"Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air!" cried Pearl, with a naughty smile. "If thou callest me that ill name, I shall tell him of thee; and he will chase thy ship with a tempest!"
“西宾斯太太说,我爸爸是‘空中王子’!”珠儿带着调皮的微笑大声说。“要是你叫我这么难听的名字,我就跟他告你的状,他就会用暴风雨追你的船!”

Pursuing a zigzag course across the market-place, the child returned to her mother, and communicated what the mariner had said. Hester's strong, calm, steadfastly enduring spirit almost sank, at last, on beholding this dark and grim countenance of an inevitable doom, which- at the moment when a passage seemed to open for the minister and herself out of their labyrinth of misery- showed itself, with an unrelenting smile, right in the midst of their path.
孩子沿着一条弯弯曲曲的路线穿过市场,回到她母亲身边,把船长的话转告给她。海丝特那种坚强、镇定、持久不变的精神,在终于看到那不可避免的命运的阴森面目之后,几乎垮了;就在牧师和她自己挣出悲惨的迷宫,眼前似乎有一条通路向他们敞开的时候,这副带着无情微笑的阴森面孔却出现在他们通路的中间。

With her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity in which the shipmaster's intelligence involved her, she was also subjected to another trial. There were many people present, from the country round about, who had often heard scarlet letter, and to whom it had been made terrific by a hundred false or exaggerated rumours, but who had never beheld it with their own bodily eyes. These, after exhausting other modes of amusement, now thronged about Hester Prynne with rude and boorish intrusiveness. Unscrupulous as it was, however, it could not bring them nearer than a circuit of several yards. At that distance they accordingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugal force of the repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. The whole gang of sailors, likewise, observing the press of spectators, and learning the purport of the scarlet letter, came and thrust their sunburnt and desperado-looking faces into the ring. Even the Indians were affected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man's curiosity, and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their snake-like black eyes on Hester's bosom; conceiving, perhaps, that the wearer of this brilliantly embroidered badge must needs be a personage of high dignity among her people. Lastly the inhabitants of the town (their own interest in this worn-out subject languidly reviving itself, by sympathy with what they saw others feel) lounged idly to the same quarter, and tormented Hester Prynne, perhaps more than all the rest, with their cool, well-acquainted gaze at her familiar shame. Hester saw and recognised the self-same faces of that group of matrons, who had awaited her forthcoming from the prison-door, seven years ago; all save one, the youngest and only compassionate among them, whose burial-robe she had since made. At the final hour, when she was so soon to fling aside the burning letter, it had strangely become the centre of more remark and excitement, and was thus made to sear her breast more painfully, than at any time since the first day she put it on.
船长的这一通知将她投入了可怕的困惑之中,折磨得她心烦意乱,可这时她还要面对另一个考验。市场上有许多从附近乡下来的人,他们时常听人谈起红字,而且由于数以百计的虚构和夸张的谣传,红字对他们已经骇人听闻,但他们谁也没有亲眼目睹过。这伙人在看腻了诸色开心事之后,此时已粗鲁无礼地围在海丝特·白兰的身边。然而,他们尽管毫无顾忌地挤过来,却只停在数步之遥的圈子以外。他们就这样站在那个距离处,被那神秘的符号所激起的反感离心力钉住了。那帮水手们也注意到了人群拥到了一处,并且弄明白了红字的涵义,便也凑近来,把让太阳晒得黑黑的亡命徒的面孔伸进了圈子。连那些印第安人都受到了白人的好奇心的无声的影响,也眯起他们那蛇一般的黑眼睛,把目光穿过人群,斜腕着海丝特的胸前;他们或许以为佩戴这个光彩动人的丝绣徽记的人准是她那一伙人中德高望重的人士。最后,镇上的居民们(他们自己对这个陈旧的题目的兴趣,由于看到了别人的反应,也无精打采地恢复了)也慢吞吞地挪到这一角落,用他们那冰冷而惯见的目光凝视着海丝特·白兰的熟悉的耻辱标记,这或许比别人对她折磨尤甚。海丝特看见并认出了七年前等着她走出狱门的那伙人的同一副女监督式的面孔;其中只缺少一人,就是她们当中最年轻又是唯一有同情心的姑娘,海丝特后来给她做了葬服。就在她即将甩掉那灼人的字母之前的最后时刻,它居然莫名其妙地成为更令人瞩目和激动的中心,因而也使她自从第一天佩戴它以来,此时最为痛苦地感到它在烫烧着她的胸。

While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the cunning cruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her for ever, the admirable preacher was looking down from the sacred pulpit upon an audience, whose very inmost spirits had yielded to his control. The sainted minister in the church! The woman of the scarlet letter in the market-place! What imagination would have been irreverent enough to surmise that the same scorching stigma was on them both!
就在海丝特站在那耻辱的魔圈中,似乎被对她作出的狡诈而残忍的判决永远钉住了的时候,那位令人赞美的牧师正在从那神圣的祭坛上俯视他的听众,他们最内在的精神已经完全被他攫住了。那位教堂中神圣的牧师!那位市场中佩戴红字的女人!谁能够竟然大不敬地猜想出,他俩身上会有着同样的灼热的耻辱烙印呢! 

③居住在斯堪地那维亚半岛和科技半岛北部的拉普人。