lilimarin's translation

Too Young to Bullfight? 小小斗牛士

Kids sometimes get in trouble for breaking a window or an arm while playing a sport, but they rarely cause controversy for their choice of sport itself. Not so with Franco-Mexican boy Michel Lagravère Peniche, 10. Twice over the past weekend, officials in the south of France stopped Lagravère from taking part in his favorite pastime. Such a prohibition might be odd were the kid a soccer or rugby champ. But Lagravère's precocious gift is for bullfighting.

孩子有时会因为打破窗户，摔坏胳膊受到家长的责备，但是他们选择的活动方式本身不会受到任何质疑，但是，对以墨西哥男孩麦克这条法则是不适用的。年仅十岁的麦克在过去一周内被法国南部政府两次禁止他最爱的活动。如果对于一个足球俱乐部或者橄榄球俱乐部的一个小队员来说肯定是件奇怪的事情，但是Lagravere却在斗牛活动中有着过于早熟的天赋。

"The violence and torture central to bullfighting make it a truly shocking activity at any time, but its cruelty is even more horrible when it's being inflicted by a small child," argues Claire Starozinski, president of the Anti-Corrida Association (ACA), which seeks a full ban on bullfighting in France and was behind the moves to prevent Lagravère from performing this past weekend. "This boy has killed nearly 60 of these animals in Mexico — there's video of him, inflicting death, on the web. We decided to prevent him from fighting in France."

反暴力中心一直认为斗牛是项残酷的运动，那么对于一个孩子来说尤为严重。发斗牛组织主席克莱尔这样说，他一直致力于法国的反斗牛运动。也正是他的阻止使Lagravere在过去一周内不能再进行斗牛活动。“这个孩子已经在墨西哥杀死了60头牛，这有他的一个网上录音，我们不允许他在法国进行这项活动。”

Strictly speaking, the bullfighting prodigy known as "Michelito" isn't in France to slay any bovine foe. The series of exhibitions he's scheduled to appear in are bloodless becerrada — confrontations with calves, staged by local bullfighting schools. Young Lagravère's participation is intended to provide aspiring matadors a demonstration of technique and skill that falls short of provoking the calves with physical pain — much less a death blow with a sword.

严格来说，这个被称作Michelito的小斗牛士在法国并没有屠杀牛，他计划的斗牛展览也是没有血腥的——一个斗牛学校把他的这些录像在小牛面前播放，小斗牛士的这一展示只是为了证明一个真正有技术的斗牛士是怎么制服对手并且避免给牛带来更大的精神痛苦，比如用匕首结束对方的生命。

But the boy's renown has the ACA focusing its anti-bullfighting campaign on him as a means of drawing attention to their wider bid to end all bullfighting in France. Bullfighting is currently prohibited under a law that bans gratuitous cruelty to animals, yet it is allowed in certain areas of southern France where the practice is part of local culture and tradition. The ACA wants it stamped out everywhere and is about to embark on a series of protests ending with a big demonstration at the Nîmes festival on Sept. 13. "What fans of corrida don't understand is, the bloodshed and agony that draw them to the event is the same thing that repels the public once it's forced to look at it," says Starozinski, who cites polls that consistently show that a majority of French want the practice ended.

但是小斗牛士的行动再次激发了反斗牛联盟禁止所有斗牛活动的欲望，现在法国已经出台反斗牛法来禁止所有动物的无故宰杀。但是在法国南部的一些地区基于它是一项传统的活动而得以允许。反斗牛组织希望这一活动在全法国范围内都得以禁止，并且积极的采取措施以促成他们在九月份的尼姆节前实现“这样一项流血的让人痛苦的赛事让人们再次想起法国政府遭受的一些血腥的历史，这是斗牛爱好者不能理解的。”Starozinski，再次发起选票来证明大多数人是希望这项活动停止的。

Bullfighting aficionados, though, are mobilizing to ensure that Lagravère and other student-toreadors can partake in the fighting demonstrations planned for them. The mayor of the southwestern town of Hegetmau vows to push ahead with a youth performance featuring Lagravère this Wednesday. Arles mayor Hervé Schiavetti, meanwhile, says he's rescheduling events cancelled at local schools over the weekend. He says bullfighting is too important to regional tradition to relinquish. "The raising and selling of bulls has played a large role in our economic, social and cultural past, and they still figure large in this seasonal festivity," explains Schiavetti, who says the ACA's move to scuttle shows by Lagravère are as widely resented as the push to ban bullfighting. "It's seen here by most people as an injustice and a mean-spirited effort to impose one kind of thinking on attitudes and events rooted in tradition." Kids, the pro-bullfighters say, are no more exposed to injury in events than children who play rugby.
斗牛爱好者则搜集证据证明让小斗牛士和斗牛学校的孩子们进行斗牛活动是合理的。法国南部城市Hegetmau的市长支持小斗牛士Lagravere礼拜三的表演。Arles的市长Herve同时表明他会取消周末在一个地方学校的活动。他说斗牛活动是一项很重要的传统节目，应该得到支持。“斗牛的饲养售卖在经济，社会，文化中一直扮演着很重要的角色。并且在这样大型的节日庆典活动中也极其重要。”他说反斗牛组织对小斗牛士采取的行动是会引起大众愤慨的。“这里许多人都认为把一种抵制传统活动的观念强加与人是可耻的。”支持斗牛活动的人说，孩子们即使在橄榄球活动中也是会受伤的。

Perhaps. But until professional rugby matches end with losing players dead and their ears and other appendages cut off as trophies, that comparison doesn't quite hold. And given Michelito's proven talents as a precocious slayer of bulls, his supporters' claims that he's just a little kid being denied the innocent pleasures of sport will probably be a fairly tough sell as well.

但是，也许他们并不会提起在橄榄球比赛中也会引起球员的伤亡，或者掉了耳朵或者伤了什么地方。Michelito的支持者声称他只不过是一个被一些无知的人阻止进行自己喜爱的活动的孩子，只不过在斗牛方面他表现出了过分早熟的天分而已。

eliza1983 发布在 翻译例文  |  发布时间: 07:17PM Aug 07, 2008  |  评论[0]