I've been trying to read through one newspaper article every day, no matter how long it takes. I look up approximately every third word in my dictionary. Today's news was fascinating. Hard to imagine a more dramatic headline than "Obesità! I Bambini Italiani Sono i PiùGrassi d'Europa!" Good God! Obesity! The article, I think, is declaring that Italian babies are the fattest babies in Europe! Reading on, I learn that Italian babies are significantly fatter than German babies and very significantly fatter than French babies.(Mercifully, there was no mention of how they measure up against American babies.) Older Italian children are dangerously obese these days, too, says the article. (The pasta industry defended itself.) These alarming statistics on Italian child fatness were unveiled yesterday by—no need to translate here—"una task force internazionale." It took me almost an hour to decipher this whole article. The entire time, I was eating a pizza and listening to one of Italy's children play the accordion across the street. The kid didn't look very fat to me, but that may have been because he was a gypsy. I'm not sure if I misread the last line of the article, but it seemed there was some talk from the government that the only way to deal with the obesity crisis in Italy was to implement a tax on the overweight . . .? Could this be true? After a few months of eating like this, will they come after me?

我每天尝试把报纸上的一篇文章从头到尾读一遍，无论花多少时间。我大概每三个字查一次字典。今天的消息很有意思。很难想像有比 Obesit? I Bambini Italiani Sono i PiùGrassi d' Europa!更戏剧性的新闻标题。老天爷！肥胖症！我想这篇文章在宣称意大利的婴儿是欧洲最胖的婴儿！我往下念，得知意大利婴儿比德国婴儿胖得多，比法国婴儿更是胖上许多（幸好未提及和美国婴儿较量的结果。）文章指出，较大的孩子近来的肥胖情况亦很严重。（面食工业为自己辩护。）这些意大利幼童肥胖症的惊人统计数字，昨日由一个国际专责小组所发表。我花了将近一个钟头转译整篇文章。这期间，我吃着比萨饼，听着意大利孩童中的一位在对街演奏手风琴。这孩子在我看来并不太胖，但或许因为他是吉普赛人。我不确定是否误读文章的最后一行字，但看来政府似乎谈到，解决意大利肥胖危机的唯一方式是课征超重税……？这是真的吗？这么吃了几个月后，他们会不会来找我麻烦？

It's also important to read the newspaper every day to see how the pope is doing. Here in Rome, the pope's health is recorded daily in the newspaper, very much like weather, or the TV schedule. Today the pope is tired. Yesterday, the pope was less tired than he is today. Tomorrow, we expect that the pope will not be quite so tired as he was today.

每天看报来了解教宗的状况也很重要。在罗马，报上天天刊载教宗的健康状况，就像天气预报，或电视节目表。今天，教宗很累。昨天，教宗比今天不累。明天，预料教宗将不像今天这么累。

It's kind of a fairyland of language for me here. For someone who has always wanted to speak Italian, what could be better than Rome? It's like somebody invented a city just to suit my specifications, where everyone (even the children, even the taxi drivers, even the actors on the commercials!) speaks this magical language. It's like the whole society is conspiring to teach me Italian. They'll even print their newspapers in Italian while I'm here; they don't mind! They have bookstores here that only sell books written in Italian! I found such a bookstore yesterday morning and felt I'd entered an enchanted palace. Everything was in Italian—even Dr. Seuss. I wandered through, touching all the books, hoping that anyone watching me might think I was a native speaker. Oh, how I want Italian to open itself up to me! This feeling reminded me of when I was four years old and couldn't read yet, but was dying to learn. I remember sitting in the waiting room of a doctor's office with my mother, holding a Good Housekeeping magazine in front of my face, turning the pages slowly, staring at the text, and hoping the grown-ups in the waiting room would think I was actually reading. I haven't felt so starved for comprehension since then. I found some works by American poets in that bookstore, with the original English version printed on one side of the page and the Italian translation on the other. I bought a volume by Robert Lowell, another by Louise Glück.

对我来说，这里是语言的仙境。对于一向想说意大利语的人而言，哪个地方能比罗马更好？就像有人为了配合我的需要而创造出一座城市，城里每个人（甚至连儿童、计程车司机、电视广告的演员）都用这神奇的语言在说话。就好似整个社会同心协力教我意大利语。他们甚至趁我待在这儿的时候印意大利文报纸；他们一点也不介意大费周章！他们这里有些书店只卖意大利文写的书！昨天早上我发现这样一家书店 ，觉得自己进了一座魔法宫殿。所有的书都是意大利文——甚至苏斯博士（Dr.Seuss）也是。我逛遍整间书店，触摸每一本书 ，希望任何人看见我 ，都以为我的母语是意大利语。喔，我多么希望意大利语朝我开放它自己！这感觉让我回想起四岁时仍不识字，却渴望学会阅读。我记得和母亲坐在诊所的候诊室，拿着一本《好管家》（Good Housekeeping）杂志摆在面前，慢慢地翻着，盯着内文，希望候诊室里的大人们以为我确实在读。从那以后，我从未感到如此渴望理解。我在这家书店看见美国诗人的作品，书页的一边印着英文版原文，另一边印着意大利文翻译。我买了一本洛 威尔（Robert Lowell）的书，另买一本格丽克（Louise Glck）的。