首个奥运会难民代表团背后的推手
日期:2016-08-08 10:31

(单词翻译:单击)

首个奥运会难民代表团背后的推手

RIO DE JANEIRO — Germans rolled luggage into the Olympic Village, Slovaks stood proudly at the raising of their national flag, and a delegation from Benin posed for photos in yellow floral prints and lobster-red hats. Nearby, a woman from Kenya, barely 5 feet tall and all but unnoticed, signed off on her project to give an Olympic home to athletes who had none of their own.

里约热内卢——德国人拉着行李进入奥运村;斯洛伐克人骄傲地伫立观看自己国家的国旗冉冉升起;贝宁代表团身穿黄色印花服装、头戴龙虾红的帽子摆姿势拍照。不远处,有一位仅5英尺高的肯尼亚女人,几乎无人注意;她要给那些没有国籍的运动员在奥运这个大家庭里安一个家。

“Peace, unity through sports,” she wrote on a mural.

“通过体育实现和平和团结,”她在留言墙上写道。

Tegla Loroupe will participate in her fourth Olympics, this time not as a groundbreaking marathoner but as a peace ambassador bringing attention and compassion to the global refugee crisis.

泰格拉•洛鲁佩(Tegla Loroupe)将第四次参加奥运会,但这一次她不是作为一名打破记录的马拉松选手,而是作为一名和平使者,引发人们对全球难民危机的关注和同情。

She is the leader of a group of 10 displaced athletes, known as the Refugee Olympic Team. It will march Friday in the opening ceremony, carrying the Olympic flag, serenaded by the Olympic anthem.

她是十名无家可归的运动员的领队,他们被称为奥运会难民代表团(Refugee Olympic Team)。在周五的开幕式上,他们将伴随着奥运会会歌、拿着奥运会会旗入场。

Five of those athletes prepared for the Rio Games at a training camp operated by Loroupe in the hills outside Nairobi, the Kenyan capital. “I think I have the strength to prove that even small people can do something big,” she said.

其中五名运动员,曾在洛鲁佩位于肯尼亚首都内罗毕郊外的山上组织的训练营里备战里约奥运会。“我想我有能力证明,小人物也能干大事,”她说。

There is much to be wary and cynical about regarding the Summer Games — like the corruption and the doping and the commercialism — but the opening ceremony can provide a flickering respite from pessimism, a brief chimney sweep of the sooty Olympic ideal.

本届夏季奥运会有很多让我们提防和嘲讽的东西——比如腐败、兴奋剂和商业化——不过开幕式能让我们暂时摆脱悲观,扫除蒙在奥运会理想上的污迹。

Perhaps no one represents hopefulness in international sport more resolutely than Loroupe. She refused to succumb to a life of expected subservience as a young woman and has spent her postrunning career offering possibility instead of despair.

也许没人能比洛鲁佩更能坚决地代表人们对国际体育的希望。年轻的时候,她拒绝屈从于人们的期待,不愿过那种奴颜婢膝的生活;在跑步生涯结束之后的人生里,她给人们带来希望,而非绝望。

“People treat these refugees like criminals,” Loroupe said Monday. “We need to treat them with respect.”

“人们像对待罪犯那样对待这些难民,”洛鲁佩周一说,“我们需要尊重他们。”

In the running world, Loroupe, 43, is celebrated as the winner of the New York City Marathon in 1994 and 1995, the first black African woman to win a major marathon, a former world-record holder at the distance of 26.2 miles.

在长跑界,43岁的洛鲁佩曾在1994年和1995年两次获得纽约马拉松赛(New York City Marathon)冠军,是第一位赢得一项重要马拉松赛事冠军的非洲黑人女性,也曾是26.2英里马拉松世界纪录的保持者。

But her running has been overtaken by her goodwill and activism.

不过,她的亲善和行动主义盖过了她的赛跑成绩。

Under the banner of the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation, she has organized peace races among tribal rivals, trying to resolve conflicts with conciliation instead of weapons.

她以泰格拉•洛鲁佩和平基金会(Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation)的名义,在敌对部落之间组织和平赛跑,努力用调解而非武器解决冲突。

“I always go where there are not good people,” Loroupe said. “I want to help them.”

“我总是前往没有好人的地方,”洛鲁佩说,“我想帮助他们。”

In 2011, the mostly Christian and animist South Sudan gained its independence from mostly Muslim Sudan. All five of the refugee Olympians trained by Loroupe, two women and three men, are from South Sudan. They were identified during trials held to find runners in 2015 at two refugee camps inside neighboring Kenya.

2011年,以基督徒和泛灵论者为主的南苏丹(South Sudan)从以穆斯林为主的苏丹脱离出来,实现独立。洛鲁佩培训的五名奥运会难民运动员——两名女子和三名男子——都来自南苏丹。2015年,在邻国肯尼亚的两个难民营里举行的跑步选拔赛中,他们被挑选出来。

Across the world, there are 63.5 million people displaced by fighting and persecution, according to the U.N. refugee agency, often unwanted by politicians, unable to reconnect with their families or any confident future.

根据联合国难民机构的数据,全世界有6350万人因战乱和迫害无家可归,他们往往不受政客们欢迎,无法与家人重新取得联系,前途渺茫。

“In a year when refugees have found borders, camps and minds closed, the International Olympic Committee did something remarkably open,” wrote Minky Worden of Human Rights Watch. “The creation of a refugee team reframes the debate, to focus not on fear and pushing away but on inclusion and celebrating the resilience and potential all refugees represent.”

“在难民们看到边界线、难民营纷纷关闭,思想封闭的一年里,国际奥委会做了一件非常开放的事,”“人权观察”组织(Human Rights Watch)的明基•沃登(Minky Worden)写道,“难民代表团的设立改变了这场争论,把焦点从恐惧与拒绝,转变为包容以及对所有难民所代表的适应力和潜力的赞扬。”

One of the refugee Olympic athletes from South Sudan is Yiech Pur Biel, 21, an 800-meter runner who fled from his village in 2005 and stayed with a neighbor while his mother and brother headed toward survival in Ethiopia. He said he had not heard from them since. He was told they were OK, but he also knows that people are reluctant to give the worst news.

其中一名难民运动员、21岁的耶什•普尔•比尔(Yiech Pur Biel)来自南苏丹,他是800米选手。2005年,他从村里逃出来,和一个邻居待在一起,而他的妈妈和弟弟(或哥哥)前往埃塞俄比亚求生。他说,从那以后,就失去了他们的消息。他被告知他们都挺好,不过他也知道人们不愿说出最坏的消息。

“Tegla is our mother, not only our leader,” Biel said. “Most of us run because of war. Madam Tegla gives us a chance for other people to know the history of our lives. And we can forget what happened before. We can celebrate. We can have hope, like everyone else.”

“泰格拉是我们的妈妈,她不只是我们的领队,”比尔说,“我们大部分人是因为战争逃离家园。泰格拉夫人给了我们一个机会,让其他人知道我们以前的生活。我们现在可以把过去的事情抛在脑后。我们现在可以庆祝。我们可以像其他人那样拥有希望。”

Another of the refugee Olympians is Paulo Amotun Lokoro, 24, a 1,500-meter runner. He was lost while fleeing his Sudanese village in 2003, unable to keep up with his parents. He did not reunite with them until three years later at the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. That is where Loroupe discovered him last year.

另一名奥运会难民选手、24岁的保罗•阿穆通•洛科罗(Paulo Amotun Lokoro),是1500米长跑运动员。2003年,他从他家住的苏丹那个村子跑出来时迷了路,与父母失散。直到三年后他才在肯尼亚的卡库马难民营与家人团聚。去年洛鲁佩就是在那里发现他的。

At first, Lokoro thought he was not good enough to be a serious runner. Or that this might be some kind of a joke.

一开始,洛科罗觉得自己不够优秀,不够资格做职业长跑选手。觉得这是在开玩笑。

“I was nowhere,” Lokoro said. “Now I am somewhere.”

“以前我看不到未来,”洛科罗,“现在我有了希望。”

It is an emotion that Loroupe understands. She is a Pokot, not a Nandi, the dominant Kenyan running tribe. In her native village of Kapsait, near the border with Uganda, community leaders did not want her to run because she was a girl. Her father did not want her to go to school. He expected her to be a baby sitter.

洛鲁佩对这种情绪深有体会。她是波科特人,不是南迪人,后者是肯尼亚最主要的跑步部落。她的村庄Kapsait离与乌干达的边界不远,村里的头人不想让她去跑步,因为她是女孩。她父亲不想让她上学,想让她去当保姆。

“Her father called her ‘Useless’; that was his name for her,” said Anne Roberts, a former coordinator of elite athletes for the New York City Marathon who has been a close friend of Loroupe’s for more than two decades.

“她父亲称她是‘无用之人’,那就是他给她起的名字,”纽约市马拉松赛优秀运动员的前协调员安妮•罗伯茨(Anne Roberts)说。她成为洛鲁佩的密友已有20多年。

But, of course, Loroupe was not useless. She became a great runner. And when the men in her training group asked her to cook their food and wash their clothes, she explained that she was an athlete, not a maid.

洛鲁佩当然不是无用之人。她成长为一名伟大的长跑运动员。当训练组的男人们让她去做饭洗衣时,她说自己是运动员,不是女仆。

She and Roberts talked often about how a running career is short and the rest of life is long. “You’ll be judged on what you do after your career, not while it’s going on,” Roberts told Loroupe.

她和罗伯茨经常谈论跑步事业很短,剩下的人生很长。“人们不会在你还是运动员的时候评价你,而是根据你跑步生涯结束之后做的事情对你做出评价,”罗伯茨曾经这么告诉洛鲁佩。

In 2014, Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, presented Loroupe with an idea of entering a refugee team in the Rio Olympics. Last year, the IOC established a $2 million fund for the project.

2014年,国际奥委会主席托马斯•巴赫(Thomas Bach)向洛鲁佩提出一个想法,在里约奥运会上推出一个难民代表团。去年,国际奥委会为这个项目设立了一个200万美元的专项资金。

When the team was selected in June, Bach said: “This will be a symbol of hope for all the refugees in our world, and will make the world better aware of the magnitude of this crisis. It is also a signal to the international community that refugees are our fellow human beings and are an enrichment to society.”

这支代表团于今年6月选好后,巴赫说:“这将成为世界上所有难民的希望象征,将让世人更好地了解这场危机的严重性。它也在提醒国际社会,难民是我们人类的同胞,是社会的财富。”

The refugee Olympians will not win gold medals, Loroupe said, “but they will not disappoint.”

洛鲁佩说,奥运会难民选手不会赢得金牌,“不过他们不会令人失望的”。

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