【双语·有声】给陌生人的信Letters to Complete Strangers

已经记不起有多久没为亲朋好友写过一封手写信了，更别提写给陌生人了。提及写给陌生人的书信，很多人不免会想起茨威格那部著名的小说——《一个陌生女人子的来信》。即使那并非真正意义上的陌生人，即使它是一个悲伤的故事，它仍然像是一个符号，记述着一种神秘，一种想望。如今，有一名普通的女子，将这种神秘幻化成一份润物无声的善意，为这座充满了冷漠与隔阂的都市，带来人性的温暖。

如果你也来写一封“给陌生人的情书”，你会写些什么呢？

Letters to Complete Strangers

给陌生人的信

by Huma Qureshi/翻译：铖铖 

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6:13 Letters to Complete Stranger 来自疯狂英语

When 24-year-old Hannah Brencher moved to New York after college, she was hit by depression and overwhelming loneliness. One day she felt so alone, she wanted to reach out to someone. And so she put pen to paper and started writing letters. Letters to complete strangers.

当24岁的汉娜·布兰切尔大学毕业搬到纽约后，沮丧孤独的情绪铺天盖地向她袭来。有一天，她觉得孤独得厉害，希望向他人倾诉心声。于是，她拿出纸笔，写起信来。写给彻头彻尾的陌生人的信。

 

But these weren’t sad letters about how she was feeling. They were happy letters, all about the other person, not her. She would write messages for people to have a “bright day” and tell strangers how brilliant they were, even if they thought no one else had noticed. Brencher began dropping the notes all over New York, in cafes, in library books, in parks and on the subway. It made her feel better, knowing that she might be making somebody’s day through just a few short, sweet words. It gave her something to focus on. And so, The World Needs More Love Letters was born.

但她写的并非描述个人感受的伤感信。她写的都是些令人快乐的信，信上写的全都是其他人，与她自己无关。她想向别人写一些信息，让他们过上“欢快的一天”，她想告诉那些陌生人，尽管他们认为没人在意，但他们确实很有才。布兰切尔开始在纽约的不同角落放下这些信笺，包括咖啡馆、图书馆的书中、公园以及地铁上。这么做让她心情好起来了，因为她知道仅仅通过一小段简短贴心的话，她就可能让某个人快乐起来。这让她的生活有了一个重心。于是，“世界需要更多情书”网站就这么诞生了。

 

The World Needs More Love Letters is all about writing letters—not emails, but proper, handwritten letters. Not ¹⁾conventional love letters, written to a real beloved, but surprise letters for strangers. They don’t necessarily say “I love you”, but they are full of kindness—telling people they are remarkable and special and ²⁾all-round amazing.

“世界需要更多情书”全都与写信有关——不是电邮，而是实实在在的手写信。不是传统意义上写给倾慕之人的情书，而是写给陌生人的意外信件。信中不一定说到 “我爱你”，但却满是友善的字句——告诉人们，他们非凡脱俗、与众不同、多才多艺。

 

Brencher’s ³⁾initiative has now exploded. She has personally written hundreds, if not thousands of letters. Last year, she did a ⁴⁾TED talk. In it, she talks about a woman whose husband, a soldier, comes back fromAfghanistanand they struggle to reconnect—“So she tucks love letters throughout the house as a way to say: ‘Come back to me. Find me when you can’”—and a university student who slips letters around her campus, only to suddenly find everyone is writing them and there are love letters hanging from the trees.

如今，布兰切尔的初衷已经得以扩散。她自己曾写过的信，就算没有几千封，也有好几百封了。去年，她在Ted大会上做了一次演讲。演讲中，她提到一名女子的故事。这名女子的丈夫是一名士兵，刚从阿富汗归来，两人正苦于不知如何重新与对方交流——“所以她就把情书塞到屋子的各个角落，以这种方式，向对方说‘回到我身边吧。你准备好了，就来找我谈谈吧。’”——还有一个女孩的故事。她爱把情书塞在大学校园的各个角落，有一天，她突然发现所有人都在写着这样的情书，甚至连树上也挂满了情书。

 

Now there are more than 10,000 people joining in all over the world. Sometimes, they write letters to order, to people who are lonely and down and just want someone to tell them that everything will be OK. Mostly, though, they scribble notes and leave them somewhere unlikely, for somebody to find.

现在，全世界已有超过一万人加入到这个活动中。有时候，他们会因应要求而写信，写给那些孤独、情绪低落的人，写给那些希望有人能告诉他们一切都会好起来的人。不过，多数情况下，他们写下便笺，放在某处不显眼的角落，让别人去发现。

 

It’s a very cute idea. So I decide to give it a try and see if I might do the same for someone else.

这是个很有意思的想法。于是，我决定尝试一下，看看自己这么做能否在别人身上达到一样的效果。

 

By the time I sit down to write my letters, I feel stupidly self-conscious and also, I don’t want to make a spelling mistake, cross it out and ruin the whole thing. I browse Brencher’s website for inspiration. But everything I start to say sounds, well…cheesy. And stupid. “Hey! You! Yes, you!” Nope.

等我坐下来写信的时候，我觉得自己很傻，很不自在，同时我也不想拼错一个单词，把它划掉，然后坏了整件好事儿。我浏览布兰切尔的网站寻找灵感。但我刚开始写出来的东西听起来都，嗯……差劲儿。还很傻。“嘿，你！对，就是你！”不行。

 

I try again, and this time bumble my way through a few ⁵⁾platitudes. “In a city like London where people go out of their way not to smile or even catch your eye, I just felt like saying hello.” I end it with a sort of *waves* (though no smiley face) and tell them I hope they had a good day and that even if they had a ⁶⁾crappy day, that this random note might have made them feel better.

我重新再写，这一次，我拙劣地写下一些陈词滥调：“在伦敦这样一个城市，人们不爱笑，甚至不与你进行眼神接触，我只是想说声你好。”我在句子后面加了些波浪符号（不过没有加上笑脸图案），并且告诉他们，我希望他们拥有愉快的一天，而且就算他们这一天过得很糟，这张无意中发现的便笺或许会让他们感觉愉快一些。

 

My next letter is basically the same, except I address it to “the stranger sitting on the tube”. By letter number three, I figure less is more so simply say: “YOU ARE WAY BETTER THAN YOU THINK YOU ARE.” Which, let’s face it, we’d all love to hear someone say. I mark the envelope: “Something to cheer you up if you’re having a bad day.” I like that one. I think I ⁷⁾nailed it.

我的第二封信基本上如出一辙，只是在上面多写了“致地铁上的陌生人”。写第三封信的时候，我觉得“少即是多”，所以只是简单地写上“你比你自己所想的要好很多。”这句话，老实说，我们所有人都喜欢别人这么说。我在信封上加了一句：“如果你今天过得很糟，这些会让你高兴起来。”我喜欢这句，我想我干得太漂亮了。

 

The next part is the letter-drop: where to leave them? I slip one in the sofa in the cafe that I’m in, poking out ⁸⁾conspicuously between the cushions so the next person notices, and drop the other one oh-so-casually on the tube, as if it wasn’t me that left it on that seat at all. On my way home I notice a nice-looking bike with a basket, so I drop the last note in there.

下一步是投放信笺：这些信放在哪儿好呢？我把其中一封插在我身处的咖啡馆的沙发上，明显地突出于靠垫之间，以便下一位顾客能看得到。另外一封我无比随意地放在地铁上，就好像完全不是我落下的一般。在我回家的路上，我看到一辆带车篮的漂亮自行车，于是我把最后一封信放进车篮子里。

 

It’s kind of exciting, oddly ⁹⁾exhilarating and butterfly-inducing, leaving these notes behind and wondering if the person who finds one will smile or screw it straight up. I’d like to think they would appreciate the gesture, although I can equally understand why they might think I am a ¹⁰⁾lunatic. But I guess, as Brencher’s experiment shows, it’s really not that much weirder to take the time to write a random letter for someone with the aim of making their day that wee bit brighter than it is to, say, Tweet a whole bunch of people you’ll never meet or never really know.

把这些便笺放下，我猜想着发现信件的人是会微笑还是会直接把信撕掉，这种感觉很刺激，出奇地令人既雀跃又紧张。我倾向于认为他们会对这种做法表示感激，虽然我同样理解他们或许会认为我是个疯子。但我想，正如布兰切尔的实验证明的那样，比起向一帮你永远不会碰面或认识的人发微博，花些时间随心为陌生人写些信，为他们的生活增添一丁点儿欢乐，这种做法真的不算太古怪。

 

When I get home, I realise I’ve got one card and one envelope left. So I scrawl a lil’ something for my husband and leave it under his pillow. Way better than sending a text.

当我回到家的时候，我发现自己还剩下一张卡片和一个信封。于是，我给丈夫胡乱写下片言碎语，并将信笺放到他的枕头底下。这样做，比发短信好多了。

 

1) conventional [k?n?ven??nl]  adj. 常规的，传统的

2) all-round 多方面的，多才多艺的

3) initiative [??n???t?v] n. 主动，主动精神

4) TED （指technology, entertainment, design在英语中的缩写，即技术、娱乐、设计）是美国的一家私有非营利机构，诞生于1984年，该机构以它组织的TED大会著称。每年3月，TED大会在美国召集众多科学、设计、文学、音乐等领域的杰出人物，分享他们关于技术、社会、人的思考和探索。

5) platitude [?pl?t?tju:d] n. 陈词滥调

6) crappy [?kr?p?] adj. 俚>蹩脚的

7) nail it 成功完成，做好

8) conspicuously [k?n'sp?kj??sl?] adv. 显著地，超群地

9) exhilarating [?g?z?l?re?t??] adj. 令人喜欢的，使人愉快的

10) lunatic [?lu:n?t?k] n. 疯子，狂人