《中英對照讀新聞》Boy’s balloon finds pen-pal：Britain’s Queen 男孩的氣球找到筆友：英國女王

◎張沛元

A 4-year-old British boy who released a balloon with a message hoping to find a pen pal in a foreign land ended up having a correspondence with the Queen.

一名釋放一個氣球夾帶想找一名海外筆友訊息的4歲英國男童，結果和女王通上了信。

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Tom Stancombe let go of his helium balloon in Hampshire, west of London, but rather than flying across to France or half way around the world, it ended up just 20 miles（32 km） away, landing inside Windsor Castle, the Daily Mail reported.

據每日郵報報導，湯姆．史坦康在倫敦以西的漢普夏施放一個氦氣氣球，結果氣球非但沒有飛越英國抵達法國或繞過半個世界，反而掉落在20英里（32公里）外的溫莎古堡裡。

The Queen instructed her personal assistant to reply and so the monarch and the boy, helped by his parents, exchanged a series of letters, mostly about the fact that one of the boy’s ancestors, an artist, had works in the royal art collection.

女王吩咐她的私人助理回信，因此女王便與這名男孩在父母協助下通了好幾封信，內容主要談到這名男孩有一位藝術家祖先有作品被選入皇家藝術品收藏。

"She（the Queen） was delighted to find that your balloon had travelled all the way to the gardens at Windsor Castle," the monarch’s assistant wrote.

「她（女王）很高興地發現你的氣球一路飛到溫莎古堡的花園，」女王的助理寫道。

Asked if he thought his son would be exchanging any more letters with the Queen, Tom’s father said："I don’t expect we’ll get another one, but I think it’s incredible they bothered replying at all."

湯姆的父親在被問到是否認為兒子還會再和女王通信時說：「我想我們不會再收到信了，但我認為他們居然費心撥冗回信，就夠讓人難以置信了。」

新聞辭典

let go：放手，放棄。例句：Let go of my hand！You’re hurting me！（放開我的手！你弄痛我了！）

bother：動詞，麻煩，費心。例句：Don’t bother to say goodbye to me before you leave.（你走之前別費心來和我說再見了。）

at all：絲毫，根本。例句：I don’t trust her at all.（我一點也不相信她。）