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Ten seconds’ silence was not enough time for Arthur to reassemble his whole view of himself and his life in a way that suddenly included an entire new daughter of whose merest existence he had had not the slightest inkling of a suspicion when he had woken that morning. Deep, emotional family ties cannot be constructed in ten seconds, however far and fast you travel away from them, and Arthur could only feel helpless, bewildered and numb as he looked at the girl standing in his doorway, staring at his floor.
十秒钟的时间也不够阿瑟组织起对自己和人生的全新角度，好把这个今早起床时他丝毫没有想到的新女儿囊括进去。深刻，（、）亲密的家庭关系不可能在十秒钟里建立起来，无论你离开他们多快多远，因此当阿瑟看着那个站在门口盯着自己地板的姑娘时，只能感到无助，迷惑和麻木。
He supposed that there was no point in pretending not to be hopeless.
他想，假装自己并不无助是没有意义的。
He walked over and he hugged her.
他走过去拥抱她。
‘I don’t love you,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t even know you yet. But give me a few minutes.’
“我不爱你。”他说，“对不起。我甚至不知道你是谁。不过请给我几分钟。”
‘What’s this?’
“这是什么？”
Arthur had almost given up. That is to say, he was not going to give up. He was absolutely not going to give up. Not now. Not ever. But if he had been the sort of person who was going to give up, this was probably the time he would have done it.
阿瑟几乎要放弃了。也就是说，他不会放弃。他绝对不会放弃。现在不会放弃。永远不会放弃。可如果他是那种会放弃的人，这会儿大概就是他要放弃的时候了。
Not content with being surly, bad-tempered, wanting to go and play in the paleozoic era, not seeing why they had to have the gravity on the whole time and shouting at the sun to stop following her, Random had also used his carving knife to dig up stones to throw at the pikka birds for looking at her like that.
粗鲁无礼，阴沉乖戾，想去古生代玩耍，不知道这儿干吗要一直有重力，对着太阳嚷嚷问它干吗老跟着自己。在这一切之外，兰登还拿了阿瑟切肉的小刀去撬石头，然后用它们丢噼卡鸟，理由是它们竟敢拿那种眼神看自己。
Arthur didn’t even know if Lamuella had had a paleozoic era. According to Old Thrashbarg the planet had been found fully-formed in the navel of a giant earwig at four-thirty one Vroonday afternoon, and although Arthur, as a seasoned galactic traveller with good ‘O’ level passes in Physics and Geography, had fairly serious doubts about this, it was rather a waste of time trying to argue with Old Thrashbarg and there had never been much point before.
阿瑟甚至不知道拉姆拉有没有经历过古生代。按照老刷希巴的说法，这个星球是在一个星期八下午四点三十分出现在一只巨大的蠼螋肚脐眼上的，一出现就是现在这模样；而阿瑟，尽管作为一个老道的银河系旅行家，而且上学的时候物理和地理也能双双以0通过，对于这种说法却相当怀疑。但他很明白跟老刷希巴争论只是浪费时间，再说，他过去也没觉得这件事有什么争论的必要。
He sighed as he sat nursing the chipped and bent knife. He was going to love her if it killed him, or her, or both. It wasn’t easy being a father. He knew that no one had ever said it was going to be easy, but that wasn’t the point because he’d never asked about being one in the first place.
他一面护理破损，弯曲的小刀，一面叹了口气。他一定要爱她，就算这会要了他的命或者她的命乃至他俩的命也在所不惜。当父亲并不容易。他知道从来都没人说这件事容易，但问题不在这儿，因为从一开始他就没向人家要过这份差事。
He was doing his best. Every moment that he could wrest away from making sandwiches he was spending with her, talking to her, walking with her, sitting on the hill with her watching the sun go down over the valley in which the village nestled, trying to find out about her life, trying to explain to her about his. It was a tricky business. The common ground between them, apart from the fact that they had almost identical genes, was about the size of a pebble. Or rather, it was about the size of Trillian and of her they had slightly differing views.
他在尽力而为。从做三明治里挤出来的每一秒钟他都跟她呆在一起，跟她说话，陪她走路，同她一起坐在小山上望着太阳落到他们所在的山谷背后，努力了解她的生活，试着跟她解释自己的一生。这事儿挺棘手。他俩之间的共同点，除了几乎完全相同的基因之外，只有一块鹅卵石大小。或者应该说是崔莉恩大小，但对于她，他俩的看法又略有不同。
‘What’s this?’
“这是什么？”
