Smiley's People汉译19

agent124

But she did not say it, she kept rigidly silent.
但她没有说出口，而是一言不发，保持缄默。

Ostrakova had already sworn to herself that she would restrain both her quick temper and her quick tongue, and she now physically enjoined herself to this vow by grabbing a piece of skin on the soft inside of her wrist and pinching it through her sleeve with a fierce, sustained pressure under the table, exactly as she had done a hundred times before, in the old days, when such questionings were part of her daily life—When did you last hear from your husband, Ostrakov, the traitor? Name all persons with whom you have associated in the last three months!
奥斯特拉科娃早就发誓要改掉急躁和嘴巴快的脾气，现在她身体力行要做到这点。她抓住手腕内侧的一块柔软的皮肤，隔着袖子在桌子下持续用力地掐。以前，当类似的盘问是她日常生活的一部分时，同样的动作她也做过无数次。就像这样的问题————你最近一次收到你的叛徒丈夫奥斯特拉科夫的消息是什么时候？把你最近三个月里接触过的人统统说出来！

With bitter experience she had learned the other lessons of interrogation too. A part of her was rehearsing them at this minute, and though they belonged, in terms of history, to a full generation earlier, they appeared to her now as bright as yesterday and as vital: never to match rudeness with rudeness, never to be provoked, never to score, never to be witty or superior or intellectual, never to be deflected by fury, or despair, or the surge of sudden hope that an occasional question might arouse.
关于审讯的经验，她是在痛苦中学到的。此刻，她身体的一部分正在重温这些经验。尽管是整整一个世代前的经验，现在她却感觉新鲜如昨，异常生动：永远不要以粗鲁对粗鲁，永远不要被激怒，永远不要占上风，永远不要耍小聪明，表现出优越感或才智，永远不要因为偶然一问所激起的愤怒，绝望，或者突然的希望而忘了真正的目的。

To match dullness with dullness and routine with routine.
他迟钝，你也迟钝；他例行公事，你也例行公事。

And only deep, deep down to preserve the two secrets that made all these humiliations bearable: her hatred of them; and her hope that one day, after endless drips of water on the stone, she would wear them down, and by a reluctant miracle of their own elephantine processes, obtain from them the freedom they were denying her.
把两个秘密深深地藏在心底，靠它扛过一切羞辱。一个是对他们的恨，一个是她的心愿，希望有朝一日，滴水石穿，她比他们更能熬，终将战胜他们。他们不想给她自由，她却要创造一个奇迹，让他们自己庞杂繁复的程序，不情愿地给她自由。