Their ill-starred voyage ended in shipwreck off the coast.
他们那命运多舛的航行最终在海岸附近以船难告终。
The ill-starred lovers, kept apart by feuding families and cruel circumstance, never found the happiness they so desperately sought.
这对命运不济的恋人被世仇的家族和残酷的命运所阻隔,始终未能找到他们苦苦追寻的幸福。
莎士比亚《奥赛罗》(Othello)中,奥赛罗在悲剧结局前自称为"ill-starred"之人("Speak of me as I am… Of one that loved not wisely, but too well; of one not easily jealous… of one whose hand, like the base Judean, threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe."紧接其后便提到了"ill-starred"),这是该词最著名的文学出处之一。
托马斯·哈代(Thomas Hardy)的小说中常出现命运注定悲剧的人物,ill-starred 的主题贯穿其作品如《德伯家的苔丝》(Tess of the d'Urbervilles)和《无名的裘德》(Jude the Obscure)。