追忆张纯如
Memoir About My Wife Iris Chang (Excerpt)
关于我妻子张纯如的回忆（节选）
文/布莱特·道格拉斯
译/聂雅真
By Brett Douglas
When I first met my wife Iris Chang in October of 1988, she was a beautiful, charming girl who was full of life. I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had told me she would someday write a best-selling book that would be translated into 15 languages. What does surprise me is that I am now writing an epilogue to The Rape of Nanking seven years after her death.
1988年10月当我第一次遇见我的妻子张纯如时，她是个美丽迷人、充满活力的女孩。当时如果有人告诉我纯如会写一本译成15国文字的畅销书，我一点儿都不会奇怪。令我奇怪的是，在她逝世7年后的今天，我正为她的《南京大屠杀》写后记。
With the energy, passion, and drive that Iris showed at the age of thirty, I thought it was likely she would be writing great books well in her eighties or nineties. When we met neither of us had dated a few times, but we soon both knew we were a perfect match. We were blessed to have sixteen happy years together.
看到她在30岁时表现得如此热情横溢，精力充沛，干劲十足，我想等她到了八十大几、九十大几的年纪，很可能会写出伟大的作品。当我们相遇时各自都没有多少恋爱经验，但我们都知道我俩是绝配。上帝保佑我们一起快乐地生活了十六年。
At the time of this writing, two books have been published about Iris’ life: Finding Iris Chang by Paula Kamen and The Woman Who Could Not Forget by her mother, Ying-Ying Chang. These are both good books, and I encourage those who want to learn more about Iris to read them. Ying-Ying Chang’s The Woman Who Could Not Forget provides a detailed deion of Iris’ entire life, and I have no desire to try to improve upon that book. Instead I’ll focus on a few factors I believe led to her success.
在写本文时，有两本关于纯如的书出版了：一本是葆拉·卡门的《找到张纯如》,及她的母亲张盈盈所著《无法忘记过去的女人》。这是两本很好的书。我建议想对纯如了解更多的人可以读读。张盈盈的《无法忘记过去的女人》提供了有关纯如一生的详细描述，我不想试图对这本书作什么修订，而是想集中谈几点我认为促使纯如获得成功的因素。
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Iris attended the University of Illinois’ High School. The high school has produced several Nobel Prize winners and many other graduates who went on to achieve extraordinary success. Iris was on track to graduate in just over three years, but she changed her major to journalism when she was a few hours short of a degree. At the time, it was relatively rare for a girl to study Math and Computer Science, it was rare for someone to complete the program that quickly, and it was extremely rare for someone who had completed the program so easily to change majors at the very end.
纯如就读的中学是伊利诺伊大学附属中学。这所中学已培养出好几位诺贝尔奖获得者和其他许多取得杰出成就的毕业生。纯如大学读了三年多，即将毕业，但只差几个小时就将取得学位时，她改变专业转读了新闻。在当时，一个女孩子学数学和计算机科学很少见，那么快学完课程也很稀有，而那么轻而易举地完成课程却又在最后改变专业尤其罕见。
Iris soon won internship at Newsweek, the Associated Press, and the Chicago Tribune. Later she was admitted to the prestigious Writing Seminar program at Johns Hopkins University. While she was there, at the age of only twenty-two, she met her editor, and later her agent, Susan Rabiner. Susan gave her a topic, and Iris started research on her first book The Thread of the Silkworm.
纯如很快进入美国《新闻周刊》、美联社、《芝加哥论坛报》实习。以后她又进入了著名的约翰·霍普金斯大学的写作研究班。她在那儿遇见了她的编辑苏珊·拉宾娜（后来成了她的代理人），当时纯如只有22岁。苏珊给了她一个题目，于是纯如开始她的第一本书《蚕丝》的研究工作。
Along with her beauty, her intelligence, and her education, two other factors contributed greatly to Iris success. She was never shy about asking someone, no matter how famous, for help or advice and she was always trying to improve herself. For instance, in 1991, Iris was very nervous about the prospect of giving a short toast in front of two hundred people at our wedding reception. Yet she consciously worked at public speaking so that by the time The Rape of Nanking was published in 1997, she could hold the attention of a thousand people for an hour or longer while she talked about her research and her books.
除了她的美貌、智慧和所受的教育外，还有两个因素大大帮助了纯如获得成功。在请人帮助或征求意见时她从不害羞，无论这人多么有声望。她总在不断自我提升。例如，1991年我们的婚礼上，她要在200多人面前致敬酒词，这使她感到很紧张。以后她就有意识地练习在公开场合讲话。到1997年《南京大屠杀》出版时，她可以吸引上千人听她长时间谈她的研究和著作，有时一个小时，有时更长。
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Iris attended a conference in Cupertino, California late in 1994 where she saw photos from the Rape of Nanking. Many people believe that Iris saw the photos and decided then and there that she had to write a book on the atrocity. But Iris had heard stories about the Rape of Nanking from her parents and grandparents. She told me shortly after we started dating in October 1988 that it was of her desire to write a book about the Nanking Massacre. As soon as she completed the final draft of her first book The Thread of the Silkworm, she determined that Japan’s assault on Nanking was the most promising topic for her second book, and so she started her research.
纯如参加了1994年下半年在加州丘泊蒂诺召开的一次会议。会上她看到了南京大屠杀时拍下的照片。许多人以为纯如是看过这些照片后当即决定必须写一本关于该暴行的书。但是，南京大屠杀的事是她幼年听父母和祖父母讲起的。1988年10月我和她开始谈恋爱不久她就已告诉我，她要写一本关于南京大屠杀的书。第一本书《蚕丝》的终稿完成后，她决定把日本对南京的攻击作为第二本书的首选题材，就此开始她的研究。
During the first ten years of our relationship, it was a true pleasure to watch Iris build herself from a sometimes shy and introverted person into “Super Iris”, the famous author and historian who could keep audiences enthralled with her speeches and win debates on national television. It was much sadder to see “Super Iris” rapidly succumb to mental illness during the summer of 2004.
我和纯如在一起的头十年，我非常高兴地看到她从一个有时会害羞的内向的人发展成为“超级纯如”，成为著名的作家和历史学家，演讲能吸引听众，还能在全国性的电视辩论中胜出。但“超级纯如”却于2004年夏天因精神疾病迅速恶化而离世，让人悲恸不已。
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（节选自《英语世界》2016年第11期）
作者简介
著名美籍华裔作家张纯如（Iris Chang）的丈夫。张纯如于2004年11月9日因抑郁吞枪自杀，年仅36岁。本文节选自道格拉斯为张纯如代表作 《南京大屠杀：被遗忘的二战浩劫》（The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II）2011年再版写的后记。
冷暖人生《女儿张纯如》完整视频
来源：英语世界 日期：2017年12月14日
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