譯/陳韋廷
The well-wishers had all gathered even though neither the teenage bride-to-be nor her mother wanted the girl to go through with the wedding. It took a police raid to stop it, and even then it was nearly too late.
It is hard to state the age of Deepa Kumari, the betrothed girl, with any certainty. A government identification card lists it at 15. Her father, accused of selling Deepa for about $300 to the groom, a 31-year-old laborer, insists that she is 17. A local constable put the number at 13.
儘管10來歲的準新娘和她的母親都不希望這女孩完成婚禮，賀客卻已到齊。全靠警方採取突擊行動才阻止了這場婚禮，而且險些就來不及了。
很難確定這位已經訂婚的女孩蒂帕．庫瑪里年紀多大，而一張政府身分證上寫的是15歲。她的父親被指控用大約300美元的價格將蒂帕賣給31歲的新郎，一個工人，並且堅稱她已17歲，而當地一名警察則說女孩只有13歲。
In any case, by dusk on that February evening, a group of plainclothes police officers stormed the village of Madhura in Bihar state. They chased men into fields and detained the bride and groom, already covered in turmeric powder to prepare for the ceremony, for further questioning.
Speaking to reporters at the police station later, Deepa Kumari, with downcast eyes, made her position clear: "I will not marry, sir," she said. "I want to study."
不管實際年紀如何，一群便衣警察在二月某天傍晚前衝進了比哈省的馬圖拉村。把那些男子追趕到田裡，並拘留身上已撲滿薑黃粉為儀式做準備的新娘和新郎，以便進一步訊問。
蒂帕．庫瑪里後來在派出所跟記者談話時，帶著沮喪的眼神表明了自己的立場：「我不想結婚，先生，我要讀書。」
India's child marriage rate is one of the highest in the world, with a long list of social and economic pressures, from poverty to a dearth of education opportunities, propping up the number.
But as awareness has spread about the detriments associated with underage marriages, and as the authorities have responded more diligently, the prevalence has dropped. In some areas, it has done so sharply.
印度是世界上童婚率最高的國家之一，從貧困到缺乏教育機會等一長串社會和經濟壓力，支撐起高童婚率。
但隨著人們對未成年婚姻的危害認識日增，當局又以更大力度回應此事，童婚盛行程度已經下降。在某些地區甚且大幅下降。
Data released by UNICEF this month found that a girl's risk of marrying before her 18th birthday in South Asia fell by more than a third in the last decade, from nearly 50 percent to about 30 percent, in large part because of progress in India.
Child marriage here is finely threaded with other practices, including the exchange of a dowry from the bride's family to the groom, and sometimes with sex trafficking, making it difficult to tackle any one issue without addressing others. Social workers said there are no easy solutions.
聯合國兒童基金會本月公布的數據顯示，南亞女孩滿18歲之前結婚的比率10年來下降超過三分之一，從將近50％降至約30％，這在很大程度上是由於印度的進步。
印度的童婚與一些其他習俗緊密相連，包括新娘家須向夫家提供嫁妝，有時還涉及性販運，以致在不解決其他相關問題的情況下，很難去解決任何單一問題。社工表示，沒有簡單的解決方法。
"You cannot wave a magic stick," said Anand Madhab, principle consultant at the Gender Resource Center, an organization that supports women's empowerment. "It's a deep-seated problem."
Bihar, a poor, agrarian state in northern India, has one of the highest rates of underage marriages in the country, according to India's National Family Health Survey. In 2005, 69 percent of surveyed women said they married when they were underage. Ten years later, the number fell to 42.5 percent.
性別資源中心該中心是支持女性賦權的組織，首席顧問阿南得．馬德哈說：「你沒有法寶。這是個根深柢固的問題。」
印度全國家庭健康調查指出，印度北部的貧窮農業省比哈省是全國未成年人結婚率最高的省份之一。2005年，69％受訪女性表示自己未成年就結婚了，該數字在10年後已降至42.5％。
※說文解字看新聞
童婚是指雙方或其中一方為未成年兒童的婚姻關係，造成此類未成年婚姻（underage marriage）的原因包括貧窮、性別不平等（gender inequality）與傳統文化習俗等，而此一現象在開發中國家相當普遍，常見於南亞、中東與非洲內陸國家。
在印度，童婚是性侵以外另一個恐怖的社會現象，孩童用身體換聘金，這種金錢交易也助長了性販運（sex trafficking），而 trafficking為一名詞，指的是非法的買賣或交易，動詞形式則為traffic，而應用此單字的還有human trafficking（人口販運）、child trafficking（兒童販運）、baby trafficking（販嬰）和drug trafficking（販毒）等等。
至於片語prop up意指「支撐、支持」，相同意思的片語還有shore up跟stand up for等等，而俚語wave a magic wand（or stick） 指的是施展魔法，在文中則意譯為「擁有法寶」。
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