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文藝板塊
Johnson
約翰遜專欄
Justice and just slips
公平與失言
The battle against racist language is too important to trivialise
反對種族主義用語十分重要，不容輕視
Back in 2002 The Economist mused about the rise of Brazil’s left-wing president-elect, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. “The meaning of Lula”, ran the cover line, prompting a great deal of mail—much of it from amused South Asian readers who wrote to say that the meaning of “lula” in Urdu is “penis”.
早在2002年，《經濟學人》就曾剖析過巴西左翼候任總統路易斯·伊納西奧·盧拉·達席爾瓦的崛起。當時的封面標題是“盧拉的意義”。為此我們收到了大量的郵件，其中很多信件來自于南亞的讀者，他們覺得我們的標題很好笑，并在郵件中寫道，在烏爾都語中，“lula”的意思是“生殖器”。
Amused—not outraged. It would have been absurd not to cover a soon-to-be president because his name is naughty in Urdu. Yet another complaint about a verbal coincidence, involving the trace of a graver kind of obscenity, recently had serious consequences at the business school of the University of Southern California (USC). Greg Patton, who teaches communication, was describing how repeating “erm, erm” can undermine a speaker’s effectiveness. He noted that other languages have similar pause-fillers; Chinese people, he mentioned, use the equivalent of “that, that, that”, or in Mandarin, “nei ge, nei ge, nei ge”.
他們是覺得很好笑，而并不是被激怒了。如果僅僅是因為一位即將上任的總統的名字在烏爾都語中有下流的意味，就不加以報道的話，那也太荒謬了。但是，最近發生了另外一起有關發音巧合的投訴事件，這次的事件涉及到的猥褻程度更深，而且在南加州大學商學院造成了嚴重的后果。格雷格·巴頓是教授傳播學的老師，他在課堂上描述重復使用“呃，呃”是如何削弱說話者的有效性的。他指出，其他語言也有類似的填充詞。他提到，中國人會相應地使用“那個，那個，那個”，用普通話說就是“內個，內個，內個”。
Then came the whirlwind. An anonymous complaint from an unknown number of black students said that their “mental health has been affected”. The dean of the business school removed Mr Patton from the class, excoriating him in a leaked letter: “It is simply unacceptable for faculty to use words in class that can marginalise, hurt and harm the psychological safety of our students.”
巴頓的課掀起了軒然大波。一些數量未知的黑人學生寫了封匿名投訴信，表示他們的“心理健康受到了影響”。商學院院長對巴頓進行了停課處理，在一封外泄的信中，他對巴頓進行了嚴厲的批評：“我們完全無法接受教師在課堂上使用一些邊緣化的詞語來有損并傷害我們學生的心理安全。”
Veterans of these brouhahas will recall a case from 1999 in which a Washington official was disciplined for using “niggardly” in a meeting. (The word probably comes from medieval Scandinavia and is unrelated to the racial slur.) Philip Roth turned a true story from 1985 into the crux of his book “The Human Stain” (2000). A professor inquires after two missing students, wondering aloud if they are “spooks”, meaning ghosts. But that term is also an old anti-black insult. The students are black (as, secretly, is he), and the fracas ends his career.
經歷過這些鬧劇的老手會想到1999年的一個案例，當時一名華盛頓官員因為在會議中使用了“吝嗇的”一詞而受到紀律處分。（這個詞可能源于中世紀的斯堪的納維亞半島，且與種族歧視無關）。菲利普·羅斯則將1985年發生的真實事件作為關鍵改編成了《人性污點》一書，于2000年出版。書中一名教授詢問兩名缺課的學生，大聲質問他們是否是“spooks”，意為幽靈。但“spooks”同時也是很久以前就出現的，帶有侮辱之意的歧視黑人的詞匯。因為他的學生們都是黑人（他自己也有著黑人血統，但沒有公之于眾），這次糾紛給他的職業生涯畫上了句號。
Firestorms like the one at USC are set to become more frequent. America and other countries are wrestling with a history of racism, and language is part of those reckonings. Some renamings and reframings are justifiable, even overdue. Others hit the wrong target, but do little damage. In a few counter-productive cases, aspersions are cast on well-intentioned people.
類似南加州大學發生的爭議風暴事件會發生的更加頻繁。美國和其他國家正在全力解決種族歧視這一歷史遺留問題，而語言也是那些進行清算的問題之一。有些表達的重新命名和重新架構合乎情理，甚至早就該進行。有些表達遭到了錯誤的打擊，但也沒有造成什么嚴重后果。然而，在一些案例中卻適得其反，明明是出于善意的人卻遭到了誹謗。
譯文由可可原創，僅供學習交流使用，未經許可請勿轉載。
