我姑媽取得的那年是“女生年”,她非常幸運。
My mother was faced with passage to England, room and board and living expenses, and tuition at the University of London.
但是我的母親沒那么幸運,她將面臨著支付到英格蘭的路費、住宿費、生活費和在倫敦的學費的困難。
To get a sense of how daunting that figure was,
知道我姑媽的“百年獎學金”是多少嗎?
the value of the Centenary scholarship my aunt won was probably as much as the sum of my grandparents' annual salaries.
那相當于我祖父母加起來的工資總和。
There were no student loan programs, no banks with lines of credit for schoolteachers out in the countryside.
那時沒有助學貸款,在鄉(xiāng)下,也沒有銀行給鄉(xiāng)村教師信用貸款。
"If I'd asked my father," my mother says, "he would have replied, 'We have no money.'"
“如果我問我的父親,如何解決困難,”我媽媽說,“他會回答說,‘我們沒有錢了。’”
What did Daisy do? She went to the Chinese shopkeeper in a neighbouring town.
戴西是怎么做的呢?她來到旁邊小鎮(zhèn)一個中國老板的商店里。
Jamaica has a very large Chinese population that since the nineteenth century has dominated the commercial life of the island.
牙買加那時候有很多的中國人,他們自19世紀開始就控制了島上的商業(yè),
In Jamaican parlance, a store is not a store,it's a "Chinee-shop."
用牙買加人的說法,商店不是商店,而是“中國商店”。
Daisy went to the Chinee-shop to Mr.Chance and borrowed the money.
戴西到這間“中國商店”去找那位“關(guān)鍵先生”借錢,
No one knows how much she borrowed, although it must have been an enormous sum.
沒有人知道她借到了多少,但肯定是一個非常大的數(shù)字。
And no one knows why Mr.Chance lent it to Daisy, except of course that she was Daisy Nation,
也沒有人知道“關(guān)鍵先生”為什么借錢給戴西,當然,除了知道她是戴西·納森外。
and she paid her bills promptly, and had taught the Chance children at Harewood school.
她在海厄烏德學校教“關(guān)鍵先生”的孩子學習,很快便還清了她的賬單。
It was not always easy to be a Chinese child in a Jamaica schoolyard.
在牙買加,中國小孩是很難進入當?shù)貙W校的,
The Jamaican children would taunt them.
而且牙買加小孩也會嘲笑中國學生,稱他們?yōu)?ldquo;中國豬”。
Daisy was a kindly and beloved figure, an oasis amid that hostility.
戴西一貫非常溫柔,有愛心,在那個不友好的環(huán)境中,她就像沙漠中的綠洲一樣,
Mr. Chance may have felt in her debt.
“關(guān)鍵先生”或許會覺得欠她點兒什么。
"Did she tell me what she was doing? I didn't even ask her," my mother remembers. "
“她會告訴我她在做什么嗎?我甚至都沒有問過她。” 我的媽媽回憶說,
It just occured. I just applied to university and got in.
“它就這樣發(fā)生了,我一申請學校,就被錄取了,
I acted completely on faith that I could rely on my mother without even realizing that I was relying on my mother."
我經(jīng)常有什么事情就本能地依賴我的母親,但卻沒有意識到我正依賴她。”
Joyce Gladwell owes her college education first to William,M.McMillan,
喬伊斯能上大學,第一個要感激的是麥克米蘭,
and then to the student at Saint Hilda's who gave up her scholarship and then to Mr.Chance, and, most of all, to Daisy Nation.
然后是在圣·希爾達學校那些放棄了獎學金的學生,再然后是“關(guān)鍵先生”,最后,也是最重要的是要感謝戴西·納森。