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Now computers, the Internet, cellular phones, cable TV, and cheaper jet transportation have accelerated and complicated these connections.
現今，計算機、互聯網、移動電話、有線電視和價格低廉的噴氣式飛機空運加速了這種聯系，并使其更加復雜化。
Still, the basic dynamic remains the same: Goods move. People move. Ideas move. And cultures change. The difference now is the speed and scope of these changes. It took television 13 years to acquire 50 million users; the Internet took only 5.
盡管如此，產生這些變化的動力卻是一致的；商品流通、人員流動、觀念轉變、文化變遷。現在不同的是這些變化的速度和范圍。電視機用了 13年時間擁有5000萬用戶，而互聯網只用了5年時間。
Not everyone is happy about this. Some Western social scientists and anthropologists, and not a few foreign politicians, believe that a sort of cultural cloning will result from what they regard as the "cultural assault" of McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Disney, Nike, MTV, and the English language itself—more than a fifth of all the people in the world now speak English to some degree. Whatever their backgrounds or agendas, these critics are convinced that Western—often equated with American—influences will flatten every cultural crease, producing, as one observer terms it, one big "McWorld."
并非所有人都對這種變化感到滿意。一些西方社會學家、人類學家和相當多的外國政治家認為文化克隆是麥當勞、可口可樂、迪士尼、耐克和MTV“文化侵略”的結果，同時也是英語語言本身的結果，因為現在世界上有五分之一以上的人口或多或少地使用英語。不論他們的背景和理念如何，這些對全球化持反對態度的人都深信西方的——往往等同于美國的——影響會把文化上的差異逐一摧毀。正如一位觀察家所說的，這最終將導致一個“麥當勞世界”，一個充斥美國商品和體現美國價值觀的世界。
Popular factions sprout to exploit nationalist anxieties. In China, where xenophobia and economic ambition have often struggled for the upper hand, a recent book called China Can Say No became the best-seller by attacking what it considers the Chinese willingness to believe blindly in foreign things, advising Chinese travelers to not fly on a Boeing 777 and suggesting that Hollywood be burned.
利用國民的焦慮和不安情緒的派別不斷涌現。在中國，恐外自閉和容外發展經濟的思潮一直在爭取統治地位。最近出版的《中國可以說不》大為暢銷。這本書對那種中國人盲目崇洋媚外心理進行了批駁，建議中國游客不要乘坐波音777飛機，并建議燒毀好萊塢大片。
There are many Westerners among the denouncers of Western cultural influences, but James Watson, a Harvard anthropologist, isn't one of them.
許多西方人對西方文化影響持抨擊態度，但哈佛大學人類學家詹姆斯·沃森所持觀點有異。
