此次冬奥会选择在韩国平昌自有其重大意义。之所以选在此处，并不是因为他有多发达，多繁荣，而是因为有其他重要意义。
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Lee Ji-seol was in elementary school when her hometown, Pyeongchang, first applied to host the Winter Olympics. During a visit by Olympic officials, she recalled, her entire class lined up on a street to cheer and wave flags.
韩国平昌——当她的家乡平昌首次申办冬奥会时，李智雪（音）还在上小学。她记得有一次奥运官员访问平昌，他们全班都去到了一条街上挥舞旗帜，夹道欢呼。
Their enthusiasm notwithstanding, the bid hardly seemed promising. Located 50 miles from North Korea and the world’s most heavily fortified border, Pyeongchang was known as a mountain backwater that produced potatoes and cattle. The town center was a nondescript crossroads, going to seed with “love motels” and karaoke bars. The area had two ski resorts, but they struggled to muster enough snow to attract visitors.
尽管他们十分热情，但竞标形势看起来并不乐观。平昌距离朝鲜和世界上守卫最为森严的边境只有50英里（约合80公里），在外人眼里就是一个种土豆、养牛的闭塞山区。城镇的中心是一个平淡无奇的十字路口，满是些“爱情旅馆”和卡拉OK厅。这一带有两个滑雪度假村，但很难凑够足够多的雪来吸引游客。
That first bid for the 2010 Games failed, as did a second bid to host in 2014, but the International Olympic Committee finally gave Pyeongchang, population 43,000, the nod for the 2018 Winter Games, which open this week. It was a victory for those who never stopped believing in the obscure little town, one of the most unlikely hosts of the Games in Olympic history.
2010年他们首次申奥失败，2014年第二次竞逐奥运会主办权也未能成功。但最终，国际奥委会(International Olympic Committee)同意由4.3万人口的平昌郡举办将于本周开幕的2018年冬奥会。这是一直对这个无名小镇充满信心的人的胜利，它是奥运史上最意想不到的东道主之一。
“The entire town was out dancing,” Lee, 22, said of the day they heard the news. “Before we started our Olympic campaign, few South Koreans, much less any foreigners, even knew we existed.”
“全城的人都上街手舞足蹈，”22岁的李智雪描述他们听到消息的那天。“在我们参加奥运竞标前，韩国都没几个人知道我们的存在，更别说外国人了。”
Pyeongchang’s obstacles were both economic and physical. It is one of the poorest places in Gangwon, South Korea’s most isolated and least developed province, which shares a long border with the North. And though it is just 80 miles from Seoul, getting to Pyeongchang from the capital used to take hours on mountain roads that twist like “a sheep’s intestines,” as the locals say.
平昌的短板不只是经济，还有天然缺陷。它是韩国最偏僻、最不发达的省份——江原道最贫困的地区之一，有很长一段与朝鲜接壤的边境线。尽管离首尔只有80英里（约合128公里），但从首都去往平昌需要走当地人说的“羊肠”山路，曾经需要几个小时。
The provincial governor, Choi Moon-soon, called it “the last place the government thought of when it thought of investment,” adding, “We hoped an Olympics would change that.”
江原道知事崔文洵(Choi Moon-soon)称平昌“是个很难得到政府投入的地方，”但是“我们希望奥运会能改变这一点”。
Even the town’s name was a problem. Originally spelled “Pyongchang” in English, it was often confused with Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. So in 2000, the town added a letter, capitalized another and changed it to “PyeongChang,” though most foreign news agencies declined to use the capital C.
就连这座城市的名字都是个问题。起初，平昌在英文中的拼写是“Pyongchang”，但人们常把它与朝鲜的首都平壤(Pyongyang)混淆。因此，平昌在2000年往英文名中多添了一个字母，又将另一个字母变为大写，改成了“PyeongChang”，尽管大多数的外国新闻机构都拒绝把字母C大写。
Despite the rebranding, a Kenyan man registered to attend a U.N. meeting in Pyeongchang in 2014 made headlines after he flew to Pyongyang by mistake.
尽管改了名字，2014年仍有一位登记前往平昌参加联合国会议的肯尼亚人一不小心飞到了平壤，成了新闻人物。
In time, though, South Korea embraced Pyeongchang’s bid for the Games as its own. The nation’s leaders were eager to build global prestige and saw the Winter Games as a chance to become one of only a handful of countries that have hosted a “trifecta” of international sports events. (The World Cup took place in South Korea and Japan in 2002, and Seoul hosted the Summer Games in 1988.)
不过后来，韩国还是把平昌申奥视作了国家申奥。韩国领导人迫切希望在全球树立声望，把冬奥会视作一个机会，可以让韩国成为少数举办过三大国际体育赛事的国家。（2002年的世界杯在韩国和日本举办，1988年的夏季奥运会在首尔举办。）
In lobbying for its bid, South Korea used a potential handicap — Pyeongchang’s proximity to the North Korean border, in a region bristling with troops and weaponry — as a selling point. Holding the Games in Pyeongchang, officials argued, would promote peace between two nations still technically at war.
在申办的游说中，韩国把平昌潜在的缺陷——紧邻朝韩边界，地处军队和枪炮林立的区域——用作卖点。申办官员们称，在平昌举办奥运会，会增进两个从严格意义上来说仍处在战争状态的国家之间的和平。
The North did agree to send 22 athletes to the Games, and the two countries agreed to field a joint women’s ice hockey team.
朝鲜同意派出22名运动员参赛，两国也同意派出一支女子冰球联队上场。
A third of South Korea’s 600,000 military personnel are based in Gangwon province. many who were posted here as conscripts — all men in South Korea are required to serve about two years in the military — say they never want to see it again, so rugged are its hills and cold its winters.
韩国的60万军人中，有三分之一都驻扎在江原道。韩国规定所有男性都要在部队中服役两年左右，许多应征入伍，曾被派驻至此的人都表示，他们再也不想看见这个地方，山路如此崎岖，冬天也太过寒冷。
Suspicion of North Korea is deeply etched here, as nowhere else in South Korea. The mountainous border is scarred with barbed wire, tank traps, land mines and guard posts. Hilltop loudspeakers blare K-pop songs daily toward the North, which counters by sending propaganda leaflets floating on balloons into the South.
这里深深地刻下了对朝鲜的猜疑，比韩国其他地方更甚。带刺的铁丝网、坦克陷阱、地雷和岗哨就像多山边界上的一道道伤疤。山顶上的扬声器每天都用大音量向朝鲜播放韩国流行乐，而朝鲜则用漂浮的气球把一张张传单送进韩国作为反击。
Dreams of easing tensions and reunifying with the North one day are also more acutely felt here than anywhere else in South Korea. Many older people in the area came from the North as war refugees, settling near the border in hopes of returning quickly once the Koreas were reunified.
比韩国其他地方，这里也更能深切地感受到缓和紧张形势、希望有朝一日能与朝鲜统一的梦想。在这块地方，许多年纪较大的人都是来自朝鲜的战争难民，他们在边境附近住下来，希望在朝鲜半岛统一后能快些回去。
“Our dream is to one day take the train to go to North Korea and all the way across Siberia and to Berlin,” said Noh Yeon-su, curator of the DMZ Museum, referring to roads and rail lines that stop at the border, essentially making South Korea an island.
“我们的梦想是有一天能搭上去朝鲜的火车，一路穿过西伯利亚，去到柏林，”非军事区博物馆(DMZ Museum)的馆长卢沇洙（Noh Yeon-su，音）说，他指的是在朝韩边界终结的公路和铁路，基本上让韩国变成了一座岛。
The province is also home to the Peace Dam, a towering structure built on the Han River because of fears that another dam upstream in North Korea might release a killer flood, by accident or on purpose.
江原道也是和平大坝(Peace Dam)的所在地，这座高耸在汉江上的建筑是出于对上游朝鲜境内另一座大坝释放毁灭性洪水的担心而建造，不论洪水是因意外还是有意为之。
But Choi, the governor, shrugs off such concerns.
但崔文洵道知事并不理会这些担忧。
“Those of us who live here are not afraid of North Korea because the North, despite all its missile tests and bombast, doesn’t have an ability to fight a war,” he said. The economic output of his province, the South’s poorest, he noted, exceeds that generated by all of North Korea.
“我们这些住在这里的人并不害怕朝鲜，因为尽管他们有导弹试验和满嘴大话，他们并没有能力打一场战争，”他说。他强调说，江原道是韩国最穷的省份，然而这里的经济产出都超过了朝鲜全国。
He added, “The happiest thing about the Olympics is that when foreigners see the Games taking place here, we can shake off our stigma as a dangerous place.”
他补充说，“这次奥运会最让人愉快的事情，就是当外国人看到奥运会在这里举办时，我们就可以摆脱这个耻辱，不再被当做一个危险的地方。”
