英文部分来自“经济学人”杂志。译文是个人学习、欣赏语言之用，谢绝转载或用于任何商业用途。本人同意平台在接获有关著作权人的通知后，删除文章。
由于本人能力有限，错漏在所难免，欢迎批评指正。
Charlemagne(/ˈʃɑːrlᵻmeɪn/; 2 April 742/747/748[1]– 28 January 814), also known asCharles the Great(Latin:CarolusorKarolus Magnus) orCharles I, wasKing of the Franks. He united much of Europe during the earlyMiddle Agesand laid the foundations for modernFrance,Germany, and theLow Countries.
François Fillon’s presidential race will appeal to those who watch for the crashes
弗朗索瓦·菲永竞选总统将吸引那些期待碰撞的人
弗朗索瓦·菲永以勇于改革和善于与社会各界对话著称。他喜欢文学，爱好登山活动，并对赛车情有独钟。其所著的《法兰西能够承受真相》一书，颇为畅销。
When a British television show, Top Gear, was marketed to the French a few years ago, it seemed an improbable proposition. The hit programme, which appeals to petrol heads and the nation’s inner laddishness, was not an obvious fit for Gallic sensibilities. More improbable still, when the French version was launched in 2015, was the choice of an early special guest, whose challenge is to set the fastest time possible when driving an ordinary car round a race track: it was the rather dour, besuited, centreright former prime minister, François Fillon.
当英国电视节目“Top Gear”几年前向法国推广时，那似乎是一个不可能的想法。这个吸引了热情的汽车爱好者，激发出国家内部好胜心的热播节目，和法国人的感性不那么匹配。当2015年节目的法国版推出时，最初选择的一位特邀嘉宾让人更难以置信，他就是相当严肃的，西装革履的中右翼前首相弗朗索瓦·菲永。他面临的挑战是在赛道上驾驶普通汽车尽快完成任务。
As it turned out, Mr Fillon, who is now the Republicans’ beleaguered presidential candidate, did rather well. Strapped into a specially adapted Dacia Sandero, equipped with a crash helmet and an internally mounted camera recording his every move, Mr Fillon was unerringly calm and focused at the wheel. His lap time earned him a highly respectable fourth place. Fillon devotees were not surprised. He is an amateur racing driver; his brother, Pierre, runs the 24-hour race at Le Mans, which lies in his rural former constituency of La Sarthe, in western France. For anybody else struggling today to understand why Mr Fillon has defied insistent calls from his own team to quit the French presidential race, despite a judicial investigation into alleged misuse of the parliamentary payroll, his Top Gear appearance offers an insight. This is a man who—alone, impervious to distraction, unafraid of risk, and under pressure—has an unwavering faith in his capacity to hold steady and make it over the finishing line.
近期备受批评的共和党总统候选人菲永，出赛时的表现相当不错。戴着防撞头盔，装备了记录一举一动的内置相机，固定在特别改装的Dacia Sandero牌汽车里的菲永表现得沉着冷静，操控精准，驾驶全神贯注。他的单圈时间为他赢得了令人敬畏的第四名。 他的崇拜者并不感到惊讶。他是一名业余赛车手; 他的兄弟皮埃尔在勒芒经营着一项24小时赛车赛事。这里位于他以前所在的乡下选区，法国西部的拉萨尔特（La Sarthe）。司法调查指控菲永滥发工资；自己的竞选团队也坚决要求他退出法国总统竞选。这种情况下，为什么他并没有屈服？ 对于很难理解菲永这个决定的人来说，他在Top Gear节目中的表现提供了一个深入的视角。他是一个独立的，不受外界影响而分散注意力，无惧风险，习惯在压力下工作的人 -对自己能力的信心从不动摇，立场坚定，总能想办法完赛，冲过终点。
The Dacia Sanderois a subcompact car produced jointly by the French manufacturer Renault and its Romanian subsidiary Dacia since 2007, currently at its second generation. It is also marketed as theRenault Sanderoin certain markets, such as Russia, Egypt, South Africa, Mexico or South America. It was introduced in September 2007 and is based on the Logan platform.
Mr Fillon’s troubles have turned an election that was difficult for the centre-right to lose into one that will be difficult to win. Last November, the politician once mocked as Mr Nobody surged from poll outsider to grab his party’s nomination, with a sweeping 67% of centre-right voters. Overnight, Mr Fillon became the favourite in the election on April 23rd and May 7th. The sitting Socialist president, François Hollande, was so unpopular that he bowed out before he was pushed. L’alternance, or the habitual rotation of power between the left and the right, meant that centreright politicians just assumed it was their turn.
菲永的那些麻烦使得中右翼本来胜券在握的选举变成难求一胜的局面。去年十一月，这位曾被嘲笑为无名氏的政治家从投票中脱颖而出，获得了大约67％的中右翼选民的支持，取得了党派提名。一夜之间，菲永成为4月23日和5月7日选举重要时刻的宠儿。执政的社会党主席弗朗索瓦·奥朗德（François Hollande）太不受欢迎以至于他在被赶下去之前就退出了。习惯性的左右两党权利轮换意味着中右翼政治家认为该轮到他们了。
Such expectations have now collapsed. Investigative judges say they will put Mr Fillon under formal investigation on March 15th over alleged fake jobs for his Welsh-born wife, Penelope, and two of his children. The sums were bad enough. The payroll bill over the years came to €900,000 ($949,000); the average pre-tax annual salary is €20,670. But there was also an uncomfortable sense of feudal entitlement about the affair. The tweedy Mr Fillon lives in a historic manor house in La Sarthe, complete with chapel and horse. Paris-Match once published a photo of him, a practising Catholic, and his large family, taking tea on its sweeping lawn. Worse, Mr Fillon insisted on his own reputation for probity. As disillusion grew, and his poll numbers sank, Mr Fillon dug in. It was a conspiracy, he exclaimed, fingering the usual suspects: the media, the left, even the judiciary. The people, he cried to diehard supporters at a hastily organised weekend rally in Paris, had chosen him; they would be his judge. Mr Fillon hit the most discordant note of all when he sought to mimic the grandiose oratory of Charles de Gaulle, whose photo he kept on his bedroom wall as a child. “France”, he declared, “is greater than my errors.”
这种预期现已分崩离析了。调查法官表示，他们将在3月15日对菲永展开正式调查，关于他生于威尔士的妻子Penelope和两个孩子拿空饷的指控。涉及金额够糟糕。多年来支付的工资累计达到90万欧元（约合949,000美元），平均税前年薪为20,670欧元。但也有对于事件中的特权一种不爽的感觉。 优哉游哉的菲永住在位于La Sarthe的一座历史悠久的庄园，有小教堂和马。Paris-Match杂志曾经发表了一张照片，这位虔诚的天主教徒和他的大家庭，在草坪上喝茶。更糟糕的是，菲永还在强调自己廉洁的声誉。随着幻像的破灭，支持人数的下降，菲永开始负隅顽抗。他指着那些可疑分子-媒体，左派，甚至是司法机构，大声说："这是阴谋"。在巴黎仓促举行的一个周末集会上，他向死忠们大声演说。这些人选择了他。他们将是他的法官。从孩提时起，戴高乐的照片就一直挂在他卧室的墙壁上。但当他试图模仿戴高乐的伟大演讲时，他发出了所有音符中最不和谐的那一个。 他宣称，“法国能够包容我的错误”。
Nothing, it now seems, will deflect Mr Fillon from his course. Not the loss of his campaign manager, Patrick Stefanini, nor his spokesman, Thierry Solère, nor the scores of deputies who have also quit his campaign team. Defeat in the first round, said Mr. Stefanini, could no longer be ruled out. In their despair over the weekend, defectors appealed to the primary’s runner-up, Alain Juppé, another ex-prime minister, to take over as candidate. Somehow, anyhow. But Mr Fillon was having none of it. It was all “too late”, an embittered Mr Juppé replied: Mr Fillon had a boulevard in front of him, but has driven into a dead end.
现在似乎没有什么能扭转菲永先生的命运。他的竞选经理Patrick Stefanini，他的发言人Thierry Solère，以及那些退出竞选团队的代表们都办不到。史蒂芬尼（Stefanini）先生说，不能排除他一轮游的可能性。倒戈者们在周末绝望地呼吁阿兰·朱佩-初选第二名，另一位前总理，接任候选人。以某种方式，无论如何。但是菲永先生没有这样做。一切都“太晚了”，朱佩愤怒地回应：菲永面前曾有一条康庄大道，但现在他已经穷途末路。
Besides the harm done to the image of democratic politics, one casualty of this sorry saga is an ambitious economic programme, gone to waste. For all his flaws, Mr Fillon grasps the need to shake up France’s rule-bound system to free up the creation of jobs, ideas and profits. He knows, having served as prime minister under President Nicolas Sarkozy, that reforms need to be spelled out before an election in order to secure a mandate to put them into place afterwards. But the damage now done to his credibility is such that, even were he to defy the odds and win, Mr Fillon would lack the authority to do what he has promised.
除了对民主政治形象的伤害之外，这个可悲故事的牺牲品还包括雄心勃勃的经济计划被白白浪费。无论菲永有多少缺点，他抓住了法国需要动摇规则束缚的制度这个重点。这将增加就业机会，创新想法和产生利润。作为曾辅佐尼古拉斯·萨科齐总统的总理，他深知，改革计划需要在选举前就清楚地表达出来，以确保日后落实的强制性。但现在对他的信任已经受损，即使他逆转取胜，菲永也将缺乏权威去做他应允之事。
Tragédie française法兰西悲剧
Another is political unity on the French right. When Jacques Chirac stood for re-election in 2002, he brought rival cliques from the centre and the right together under a broad umbrella, originally named the Union for a Presidential Majority (UMP). It helped him in the run-off, where he roundly beat Jean-Marie Le Pen, of the nativist National Front. Today, Mr Le Pen’s daughter, Marine, is likely to reach the second round, and Mr Fillon needs to keep those same constituent parts together in order to make it as well. Instead, the centrists are wavering. Many centre-right figures around Mr Juppé have quit the campaign. Mr Fillon is left with the socially conservative right wing, whose most organised element is a Catholic movement that mobilised vigorously against the legalisation of gay marriage.
另一个牺牲品是法国右翼的政治团结。当雅克·希拉克在2002年再次参选时，他将敌对的中间和右翼势力团结在他的大旗之下，这个联盟最初被称为总统多数派（UMP）。这在总决选时助了他一臂之力，完胜本土主义者国民阵线的让·玛丽·勒庞。今天，勒庞先生的女儿，Marine，很可能会进入第二轮，而且菲永需要同样把这些选举势力融合在一起，以便也能做走得更远。相反，中间派正在摇摆之中。 朱佩先生周围的许多中右翼人士已经退出了竞争。 菲永只剩下社会的保守右翼力量。其最有组织的元素是天主教运动，主张积极推动反对同性婚姻合法化。
�让·玛丽·勒庞 (法语:Jean-Marie Le Pen，1928年6月20日-)，法国政治家，极右党派国民阵线领导人。他曾数次参加法国总统选举，其中在2002年法国总统大选中，一度获得17.4%的得票率，击败当时被看好的法国左派候选人 利昂内尔·若斯潘。尽管他最终负于希拉克，但却震惊了整个欧洲。不过他关于移民和二战历史等言论，却常常遭受很大争议。-360百科
This spectacle has blown the wheels off one of the few credible efforts to keep Ms Le Pen out of the Elysée. “If it’s a choice between Fillon and Le Pen, I’ll abstain,” said a retired Socialist voter in Angers, a cathedral town near his rural fief. The stakes are higher than at any other election since de Gaulle established the Fifth Republic in 1958. Mr Fillon may think he can still make the final lap. But hopes of defeating Ms Le Pen are increasingly turning instead to a young centrist untested behind the wheel, Emmanuel Macron. And he, against all the unwritten rules of French politics, has never run for election to any office before.
这种情形使得阻止勒庞入主爱丽舍宫的少数几个可信的努力灰飞烟灭。Angers的一位退休社会党选民说 “如果是在菲永和勒庞之间做选择，我宁愿投弃权票”。那里是一座大教堂所在的集镇，离他的农村封地很近。自戴高乐1958年成立第五共和国以来，这次各方的赌注超过以往任何一次选举。菲永可能认为还有机会跑最后一圈。但是，击败勒庞女士的希望越来越转向一个站在车后，没什么经验的年轻中间派，埃马纽埃尔·马克龙(Emmanuel Macron)。与所有法国的政治潜规则相反，他之前竟没有竞选过任何政府职位。
感谢您抽出宝贵时间阅读拙作，此处应为您准备好鲜花，掌声和红包：）。如能提出宝贵意见和建议，我将不胜感激之至。