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由于一直同时听着中英文两种语言，故而我对它们之间的任何对比总是心存怀疑，因为我注意到它们各自都有对方所没有的难点。说英文的人会认为中文极其难，因为中文用非常微妙的声调变化就可以表示不同的词语。而英文则常常被认为缺乏一致性，因为英文具有太多不合规则的用法。
Even more dangerous, in my view, is the temptation to view the gulf between different languages and behavior in translation. To listen to my mother speak English, an outside spectator might make the deduction that she has no concept of the temporal differences of past and future or that she is gender blind because she refers to my husband as \people take an indirect route to get to the point. It is, rather, my mother's individual tendency to ornament her language and wander around a bit.
I worry that the dominant society may see Chinese people from a limited perspective, hedging us in with the stereotype. I worry that the seemingly innocent stereotype may lead to actual intolerance and be part of the reason why there are few Chinese in top management positions, or in the main judiciary or political sectors. I worry about the power of language: If one says anything enough times, it might become true, with or without malicious intent.
Could this be why the Chinese friends of my parents' generation are willing to accept the generalization?
\and polite, let them think that. Wouldn't Americans appreciate such an honorary description?\
在我看来，更危险的做法是，人们往往倾向于通过翻译来理解不同语言和行为之间的差异。如果一个旁观的外人听我母亲说英语，可能会得出结论，说她对过去和将来这样的时间区别没有概念，或者认为她对人的性别不加区分，因为她提到我丈夫时总是说“她”。如果一个人对此类现象不假思虑，他也许还会概括说，所有中国人都是通过委婉迂回的方式才能说到话题重点的。而实际上喜欢修饰和绕弯子只是我母亲个人的说话风格。
我担心主流社会可能会从一个狭隘的角度、以一种成见看待中国人。我担心这种看似无害的成见实际会导致人们对中国人难以容忍，并成为中国人在高层管理职位或主要的司法及政府部门寥寥无几的部分原因。我担心语言的力量，即如果一个人将一件事说了很多遍，无论其是否有恶意，这件事都会变成事实。 这会不会就是我父母辈的中国朋友愿意接受那些对中国人的简单概括的原因呢？
“你为什么要抱怨呢？”他们中有人问我。“如果人们认为我们谦虚礼让，就让他们那样想好了。难道美国人不喜欢这种赞誉性的话吗？
And I do believe that anyone would take the description as a compliment - at first. But after a while, it annoys, as if the only things that people heard one say were what had been filtered through the sieve of social niceties: I'm so pleased to meet you. I've heard many wonderful things about you.
These remarks are not representative of new ideas, honest emotions, or considered thought. Like a piece of bread, they are only the crust of the interaction, or what is said from the polite distance of social contexts: greetings, farewells, convenient excuses, and the like. This generalization, therefore, is not a true composite of Chinese culture but only a stereotype of our exterior behavior.
\At this junction, I do agree in part with The New York Times Magazine article. There is no one word for \would say the Chinese equivalent of answering \or \is specific to what is asked.
Ask a Chinese person if he or she has eaten, and he or she might say chrle (eaten already) or meiyou (have not).
Ask, \you stopped beating your wife?\and the answer refers directly to the proposition being asserted or denied: stopped already, still have not, never beat, have no wife.
What could be clearer?
我当然相信每个人在一开始都会把这种描述的话当成称赞。但过了一段时间，这种话就会让人恼怒，就好像所听到的只是些经过细微的社交区别过滤后的言辞，诸如“很高兴认识你，我听到许多人都夸奖你”之类的话。
这些话不能表达什么新观点，也不能传达什么真实的情感或深思熟虑的想法。它们就像一片面包，只是人们交往中最表层的东西，或社交场合下出于礼貌而说的一些话：问候、道别、顺口的托词，诸如此类。由此看来，那些对中国人的概括性评价并非是对中国文化成分的真实描述，而仅仅是对我们外在行为的一种成见而已。
“那么中文究竟怎么表达‘是’和‘不是’呢？”我的朋友也许会小心翼翼地问。 在这一点上，我的确在某种程度上同意《纽约时报杂志》的那篇文章。在中文里，没有哪一个字专门用于表达“是”或“不是”，但这并非是因为需要保持谨慎。若的确有什么不同的话，那我会说中文里对应的“是”或“不是”的表达通常是针对所问的具体内容而定的。
如果你问一个中国人是否吃饭了，他（或她）会说“吃了”（已经吃过）或“没有”（没有吃过）。
你若问：“你停止打老婆了吗？”他会直接就所断定或所否认的假设进行回答：已经停止了，还没有，从来不打，没有老婆。 还有什么能比这更明了的呢？ Unit 6
The weight men carry
When I was a boy growing up off the grid in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the men I knew labored with their bodies from the first rooster crow in the morning to sundown. They were marginal farmers, shepherds, just scraping by, or welders, steelworkers, carpenters; they built cabinets, dug ditches, mined coal, or drove trucks, their forearms thick with muscle. They trained horses, stocked furnaces, made tires, stood on assembly lines, welding parts onto refrigerators or lubricating car engines. In the evenings and on weekends, they labored equally hard, working on their own small tract of land, fixing broken-down cars, repairing broken shutters and drafty windows.
In their little free time, they drowned their livers in beer from cheap copper mugs at a bar near the local brewery or racecourse.
The bodies of the men I knew were twisted and wounded in ways visible and invisible. Heavy lifting had given many of them spinal problems and appalling injuries. Some had broken ribs and lost fingers. Racing against conveyor belts had given some ulcers. Their ankles and knees ached from years of standing on concrete. Some had partial vision loss as the glow of the welding flame damaged their optic receptors. There were times, studying them, when I dreaded growing up. All around us, the fathers always seemed older than the mothers. Men wore out sooner, being martyrs of constant work. Only women lived into old age.
There were also soldiers, and so far as I could tell, they scarcely worked at all. But when the shooting started, many of them would die for their patriotism in fields and forts of foreign outposts. This was what soldiers were for - they were tools like a wrench, a hammer or a screw. 男人背负的重担
当我还是个小男孩时，我住在弗吉尼亚州一个偏远的地区，那时我所认识的男人们从清晨的第一声公鸡啼鸣一直劳作到日落。他们都是些不起眼的农民、牧羊人，勉强度日，或是焊接工、钢铁工或木匠；他们制作橱柜、挖掘沟渠、开采煤炭，或驾驶卡车，这使他们拥有肌肉结实的上臂。他们训练马匹、填塞炉膛、制造轮胎，站在装配线上将零件焊接到冰箱，或是给汽车发动机上润滑剂。到了傍晚或周末，他们也要同样辛苦地劳作，在自己的一小片土地上耕作，修理出了问题的汽车，修复坏掉的百叶窗和漏风的窗户。在仅剩的闲暇时间里，他们会在当地的啤酒作坊或赛马场附近的酒馆里用盛在廉价铜杯中的啤酒将自己灌得烂醉。 我所认识的那些男人的身躯遭受着种种看得见或看不也的扭曲和伤痛。搬运沉重的物品给他们很多人造成了脊柱病和可怕的伤痛。有些人断了肋骨，掉了手指。在传输带上不停地工作使他们有些人患了溃疡。他们的脚踝和膝盖由于经年累月站立在水泥地上疼痛不已。有些人由于焊接火光损伤视觉感官而遭受部分视觉缺失的折磨。有些时候，打量着他们，我会害怕长大。在我们周围的人中，父亲们
看上去总是比母亲们要老。男人衰老得更早，长期遭受着因持续劳作带来的病痛。只有女人才活到年老。
还有士兵也是男人的工作。据我所知，他们几乎不工作，但当战争一打响，他们很多人都会出于爱国热情而战死在疆场或异域前哨的堡垒前。这就是士兵的作用——他们就像工具，如同扳钳、锤子或螺丝一样。
These weren't the only destinies of men, as I learned from having a few male teachers, from reading books and from watching television. But the men on television - the news commentators, the lawyers, the doctors, the politicians who levied the taxes and the bosses who gave orders - seemed as remote and unreal to me as the figures in old paintings. I could no more imagine growing up to become one of these sophisticated people than I could imagine becoming a sovereign prince.
A scholarship enabled me not only to attend college, a rare enough feat in my social circle, but even to traverse the halls of a historic university meant for the children of the rich. Here for the first time I met women who told me that men were guilty of having kept all the joys and privileges of the earth for themselves. I was puzzled, and demanded clarification. What privileges? What joys? I thought about the grim, wounded lives of most of the men back home. What had they allegedly stolen from their wives and daughters? The right to work five days a week, 12 months a year, for 30 or 40 years, wedged in tight spaces in the textile mills, or in the coal mines, struggling to extract every last bit of coal from the rock-hard earth? The right to die in war? The right to fix every leak in the roof, every gap in the fence? The right to pile banknotes high for a rich corporation in a city far away? The right to feel, when the lay-off came or the mines shut down, not only afraid but also ashamed?
这些并非男人们唯一的归宿，我从曾经有过的几位男教师、从看书及看电视中认识到了这一点。但是，那些上电视的男人们——新闻评论员、律师、医生、课 征税款的政治家及发号施令的老板们——在我看来就像古老绘画上的人像，遥远而不真实。我不能想象自己长大会变成这些精明世故的人中的一员，就像我无法想象自己能变成一个权力至高无上的国君一样。