for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant.
在子彈射中大象那短短的一瞬間，神秘可怕的變數已然降臨在大象身上。
He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered.
它沒有移動，也沒有就此倒下，但身體的每一根線條都由此改變。
In the end, I could stand it no longer and went away. I heard later that it took him half an hour to die.
最后，我待不下去，于是離開了。之后我聽說它在半小時后才死去。
I often wondered, had any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool?
我常常在想，有多少人知道我那么做只是不想被人看做是傻瓜呢？
In 1927, Blair went home, where a sniff of the English air convinced him that he couldn't be part of an oppressive system a day longer.
1927年，布萊爾回家了，英國的情形讓他確定，他無法再做一天的壓迫階級。
Home was here at Southwold, a Suffolk seaside town so full of Anglo-Indian retirees that it was known as a little Raj by the sea.
在索斯沃爾德的家，一個住滿了英裔印度退休人員的海邊小鎮，它以海邊"小印度"而聞名。
Eric's sister Avril kept a teashop, mother played bridge, father stared at the sea.
艾瑞克的妹妹艾薇兒開著一家茶館，母親打著橋牌，父親凝視著大海。
When Eric announced to the family that he was leaving the Burma police to become, of all things, a writer, you can well imagine their horrified disbelief.
當艾瑞克向家人宣布他離開了緬甸警局而偏偏做了一名作家，你可以想象出他們難以置信。
And what was the England that Eric had come home to?
艾瑞克回國時的英國是什么樣的呢？
A country he'd later describe as resembling a family -- a rather stuffy Victorian family
后來，他把這個國家比喻為一個家庭，一個古板的維多利亞式家庭，
where rich relations are kowtowed to and poor relations are horribly sat upon; where the young are thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts.
富有的親戚被阿諛討好，貧窮的親戚被粗暴對待，年輕人遭受挫折，絕大部分權力掌握在不負責任的叔叔和臥床不起的阿姨手中。
A family, he said, with the wrong members in control.
他說，這是一個由錯誤之人掌控的家庭。
