Once more the nation's honour rests on the words of a secretive bunch of Scandinavians, who, on naming the latest members of the world's most prestigious club, the Nobel laureates, unleash joyful celebrations, acrimonious protests, and a collectively mumbled "Who?"
国家荣誉将再一次降落到一群神秘北欧人的话语上，他们将宣布世界上最负盛名奖项，诺贝尔奖最新的获奖者，引爆欢乐的庆祝活动、激烈的抗议和一个集体嘟囔着的“谁?”。
The prize-giving starts on Monday with medicine or physiology, then moves to physics, chemistry and peace, before closing with economics and literature next week.
医学或生理学奖星期一开始颁奖，然后到物理奖、化学奖以及和平奖，下周经济学奖和文学奖最后颁布。
Most winners will be unfamiliar names and that can be no surprise. Hardly anyone with a public profile in science or economics is a contender; the literature prize has bypassed scores of famously great writers, from Nabokov to Tolstoy; and the peace prize is as fickle as any politics.
大多数的获奖者将是陌生的名字，这毫不奇怪。在科学或经济学领域几乎没有知名人士成为竞争者，文学奖一直绕过久负盛名的伟大作家，从纳博科夫到托尔斯泰;和平奖像政治一样风云莫测。
Britons, however, have fewer reasons than most to gripe about the obscurity of laureates. Since 2000, 16 prizes have landed on these shores. And the odds look good for a local winner this week. Only the US, which has won at least a prize a year since the second world war, can claim more Nobels than Britain.
然而，英国人有不少理由去抱怨获奖者的默默无闻。自2000年以来，16个奖项花落到这些海岸。本地赢家这周获奖的机率看起来很好。只有美国自二战以来至少一年赢一个奖，比英国拿到了更多的诺贝尔奖。
But UK winners are sure to be more scarce in future. The Nobels began with an emphasis on Europe, then shifted, with the US dominating since the 1940s. Other countries are in ascendance. "In the coming decades we will begin to see as many Nobel prize winners from Asia as we have seen from Europe and North America since the mid-20th century," says David Pendlebury, who spots Nobel-class researchers from literature citations at Thomson Reuters.
不过英国的获奖者未来一定更加稀缺。诺贝尔奖开始主要在欧洲，然后转移，美国自20世纪40年代以来一直占据着这个奖项。其他国家也在崛起。 “在未来的几十年中，我们将开始看到众多来自亚洲的诺贝尔奖获得者，正如20世纪中期以来我们一直能看到来自欧洲和北美的获奖者，” 彭德尔伯里(David Pendlebury)，他从汤姆森路透集团的文献引证诺贝尔奖级的研究人员的话说。
So who will win this year? No one is eligible without a nomination, and hundreds are received for each prize every year. Bob Dylan lurks, unlikely as ever, among the bookies' odds for the literature prize. Michael Orthofer, at The Complete Review, points to Mo Yan, Adonis and William Trevor, but warns: "They manage to be pretty unpredictable and often very idiosyncratic." Ladbrokes favours the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.
那么今年谁将会获奖呢?没有提名任何人都没有资格，每个奖项每年都会收到数百个提名。鲍勃•迪伦潜伏着，不可能像以往一样，有中文学奖的概率。Michael Orthofer，在全面审查中，指向莫言、阿多尼斯和威廉•特雷弗，但提醒说：“他们是相当不可预测的，而且往往是非常独特的。”立博公司倾向于日本作家村上春树。
The peace prize may go to Moncef Marzouki, the human rights campaigner and interim president of Tunisia, in support of the Arab spring, though Gene Sharp, a champion of non-violent struggle, is another contender.
和平奖可能会是人权活动家和突尼斯临时总统Moncef Marzouki，支持阿拉伯之春运动，虽然非暴力斗争的胜利者吉恩•夏普也是竞争者。
One of Pendlebury's favourites for the economics prize, an invention of Sweden's national bank, is Sir Tony Atkinson, for work on income inequality.
瑞典国家银行的发明，经济学奖里彭德尔伯里最喜欢的其中一个，是托尼•阿特金森先生，致力于收入的不平等。
The medicine prize must, at some point, honour Shinya Yamanaka for cell reprogramming, though Britain's Sir Alec Jeffreys is in contention for DNA fingerprinting.
医学奖某些时候一定会因为细胞重新编程奖励Shinya Yamanaka，虽然英国爵士亚历克•杰弗里斯也在用DNA指纹竞争这一奖项。
What is more certain as Nobel week gets under way is that whoever wins, there will be protest, celebration and disappointment. And as the names are read, plenty of us lesser mortals will ask the same question: "Who?"
更加确定的是随着诺贝尔奖这周照常颁布，无论谁获奖都会有抗议、庆祝和失望。随着名字被念出，我们中平凡的大多数将会问同样的问题：“谁?”
