“You know what I’m going to devote the rest of my life to?” David Letterman said on his last night as the host of the “Late Show” on CBS. “Social media.”
“你知道我将用我的余生拿来干什么吗？”大卫·莱特曼(David Letterman)在他最后一次主持哥伦比亚广播公司的《深夜秀》时自问自答道。“社交媒体。”
Mr. Letterman ended his 33-year career in late-night on Wednesday as he had started it — with the irreverence, self-mockery and mischief that made him such an iconoclastic talk-show host.
周三，莱特曼以他开始这个节目的方式结束了自己33年的深夜秀职业生涯，正是他不恭不敬、自我解嘲和恶作剧的特点，使他成为一位非常反传统的脱口秀主持人。

His farewell was much better than the usual mawkish television send-off: He mixed favorite segments like his Top 10 list with clips of classic skits and a few restrained fillips of sincerity and humility. His final show was not at all like the Pharaonic and mushy last bow Johnny Carson took when he left “The Tonight Show” in 1992. As could be expected, it was a bracing antidote to the weepy extravaganza that ushered his rival Jay Leno into retirement last year.
他的告别节目比通常自作多情的电视送别好得多：他在节目中穿插了最受喜爱的部分，例如他的10大名单，包括经典小品片段，以及几个有诚意、谦逊的、有克制的时刻。他在最后的节目里一点也不像约翰尼·卡森(Johnny Carson)1992年最后一次主持《今夜秀》时那样以法老自居、且多愁善感。正如所预想的，最后一集《深夜秀》是去年送别他的对手杰·雷诺(Jay Leno)退休时，那种伤感而又铺张华丽表演的清新宜人的解药。
Mr. Letterman’s retirement has gotten an extraordinary amount of focus — a frenzied outpouring of fan devotion, celebrity tributes and nonstop media attention — perhaps because he was so important to the last generation of viewers who grew up watching shows on a television set, and not on a smartphone.
莱特曼的退休已经得到特别大量的关注，粉丝们的忠诚、名人的献礼辞，以及不间断的媒体报道疯狂地迸发，这也许是因为他对在电视机前、而不是在智能手机上看着节目长大的最后一代观众如此的重要。
Mr. Letterman’s crack about younger performers who use Twitter and Facebook was a shout-out to the talk-show host’s core audience, the late-night viewers who decades ago defined themselves as the insurgents who preferred Mr. Letterman to Mr. Leno.
莱特曼对年轻表演者使用Twitter和Facebook的敲打，是这位脱口秀主持人向核心观众发出的呼喊，这些观众几十年前用选择莱特曼、而不是莱诺把自己定位为反叛者。
All Mr. Letterman had to say was the date, June 17, 1996, and the studio audience began laughing appreciatively. He then showed a clip of one of his more famous pranks when he posed as a server at a drive-through Taco Bell and tormented customers with terrible service.
莱特曼只需要说出那个日子，1996年6月17日，现场观众就开始会意地发笑。然后，他播放了一段自己比较著名的恶作剧片段之一，他假装塔可钟(Taco Bell)的不必下车即可购买食物窗口的服务员，用极为糟糕的服务折磨顾客。
The clips of his absurdist gags, riffs on conventional television comedy, were fun, but they were also a reminder of how inventive and seditious Mr. Letterman was in his heyday, and how much his successors in today’s late-night constellation owe him. One acolyte, Jimmy Kimmel, the host of his own late-night talk show on ABC, was so worshipful he ran a rerun on Wednesday so as to not pull focus from Mr. Letterman.
他的荒诞噱头以及对传统电视喜剧即兴模仿的片段很逗乐，但它们也让人记起莱特曼在其鼎盛时期多么具有创意和煽动性，也提醒人们在当今深夜秀星空闪烁的他的后继者们欠了他多少东西。其中一位后继者吉米·金梅尔(Jimmy Kimmel)在美国广播公司主持自己的深夜脱口秀节目，金梅尔是如此地崇拜莱特曼，以至于他在周三夜间，为了不把观众的注意力从莱特曼那里吸引走，重播了一个旧集子。
On his show, Mr. Letterman demanded a lighter touch. In the Top 10 list, “Things I’ve Always Wanted to Say to Dave,” Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a “Seinfeld” alumna, said, “Thanks for letting me take part in another hugely disappointing series finale.”
在自己的节目中，莱特曼要求更轻的手法。在以“我一直想对大卫说的事儿”为题的10大名单部分，曾担任《宋飞正传》演员的朱莉娅·路易斯-德雷福斯(Julia Louis-Dreyfus)说，“谢谢你让我参加又一个非常令人失望的电视系列的结局。”
Mr. Letterman joined CBS in 1993, a year after HBO introduced “The Larry Sanders Show,” a behind-the-scenes parody of “The Tonight Show” that starred Garry Shandling as an insecure, self-absorbed talk-show host.
莱特曼于1993年加盟CBS，一年后，HBO推出了《拉里·桑德斯秀》(The Larry Sanders Show)，那是对《 今夜秀》幕后情节的滑稽模仿剧，由加里·赡德令(Garry Shandling)扮演缺乏信心、又自我陶醉的脱口秀主持人。
But Mr. Letterman’s onstage persona, as host of “Late Night” at NBC, and later at CBS, was a one-man sendup of the talk-show genre. Even after more than 30 years, Mr. Letterman never lost his arch, ironic self-awareness; he did not sink into the easy, quid pro quo conventions of late-night talk shows, but kept defying them.
但是，莱特曼作为NBC《深夜秀》、后来是CBS节目主持人的舞台角色，是脱口秀体裁的单人滑稽模仿。即使在30多年后，莱特曼从未失去他特有的、具有讽刺意味的自我意识；他并没有陷入深夜脱口秀节目等价交换惯例的轻车熟路，而是不断地违抗惯例。
Over the last few weeks, a parade of celebrity guests including Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and George Clooney have paid their respects to Mr. Letterman. On Wednesday, he described all the encomiums as “over-the-top” and said he found it “flattering, embarrassing and gratifying.”
在过去的几个周中，包括汤姆·汉克斯(Tom Hanks)、朱莉娅·罗伯茨(Julia Roberts)和乔治·克鲁尼(George Clooney)在内的名人嘉宾纷纷对莱特曼表示敬意。周三，他把所有这些颂辞描述为“过头了”，并说他觉得那些话“令人荣幸、尴尬、满足。”
Mixed feelings make sense in a comedian who was always paradoxical — a winning, witty and supremely confident performer who offstage was practically a hermit and riven by self-doubt.
复杂的感情对这位喜剧演员来说言之有理，他总是充满矛盾，他是一位成功、机智、具有超级自信的表演者，但在台下，他实际上是一位隐士，备受自我怀疑的折磨。
Fans are devoted to Mr. Letterman in part because they know his psyche so well: He is an intensely private celebrity who kept processing his personal life in front of the camera. He helped the nation heal after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by movingly expressing his feelings of sadness and helplessness. He brought his medical team onto his show after his 2000 quintuple bypass, and he even described his affairs with women in his office as “creepy” in an unnerving mea culpa in 2009.
粉丝们效忠莱特曼，部分是因为他们熟识他的心灵：他是一个极为隐秘的名人，而他又不断地在镜头前处理他的个人生活。他曾用悲伤和无助情感的动人表达帮助美国从2001年9月11日袭击所带来的创伤中康复。在2000年做了五道心脏旁路手术后，他把自己的医疗团队带到电视台上。在2009年的一个令人不安的自我认错中，他甚至把自己与办公室中女性的婚外情描述为“令人毛骨悚然”。
On Wednesday, Mr. Letterman said that one of the worst things about retiring was that, as he put it: “When I screw up now, and Lord knows I’ll be screwing up, I have to go on somebody else’s show to apologize.”
周三，莱特曼说了退休最糟糕的事情之一，用他的话来说是：“我今后做错事时，得去别人的节目上表示歉意，老天知道我是一定会做错事的。”
He mixed jokes about his future with serious references to pivotal moments in his past. He chose as his last musical guests the Foo Fighters because the band canceled a tour in South America to play on his first show after the heart surgery.
他开着关于自己未来道路的玩笑，也同时会严肃地提到自己过去的关键时刻。他选择Foo Fighters乐队作为他最后的音乐客人，因为该乐队为了在他心脏手术后的首次节目上表演，取消了一次南美巡演。
As he has on many a night, Mr. Letterman made a humorous reference to his son, Harry, imitating his voice in a squeaky falsetto. He also paid a solemn, quite personal tribute to his son and his wife, Regina, who were seated in the audience.
与他以往很多夜晚一样，莱特曼幽默地提到他的儿子哈利(Harry)，用尖尖的假声模仿儿子的声音。他对坐在观众席中的儿子和妻子里贾纳(Regina)表达了庄重敬意。
“Thank you for being my family,” he said. “I love you both and really, nothing else matters, does it?”
“谢谢你们，我的家人，”他说。“我爱你俩，真的，再没有比你们重要的了，不是吗？”
Mostly, though, he did what he did best: make fun of himself. “It’s beginning to look like I’m not going to get the ‘Tonight Show,’ ” Mr. Letterman joked.
然而，大多数时候，他做了他最会干的事：用自己打趣。“看起来越来越有可能我不会去主持《今夜秀》了，”莱特曼开玩笑说。
Mr. Letterman defined himself as the loser in his long, bitter battle with Mr. Leno. His rival got “The Tonight Show” gig and higher ratings, but in the end, Mr. Letterman won the legacy.
莱特曼把自己在与莱诺的漫长、艰苦的竞争中定义为失败者。他的对手得以主持《今夜秀》，赢得了更高的收视率，但最终是莱特曼在最后节目中胜出。