If you put all the books you own on the street outside your house, you might expect them to disappear in a trice. But one man in Manila tried it - and found that his collection grew. 如果，把自己所有的书摆放在屋外的街边，你或许会预计它们在眨眼间便没了踪影。但是有一个马尼拉人这样尝试了——却发现，他的收藏增长了
Hernando Guanlao is a sprightly man in his early 60s, with one abiding passion - books. 何南多·关老（Hernando Guanlao）， 60出头，矍铄而嗜书。
They’re his pride and joy, which is just as well because, whether he likes it or not, they seem to be taking over his house. 要说书籍是他的骄傲与乐趣也无妨，因为，不管他喜欢与否，它们似乎已霸占了他的房子。
Guanlao, known by his nickname Nanie, has set up an informal library outside his home in central Manila, to encourage his local community to share his joy of reading. 关老，以绰号“拿涅”为人所知，在马尼拉中央区的家外设立了一个非正式的图书馆，以期鼓励他所在社区的人们分享他的阅读之乐。
The idea is simple. Readers can take as many books as they want, for as long as they want - even permanently. As Guanlao says: "The only rule is that there are no rules."
It’s a policy you might assume would end very quickly - with Guanlao having no books at all. But in fact, in the 12 years he’s been running his library - or, in his words, his book club - he’s found that his collection has grown rather than diminished, as more and more people donate to the cause. 这或许是一个我们认定会速死的制度，它会以关老先生无书可借而告终。但事实上，他所运作的图书馆——或者用他的话来说，他的读书俱乐部——已有了12个年头。因为有了越来越多人的捐助，他的图书馆藏量未减反增。
"It seems to me that the books are speaking to me. That’s why it multiplies like that," he says with a smile. "The books are telling me they want to be read… they want to be passed around." “那些书好似在同我讲话，这便是书籍藏量这般增长的原因吧，”他笑着说。“它们在向我诉说，它们渴望被阅读，渴望被传播。”
Guanlao started his library in 2000, shortly after the death of his parents. He was looking for something to honour their memory, and that was when he hit upon the idea of promoting the reading habit he’d inherited. 2000年，关老创立了这个图书馆，就在他的父母过世后不久。他当时正在寻找些什么，来缅怀他们，也就在那时，灵感迸发，他萌生了弘扬父母赐予他的阅读习惯的主意。
2012-10-7 13:29 上传下载附件 (49.92 KB) "I saw my old textbooks upstairs and decided to come up with the concept of having the public use them," he says. “我看到楼上的旧教科书，便敲定了一个想法：让公众去使用他们，”他继续说道。
So he put the books - a collection of fewer than 100 - outside the door of his house to see if anyone wanted to borrow them. They did, and they brought the books back with others to add to the collection - and the library was born. 于是他把他的藏书——略少于100本——放在他家的门外，看是否会有人想借阅。真的有人这样做了，并且在归还时还捎带了其他的书——就这样，一个图书馆诞生了。
Such is the current turnover that Guanlao confesses he has no idea how many books are in his possession, but there are easily 2,000 or 3,000 on the shelves and in the boxes stacked outside his front door. 书籍的流动之快，连关老都坦言他根本不清楚到底他掌管着多少书，不过，在前门外的书架上和箱子中，书籍量轻松平常即可达到2000或3000本之巨。
And that’s before you move inside, where books are rapidly encroaching into every available space. You can hardly get into the front room, the car has long since been moved out of the garage, and books are even stacked all the way up the stairs. 不过，那可是在你进屋之前（的数量）。书正快速侵占着屋内每一寸可用的空间，你都很难进入前室，轿车早就移出了车库，而整个楼梯都已被堆满了。
The library is not advertised, but somehow, every day, a steady stream of people find their way there. 从未有广告，但不知为何，每一天都会有稳定的人流涌向此处。
On the day we visited, some shop assistants came to browse during their lunch break, a local man borrowed a weighty tome about the history of St John’s Gospel, and some schoolchildren picked up some textbooks - although I noticed they were taking some fashion magazines as well. 在我们拜访的那一天，一些商店店员在午休时间来此阅览，一个当地人借走了厚重的一卷《圣乔治福音历史》，而一些学龄小孩挑选了若干教科书——尽管我注意到他们同时也带走了些时尚杂志。
But it’s people like Celine who sustain the library. She lives down the road from Guanlao, and she arrived with two bulging bags of books - some of which she was returning, others of which she was planning to donate. 不过，维持着这个图书馆的是像赛琳这样的人。她住在关老家的同一条马路上，她来的时候带着两包鼓鼓的书——一些是她将要还的，其余是她打算捐的。
She says she loves the concept of the library, because Filipinos - certainly those who are not particularly wealthy - have limited access to books. 她说她很喜欢这种图书馆的构想，因为，菲律宾人，尤其是那些并不怎么富裕的，接触书籍的机会有限。
"I haven’t been to any public libraries except the national library in Manila," she says, explaining that it is quite far away - and it is not possible to borrow any books. “除了马尼拉的国家图书馆，我从过去过任何其他图书馆，”她说到，并解释说它（国家图书馆）太远了 ，并且不大可能出借任何书籍。
If she wants to buy a book, the average price is about 300 pesos (£；4.50, $7), she says. Imported books - especially children’s books - could easily be twice that amount. 如果她想买一本书，平均花费大约300比索（4.5英镑/7美元），她说，进口书——尤其是儿童书——售价翻倍亦是稀松平常。
"Considering the income here, I think parents have other priorities," she adds. “考虑到这儿的收入水平，父母们有其他更需操心的事情，”她补充道。
To help the poorest communities in Manila, Nanie Guanlao does not wait for them to find him - he goes to them, on his "book bike", which has a large basket piled high with books. 为了帮助马尼拉最贫困的社区，拿涅·关老并不会一味坐等——他会骑上他的“书车”，满载着一大筐书籍，主动上门。
He’s also started to set his sights outside Manila. He’s already given several boxes of books to a man trying to set up a similar venture in Bicol province, a 10-hour drive from Manila, and his latest plan is to help a friend who wants to start up a library in the far south of the country. 他也已经开始放眼马尼拉之外。驱车10小时，他送给一个在比科尔省试图创办类似机构的人数箱书籍。而且他最近计划帮助一个南部边远地区的朋友创办一个图书馆。
She wants to set up a "book boat", travelling around the islands of Sulu and Basilan - an area better known as a hideout for separatist rebels than for any great access to literature. 她想设一叶“书舟”，周游于苏禄群岛和巴西兰岛。相比较于任何提供文学（书籍）的途径，这个地区更加出名的是它作为分裂反叛分子的藏身之所的身份。
As we sat outside Nanie Guanlao’s house in the midday sun, watching people browse through his collection, he tells me why he thought it was worth spending all his time - even to the point of giving up his job and surviving purely on his savings - to maintain the library.
统一坊在线翻译网 
发表于 2012/10/7 13:54:00
