〈谈文论译〉女贞与分赃政治 Privet & Pork Barrel 苏正隆
读过《哈利·波特》的人对 4 Privet Drive 大概都不陌生，那是主角哈利童年住处，
the street address of the home owned by Vernon and Petunia Dursley，他阿姨佩妮
和姨丈威农·德思礼的家。Privet (Ligustrum vulgare)“欧洲女贞”是英国常见的绿篱
植物，4 Privet Drive 台湾版翻成“水蜡树街4号”，中国简体版译为“女贞路4号”，
以译为“女贞”为宜，女贞这一属植物包括欧洲女贞、日本女贞、水蜡树等，但英国并没
有“水蜡树”。“日本女贞”又名“琉球女贞”，其实是台湾原生植物。
前天下午经过台大新生南路三段，看到行道上的“日本女贞”(Ligustrum liukiuense,
Japanese Privet) 长得好好的，却给铲除，又重种另一批“日本女贞”。奇怪吧？不！
因为选举到了。
许多掌握政府资源者往往会利用选举前大方拨款，给自己的地方桩脚一些好处，让他们包
些工程。这种政客笼络支持者的政治手腕，中文叫“分赃政治”，英文叫pork barrel，
直译就是“猪肉桶”。底下是 Merriam-Webster 对pork barrel 的解释： government
projects or appropriations yielding rich patronage benefits … used
figuratively to mean "a supply of money" or "one's livelihood" (a farmer,
after all, could readily turn pork into cash). When 20th-century legislators
doled out appropriations that benefited their home districts, someone
apparently made an association between the profit a farmer got from a barrel
of pork and the benefits derived from certain state and federal projects. By
1909, pork barrel was being used as a noun naming such government
appropriations, and today the term is usually used attributively in
constructions such as "pork barrel spending" or "a pork barrel project."
(Jerome Su, Revised Oct 14, 2018)