英語全球化的功與過

One of the odd stories to come out of the French-speaking province of Quebec last year was the announcement that intensive English courses would be offered to students in state schools. Odd, because in the past half-century, much of the Québécois identity has been built on resisting English. Authorities throw the book at people for doing things that would be normal elsewhere in Canada. Last autumn, the Montreal newspaper La Presse revealed that two real estate executives had made presentations in English to a Montreal-based pension fund, violating the province's language laws, which give workers the right to a French-speaking environment.

去年，以法語爲官方語言的加拿大魁北克省傳來了一則不同尋常的消息：該省宣佈將在公立學校中面向學生開設英語精讀課程。之所以說它不同尋常，是因爲在過去半個世紀中，魁北克人的民族認同在很大程度上建立在抵制英語這一基礎上。在加拿大其他地方被視爲正常的事情，在魁北克卻會受到當局最嚴厲的懲罰。去年秋天，蒙特利爾報紙《La Presse》曝光了一件事：兩名房地產行業的高管使用英語向一支總部位於蒙特利爾的養老基金做報告。這種行爲違反了魁北克省的語言法。在該省，員工有權享有一個講法語的工作環境。

Now, school authorities in Quebec City are questioning whether the time is ripe for introducing those English classes after all. Their hesitation has left French-speaking parents angry. On one hand, those parents want their children to cherish their own community and its language. On the other hand, English is the international language of business, and their children will have a hard time climbing the social ladder without it.

如今，對於引入此類英語課程的時機到底是不是已經成熟，魁北克市學校當局提出了質疑。他們的猶豫不決令那些講法語的家長們感到憤怒。一方面，父母希望子女珍視他們自己的社交圈和語言。另一方面，在英語已成爲國際商務語言的情況下，如果不會講英語，他們子女在提高自身社會地位的過程中將遭遇重重障礙。

Self-contradiction besets all governments as they try to work out a role for English in their national culture. Long-time Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad was, as a young man, a promoter of Malay. He made it the language of school instruction two decades ago. But in 2003, he came up with a plan to teach mathematics and science in English, reasoning that most technical literature on those subjects was in English. It was a flop. English-language ability, among both teachers and students, had dropped more precipitously since independence than Dr Mahathir cared to admit. But when the government suggested discontinuing the programme in 2009, parents flew into a rage.

那些試圖在自身文化中爲英語尋找到合適定位的政府，都無法擺脫這種矛盾。長期擔任馬來西亞總理的馬哈蒂爾•穆罕默德(Mahathir Mohamad)年輕時曾是馬來語的推動者。20年前，他使馬來語成爲了學校的教學語言。但2003年時，他又提出一項新計劃，也就是用英語來教授數學和科學，原因是這些學科的大部分技術文獻都是用英語撰寫的。此舉徹底受挫。馬來西亞教師和學生的英語能力自該國獨立以來已急劇下滑，儘管馬哈蒂爾博士本人不願承認下滑得有那麼厲害。然而，當2009年馬來西亞政府建議中止該計劃時，家長們卻強烈不滿。

Not all cultures have the same historical anguish over English that Malaysians and Québécois do. But almost all are being dragged ineluctably towards giving English a bigger role in their societies. More than a dozen EU countries require that English be taught in schools. In Thailand and China, the government has fostered English-language learning circles. Francophone Rwanda switched over in 2009 to English school instruction. English spreads wherever there is democracy or markets or even the slightest inclination towards them.

在英語這個問題上，並不是所有文化都遭遇了馬來西亞人和魁北克人遭遇的那種歷史痛苦。但如今，幾乎所有的文化都不得不在各自的社會中賦予英語更加重要的角色，這已成爲一種不可避免的趨勢。已有十餘個歐盟(EU)國家要求本國學校教授英語。在泰國和中國，政府對英語學習圈子進行了扶持。法語國家盧旺達2009年時將學校教學語言改爲英語。一個地方只要擁有民主或市場、甚至只要具備向民主或市場靠攏的最輕微傾向，英語就會該地蔓延開來。

So now we can all talk, we peoples of the world. The universalisation of English has happy consequences. But like the building of the Tower of Babel, it has negative ones, too. English as a lingua franca offers unfair advantages to the half-billion people who speak English as a native language. We sometimes assume that English is a world standard only for superficial interactions — hotel personnel saying "How was your stay?" or business consultants importing words like "benchmarking" into their own languages. But French and German professors, for instance, often grumble that it is hard to build a career when academic journals are all in English.

於是，現在全世界的人可以彼此交流了。英語的普及產生了積極的影響。但是，就像建造巴別塔(Tower of Babel)一樣，它也帶來了消極影響。對以英語爲母語的5億人來說，作爲通用語言的英語爲他們提供了一種有失公平的優勢。我們有時只是出於泛泛交流的原因，就將英語視爲一種世界標準——比如酒店工作人員說的那句“How was your stay?”（您住得愉快嗎？），或是商業顧問們引入到自己母語中的“benchmarking”（標杆管理法）等詞彙。但法國和德國的教授卻經常抱怨道，在所有學術刊物都以英語爲書面語言的情況下，他們的職業發展困難重重。這只是一個例子。

Meanwhile, there can be a diversity-stifling effect to "diversity". When universities, whether in Quebec or Paris or Catalonia, teach classes in global English, they can adorn their student bodies with exotic people from around the world — the most talented ones, the flower of their respective cultures. But the net effect can be to turn these varied young people into extremely unvaried adults. Language shapes mentalities — how deeply is harder to say. But the spread of English may be limiting our ability to think in different ways.

另一方面，英語的普及可能會扼殺“多樣性”。當各所大學——不管是魁北克、巴黎還是加泰羅尼亞的大學——都用全球性的英語授課時，它們能夠吸引到來自世界各地的留學生，來充實自己的學生隊伍。這些留學生極具天賦，是各自文明的奇葩。但這種做法的最終結果卻是把這些原本特點各異的年輕人培養成了毫無差異的成年人。語言可以塑造人們的心智。這種塑造力到底有多大，愈發難以說清。但英語的擴張也許正在抑制我們以不同方式思考問題的能力。

In a fascinating piece written for the New York Review of Books last June, the novelist Tim Parks described his suspicion that world authors today write with an eye to the translatability of their work into English. They "had already performed a translation within their own languages", he writes. Mr Parks was grateful for the directness this produced, but worried it came at a price in literary variety. Global English allows writers to go "not quite as far but in half the time", as the old Cure song used to have it.

小說家蒂姆•帕克斯(Tim Parks)去年6月爲《紐約書評》(New York Review of Books)撰寫了一篇頗有意思的文章，他在文章中談到了自己的一點懷疑：世界各國的作家如今在寫作時都會考慮，自己的作品是否容易譯成英語。帕克斯在文中指出，作家們“在成文時實際上是在用母語翻譯英語版的內容。”這樣做能使文章譯成英語後通俗易懂，對此帕克斯予以了肯定，但他擔心這會犧牲文學的多樣性。就像《The Cure》樂隊的那支老歌所唱的，全球性的英語讓作家雖然“走得沒那麼遠，但用時卻減少了一半”。

The writer Robert McCrum wrote in his recent book Globish that there are 4bn people who understand English, if we're generous about what we mean by English. One can only rub one's eyes. Anyone who is now 38 years old or older was alive at a time when 4bn was more than the whole population of the planet. It reached that level in 1974, just seven years before Fran•ois Mitterrand came to power in France. His culture minister, Jack Lang, waged a fight against the linguistic imperialism of English. A later government would specify that 40 per cent of popular songs on the radio had to be in French. That law gave rise to a lot of laughter in Washington and London. It doesn't seem quite so crazy as it did back then.

作家羅伯特•麥克拉姆(Robert McCrum)在他最近所寫的《全球語》(Globish)一書中談到，如果我們對英語下一種寬泛的定義，那麼目前世界上有40億人懂英語。你或許會對此大感意外。如果你現在的年齡在38歲或以上，那麼你的人生中曾經有過這樣一段日子：那時，全世界的人口總和還不到40億。全球人口在1974年時達到40億，7年後，弗朗索瓦•密特朗(Fran•ois Mitterrand)執掌了法國的政權。密特朗時期的文化部長雅克•朗(Jack Lang)發起了一場反抗英語語言霸權的鬥爭。那之後的歷屆法國政府將會規定：電臺播放的流行歌曲中，法語歌必須佔到40%。這部法律在華盛頓和倫敦一度成爲笑料。今天，這個主意似乎並沒有當初看上去那樣瘋狂。

The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard

注：本文作者爲《旗幟週刊》(The Weekly Standard)高級編輯。

譯者:薛磊