翻译考试优秀短文的中英译文

Newspaper apologies nearly always seem inadequate. The most audacious one I know was brought back from America by the artist Edward Burne-Jones to show his friend Lady Homer of Mells. It read: "Instead of being arrested as we stated, for kicking his wife down a flight of stairs, and hurling a lighted kerosene lamp after her, the Revd. James P. Wellman died unmarried four years ago." This sentence is remarkable for the enormity of the error and the succinctness of the correction — not, be it noted, an apology, for the law of libel, in the United States as in England, offers no redress to a dead person. I suspect the extract is from the New York World when it was a sensational paper owned by Pulitzer. For reasons which a recent biography of him does not clarify, he had a particular hatred for clergymen of all denominations, and frequently exaggerated or invented discreditable news items about them. He also discovered that such items invariably put on circulation.

报社的道歉几乎从来是不到位的。据我所知，最为厚颜的一次是艺术家爱德华·伯恩 — 琼斯从美国带回来，让他的友人麦尔斯庄园的洪纳夫人看的，曰：“詹姆士·P. 维尔曼神甫没有像我们所述说的那样，因为将妻子一脚踹下了楼梯，随后又将一支点燃的煤油灯朝她掷去而被逮捕，而是于四年之前过世，从未婚娶。”对于如此之大的错误，而更正又如此之简短，这一句话可谓妙矣也哉——请注意，这算不上是“赔礼道歉”，因为在美国(正如在英国一样)，根据诽谤法，是不给死人纠错的。我猜想这条剪报取自《纽约世界报》，曾是一家轰动的报纸，由普利策拥有。不知何故(最近有关普氏的传记并未澄清)他尤其痛恨各个教派的教士们，经常将一些诋毁他们的新闻段子加以渲染，或是编造出一些这样的段子。他还发现此类新闻段子总是会使发行量剧增。