Decline of Reading
閱讀的衰退
We have a crisis on our hands.
我們正面臨著危機。
You mean global warming?
你是指全球變暖問題?
The world economy?
世界經濟問題?
No, the decline of reading.
不,是閱讀衰退的問題。
People are just not doing it anymore, especially the young.
大家現在都不讀書了,尤其是年輕人。
Who's responsible?
誰該負責?
Actually, it's more like, What is responsible?
其實,問題更應該問成:什么該負責?
The Internet, of course,and everything that comes with it—Facebook, Twitter.
當然是因特網,還有所有伴隨它而生的產物,比如臉譜網站,推特微博。
You can write your own list.
你自己就可以列出個清單。
There's been a warning about the imminent death of literate civilization for a long time.
很長時間以來就有讀寫文明即將消亡的警戒。
In the 20th century, first it was the movies, then radio,then television that seemed to spell doom for the written world.
在20世紀,先是電影,然后是收音機,再然后是電視機,似乎都會給書寫領域帶來滅頂之災。
None did.Reading survived;in fact it not only survived,it has flourished.
但沒有一樣辦到了這點。閱讀幸存了下來;事實是它不僅幸存下來,它還興旺得很。
The world is more literate than ever before—there are more and more readers, and more and more books.
整個世界比以前任何時候都更有文化修養—世界擁有了越來越多的讀者,越來越多的書籍。
The fact that we often get our reading material online today is not something we should worry over.
我們如今時常從網上獲取閱讀材料,對這一事實我們無需過慮。
The electronic and digital revolution of the last two decades has arguably shown the way forward for reading and for writing.
過去20年的電子,數字革命可以認為是為閱讀和書寫指明了前行的道路。
Take the arrival of e-book readers as an example.
以電子書籍閱讀器的推行為例。
Devices like Kindle make reading more convenient and are a lot more environmentally friendly than the traditional paper book.
像Kindle這類設備是的閱讀比起在傳統紙張上進行的閱讀更為方便,也環保得多。
As technology makes new ways of writing possible,new ways of reading are possible.
正如科技使得新的書寫方式成為可能,它也給新的閱讀方式提供可能性。
Interconnectivity allows for the possibility of a reading experience that was barely imaginable before.
互聯性使我們有可能擁有在以前幾乎是無法想象的閱讀體驗。
Where traditional books had to make do with photographs and illustrations,an e-book can provide readers with an unlimited number of links:to texts, pictures, and videos.
傳統書籍只能使用照片和插圖,而電子書籍可以為讀者提供到文本,圖片和視頻的無數鏈接。
In the future, the way people write novels, history,and philosophy will resemble nothing seen in the past.
未來人們寫作小說,歷史和哲學的方式將和以往所見的方式完全不同。
On the other hand, there is the danger of trivialization.
但另一方面確實存在著瑣碎化的危險。
One Twitter group is offering its followers single-sentence-long "digests" of the great novels.
一個推特群為其粉絲提供著名小說的一句話“摘要”。
War and Peace in a sentence?
一句話的《戰爭與和平》?
You must be joking.
你在開玩笑吧。
We should fear the fragmentation of reading.
我們應該警惕閱讀的碎片化。
There is the danger that the high-speed connectivity of the Internet will reduce our attention span—that we will be incapable of reading anything of length or which requires deep concentration.
存在著這樣的危險:互聯網的高速鏈接性會縮短我們的注意力,也就是說我們無法閱讀任何一定長度或要求注意力高度集中的東西。
In such a fast-changing world,in which reality seems to be remade each day,we need the ability to focus and understand what is happening to us.
在如此快速變化的世界中,現實似乎每天都被重新締造,我們需要有能力集中注意力并理解正在發生的事情。
This has always been the function of literature and we should be careful not to let it disappear.
這從來都是文學所具有的功能,我們應該小心,別讓這個功能消失。
Our society needs to be able to imagine the possibility of someone utterly in tune with modern technology but able to make sense of a dynamic, confusing world.
我們的社會要能夠設想出現這種人的可能性:他既完全和現代科技合拍,又能理解這個時刻變化,令人迷惑的世界。