Now computers, the Internet, cellular phones, cable TV, and cheaper jet transportation have accelerated and complicated these connections.
现今，计算机、互联网、移动电话、有线电视和价格低廉的喷气式飞机空运加速了这种联系，并使其更加复杂化。
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 5.
尽管如此，产生这些变化的动力却是一致的；商品流通、人员流动、观念转变、文化变迁。现在不同的是这些变化的速度和范围。电视机用了 13年时间拥有5000万用户，而互联网只用了5年时间。
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."
并非所有人都对这种变化感到满意。一些西方社会学家、人类学家和相当多的外国政治家认为文化克隆是麦当劳、可口可乐、迪士尼、耐克和MTV“文化侵略”的结果，同时也是英语语言本身的结果，因为现在世界上有五分之一以上的人口或多或少地使用英语。不论他们的背景和理念如何，这些对全球化持反对态度的人都深信西方的——往往等同于美国的——影响会把文化上的差异逐一摧毁。正如一位观察家所说的，这最终将导致一个“麦当劳世界”，一个充斥美国商品和体现美国价值观的世界。
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.
利用国民的焦虑和不安情绪的派别不断涌现。在中国，恐外自闭和容外发展经济的思潮一直在争取统治地位。最近出版的《中国可以说不》大为畅销。这本书对那种中国人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，并建议烧毁好莱坞大片。
There are many Westerners among the denouncers of Western cultural influences, but James Watson, a Harvard anthropologist, isn't one of them.
许多西方人对西方文化影响持抨击态度，但哈佛大学人类学家詹姆斯·沃森所持观点有异。