So now we can all talk, we peoples of the world. The universalisation of English has happy consequences. But like the building of the Tower of Babel, it has negative ones, too. English as a lingua franca offers unfair advantages to the half-billion people who speak English as a native language. We sometimes assume that English is a world standard only for superficial interactions — hotel personnel saying "How was your stay?" or business consultants importing words like "benchmarking" into their own languages. But French and German professors, for instance, often grumble that it is hard to build a career when academic journals are all in English.

于是，現(xiàn)在全世界的人可以彼此交流了。英語的普及產(chǎn)生了積極的影響。但是，就像建造巴別塔(Tower of Babel)一樣，它也帶來了消極影響。對以英語為母語的5億人來說，作為通用語言的英語為他們提供了一種有失公平的優(yōu)勢。我們有時只是出于泛泛交流的原因，就將英語視為一種世界標準——比如酒店工作人員說的那句“How was your stay?”（您住得愉快嗎？），或是商業(yè)顧問們引入到自己母語中的“benchmarking”（標桿管理法）等詞匯。但法國和德國的教授卻經(jīng)常抱怨道，在所有學術(shù)刊物都以英語為書面語言的情況下，他們的職業(yè)發(fā)展困難重重。這只是一個例子。

Meanwhile, there can be a diversity-stifling effect to "diversity". When universities, whether in Quebec or Paris or Catalonia, teach classes in global English, they can adorn their student bodies with exotic people from around the world — the most talented ones, the flower of their respective cultures. But the net effect can be to turn these varied young people into extremely unvaried adults. Language shapes mentalities — how deeply is harder to say. But the spread of English may be limiting our ability to think in different ways.

另一方面，英語的普及可能會扼殺“多樣性”。當各所大學——不管是魁北克、巴黎還是加泰羅尼亞的大學——都用全球性的英語授課時，它們能夠吸引到來自世界各地的留學生，來充實自己的學生隊伍。這些留學生極具天賦，是各自文明的奇葩。但這種做法的最終結(jié)果卻是把這些原本特點各異的年輕人培養(yǎng)成了毫無差異的成年人。語言可以塑造人們的心智。這種塑造力到底有多大，愈發(fā)難以說清。但英語的擴張也許正在抑制我們以不同方式思考問題的能力。

In a fascinating piece written for the New York Review of Books last June, the novelist Tim Parks described his suspicion that world authors today write with an eye to the translatability of their work into English. They "had already performed a translation within their own languages", he writes. Mr Parks was grateful for the directness this produced, but worried it came at a price in literary variety. Global English allows writers to go "not quite as far but in half the time", as the old Cure song used to have it.

小說家蒂姆•帕克斯(Tim Parks)去年6月為《紐約書評》(New York Review of Books)撰寫了一篇頗有意思的文章，他在文章中談到了自己的一點懷疑：世界各國的作家如今在寫作時都會考慮，自己的作品是否容易譯成英語。帕克斯在文中指出，作家們“在成文時實際上是在用母語翻譯英語版的內(nèi)容。”這樣做能使文章譯成英語后通俗易懂，對此帕克斯予以了肯定，但他擔心這會犧牲文學的多樣性。就像《The Cure》樂隊的那支老歌所唱的，全球性的英語讓作家雖然“走得沒那么遠，但用時卻減少了一半”。

The writer Robert McCrum wrote in his recent book Globish that there are 4bn people who understand English, if we're generous about what we mean by English. One can only rub one's eyes. Anyone who is now 38 years old or older was alive at a time when 4bn was more than the whole population of the planet. It reached that level in 1974, just seven years before Fran•ois Mitterrand came to power in France. His culture minister, Jack Lang, waged a fight against the linguistic imperialism of English. A later government would specify that 40 per cent of popular songs on the radio had to be in French. That law gave rise to a lot of laughter in Washington and London. It doesn't seem quite so crazy as it did back then.

作家羅伯特•麥克拉姆(Robert McCrum)在他最近所寫的《全球語》(Globish)一書中談到，如果我們對英語下一種寬泛的定義，那么目前世界上有40億人懂英語。你或許會對此大感意外。如果你現(xiàn)在的年齡在38歲或以上，那么你的人生中曾經(jīng)有過這樣一段日子：那時，全世界的人口總和還不到40億。全球人口在1974年時達到40億，7年后，弗朗索瓦•密特朗(Fran•ois Mitterrand)執(zhí)掌了法國的政權(quán)。密特朗時期的文化部長雅克•朗(Jack Lang)發(fā)起了一場反抗英語語言霸權(quán)的斗爭。那之后的歷屆法國政府將會規(guī)定：電臺播放的流行歌曲中，法語歌必須占到40%。這部法律在華盛頓和倫敦一度成為笑料。今天，這個主意似乎并沒有當初看上去那樣瘋狂。

The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard

注：本文作者為《旗幟周刊》(The Weekly Standard)高級編輯。

譯者:薛磊