他她話題:世界語 英語 The world language English

INDIA has about a billion people and a dozen major languages of its own. One language, and only one, is understood-by an elite-across the country: that of the foreigners who ruled it for less than 200 years and left 52 years ago. After 1947, English had to share its official status, with north India's Hindi, and was due to lose it in 1965. It did not happen: southern India said no.

印度有約十億人口和十幾種主要的本國語言。然而在全國範圍內，人們都能理解的語言僅有一種：那些統治了印度將近二百年並於五十二年前離開該國的外國人講的語言。1947年以後，英語不得不與印度北部的印地語共有官方語言地位，並將於1965年失去其地位。事實並非如此，南部印度不同意此舉。

Today, India. Tomorrow, unofficially, the world. That is well under way; at first, because the British not only built a global empire but settled America, and now because the world (and notably America) has acquired its first truly global-and interactive-medium, the Internet.

今天，印度如此；明天，世界跟隨（非正式地）。這一進程正大行其勢。首先，英國不僅建立了一個世界性的帝國而且移民建立了美國。今天，尤以美國為甚的世界掌握了第一個真正意義上的世界性（並具互動性）的媒介——互聯網。

On the estimates of David Crystal, a British expert, some 350m people speak English as their first language. Maybe 250m-350m do or can use it as a second language; in ex-colonial countries, notably, or in English-majority ones, like 30m recent immigrants to the United States, or Canada's 6m francophone Quebeckers. And elsewhere? That is a heroic guess: 100m-1 billion is Mr Crystal's, depending how you define “can”. Let us be bold: in all, 20-25% of earth's 6 billion people can use English; not the English of England, let alone of Dr Johnson, but English.

英國專家David Crystal估計，大約有350m人把英語作為他們的第一語言。或許有250m-350m人用或者能用英語作為第二語言。特別是在前殖民地國家；或是英國人為主的國家，像30m的美國新移民；或者是加拿大的6m講法語的魁北克人。還有其他地方嗎？Mr Crystal有個大膽的猜想，有100m-1b人，這個數字取決於怎樣定義“能”。 讓我們大膽一點，全球6b人口中總共有20%-25%的人會用英語，這不是英國英語，更不是約翰遜博士的英語。

That number is soaring as each year brings new pupils to school and carries off monolingual oldies-and now as the Internet spreads. And the process is self-reinforcing. As business spreads across frontiers, the company that wants to move its executives around, and to promote the best of them, regardless of nationality, encourages the use of English. So the executive who wants to be in the frame, or to move to another employer, learns to use it. English has long dominated learned journals: German, Russian or French (depending on the field) may be useful to their expert readers, but English is essential. So, if you want your own work published-and widely read by your peers-then English is the language of choice.

隨着每年的新生入學，單一語言老人離世，以及現在互聯網的普及，這一數據正在飆升。這是一個自我增強的過程。由於商業跨越國界，各公司不計國籍，各處調遣其主管們，以期提升佼佼者；這就鼓勵了英語的運用。因此希望成為中心人物或者跳槽的主管就學用英語。英語早已佔據了學術期刊；領域的不同，德語、俄語或法語都可能會對其專家讀者有所幫助，但英語必不可少。因此你若要你的作品出版並被同行廣泛閲讀，英語是不二之選。

The growth of the cinema, and still more so of television, has spread the dominant language. Foreign movies or sitcoms may be dubbed into major languages, but for smaller audiences they are usually subtitled. Result: a Dutch or Danish or even Arab family has an audio-visual learning aid in its living-room, and usually the language spoken on-screen is English.

上映的越來越多的電影以及比之更甚的電視，傳播了這一主導語言。外來電影和情景喜劇可配音成本地語，但為了較少一部分觀眾，電影經常會被配上字幕。結果是，一個荷蘭或丹麥甚至是阿拉伯家庭在起居室裏有個視聽學習輔助設備，屏幕上説的通常是英語！

The birth of the computer and its American operating systems gave English a nudge ahead; that of the Internet has given it a huge push. Any web-linked household today has a library of information available at the click of a mouse. And, unlike the books on its own shelves or in the public library, maybe four-fifths is written in English. That proportion may lessen, as more non-English sites spring up. But English will surely dominate.

如果説計算機及其美國的操作系統的誕生輕推了英語前進，那麼互聯網的誕生就是給了它巨大的推動。今天任何聯網的家庭鼠標動下就能擁有一個信息圖書館。不像自己書架上或者公共圖書館裏的書，這裏可能五分之四的是英文。

The web of course works both ways. An American has far better access today than ever before to texts in German or Polish or Gaelic. But the average American has no great incentive to profit from it. That is not true the other way round. The web may even save some mini-languages. But the big winner will be English.

毫無疑問，網絡是把雙刃劍。今天美國人比以往任何時候都能好的多地接觸到德語、波蘭語、蓋爾語。但普通美國人對獲益於網絡並沒有太大的動機。然而反面也是錯誤的。網絡可能甚至拯救一些微語言，可是大贏家還是英語。