现代大学英语精读5 第三课 中文对照

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, "globalization."It's an inexact term for a wild assortment of changes in politics, business, health, entertainment. "Modern industry has established the world market. All old-established 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 find 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 Manifesto. 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 how 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, newspapers, transcontinental railroads, and great steam-powered ships wrought fundamental changes. Telegraph, telephone, radio, and television tied tighter and more intricate knots between inpiduals and the wider world. Now computers, the Internet, cellular phones, cable TV, and cheaper jet transportation have accelerated and complicated these connections.

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 move. And cultures change. The difference now is the speed and scope of these changes. 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 anthropologists, and not a few foreign politicians, believe that a sort of cultural cloning will result from what they regard as the "cultural assault" of McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Disney, Nike, MTV, and the English language itself—more than a fifth of all the people in

the world now speak English to some degree. Whatever their backgrounds or agendas, these critics are convinced that Western—often equated with American—influences will flatten every cultural crease, producing, as one observer terms it, one big "McWorld.

对这种变化并不是人人满意。一些西方社会学家、人类学家和为数不少的外国政治家认为文化．克隆是他们所认为的麦当劳、可口可乐、迪斯尼、耐克和MTV“文化轰炸”的结果，也是英语语言本身的结果，因为现在全球多于五分之一人口都或多或少地讲英语。不管他们的背景和纲领如何, 这些对全球化持反对态度的人深信西方的影响…往往等同于美国的影响 ...会把文化上的差异—一压平。就像一位观察家所说的，最终产生一个麦当劳世界，一个充斥美国货和体现美国价值观的世界。

5.Popular factions sprout to exploit nationalist anxieties. In China, where xenophobia and economic ambition have often struggled for the upper hand, a recent book called China can say no became the best-seller by attacking what it considers the Chinese willingness to believe blindly in foreign things, advising Chinese travelers to not fly on a Boeing 777 and suggesting that Hollywood be burned,

反映公众情绪(或得到公众支持)的派别不断滋生以便利用持此观点的国民的焦虑和不安。在闭关锁国和发展经济两种政策并存并争取其主控地位的中国，《中国可以说不》这本新书成为畅销书，这本书对中国人的盲目崇洋媚外心理进行了，批驳，建议中国游客不要乘坐波音777飞机，还建议烧掉进口的好莱坞大片。

6.There are many Westerners among the denouncers of Western cultural influences, but James Watson, a Harvard anthropologist, isn't one of them. "The lives of Chinese villagers I know are infinitely better nowthan they were 30 years ago," he says. "China has become more open partly because of the demands of ordinary people. They want to become part of the world—I would say globalism is the major force for democracy in China. People want refrigerators, stereos, CD players. I feel it's a moral obligation not to say: ?Those people out there should continue to live in a museum while we will have showers that work.'"

对西方文化影响持斥责态度的人中有许多西方人．而哈佛人类学家詹姆斯·沃森并不是其中一员。他说：“我知道现在中国农村人的生活比30年前的好多了。中国越来越开放，部分原因是出于中国老百姓的要求。他们想成为世界的一部分---我要说全球观念在中国是民主的重要动力。人们需要冰箱、音响和CD机。?远在中国的那些人应该继续过着落后的生活，而我们却可以使用淋浴器，过着舒适的现代生活?。我认为不说这种话是一种道义。”

7.Westernization, I discovered over months of study and travel, is a phenomenon shot through with inconsistencies and populated by very strange bedfellows. Critics of Western culture blast Coke and Hollywood but not organ transplants and computers. Boosters of Weste …… 此处隐藏：22251字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……