2019年翻译资格考试英语高级笔译材料：全球反美主义
英译汉
1. Last year I visited London and stumbled upon an essay in a Sunday paper written by Margret Drabble, one of Britain’s pre-eminent ladies of letters. “My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable,” she wrote. “It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness. I now loathe the United States and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world.”
2. The essay continued in the same rather bilious vein for about a thousand words, and as I read it, two things struck me：The first was how appalled I was by Drabble’s crassly oversimplistic analysis of what America was all about, of who its people were, and of what its culture valued; the second was a sense somewhat akin to fear as I thought through the implications of the venom attached to the words of this gentle scribe of the English bourgeoisie. After all, if someone whose country and class have so clearly benefited economically from the protections provided by American military and political ties reacts so passionately to the omnipresence of the United States, what must an angry, impoverished young man in a failing third world state feel?
3. I grew up in London in the 1970s and 1980s, in a country that was struggling to craft a postcolonial identity for itself, a country that was, in many ways, still reeling from the collapse of power it suffered in the post-World War II years. Not surprisingly, there was a strong anti-American flavor to much of the politics, the humor, the cultural chitchat of the period; after all, America had dramatically usurped Britannia on the world stage, and who among us doesn’t harbor some resentments at being shunted onto the sidelines by a new superstar?
4. Today, however, when I talk with friends and relatives in London, when I visit Europe, the anti—Americanism is more than just sardonic asides, rueful Monty Python-style jibes, and haughty intimations of superiority. Today something much more visceral is in the air. I go to my old home and I get the distinct impression that, as Drabble put it, people really loathe America somewhere deep, deep in their gut.
5. A Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Project survey recently found that even in Britain, America’s staunchest ally, more than 6 out of l0 people polled believed the United States paid little or no attention to that country’s interests. About 80 percent of French and German respondents stated that, because of the war in Iraq, they had less confidence in the trust-worthiness of America. In the Muslim countries surveyed, large majorities believed the war on terror to be about establishing U.S. world domination.
6. Indeed, in many countries—in the Arab world and in regions, such as Western Europe, closely tied into American economic and military structures—popular opinion about both America the country and Americans as individuals has taken a serious hit. Just weeks ago, 27 of America’s top retired diplomats and military commanders warned in a public statement, “Never in the past centuries of our history has the United States been so isolated among the nations, so broadly feared and distrusted. ”
7. If true, that suggests that, while to all appearances America’s allies continue to craft policies in line with the wishes of Washington, underneath the surface a new dynamic may well be emerging, one not too dissimilar to the Soviet Union’s relations with its reluctant satellite states in Eastern Europe during the cold war. America’s friends may be quiescent in public, deeply reluctant to toe the line in private. Drabble mentioned the Iraq war as her primary casus belli with the United States.
8. In many ways, the Iraq war is merely a pretext for a deeper discontent with how America has seemed to fashion a new global society, a new economic, military, and political order in the decade and a half since the end of the cold war. America may only be riding the crest of a wave of modernization that, in all likelihood, would have emerged without its guiding hand. But add to the mix a discontent with the vast wealth and power that America has amassed in the past century and a deep sense of unease with the ways in which a secular, market-driven world divvies up wealth and influence among people and nations, and you have all the ingredients for a nasty backlash against America.
9. In the years since I stood on my rooftop in Brooklyn watching the World Trade Center towers bum so apocalyptically, I have spent at least a part of every day wrestling with a host of existential questions. I can’t help it — almost obsessively I churn thoughts over and over in my head, trying to understand the psychological contours of this cruel new world. The questions largely boil down to the following：Where has the world’s faith in America gone? Where is the American Dream headed?
10. What is happening to that intangible force that helped shape our modern world, that invisible symbiotic relationship between the good will of foreigners and the successful functioning of the American “way of life,” that willingness by strangers to let us serve as the repository for their dreams, their hopes, their visions of a better future? In the same way that the scale of our national debt i s made possible only because other countries are willing to buy treasury bonds and, in effect, lend us their savings, so it seems to me the American Dream has been largely facilitated by the willingness of other peoples to lend us their expectations for the future. Without that willingness, the Dream is a bubble primed to burst. It hasn’t burst yet — witness the huge numbers who still migrate to America in search of the good life — but 1 worry that it is leaking seriously.
11. Few countries and cultures have risen to global prominence as quickly as America did in the years after the Civil War. Fewer still have so definitively laid claim to an era, while that era was still unfolding, as we did—and as the world acknowledged—during the 20th century, “the American Century.”
12. While the old powers of Europe tore themselves apart during World War I, the United States entered the war late and fought the fight on other people’s home terrain. While whole societies were destroyed during World War II, America’s political and economic system flourished, its dries thrived, and its entertainment industries soared. In other words, as America rose to global pre-eminence during the bloody first half of the 20th century, it projected outward an aura of invulnerability, a vision of “normalcy” redolent with consumer temptations and glamorous cultural spectacles. In an exhibit at the museum on Ellis Island a few years back, I remember seeing a copy of a letter written by a young Polish migrant in New York to his family back home. Urging them to join him, he wrote that the ordinary person on the streets of America lived a life far more comfortable than aristocrats in Poland could possibly dream of.
13. In a way America, during the American Century, thus served as a safety valve, allowing the world’s poor to dream of a better place somewhere else; to visualize a place neither bound by the constraints of old nor held hostage to the messianic visions of revolutionary radicals or Fascist movements so powerful in so many other parts of the globe.
14. Throughout the cold war, even as America spent unprecedented amounts on military hardware, enough was left over to nurture the mass-consumption culture, to build up an infrastructure of vast proportions. And despite the war in Vietnam, despite the dirty wars that ravaged Latin America in the 1 980s, despite America’s nefarious role in promoting coups and dictatorships in a slew of countries-cum-cold-war-pawns around the globe, somehow much of the world preserved a rosy-hued vision of America that could have been culled straight from the marketing rooms of Madison Avenue.
15. Now something is changing. Having dealt with history largely on its own terms, largely with the ability to deflect the worst of the chaos to arenas outside its borders, America has attracted a concentrated fury and vengeful ire of disastrous proportions. The willingness to forgive, embodied in so much of the world’s embrace of the American Dream, is being replaced by a rather vicious craving to see America—which, under the Bush administration, has increasingly defined its greatness by way of military triumphs—humbled. Moreover, no great power has served as a magnet for such a maelstrom of hate in an era as saturated with media images, as susceptible to instantaneous opinion—shaping coverage of events occurring anywhere in the world.
16. I guess the question that gnaws at my consciousness could be rephrased as: HOW does one give an encore to a bravura performance? It’s either an anticlimax or, worse, a dismal failure—with the audience heading out the doors halfway through, talking not of the brilliance of the earlier music, but of the tawdriness of the last few bars. If the 20th century was the American Century, its best hopes largely embodied by something akin to the American Dream, what kind of follow—up can the 21st century bring?
17. In the immediate aftermath of September 11, an outpouring of genuine, if temporary, solidarity from countries and peoples across the globe swathed America in an aura of magnificent victimhood. We, the most powerful country on earth, had been blindsided by a ruthless, ingenious, and barbaric enemy, two of our greatest cities violated. We demanded the world’s tears, and, overwhelmingly, we received them. They were, we felt, no less than our due, no more than our merit.
18. Perhaps inevitably, however, that sympathy has now largely dissipated. Powerful countries under attack fight back — ruthlessly, brutally, with all the economic, political, diplomatic, and military resources at their disposal.
19. In the post-September 11 world, even leaving aside Iraq and all the distortions, half-truths and lies used to justify the invasion, even leaving aside the cataclysmic impact of the Abu Ghraib prison photographs, I believe America would have attracted significant wrath simply in doing what had to be done in routing out the Taliban in Afghanistan, in reorienting its foreign policy to try and tackle international terror networks and breeding grounds. That is why I come back time and again in my mind to the tactical brilliance of A1 Qaeda’s September 11 attacks: If America hadn’t responded, a green light would have been turned on, one that signaled that the country was too decadent to defend its vital interests. Yet in responding, the response itself was almost guaranteed to spotlight an empire bullying allies and enemies alike into cooperation and subordination and, thus, to focus an inchoate rage against the world’s lone standing superpower. Damned if we did, damned if we didn’t.
20. Which brings me back to the American Dream. In the past even as our power grew, much of the world saw us, rightly or wrongly, as a moral beacon, as a country somehow largely outside the bloody, gory, oft-tyrannical history that carved its swath across so much of the world during the American Century. Indeed, in many ways, even as cultural elites in once-glorious Old World nations sneered at upstart, crass, consumerist America, the masses in those nations idealized America as some sort of Promised Land. In many ways, the American Dream of the last 100-some years has been more something dreamed by foreigners from afar, especially those who experienced fascism or Stalinism, than lived as a universal reality on the ground in the United States.
21. Things look simpler from a distance than they do on the ground. In the past foreigners might have idealized America as a place whose streets were paved if not with gold, at least with alloys seeded with rare and precious metals, even while those who lived here knew it was a gigantic, complicated, multifaceted, continental country with a vast patchwork of cultures and creeds coexisting side by messy side. Today, I fear, foreigners slumber with dreamy American smiles on their sleeping faces no more;that intangible faith in the pastel-colored hue and soft contours of the Dream risks being shattered, replaced instead by an equally simplistic dislike of all things and peoples American. The Pew survey, for example, found that sizable majorities in countries such as Jordan, Morocco, Turkey, Germany, and France believed the war on terror to be largely about the United States wanting to control Middle Eastern oil supplies.
22. In other words, the perception — never universally held, but held by enough people to help shape our global image — is changing. Once our image abroad was of an exceptional country accruing all the power of empire without the psychology of empire; now it is being replaced by something more historically normal — that of a great power determined to preserve and expand its might, for its own selfish interests and not much else.
23. Maybe the American Dream always was little more than marketing hype. But as the savagery of the images coming out of Iraq demonstrate all too well, we live in a world where image is if not everything, at least crucial. Perhaps I’m wrong and the American Dream will continue to sweeten the sleep of those living overseas for another century. I certainly hope, very much, that I’m wrong — for a world denuded of the Dream, however far from complex reality that Dream might have been, would be impoverished indeed. But I worry that that encore I mentioned earlier won’t be nearly as breathtaking or as splendid as the original performance that shaped the first American century.
参考译文
1. 去年访问伦敦时，在一张周日的报纸上，我偶然看到英国杰出女性作家玛格丽特?德拉布尔撰写的一篇文章。文中写到，“我几乎压制不住我的反美情绪，它就像病魔一样缠绕着我。这种时下流行的美国病像胃里的酸水般涌上我的喉头。我现在极端痛恨美国对伊拉克和其它弱小国家所犯下的罪行。”
2. 在接下来的千把字里，作者还是如前所述般义愤填膺。在拜读这篇文章时，文中有两件事触动了我。首先，我为玛格丽特?德拉布尔对于美国、美国人民及其文化价值作出了过分简单化的分析而深感震惊。其次，当我想到这位温柔的英国资产阶级女作家在字里行间渗透出对美国的怨恨时，我的感觉几近于恐惧。别忘了，一个人所在的国家和阶级因与美国的关系获得军事和政治保护进而经济上大为获利，如果这样的人都会对美国无所不在的影响作出如此强烈反应的话，那么在一个日渐颓势的第三世界国家里，一个愤愤不平、贫困潦倒的年轻人又会有何感想呢?
3. 我成长于伦敦的20世纪七、八十年代，时值国家正在为自己的后殖民地身份而抗争;二战后的岁月里，国家在许多方面都因为国力丧失而步履蹒跚。不足为奇的是，这一时期的政治、幽默和文化漫谈里充满了浓厚的反美气味;毕竟，美国突然间篡夺了大不列颠帝国在世界舞台上的霸主地位。被新兴霸主赶出格局，我们这些人怎能不满怀怨恨?
4. 然而，今天当我出访欧洲，在伦敦同亲戚朋友们闲聊之时，却发现反美情绪不只是讥讽的窃窃私语，抱憾的蒙蒂?派森式奚落，以及略显优越的倨傲不恭。如今，弥漫的那种氛围是发自内心深处的一种情绪。我回到老家就能清晰地感觉到，正如德拉布尔所描述的那样，人们憎恨美国，简直是打心底里对美国深恶痛绝。
5. 近来, 普尤调查中心全球态度项目调查显示，甚至在美国最忠诚的盟友英国，超过百分之六十的人认为，美国很少顾及或是无视英国的利益。接受调查的法国和德国人当中，约有百分之八十表明，由于伊拉克战争，他们对美国可信赖度的信心减弱。在穆斯林国家的调查显示，大部分人认为美国发动的反恐战争只是意欲建立其世界霸主地位。
6. 实际上，在很多国家，如阿拉伯世界和西欧这样一些与美国经济和军事关系密切的地区，公众对美国这个国家和作为个体的美国人民的看法已经遭到重挫。仅仅几周前，美国退休外交官和军官中有27人在一次公开声明中告诫道，“在过去几个世纪里，美国从未如此受到孤立、如此大范围地让人产生畏惧感并且受到置疑。”
7. 如果是事实，那就表明，虽然表面上美国的盟国继续制定与美国政府意愿相一致的政策，可暗地里有一股新动向很可能正要出现，这与冷战期间苏联和东欧卫星国家之间的关系相比并无太大的差异。美国的盟友们在公开场合表现得沉默驯顺，心底里却极不情愿言听计从。德拉布尔提到伊拉克战争是她声讨美国的首要原因。
8. 在诸多方面，伊拉克战争不过是对美国自冷战结束的15年来意欲建立一个新的国际社会体系，新的经济、军事和政治秩序深感不满的一个口实。美国也许正在现代化的浪潮中乘风破浪前进，然而极有可能，就算没有掌舵之人，美国现代化的浪潮也会出现。加之以对美国在过去一个世纪里积聚的大量财富和权力的不满，以及对市场驱动的世俗世界在人与人之间和国家之间瓜分财富和势力的方式所感到的不安，从而令人们拥有了对美国产生恶性抵触的所有因素。
9. 在布鲁克林，我站在自家的屋顶上看着世贸大厦燃烧，可怖的景象似乎预示着末日的降临。从那天起我每天至少花一部分时间思考这些与人类存在相关的问题。我情不自禁地—几乎着魔般在脑海里不断反刍这些问题，试图从心理学方面理解这一残酷新世界的轮廓。这些问题大致可归结如下两句：世界对美国的信任到哪儿去了?美国梦走向何方?
10. 那些曾经有助于造就我们现代世界的无形力量是怎么了?在外国人的美好意愿和美国人“生活方式”的成功运作之间，那种无形的依存关系是怎么了?那些陌生人把我们当作他们梦想、希望、憧憬美好未来的寄托，他们当初那种欣然的态度又是怎么了?同样，我们的国债攀升只可能是因为他国愿意购买国库劵，事实上是他们把储蓄借给我们，因此在我看来，其他民族愿意把他们对未来的期望赋予我们，这在很大程度上促成了美国梦。没有那种欣然的态度，美国梦就像泡沫般注定要破灭。然而现在尚未破灭——依旧看到很多人移居美国去寻求美好生活——可我担忧的是这个气泡正在严重漏气。
11. 几乎没有哪个国家和文化能象美国那样在内战后几年内迅速崛起并且成为世界强国。更加鲜有国家能明确地宣告一个属于自己的时代到来，正如我们在20世纪，虽然这一时代仍在延续，我们却已宣告二十世纪为“美国的世纪”，而这也为世人所公认。
12. 一战时期，当老牌欧洲列强处于四分五裂的状态中时，美国迟迟才参战而且还在其他国家的领土内开辟战场。二战期间当整个世界处于崩溃状态时，美国的政治经济体系却甚是兴旺，城市繁荣，娱乐业飞速发展。换句话说，当美国在血腥的20世纪前半叶跃身为世界头号强国时，它就向外展示了一种坚不可摧的形象，让人常常联想起一种充溢着物质诱惑和文化魅力的景象。几年前在埃利斯岛屿博物馆上的一次展览会上，我记得看过一个身在纽约的年轻波兰移民写给家里的一封信。他在信中写到走在美国大街上的普通人都生活得远比波兰贵族能够想象的舒适，并催促家人移居美国与他团聚。
13.在某种程度上，人们身处在“美国的世纪”，美国为这个世界提供了避护所，它让世界上的贫困者梦想着某处有一个更为美好的地方，可以令他们想象出这样一个地方，在那里既不为陈规陋习所约束，也不为救世主似的革命激进运动或是猖獗的法西斯主义运动所桎梏，而这些运动在世界其他各地却如火如荼。
14. 整个冷战期间，即使美国在军用设施上花费了前所未有的巨额资本，却仍有盈余用以孕育大众消费文化，以及大规模地从事基础设施的建设。尽管美国经历了越战，在20世纪八十年代发动了蹂躏拉美的龌龊战争，在全球许多国家推动政变和推行独裁统治的进程中，伙同冷战走卒扮演了为非作歹的角色，可世界上不少地方仍对美国抱有乐观正面的看法，这全是麦迪逊大街营销工作室的采集广告所传达出的印象。(注：麦迪逊大街为纽约广告业中心)
15. 现在情况正在变化，由于美国对待历史问题时大都我行我素，善于把最为混乱不堪的局势推向境外各国，终至招来四面八方集聚的怒气和灾难性规模的复仇情绪。世界上蕴涵在美国梦中那种乐于原宥他人的大多数意愿正被一种相当邪恶的企盼所取代，那就是企盼在布什当局统治下，以武力征服实现其强权的美国国运衰落。而且，在一个充斥着媒体塑造形象的时代里(对于世界上任何地方所发生的事件都会存在进行舆论导向的的即时报道，而这些形象极易受到此类报道的影响。)，没有任何强国会像美国那样犹如磁石般招致如此强烈的怨恨。
16. 我猜测令我冥思苦想的问题很可能是：一个人如何重演一场精彩的表演?那要么令人扫兴，要么更糟，成为一个令人沮丧的败笔——观众中途鱼贯而出，谈论的不是先前音乐的精彩，而是最后几节的俗丽。如果说20世纪是美国的世纪，它最为美好的希望大都是依附于诸如美国梦之类的东西之上，然而21世纪又将带来什么呢?
17. 911事件的直接后果，全世界的民众和国家一时真情流露，如果说是短暂但起码是空前的一致，令受害者美国沉浸在世人的同情当中。我们作为世上最强大的国家却被残忍、狡猾而野蛮的敌人蒙蔽了，我们两座最棒的城市遭到侵袭。我们需要全世界挥洒同情的泪水，动情到极致，我们得到了。我们感到，应该获得这些同情，不多也不少，恰如其份。
18. 然而，现在大部分的同情已不可避免地消失了。受到攻击的强国动用经济、政治、外交和军事等各种手段毫不留情、残酷无情地还以颜色。
19. 911事件之后，暂不考虑伊拉克战争以及所有歪曲的事实、半真半假的报道以及用以证明入侵正义性的谎言，甚至也不考虑美军在伊拉克阿布格莱卜监狱虐俘的照片所造成的巨大影响，我相信美国仅凭在阿富汗为肃清塔利班势力而所做的一切，以及重新调整外交政策以对付国际恐怖组织和滋生地就会招致极大的愤慨。那就是为什么在我脑海里一次次地回想基地组织911袭击策略上的精明：如果美国没有做出反应 就等于亮起了一盏绿灯，表明这个国家太过腐朽而无力捍卫自己的切身利益;如果作出反应，这种反应本身几乎足以显示一个帝国威吓同盟国和敌对国与其合作或对其屈服，这样，一开始愤怒就对准了世界孓然一身的超级大国。真混蛋，我们做也不是，不做也不是。
20. 这又把我带回美国梦的话题。在过去，正当我们国家不断强大之时，不论是非，世界上大部分国家把我们当作一座道德灯塔，看作一个远离血腥、残酷及独裁史的国家，在“美国世纪”里，美国在全世界出尽风头，盛极一时。实际上，在许多方面，即使那些曾经辉煌一时的欧洲国家里，有一些文化精英会嘲笑美国是暴发户，是粗俗而又物质主义的地方，那些国家的人民大众还是将美国理想化，将它视为充满希望的某类地方。在很多方面，过去百年左右的美国梦更多来源于遥远国度的外国人的梦想，尤其是那些经历了法西斯主义和斯大林主义的人士的梦想，而不是存在于美国这片土地上百分百的现实。
21. 从远处观望事情比亲临实地的看法要简单许多。以前那些没到过美国的外国人可能会把美国想象成大街上就算不是铺满黄金，至少也是铺满稀有贵重合金的国家，而那些真正生活在美国的人知道，美国是一个巨大的、复杂的、多面的，各种拼盘文化和信仰混杂并存的大陆国家。如今，恐怕外国人不再脸上挂着梦见美国时的微笑入眠了;对于多彩柔和的美国梦，那种不可明喻的信仰正承受着破灭的危险，被一种全美的事物和全 美国的民众都该一律令人讨厌的情绪所取代。例如，普尤研究中心调查显示，在一些国家，如约旦，摩洛哥，土耳其，德国和法国，有相当多的人认为，美国的反恐战争主要是为了控制中东石油的供应。
22. 换句话说，我们从未被所有人认可，但曾得到足够多的人认可却让我们树立了全球性的形象，这种认可现在正在改变。曾几何时，我们的国际形象是一个没有任何帝国野心却拥有了帝国权力的非凡国家，如今这种形象正被取代——昔日的美国变成了只顾自身利益不断扩张力量的强国，综观历史这种现象更为正常。
23. 也许美国梦一直就是个市场炒作。在伊拉克，野蛮的形象展现得淋漓尽致。在我们生存的世界里，形象并不是一切，但至少是至关重要的。也许我弄错了，美国梦在下一世纪仍然慰藉着居住在异国他乡之人的梦想。当然，我也希望，非常希望是我错了——因为一个被剥夺了梦想的世界，无论这个梦想距离复杂的现实有多么遥远，都必将是一个枯竭贫困的世界。但是我担心，前面我所提及的精彩重演不会再像先前塑造第一次“美国世纪”的首演那么灿烂辉煌。
