大学综合英语第二册 基础英语 2 何兆熊 课文及译文 4 culture encounters

Unit4 TEXT ⅠCultural Encounters Susan Bassnett

1. In what language are you usually surfing at Internet websites?

2. What fun do you find on Internet?

We live in an age of easy access to the rest of the world. 我们生活在一个交流非常便捷的时代Cheap flights mean that millions of people are able to visit places their parents could only dream about, while the Internet enables us to communicate with the remotest places and the traditional postal services are now referred to almost mockingly as "snail mail." 便宜的机票使得我们可以到那些我们的家长只能幻想的地方去，而网络使得我们可以跟最遥远地方的人们进行交流。在这种情况下，传统邮政现在被称为蜗牛邮件系统。When students go off back-packing, they can email their parents from Internet cafes in the Himalayas or from a desert oasis. 当学生们在背包远足的时候，他们可以用E-MAIL从喜马拉雅的网吧或者从沙漠里的绿洲给他们的家长发邮件。And as for mobile phones—the clicking of text messaging at any hour of the day or night has become familiar to us all. 不管是白天还是晚上，我们也能通过手机来发短信。Everyone, it seems, provided, of course, they can afford to do so, need never be out of touch.所有可以付的起这种方式的人都可以随时随地的获取最新信息。

Significantly also, this great global communications revolution is also linked to the expansion of English, which has now become the leading international language. 同样重要的是，全球交流的革命跟英语的普及是不可分割的。英语现在变成领先的国际语言。Conferences and business meetings around the globe are held in English, regardless of whether anyone present is a native English speaker. 不管与会者是否是把英语作为母语，全球不管哪个角落的会议和商业会谈都是使用的英语。English has simply become the language that facilitates communication, and for many people learning English is an essential stepping stone on the road to success.英语已经变成一种促进交流的语言。同时，对很多人来说，学习英语是他们通往成功道路上的奠基石。

So why, you may wonder, would anyone have misgivings about all these wonderful developments, and why does the rise of English as a global language cause feelings of uneasiness for some of us? 所以你可能会好奇为什么有些人对于这些美好的发展有所顾忌，为什么英语作为一个国际通用语言会使得有些人对英语的不适应？For there are indeed problems with the communications revolution, problems that are not only economic. 交流上的革命确实存在问题，并且这些问题并不仅仅是经济上的。Most fundamental is the profound relationship between language and culture that lies at the heart of society and one that we overlook at our peril. 最根本的东西是，语言和文化之间的不可分割的关系是一个社会的核心，而我们忽视了一些最关键的事情。

Different cultures are not simply groups of people who label the world differently; languages give us the means to shape our views of the world and languages are different from one another. 不同的文化不仅仅是给不同组别的人贴上标签，语言是帮助我们理解世界的工具，每个语言之间都是有区别的。We express what we see and feel through language, and because languages are so clearly culture-related, often we find that what we can say in one language cannot be expressed at all in another. 因为我们通过语言来表达我们的所见所想，而语言是跟文化密切相关的，所以有时候就可能产生我们能用一种语言表达出来的东西，是不能用另外一种语言来表达出来的。The English word "homesickness" translates into Italian as "nostalgia," but English has had to borrow that same word to describe a different state of mind, something that is not quite homesickness and involves a kind of longing. 英语的“想家”翻译成意大利语就变成了“怀乡病”，但是英语有时候必须要用同样的词来表示另外一种意思，这种意思不是单纯的想家，而是包含了一层渴望的意思在里面。Homesickness and nostalgia put together are almost,