“回答得好！”李光頭豎起大拇指夸獎一聲，然后嘿嘿笑著切入正題了，他說：“這樣吧，我不吃你的三鮮面，你把板車借我用一天，就算抵消了三鮮面的債。”童鐵匠不知道李光頭葫蘆里賣得什么藥，他說：“你借我的板車干什么？”（余華《兄弟》）

“You got me!” Baldy Li showed his admiration by giving him a thumbs-up but then immediately cut to the chase. “How about this: I won’t have you treat me to a bowl of house-special noodles, but if you lend me your cart for a day, we’ll call it even.” Blacksmith Tong had no idea where Baldy Li was going with this. He asked, “So why do you want to borrow my pullcart?”

請教譯文點評

My comments:

In a sports competition, if two opposing teams or players run up the same number of points, the game is described as tied or the scores are even.

In our example, to call it even is to say the two men no longer owe each other anything. Tong wants to do a favor for Li by treating him to a bowl of noodles but Li prefer having Tong’s cart for a day. By exchanging one favor (noodles) with another (cart), Li calls it even because he receives the same number of favors from Tong – one – as before.

Same for Tong – he still does just one favor for Li, and so is not losing on the number count, either.

To Li’s reckoning, none of them win or lose anything by this exchange.

Does Tong like Li’s reasoning? That’s another matter entirely, but you get Li’s point, which is all that matters to us for now.

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本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin（張欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.