It wasn’t his job to worry about that, though. It was his job to do his job, which was to do his job. If that led to a certain narrowness of vision and circularity of thought then it wasn’t his job to worry about such things. Any such things that came his way were referred to others who had, in turn, other people to refer such things to.

不过为这事情烦心并不是他的工作，他的工作是做他的工作，而他的工作的内容就是做他的工作，如果这导致了视野狭隘循环论证什么的，那他的工作也不是为这些事情操心，遇上这种事情，他会交给其他人处理，而这些其他人又会再把它们交给其他的其他人。

Many, many light years from here, indeed from anywhere, lies the grim and long abandoned planet, Vogsphere. Somewhere on a fetid, fog-bound mud bank on this planet there stands, surrounded by the dirty, broken and empty carapaces of the last few jeweled scuttling crabs, a small stone monument which marks the place, where it is thought, the species Vogon Vogonblurtus first arose. On the monument there is carved an arrow which points away into the fog, under which are inscribed in plain, simple letters the words ‘The buck stops there.’

在距离这里许多许多光年的地方——事实上那儿距离哪里都有许多许多光年——有一颗老早就被抛弃的星球，这颗阴沉沉的行星就是沃贡星，在上头某个浓雾弥漫，（、）臭气熏天的岸边，烂泥里竖立着一块石头做的小纪念碑。星球上最后几只仓皇而逃的寄居蟹留下了自己的空壳，散落在纪念碑周围，模样又脏又破，这座纪念碑纪念的是大家猜测中沃贡人（人种学的学名叫沃贡人普鲁图斯）首次上岸的地方。纪念碑上刻着一个箭头，指向外头的雾气，箭头底下用简洁朴素的字体写着“到此为止”。

Deep in the bowels of his unsightly yellow ship, the Vogon Captain grunted as he reached for a slightly faded and dog-eared piece of paper that lay in front of him. A demolition order.

在那艘奇丑无比的黄色飞船肚子里，沃贡船长一面咕哝一面伸出手去，拿起面前那张稍微有点卷曲褪色的纸片。一道清楚指令。

If you were to unravel exactly where the Captain’s job, which was to do his job which was to do his job, actually began, then it all came down at last to this piece of paper that had been issued to him by his immediate superior long ago. The piece of paper had an instruction on it, and his purpose was to carry out that instruction and put a little tick mark in the adjacent box when he had carried it out.

我们已经解释过了，船长的工作就是干他的工作，不过如果你硬要弄明白这工作到底是从哪里开始的，那么最终答案就是这张纸，很久之前由他的顶头上司下达，上头有一道命令，而他的目标就是要执行这命令，然后，等完成之后，再在旁边的小框里打一个小勾。