【原】Song of the Week - Auld Lang Syne (074)

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Song of the Week

每周一歌

Auld Lang Syne

友谊地久天长

When the clock strikes midnight at the end of December 31, the first thing many New Year’s Eve revelers are likely to hear — if the noisemakers haven’t ruined their hearing yet — is the song “Auld Lang Syne.”

当12月31日午夜钟声敲响时，许多新年前夜狂欢者可能会听到的第一个旋律就是“友谊地久天长”。

It’s not clear who exactly composed the music for the Scottish folk song, which has a long history of being sung to mark the end of something — or even how best to interpret the meaning of the song’s Scots language title, which is often attributed to the poet Robert Burns and could be literally translated as “Old Long Since.” (The Scottish government goes with the popular “for old times’ sake.”) What is clear is that Canadian bandleader Guy Lombardo helped make it a New Year’s Eve tradition in the United States.

现在还不清楚究竟是谁为这首苏格兰民歌谱的曲，但是它却有着悠久的历史，被用来标志某件事的结束，它完美地解释了这首歌的苏格兰语标题的含义，通常被归因于诗人罗伯特·伯恩斯，并可以从字面上翻译为“Old Long Since” (从很久以来)”。（苏格兰政府更推崇它为“为了旧时光”。）加拿大乐队指挥盖·伦巴多（Guy Lombardo）成功的帮助将它打造成了美国人除夕夜的传统。

Long before Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve became an end-of-year entertainment tradition, there was the New Year’s Eve concert hosted by Lombardo, “the last great dance-band leader,” as TIME once called him.

早在迪克·克拉克的新年前夜摇滚乐成为年终娱乐传统之前，就有伦巴多举办的新年之夜音乐会，“最后一位伟大的舞蹈乐队指挥”，《时代》杂志曾经这样称呼他。

“His New Year‘s Eve concerts in New York City, which began in 1929, became an institution,” the magazine noted in his 1977 obituary. “First on radio, then TV, Lombardo‘s rendition of Auld Lang Syne marked the nation’s rite of passage from the old year to the new.”

该杂志在1977年的讣告中写到：“1929年开始，在纽约举行的新年之夜音乐会成为了一个传统。”“首先在电台，后来是在电视，伦巴多所演奏的《友谊地久天长》,是这个国家从旧的一年跨入新的一年的标志。”

But where did Lombardo get the idea to make the song part of his New Year’s Eve repertoire? He explained the story to LIFE magazine in 1965 thus:

但是伦巴多从哪里得到把这首歌作为他除夕剧目的灵感呢？他在1965年向《生活》杂志解释了这个故事：

…nobody was sorry when the band moved east in the fall of 1929, and settled at the Roosevelt Grill, which Lombardo chose because “the bandstand was the natural focus.” By then the band’s radio broadcasts had given it a huge following.

…1929年秋天，乐队迁到东部，没有任何人感到遗憾。他们在罗斯福烧烤餐厅安顿下来，伦巴多之所以选择这家餐厅，是因为“乐队表演台自是大家的焦点。”在那时，乐队在电台里的播出已经吸引了大批追随者。

Lombardo doesn’t remember that first New Year’s Eve as anything special, but it was not long before he took personal custody of the event, holding it by the feat of “being on consistently,” as he points out, “from the early days of radio right through the era of television.”

对于在那里的第一个除夕夜，伦巴多并不记得有什么特别的，但不久他就亲自主理这一环节了，他指出，他希望将它做成一个“始终如一”的壮举，“从早期的电台走到电视时代”。

The main reason why Lombardo became identified as the Ghost of New Years Past, of New Years Present, and of New Years Yet to Come, he says, “is because Auld Lang Syne is our theme song—and was long before anyone ever heard us on the radio. In our particular part of western Ontario, where there’s a large Scottish population, it was traditional for bands to end every dance with Auld Lang Syne. We didn’t think it was known here. When we left Canada we had no idea we’d every play it again.”

他说，伦巴多之所以被认为是过去、现在、以及未来的新年之魂，主要是因为这首《友谊地久天长》被大家认定为新年的主题曲，而且早在有人在电台上听到我们之前。在西安大略的某些地区，有大量的苏格兰人，作为一个传统，乐队会以《友谊地久天长》结束每一支舞蹈。而在这里却并不为人所知。但当我们离开加拿大的时候，我们也从来没有想过，我们会再在如法炮制一遍。”

People then, as now, thought the song was cheesy, to which Lombardo told the magazine, “call it corny—I don’t care.”

当时的人们和现在一样，认为这首歌很俗气，伦巴多对杂志说，“说它很老土，但我并不在乎。”

cheesy：劣质的；粗俗的；庸俗的

Yet LIFE summed up how it endured, despite the complex feelings about the song that remain true today. If the song weren’t played on New Year’s Eve, “a deep uneasiness would run through a large segment of the American populace—a conviction that, despite evidence on every calendar, the new year had not really arrived.”

然而，《生活》杂志总结说，不管人们对它有着怎样的复杂感情，它依旧坚持至今，依旧那么真实。如果这首歌没有在除夕夜演奏的话，“在许多美国民众心中就会有一种深深的不安泛起 — 一种信念，即便日历上确认无疑，可内心的新年，并没有真正到来。”