About This Book
关于本书
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them represents the fruit of many years’ travel and research. I look back across the years to the seven-year-old wizard who spent hours in his bedroom dismembering Horklumps and I envy him the journeys to come: from darkest jungle to brightest desert, from mountain peak to marshy bog, that grubby Horklump-encrusted boy would track, as he grew up, the beasts described in the following pages. I have visited lairs, burrows and nests across five continents, observed the curious habits of magical beasts in a hundred countries, witnessed their powers, gained their trust and, on occasion, beaten them off with my travelling kettle.
《神奇动物在哪里》是我多年四处走访研究的结晶。还记得当年那个七岁的小巫师，成天躲在房间里解剖霍克拉普。长大后的他，探访过幽暗的丛林，走进过炙热的沙漠，攀登过峻岭，也涉足过泥泞的沼泽。可真是让人羡慕啊！这个因为解剖而搞得浑身上下都脏兮兮的小男孩，长大后会追随本书中描写的神奇动物的足迹，探访各地。我的足迹跨越五大洲，不管是哪种神奇动物的巢穴，我都看过。我去过一百多个国家寻找神奇动物，观其习性，察其能力，与其友好相处。当然，偶尔也得拎个水壶把他们都赶走。
The first edition of Fantastic Beasts was commissioned back in 1918 by Mr Augustus Worme of Obscurus Books, who was kind enough to ask me whether I would consider writing an authoritative compendium of magical creatures for his publishing house. I was then but a lowly Ministry of Magic employee and leapt at the chance both to augment my pitiful salary of two Sickles a week and to spend my holidays travelling the globe in search of new magical species. The rest is publishing history: Fantastic Beasts is now in its fifty-second edition.
受默默然出版社的奥古斯特·沃姆先生所托，第一版《神奇动物在哪里》于1918年动笔。沃姆先生问我是否可以为其出版社写一本有关神奇动物的权威手册。而我那会儿不过就是个魔法部的小职员，每周薪水只有少得可怜的两西可。所以我毫不犹豫地接受了这份差事，既可以给自己增加收入，又能在假期时满世界寻找不为人知的神奇物种。走到今天，《神奇动物在哪里》已经重印了第52版。
This introduction is intended to answer a few of the most frequently asked questions that have been arriving in my weekly postbag ever since this book was first published in 1927. The first of these is that most fundamental question of all — what is a ‘beast’?
自1927年本书首次付梓以来，每周都有无数问题寄到我家中。本引言则意在解答其中出现次数最多的几个问题。首先，也是最根本的问题是——“什么是‘兽’”。
Nice translation! waiting for more!
I am on it.