【美联英语】坚持—关于坚持的英语演讲稿(中英文对照)3

两分钟做个小测试，看看你的英语水平

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美联英语提供：关于坚持的英语演讲稿（中英文对照）3

Okay. Now this is the major change that I've seen -- how teaching English has morphed from being a mutually beneficial practice to becoming a massive international business that it is today. No longer just a foreign language on the school curriculum. And no longer the sole domain of mother England. It has become a bandwagon for every English-speaking nation on earth. And why not? After all, the best education -- according to the latest World University Rankings -- is to be found in the universities of the U.K. and the U.S. So everybody wants to have an English education, naturally. But if you're not a native speaker, you have to pass a test.

言归正传，我见过最大的改变，就是英语教学的蜕变如何从一个互惠互利的行为变成今天这种大规模的国际产业。英语不再是学校课程里的外语学科，也不再只是英国的专利。英语(教学)已经成为所有英语系国家追逐的潮流。何乐而不为呢?毕竟，最好的教育来自于最好的大学，而根据最新的世界大学排名，那些名列前茅的都是英国和美国的大学。所以自然每个人都想接受英语教育，但如果你不是以英文为母语，你就要通过考试。

Now can it be right to reject a student on linguistic ability alone? Perhaps you have a computer scientist who's a genius. Would he need the same language as a lawyer, for example? Well, I don't think so. We English teachers reject them all the time. We put a stop sign, and we stop them in their tracks. They can't pursue their dream any longer, till they get English. Now let me put it this way, if I met a monolingual Dutch

speaker who had the cure for cancer, would I stop him from entering my British University? I don't think so. But indeed, that is exactly what we do. We English teachers are the gatekeepers. And you have to satisfy us first that your English is good enough. Now it can be dangerous to give too much power to a narrow segment of society. Maybe the barrier would be too universal.

但仅凭语言能力就拒绝学生这样对吗?譬如如果你碰到一位天才计算机科学家，但他会需要有和律师一样的语言能力吗?我不这么认为。但身为英语老师的我们，却总是拒绝他们。我们处处设限，将学生挡在路上，使他们无法再追求自己的梦想，直到他们通过考试。现在容我换一个方式说，如果我遇到了一位只会说荷兰话的人，而这个人能治愈癌症，我会阻止他进入我的英国大学吗?我想不会。但事实上，我们的确在做这种事。我们这些英语老师就是把关的。你必须先让我们满意，使我们认定你的英文够好。但这可能是危险的。把太多的权力交由这么小的一群人把持，也许会令这种障碍太过普及。

Okay. "But," I hear you say, "what about the research? It's all in English." So the books are in English, the journals are done in English, but that is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It feeds the English requirement. And so it goes on. I ask you, what happened to translation? If you think about the Islamic Golden Age, there was lots of translation then. They translated from Latin and Greek into Arabic, into Persian, and then it was translated on into the Germanic languages of Europe and the Romance languages. And so light shone upon the Dark Ages of Europe. Now don't get me wrong; I am not against teaching English, all you English teachers out there.

I love it that we have a global language. We need one today more than ever. But I am against using it as a barrier. Do we really want to end up with 600 languages