I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the jagged suburbs.

我給你貧窮的街道、絕望的日落、破敗郊區(qū)的月亮。

I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.

我給你一個(gè)久久地望著孤月的人的悲哀。

I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts that living men have honoured in marble: my father’s father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs, bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow;

my mother’s grandfather -just twentyfour- heading a charge of three hundred men in Perú, now ghosts on vanished horses.I offer you whatever insight my books may hold. whatever manliness or humour my life.

我給你我已死去的先輩，人們用大理石紀(jì)念他們的幽靈：在布宜偌斯艾利斯邊境陣亡的我父親的父親，兩顆子彈穿了他的胸膛。蓄著胡子的他死去了，士兵們用牛皮裹起他的尸體；我母親的祖父——時(shí)年二十四歲——在秘魯率領(lǐng)三百名士兵沖鋒，如今都成了消失的馬背上的幽靈。

我給你我寫的書中所能包含的一切悟力、我生活中所能有的男子氣概或幽默。

I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.

我給你一個(gè)從未有過(guò)信仰人的忠誠(chéng)。

I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved somehow -the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.

我給你我設(shè)法保全的我自己的核心——不營(yíng)字造句，不和夢(mèng)想交易，不被時(shí)間、歡樂(lè)和逆境觸動(dòng)的核心。

I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.

我給你，早在你出生前多年的一個(gè)傍晚看到的一朵黃玫瑰的記憶。

I offer you explanationsof yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.

我給你對(duì)自己的解釋，關(guān)于你自己的理論，你自己的真實(shí)而驚人的消息。

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat

我給你我的寂寞、我的黑暗、我心的饑渴；我試圖用困惑、危險(xiǎn)、失敗來(lái)打動(dòng)你。