But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot.
政治戏剧所展现的是完全不同的问题，尽一切可能避免说教。客观性是最基本的，人物必须被允许呼吸自己的空气。作者不能限制和压抑他们以满足自己的品味、性格或偏见。他必须准备着从不同的角度，以完整的不受限的观念接近他们，也许偶然的情景中会使他们吃惊，但终究是给他们完全的自由按照他们的意愿行事。这并不总是成功。当然政治嘲讽戏完全不牵扯这些规矩，事实上它所做的正与其相反，但这正是它的功能所在。
Political theatre presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonising has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they will. This does not always work. And political satire, of course, adheres to none of these precepts, in fact does precisely the opposite, which is its proper function.
在我的《生日聚会》戏里，我认为在最终的决定性的行动被聚焦之前，我应允了可能性的丛林中整个范围的行动可行性。
In my play The Birthday Party I think I allow a whole range of options to operate in a dense forest of possibility before finally focussing on an act of subjugation.
《山语》假装没有这样的行为范围，它就持续地残忍、短暂和丑陋，但是戏中的士兵确实得到了一些享受。有的时候人忘记了折磨者是很容易变得厌倦的，他们需要一些玩笑以保持他们的精神面貌。这已经被发生在巴格达Abu Ghraih的事件证实了。《山语》只持续了20分钟，但它可以一小时一小时地继续下去，同样的模式可以重复来重复去，永无休止。
Mountain Language pretends to no such range of operation. It remains brutal, short and ugly. But the soldiers in the play do get some fun out of it. One sometimes forgets that torturers become easily bored. They need a bit of a laugh to keep their spirits up. This has been confirmed of course by the events at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. Mountain Language lasts only 20 minutes, but it could go on for hour after hour, on and on and on, the same pattern repeated over and over again, on and on, hour after hour.
从另一方面讲，《尘对尘》似乎是发生在水下的事情。一个正在被淹没的女人，她的手穿过波浪向上伸着，掉下去消失了，伸向他人但是发现周围没有别人，水上或者水下都是如此，只能找到阴影、倒影，漂浮着；这女人在淹没的风景里是个迷失了的人物，一个不能逃脱厄运只属于他人的女人。
Ashes to Ashes, on the other hand, seems to me to be taking place under water. A drowning woman, her hand reaching up through the waves, dropping down out of sight, reaching for others, but finding nobody there, either above or under the water, finding only shadows, reflections, floating; the woman a lost figure in a drowning landscape, a woman unable to escape the doom that seemed to belong only to others.
于是当他们死了，她也必须死。
But as they died, she must die too.
政治家所使用的政治语言不会在任何领域中冒险，因为，就我们现有的证据来看，大多数政治家所感兴趣的不是真相而是权力以及保持那种权力。要保持住权力最基本的是让人民无知中，让他们生活在对真理的无知，甚至对自身生命的无知中。我们周围所围绕的是一张巨大的色彩缤纷的谎言网, 靠着它我们被灌输着。
Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.
真相完全是另一种东西，真相是关于美国如何理解它在世界中的角色和它如何选择表现它。
The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.
但是在回到现在之前，我想先看看最近的过去，我的意思是指自从二战之后美国的外交政策。我认为在这有限的时间中实在有必要对这段时间做个哪怕是有限的回顾。
But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here.
每个人都知道战后在苏联和整个东欧所发生的事情：有计划、有步骤的疯狂暴行，广泛的残暴行为，毫无节制的思想禁锢。所有这些都被记录在案，被证实了。
Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.
但是我现在的论点是在同一时间段里，美国的罪行只是表面化地被记录过，根本谈不上正式的文件，根本不曾被确认过，也根本谈不上被看做是罪行。我认为这必须被指出来，真相与我们今天的世界直接有关。虽然在一定程度上由于前苏联的存在受到阻止，但美国在整个世界中的行为清楚地表明，它认为自己有自由处理权可以做任何自己想做的事情。
But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States’ actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.
直接入侵一个主权国家从来不是美国喜爱的方式。大体上，它宁可采取所谓的“低度冲突”。低度冲突意思是成千上万的人死掉，但是这些死亡来得比你突袭扔下炸弹一下子炸光要缓慢些。这意味着感染这个国家的心脏, 让癌生长, 看着坏疽病变发展。当这里的民众被弱化了——或者被击败致死了——反正是一样的——你们自己的朋友, 那军事机构, 那巨大的金融公司, 舒适地坐在权力的交椅中, 你到摄像机前大谈民主获取了人心。这就是在我所指的这段时间内美国外交政策的寻常的事。
Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America’s favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as “low intensity conflict”. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued—or beaten to death—the same thing—and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.
尼加拉瓜的悲剧是一个非常明显的例子。我在这里选来作为一个有力的案例表明美国对自己在世界中角色的看法，既代表过去也代表现在。
The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America’s view of its role in the world, both then and now.
上世纪80年代后期, 我出席了在伦敦的美国大使馆的一次会议。
I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s.
