評論
打印
So why was Appalachian the way it was?
那么，為什么阿巴拉契亞就會是這種方式呢？
Because of where the original inhabitants of the region came from.
這和最初居住在這里的居民來自的地區有關系。
The so-called American backcountry states, stretching from the Pennsylvania boarders south and west through Virgina and west Virginia,
所謂美國的“窮鄉僻壤”是指從南部的賓夕法尼亞州邊界和穿過西部的弗吉尼亞州和西弗吉尼亞州，
Kentucky and Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina, and the northern end of Alabama and Georgia, were settled overwhelmingly by immigrants from one of the world's most ferocious cultures of honor.
肯塔基州和田納西州、北卡羅來納和南卡羅來納州與北端阿拉巴馬州和格魯吉亞，在這些地區定居的移民，絕大多數來自世界上榮譽文化最深的地區。
They were "Scotch-Irish", that is, from the lowlands of Scotland, the northern counties of England, and Ulster in Northern Ireland.
這便是“蘇格蘭-愛爾蘭”，即從蘇格蘭低地、英格蘭北部各郡、到北愛爾蘭的阿爾斯特。
These regions were known as the borderlands.
這些區域處于偏遠之地。
And they were remote and lawless territories that had been fought over for hundred of years.
偏遠的邊境和無法律明文規定的領土，數百年來都是爭奪之地。
The people of the region were steeped in violence. They were herdsmen, scraping out a living on rocky and infertile land.
該地區人民有長久以來都浸染在暴力當中。他們是生活在山區和貧瘠之地的牧民。
They were clannish, responding to the harshness and turmoil of their environment by forming tight family bonds and placing loyalty to blood above all else.
他們排斥其它宗族，形成嚴密家庭紐帶應對殘酷和混亂的環境，把血液的忠誠高于一切。
And when they immigrated to North America, they moved into the American interior, to remote, lawless, rocky and marginally fertile places like Harlan that allowed them to reproduce in the New World the culture of honor that they had created in the Old World.
而當他們移民到北美，他們進入美國的領土，這些地方偏遠，不受政府法律管轄的邊界或山區等像哈蘭一樣的地區，使他們在這個新的世界中繼續延續他們在舊的世界里創造的榮譽文化。
"To the first settlers, the American backcountry was a dangerous environment, just as the British borderlands had been," the historian David Hackett Fisher writes in Albion's Seed.
“對第一批定居者，美國的窮鄉僻壤是一個危險的環境，就像英國的邊境曾經那么危險。”歷史學家大衛.哈克特.費希爾在“阿爾比恩的種子”中寫道。
Much of the southern highlands were "debatable lands" in the border sense of a contested territory without established government or the rule of law.
從沒有政府法治管轄的角度來看那些被爭來奪去的土地，大部分的南部高地是“有爭議的土地”。
The borderers were more at home than others in this anarchic environment, which was well suited to their family system, their worrier ethic, their farming and herding economy, their attitudes towards land and wealth and their ideas of work and power.
這些居住天邊境的人們在這樣一個無政府的環境中，呆在家里的時間更多，這更好地符合他們的家族制度，武士精神、農牧經濟、他們對待土地和財富的態度以及他們對待工作和權力的思想。
So well adapted was the border culture to this environment that other ethnic groups tended to copy it.
在這種環境下，其文化也很好地適應其中，其他種族群體于是復制這種文化。
The ethos of the North British borders came to dominate this "dark and bloody ground," partly by force of numbers, but mainly because it was a means of survival in a raw and dangerous world.
當時，英國北方邊境精神主宰了這個“黑暗及血腥的地面”，部分以數量上的壓力，但主要是因為它是一種在原始和危險的世界中的生存手段。
