和谐英语

经济学人下载:切尔迪好村长拉斯洛·波格丹(1)

2020-08-06来源:Economist

Laszlo Bogdan, mayor of Cserdi, died on July 14th, aged 46
拉斯洛·波格丹是切尔迪村村长,他于7月14日去世,享年46岁。

Along the walls of his office in Cserdi, a village of around 350 souls in the gentle hills of southern Hungary, Laszlo Bogdan strung several clothes lines. Pegged to them were hundreds of messages written to “Laci”, as they called him: “People are good!” “Our parents have work”. “We have a good mayor”. These were the voices of the villagers, who since his election as mayor in 2006 had seen their world transformed.
在位于匈牙利南部丘陵地带的切尔迪村,有大约350名居民。拉斯洛·波格丹在他办公室的墙上挂起了好几根晾衣绳。上面挂着数百条写给“洛齐”(他们这样称呼他)的留言:“人们都很好!“我们的父母有工作”。“我们有一个好村长”。这是村民们的声音。自2006年他当选村长以来,村民们看到了他们的世界发生的变化。

Cserdi had once been strewn with rubble and dilapidated houses, with idle, jobless men brawling outside. Petty crime was rampant: up to 300 cases a year, with neighbouring villages terrorised. Now everything was orderly. The houses were neat, and many had gained bathrooms. Small parks had appeared. Out in the fields women worked with hoes, and men with spades, to plant potatoes or dig wells.
曾经,切尔迪到处是瓦砾和破旧的房屋,无所事事的失业者在外面喧嚷。轻微犯罪很猖獗:每年多达300起案件,邻近的村庄也感到恐惧。现在一切都井然有序了。房子很整洁,很多都有浴室。小公园建成了。在田里,女人用锄头干活,男人用铁锹干活,种土豆或打井。

Four giant plastic greenhouses sheltered crops of peppers and tomatoes. In a good year the village could produce 160,000kg of quality vegetables, with the surplus going to the poor of the county. Officials from far and wide came to inspect this “Cserdi miracle”. But Mayor Laci, pacing up and down with his purple scarf knotted fashionably round his neck, was still dissatisfied. Was it really so special, so exotic, to see Gypsies working? He spoke as one, a proud Cigany (he hated “Roma”), who revelled in garish shirts that emphasised his Gypsyness, and delivered his vegetables in a red Zsiguli car with a swinging rosary of the sort only Gypsies drove.
四个巨大的塑料大棚庇护着辣椒和西红柿的作物。丰年的时候,这个村子能生产16万公斤优质蔬菜,富余的都给了郡里的穷人。四面八方的官员们都赶来视察这个“切尔迪奇迹”。但洛齐村长仍然不满意,脖子上围着时髦的紫色围巾的他来回踱步。看到吉普赛人工作真的很特别,很有异国情调吗?他像一个骄傲的罗姆人一样说话(他讨厌“Roma”),他喜欢穿着彰显他的吉普赛精神的花哨的衬衫,他用一辆红色的Zsiguli轿车运送蔬菜,车上挂着一串摇曳的念珠。只有吉普赛人才开这种车。