现代大学英语精读5-第三课-中文对照知识分享

商品流通、人员流动、观念转变、文化变迁

埃拉·兹温格尔

1. Today we are in the throes of a worldwide reformation of cultures, a tectonic shift of habits and dreams called, in the curious vocabulary of social scientists, "glob alization."It's an inexact term for a wild assortment of changes in politics, business, h ealth, entertainment. "Modern industry has established the world market. All old-establi shed national industries are dislodged by new industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants we f ind new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. " Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote this 150 years ago in The Communist Manif esto. Their statement now describes an ordinary fact of life.

今天我们正经历着一种世界范围文化巨变的阵痛，一种习俗与追求的结构性变化,用社会学家奇特的词汇来称呼这种变化，就叫“全球化”。对于政治、商贸、保健及娱乐领域的巨大变化，这个词并不贴切。“现代工业已建立了世界市场。已建立的所有旧的国民工业被其产品不仅在国内而且在世界各地范围内销售的新兴工业所取代。人们用新的需求取代原有的需求，用外地的产品满足自己的需求。”卡尔.马克思和弗雷德里希·恩格斯早在150年前就在《共产党宣言》中写下了这些。他们那时的陈述描绘了现在生活中的普遍事实。

2. How people feel about this depends a great deal on where they live and ho w much money they have. Yet globalization, as one report stated, "is a reality, not a choice." Humans have been weaving commercial and cultural connections since before the first camel caravan ventured afield. In the 19th century the postal service, newsp apers, transcontinental railroads, and great steam-powered ships wrought fundamental c hanges. Telegraph, telephone, radio, and television tied tighter and more intricate knots between individuals and the wider world. Now computers, the Internet, cellular phone s, cable TV, and cheaper jet transportation have accelerated and complicated these con nections.

对此人们有何感受很大程度上取决于他们的生活所在地和所拥有的金钱数。然而，正如某篇报道所述，全球化“是一种事实，而不是一种选择”。早在第一批骆驼商队冒险出外经商前至今，人们一直在编织着商贸和文化相互间的交往。在19世纪，邮政服务、报纸、横跨大陆的铁路及巨大的蒸汽轮船带来了根本变化。电报、电话、收音机和电视把个人和外部世界更紧密地连在一起，这种联系更为复杂、不那么直接也不易察觉。

现在，计算机、互联网、移动电话、有线电视和相对便宜的喷气式飞机空运加速了这种联系并使这种联系更加复杂。

3.Still, the basic dynamic remains the same: Goods move. People move. Ideas m ove. And cultures change. The difference now is the speed and scope of these change s. It took television 13 years to acquire 50 million users; the Internet took only five.

然而，产生这种变化的动力是一致的：商品流通、人员流动、观念转变、文化变迁。不同的是这些变化的速度和范围。电视机拥有5,000万用户用了13年时间，互联网只用了5年时间。

4. Not everyone is happy about this. Some Western social scientists and anthropo logists, and not a few foreign politicians, believe that a sort of cultural cloning will r esult from what they regard as the "cultural assault" of McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Disne y, Nike, MTV, and the English language itself—more than a fifth of all the people in