2003年外文社再版前言

Preface to China's Foreign Language

Press's Reprint, 2003
　　杰克·贝尔登，这位杰出的美国新闻记者和作家，是中国人民的好朋友。当中国抗日战争于1937年爆发时，他人就在北京（当时叫北平）了。由于他已经在中国呆了一些时日，他逐渐学会讲中文，在社会各阶层都有了熟人，并同情起中国人民的苦难和斗争来。他知识渊博，兴趣广泛，精力过人，既有胆量又有文采，作为战地记者是再合适不过了。战争一爆发他就干上了这行，被新闻社东派西遣。他的文章频频出现在各种报纸上，给千千万万美国人带去了中国人民武装反抗侵略者的真实生动报道，也为他自己闯出了名气。
 Jack Belden, outstanding American journalist and author, was an old friend of the Chinese people. At the start of China's War of Resistance against Japan's invasion in 1937, he was living in Beijing (then Peiping). Already in China for some time, he had begun to speak our language, had acquaintances in different strata of society, and sympathized with the Chinese people's plight and struggles. His knowledge, concern, restless energy, courage and writing talent fitted him well for the work of a front-line correspondent, which he took up at the war's outbreak. Through his news agency dispatches, distributed to many newspapers, he brought to millions of American readers a vivid and authentic picture of the Chinese people's armed struggle to save their country, with which he identified himself.
　　在后来的第二次世界大战中，贝尔登成为了最为人们熟知的美国战地记者之一。他活跃在欧洲反法西斯战场前沿，在意大利受了重伤。他伤愈时，中国人民解放战争正如火如荼。于是他决定再到中国，记录下这一切。在华北的两个解放区，他与普通的人民和士兵一起，甘苦与共，艰险饱尝，甚至参与了极其危险的武工队敌后捕俘除恶行动。这样他就亲眼目睹了中国农民勇敢的起来战斗，推翻压在自己背上的三座大山（封建主义、帝国主义、官僚资产主义）的过程，深深为他们的英勇所感染。
 　　Later in World War II, he became one of the best-known of U.S. battleline collespondents on the European front of the war against the fascist Axis, and in Italy was gravely wounded. After recovering he decided, when the Chinese people's War of Liberation was at its height, to come out on his own write about it. In two liberated areas in north China, he shared the dangers hardships of the troops and people, and accompanied small "armed work group" in extremely perilous sallies far behind the enemy lines. Thus he saw and felt at first hand the dauntless spirit with which China's peasant fighters threw off their backs the burden of the "three big mountains" (imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism).
　　《中国震撼世界》就是贝尔登对这个英雄时代的目击报告。从历史的角度来看，它与埃德加·斯诺的《红星照耀中国》双星并耀，同为对中国革命的经典报道。同时，它们都延续了约翰·瑞德的《震撼世界的十天》（对1917年俄国十月革命的报道）的传统。
 　　China Shakes the World is his eyewitness record of that heroic time. Seen in historical perspective, it ranks with Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China as a classic report on China's revolution and, like it, continues the tradition of John Reed's Ten Days That Shook the World, written about Russia's October Revolution in 1917.
　　贝尔登的书1949年出版时，美国反中国人民的干涉政策妨碍了它的销售（主要书店都不敢承接此书）。但是，《中国震撼世界》冲破阻碍，在美国和其他很多国家，与读者见了面，让渴望了解中国发生的事实真相和关心中国革命的命运的人们大饱眼福。所以它的影响是相当可观的。
 　　When Belden's book was published in 1949, the U.S. policy of intervention against the Chinese people's forces muffled its sales (major bookstores in America were afraid to handle it.) But it broke through the barrier, and, in the U.S.A. and other countries, reached people who wanted to know what was really going on in China and were concerned with the fate of her revolution. So its impact was considerable.
　　现在我们在中国重印《中国震撼世界》的英文版（此前出过一个中文版），希望通过这一生动鲜明的原创作品，为新一代的读者们带来一个目光敏锐的外国朋友眼中的中国人民反抗国民党反动政权的斗争历史。今年（1989年）夏天，杰克·贝尔登于巴黎与世长辞。几个月前，他同意我们重印此书，表达了他对中国人民和进步事业的持续的关注。
 　　The book is now reprinted in China (there was a Chinese translation before) in the hope of bringing to a new generation of readers, through the original, this vivid account, by a foreign friend and acute observer, of the fight of the Chinese people against the reactionary Kuomintang regime. Jack Belden died in Paris in the summer of this year. The consent he gave for this reprint a few months earlier showed his continued concern, late in life, for China, her people and their progress.
　　和斯诺一样，杰克·贝尔登将永远被中国人民怀念。作为一个敢讲真话、秉持正义的朋友，他不远万里，顶着压力大胆地为我们的事业呐喊和宣传，从而为中美人民的相互了解、友谊和联系做出了重要和持久的贡献。
 　　Like Snow, Belden will be forever remembered by the Chinese people as a truthful, just man from afar who spoke up stalwartly for them and their cause, and made a vigorous and lasting contribution to understanding, friendship and contact between the people of China and the United States.
　　在中国革命和建设的历程中，来自世界各国的很多友人给予了我们鼓励和支持。我深信，在我们沿着社会主义道路前进时，同情和支持我们的朋友终将会越来越多。
 　　Large numbers of foreign friends, from many lands, have encouraged and supported the Chinese people - both in the accomplishment of the democratic revolution and in the subsequent socialist construction. There will be many many more. I firmly believe, as China advances further along her socialist road.

前外交部长，此文作于一九八九年八月（李根译）

Huang Hua

China's ex-Foreign Minister, August 1989, Beijing