Running as religion
奔跑是一种信仰
Milkha Singh, “The Flying Sikh”, died on June 18th, aged 90 or 91
米尔哈·辛格，“锡克飞人”，于2021年6月18日与世长辞，享年91岁（一说90岁）。
Before his best race, at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff in 1958, Milkha Singh was under far too much stress to sleep. That day he prayed, touched his forehead to the ground and promised to do his best; but the honour of India, he told God, was in His hands. This was, after all, the new India, independent of Britain for only a decade, striving to win gold in games where, as a part of empire, it had never done before.
1958年，卡迪夫英联邦运动会上，米尔哈·辛格（Milkha Singh）跑出了生涯最佳成绩；比赛前夕，他压力过大，彻夜难眠。那天，他叩首祷告神灵，发誓要倾尽全力；他对神说，印度的荣誉掌握在祂手中。毕竟，这是从英国独立仅10年的新生印度，力求能在英联邦运动会上夺取金牌，完成曾作为帝国一部分时从未实现的突破。
注释：
Sikhs are people associated with Sikhism, a monotheistic religion that originated in the 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, based on the revelation of Guru Nanak.The term Sikh has its origin in the word śiṣya (शिष्य), meaning 'disciple' or 'student'.
On the track for the 440-yard sprint, Malcolm Spence of South Africa, the world-record holder, was the man he was watching. But if he ran as he planned to, Spence was no danger. He shot from the start as fast as possible, led in the final straight, thought Spence was nowhere near but then, in a second, sensed him over his shoulder. At the line, with six inches between them, Spence failed to pass him, and he won the gold. The stadium erupted. As the Indian national anthem was played and the tricolour ascended, it seemed that 100,000 Englishmen rose to their feet. The sister of Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister, hugged him afterwards, telling him that he had made India the pride of the world.
在440码的短跑赛道上，辛格密切注视着当时（该项目）的世界纪录保持者，来自南非的马尔科姆·斯彭斯（Malcolm Spence)。如果辛格能按照自己的节奏跑，斯彭斯并不能构成威胁。辛格从一开始就全力冲刺，在最后的直道依然处于领先；他以为斯彭斯已经被甩开了，但很快，他感觉到斯彭斯已近在咫尺。抵达终点时，斯彭斯还是未能超过辛格，辛格以6英寸的微弱优势领先，夺得金牌。整个体育馆沸腾了。现场升起印度国旗、奏响印度国歌，约10万英国人起立致敬。时任印度总理贾瓦哈拉尔·尼赫鲁（Jawaharlal Nehru）的妹妹之后拥抱了辛格，对他说因为他，印度成为了世界的骄傲。
注释：
rise to (one's) feet: To come to one's feet; to stand up.
Those Britishers who stood to salute him, however, knew almost nothing about him. To them he was just an exotic person, a village boy with a Sikh top-knot who ran with his arms gracefully waving and usually went barefoot, though for international meetings he wore shoes. They did not know that, for him, running was not a sport. It was everything, his religion, his beloved, life.
然而，起立为辛格欢呼的英国人对其知之甚少。对于他们而言，辛格不过只是一个异乡人，一个留着锡克发髻的乡村小伙子，摆臂很优雅，通常光着脚（虽然国际比赛时，他会穿鞋）。英国人所不了解的是，跑步于辛格而言，不只是一项运动。跑步是他的全部，他的信仰，他的挚爱，他的生命。
As a child, a farmer’s son, he ran to escape the poverty of Gobindpura, in Punjab, and to get an education. The school was 10km away, across sands that burned so hot in summer that he and his friends would have to jump between cooling pads of grass. But at the age of 14 or 15 in the year of Partition, 1947, he ran to save his very life. The state of Punjab was being split then between India and Pakistan, and crowds of Muslim outsiders—not the gentle Muslims he knew as neighbours—suddenly arrived in the village. They began killing, leaving the mutilated bodies for dogs, and ordered his family to convert to Islam or die. One night they came, with swords and axes, to slash his parents’ throats and hack his siblings to death. His father, dying, shouted: “Run, Milkha, run! Bhaag, Milkha, bhaag!” He raced for the forest, crying.
他是农民的儿子。小时候，他跑步是为了逃离贫困的旁遮普邦高宾普拉（Gobindpura），能够有学上。学校离家有10公里远，途径一片沙地，一到夏天就热得发烫。他和朋友们不得不从凉爽的草垫上跳着走。但在1947年印巴分治时，十四五岁的他跑步是为了保命。当时印度和巴基斯坦正在争夺旁遮普邦，成群结队的穆斯林外来者（不是他所熟悉的那些和睦的穆斯林邻居）突然闯进村里。他们开始屠杀，把残破不堪的尸体扔给狗吃，还逼迫辛格的家人皈依伊斯兰教，否则就是死路一条。一天晚上，他们挥着剑和斧头，割断了辛格父母的喉咙，砍死了他的兄弟姐妹。父亲临死前还（朝辛格）大喊：“快跑，米尔哈，快跑! 逃命啊！”他哭着向森林里飞快地跑去。
There followed a time of scrapes, when he hopped trains as a refugee, shoeless and starving, and became a petty thief, running from the police. Eventually the army took him on. There he discovered running of a new kind, with coaching, races over set lengths, and prizes. The first race he won rewarded him with nourishment, a daily glass of milk. The first track he saw, decked with flags, enchanted him. In his first cross-country (“What is cross-country?”) he got stomach cramps and sat down whenever they gripped him, but still came sixth out of 400 runners.
之后，他一度陷入窘境，像难民一样扒火车，光着脚丫，饥肠辘辘；还沦落为小偷，靠跑躲避警察。最终，辛格应征入伍。在军队，他发现了新的跑步方式，有人指导，有定项赛程，还给发奖品。他赢得第一场比赛的奖励是获得营养：每天一杯牛奶。第一次看到飘扬着旗帜的跑道，他非常着迷。第一次跑越野赛（“什么是越野赛？”）时，他胃痉挛发作，时不时就得坐下，但仍然在400名选手中获得第六名。
注释：
scrape: difficult situation 窘境
Sixth was good; first was better. So began the hard, necessary work, six hours a day. He ran in fatigue time, when other jawans were doing chores, and at night, when they were playing cards. He laboured up steep hillsides and across loose sand to build his leg muscles, and honed his upper body with weights. He ran until he filled a bucket with his sweat, until he urinated blood or collapsed with exhaustion and had to go to the hospital. He took his body to the limit out of pride, and for India. His coaches and his doctors remonstrated every time, but it was no good. He would imagine a crowded stadium, the wild applause, his burst across the finish line, the Indian flag rising—and exhaust himself all over again.
第六名固然不错；第一名才更好。于是他开始了每天必修的六个小时艰苦训练。其他士兵做内务的时候，他在跑步，尽管已疲惫不堪；晚上他们打牌的时候，他还在跑步。为了锻炼腿部肌肉，他努力攀登陡坡，穿过松软沙地；并通过举重磨练上半身。他一直跑到汗如雨下，甚至跑到尿血，跑得体力不支而倒下，不得不去医院。出于骄傲，也是为了印度，他不断挑战身体的极限。教练和医生每次都告诫他，都徒劳无用。他想象着座无虚席的赛场上，掌声雷动，他冲过终点线，印度国旗高高升起——每每想起这样的画面，他就会反复训练，直到筋疲力竭。
Iron discipline paid off. He took four golds at the Asian games, besides the gold in Cardiff, and won more than 70 of his 80 international races. In 1956, at his first Olympics in Melbourne, he was eliminated in the heats but did not waste the trip. He asked the American gold medallist in the 400 metres, Charles Jenkins, to share his training schedule, and for the next four years a chit of paper with Jenkins’s world-record time, 46.7 seconds, was propped beside his picture of Guru Nanak as the focus of his prayers.
铁律获得了回报。除却在卡迪夫拿到的金牌，辛格又在亚运会上斩获四枚金牌，他参与的80场国际比赛有70多场都是冠军。在1956年的墨尔本，他第一次参加奥运会，没能闯过预赛，却不虚此行。他请求400米金牌得主、美国选手查尔斯·延金斯（Charles Jenkins）向他分享训练计划。接下来的四年里，他把延金斯保持的46.7秒的400米世界纪录写在一张纸条上，垫在拿那克宗师画像的旁边，做为祈祷的目标。
注释：
Guru Nanak: 拿那克宗师（1469.4.15 - 1539.9.7），锡克教创始人，首任锡克教宗师（Guru），确立了锡克教反对种姓制度的思想。
In 1960, at the Rome Olympics, his time was 45.6. It was an Indian national record but not, alas, the world record, because he did not win that 400-metre sprint. Though he led for the first 200 metres or so, he then slowed, glanced back, and could not regain his rhythm. Three runners passed him. It was Spence who, by 0.1 of a second, pipped him for the bronze. It was the worst day of his life, excepting only that day when his parents had been killed. Even the national record he had set then was electrically retimed to 45.73, and in 1998 a policeman broke it. By then he had long retired from competition, unable ever to forgive himself for that lapse in Rome.
1960年的罗马奥运会上，辛格跑出了45.6秒的成绩，创造了印度全国纪录。可惜的是，45.6秒并没有打破世界纪录，因为他没有拿到那场比赛的胜利。尽管在前200米左右保持领先，可随后他放慢了速度，向后一瞥，然后彻底失去了节奏。三位选手超过了他，而正是斯彭斯以0.1秒的优势斩获铜牌（令辛格屈居第四）。除了父母被杀那天，这是辛格一生中最难过的一天，连他打破的全国纪录也被电子钟重新记为45.73秒。1998年，一位警察打破了这项纪录，那时辛格早已离开了赛场，再也没办法原谅自己当年在罗马的失误。
He did, however, manage to forgive others. In 1960 he was invited to Lahore for a meeting that would pit him against Pakistan’s champion sprinter, Abdul Khaliq. At first, he refused to go. How could he? His childhood home was there now, still soaked with blood. It was Nehru who convinced him that there needed to be friendship between the two new, raw nations, so he went. The moment he crossed the border, to his surprise, he was welcomed with flags and flowers. And when he won his race, the Pakistani prime minister whispered to him, in Punjabi, that he had not run that day; he had actually flown. “Pakistan bestows on you”, he said, “the title of 'The Flying Sikh’.”
不过，他仍试着努力原谅其他事情。1960年，他受邀来到拉合尔（Lahore），与巴基斯坦短跑冠军阿卜杜尔·卡利克（Abdul Khaliq）比了一场。最开始他不愿意去。怎么会愿意呢？他儿时的家现在归了巴基斯坦，依旧血迹斑斑。是尼赫鲁说服了他，告诉他两个新生的国家之间需要友谊，他这才动身前往。令他惊讶的是，跨过两国国界线那一刻，迎接他的是旗帜和鲜花。赢下和卡利克的对决后，巴基斯坦总理用旁遮普语在他的耳边低声说道：“您不是在跑，是在飞。”接着，总理宣布：“巴基斯坦授予您'锡克飞人’的称号。”
注释：
Lahore：拉合尔，原英属印度旁遮普省首府，印巴分治后由于穆斯林人数较多被分给巴基斯坦。现为巴基斯坦第二大城市，巴基斯坦旁遮普省首府。
He took it up joyfully, and so did his fans. It gave wings to his celebrity, which peaked in 2013 with a top-grossing Bollywood film of his life. In retrospect “The Flying Sikh” was perhaps his favourite honour, though he had also received the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest for civilians. (He was scornful of more common awards, like the Arjuna, that were handed out to almost anyone like prasad in a temple.) As an athlete, he had run for nothing more than his country and his countrymen’s applause. And, despite everything that had happened, he had two countries. Wherever he ran, he said, both India and Pakistan ran with him. It was as if in Milkha Singh, for brief seconds, they found unity again.
他欣然接受了这一称号，他的跑迷们也很高兴。这一称号让他声名鹊起，2013年一部描绘他生平的宝莱坞电影斩获印度票房冠军，他的名声达到顶峰。回顾往事，尽管获得了印度公民第四高荣誉“莲花士勋章”（the Padma Shri），但“锡克飞人”的称号或许是他的最爱（他对一般荣誉嗤之以鼻，比如阿朱那奖，就和寺庙里的神食一样人手皆有）。作为一名运动员，他只为自己的国家和同胞的掌声奔跑。尽管发生了这么多事，他依然有两个祖国。他说，无论自己在哪里奔跑，印度和巴基斯坦都与他同行；仿佛在米尔哈·辛格身上，这两个国家再一次短暂地合为一体。
注释：
1.The Padma Shri：莲花士勋章，在印度的公民荣誉勋章系统中位列第四档，居于印度国宝勋章（Bharat Ratna）、莲花赐勋章（Padma Vibhushan）和莲花装勋章（Padma Bhushan）之后，也是印度莲花系列勋章中档次最低的勋章。莲花士勋章一般由印度政府颁发给在国民生活各个领域有“杰出贡献”的印度公民，并附赠莲花士勋章受勋证书，每年在印度共和日（1月26日）颁发。（下图为莲花士勋章的样式概念图）
2.Arjuna：此处指阿朱那奖（The Arjuna award）。该奖以梵语史诗《摩诃婆罗多》中象征勤劳、决心和专注的阿朱那王子命名，主要颁发给在少数几项国际大赛（如奥运会、亚运会、英联邦运动会）上表现突出的印度运动员。在2018年改制之前，所有体育项目均可获评阿朱那奖，因此就形成了“人人都有”的场景。
3.Prasad：又作Prasada，无中文官方译文，暂译作“神食”。这是一种印度教和锡克教神庙中供奉给神灵的素食食物；祈祷结束后，信徒可共同食用。下图为一张Prasad的照片。
4.描绘米尔哈·辛格一生的宝莱坞电影是《灵魂奔跑者》（Bhaag Milkha Bhaag，2013），由印度著名穆斯林影星法尔汉·阿赫塔尔（Farhan Akhtar）饰演米尔哈·辛格。
翻译组：
Lucia，英语专业学生，经济学人爱好者
Nikolae，新手人民教师，声优探索者，乃木坂47与AKB49
Diamond，男，搬砖工，理工科永久性脑损伤，学习翻译的小学生
校对组：
Luc，男，在北京，喜欢睡觉
Lee，爱骑行的妇女之友+Timberland粉
Claire，进进退退，摇摇摆摆，探索世界ing
感谢其他平台编辑作者：
B站地址：
https://space.bilibili.com/522030734
编辑：Daisy，勤勤恳恳工具人，B站客服的好朋友
知乎地址：
zhihu.com/people/damon0922
编辑：jill，会展经济，想跨界英专的英语学渣
微博地址：
https://weibo.com/u/2375202237
编辑：Erin，在校大学生一枚，TE爱好者
