One of the odd stories to come out of the French-speaking province of Quebec last year was the announcement that intensive English courses would be offered to students in state schools. Odd, because in the past half-century, much of the Québécois identity has been built on resisting English. Authorities throw the book at people for doing things that would be normal elsewhere in Canada. Last autumn, the Montreal newspaper La Presse revealed that two real estate executives had made presentations in English to a Montreal-based pension fund, violating the province's language laws, which give workers the right to a French-speaking environment.

去年，以法语为官方语言的加拿大魁北克省传来了一则不同寻常的消息：该省宣布将在公立学校中面向学生开设英语精读课程。之所以说它不同寻常，是因为在过去半个世纪中，魁北克人的民族认同在很大程度上建立在抵制英语这一基础上。在加拿大其他地方被视为正常的事情，在魁北克却会受到当局最严厉的惩罚。去年秋天，蒙特利尔报纸《La Presse》曝光了一件事：两名房地产行业的高管使用英语向一支总部位于蒙特利尔的养老基金做报告。这种行为违反了魁北克省的语言法。在该省，员工有权享有一个讲法语的工作环境。

Now, school authorities in Quebec City are questioning whether the time is ripe for introducing those English classes after all. Their hesitation has left French-speaking parents angry. On one hand, those parents want their children to cherish their own community and its language. On the other hand, English is the international language of business, and their children will have a hard time climbing the social ladder without it.

如今，对于引入此类英语课程的时机到底是不是已经成熟，魁北克市学校当局提出了质疑。他们的犹豫不决令那些讲法语的家长们感到愤怒。一方面，父母希望子女珍视他们自己的社交圈和语言。另一方面，在英语已成为国际商务语言的情况下，如果不会讲英语，他们子女在提高自身社会地位的过程中将遭遇重重障碍。

Self-contradiction besets all governments as they try to work out a role for English in their national culture. Long-time Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad was, as a young man, a promoter of Malay. He made it the language of school instruction two decades ago. But in 2003, he came up with a plan to teach mathematics and science in English, reasoning that most technical literature on those subjects was in English. It was a flop. English-language ability, among both teachers and students, had dropped more precipitously since independence than Dr Mahathir cared to admit. But when the government suggested discontinuing the programme in 2009, parents flew into a rage.

那些试图在自身文化中为英语寻找到合适定位的政府，都无法摆脱这种矛盾。长期担任马来西亚总理的马哈蒂尔•穆罕默德(Mahathir Mohamad)年轻时曾是马来语的推动者。20年前，他使马来语成为了学校的教学语言。但2003年时，他又提出一项新计划，也就是用英语来教授数学和科学，原因是这些学科的大部分技术文献都是用英语撰写的。此举彻底受挫。马来西亚教师和学生的英语能力自该国独立以来已急剧下滑，尽管马哈蒂尔博士本人不愿承认下滑得有那么厉害。然而，当2009年马来西亚政府建议中止该计划时，家长们却强烈不满。

Not all cultures have the same historical anguish over English that Malaysians and Québécois do. But almost all are being dragged ineluctably towards giving English a bigger role in their societies. More than a dozen EU countries require that English be taught in schools. In Thailand and China, the government has fostered English-language learning circles. Francophone Rwanda switched over in 2009 to English school instruction. English spreads wherever there is democracy or markets or even the slightest inclination towards them.

在英语这个问题上，并不是所有文化都遭遇了马来西亚人和魁北克人遭遇的那种历史痛苦。但如今，几乎所有的文化都不得不在各自的社会中赋予英语更加重要的角色，这已成为一种不可避免的趋势。已有十余个欧盟(EU)国家要求本国学校教授英语。在泰国和中国，政府对英语学习圈子进行了扶持。法语国家卢旺达2009年时将学校教学语言改为英语。一个地方只要拥有民主或市场、甚至只要具备向民主或市场靠拢的最轻微倾向，英语就会该地蔓延开来。

So now we can all talk, we peoples of the world. The universalisation of English has happy consequences. But like the building of the Tower of Babel, it has negative ones, too. English as a lingua franca offers unfair advantages to the half-billion people who speak English as a native language. We sometimes assume that English is a world standard only for superficial interactions — hotel personnel saying "How was your stay?" or business consultants importing words like "benchmarking" into their own languages. But French and German professors, for instance, often grumble that it is hard to build a career when academic journals are all in English.

于是，现在全世界的人可以彼此交流了。英语的普及产生了积极的影响。但是，就像建造巴别塔(Tower of Babel)一样，它也带来了消极影响。对以英语为母语的5亿人来说，作为通用语言的英语为他们提供了一种有失公平的优势。我们有时只是出于泛泛交流的原因，就将英语视为一种世界标准——比如酒店工作人员说的那句How was your stay?（您住得愉快吗？），或是商业顾问们引入到自己母语中的benchmarking（标杆管理法）等词汇。但法国和德国的教授却经常抱怨道，在所有学术刊物都以英语为书面语言的情况下，他们的职业发展困难重重。这只是一个例子。

Meanwhile, there can be a diversity-stifling effect to "diversity". When universities, whether in Quebec or Paris or Catalonia, teach classes in global English, they can adorn their student bodies with exotic people from around the world — the most talented ones, the flower of their respective cultures. But the net effect can be to turn these varied young people into extremely unvaried adults. Language shapes mentalities — how deeply is harder to say. But the spread of English may be limiting our ability to think in different ways.

另一方面，英语的普及可能会扼杀多样性。当各所大学——不管是魁北克、巴黎还是加泰罗尼亚的大学——都用全球性的英语授课时，它们能够吸引到来自世界各地的留学生，来充实自己的学生队伍。这些留学生极具天赋，是各自文明的奇葩。但这种做法的最终结果却是把这些原本特点各异的年轻人培养成了毫无差异的成年人。语言可以塑造人们的心智。这种塑造力到底有多大，愈发难以说清。但英语的扩张也许正在抑制我们以不同方式思考问题的能力。

In a fascinating piece written for the New York Review of Books last June, the novelist Tim Parks described his suspicion that world authors today write with an eye to the translatability of their work into English. They "had already performed a translation within their own languages", he writes. Mr Parks was grateful for the directness this produced, but worried it came at a price in literary variety. Global English allows writers to go "not quite as far but in half the time", as the old Cure song used to have it.

小说家蒂姆•帕克斯(Tim Parks)去年6月为《纽约书评》(New York Review of Books)撰写了一篇颇有意思的文章，他在文章中谈到了自己的一点怀疑：世界各国的作家如今在写作时都会考虑，自己的作品是否容易译成英语。帕克斯在文中指出，作家们在成文时实际上是在用母语翻译英语版的内容。这样做能使文章译成英语后通俗易懂，对此帕克斯予以了肯定，但他担心这会牺牲文学的多样性。就像《The Cure》乐队的那支老歌所唱的，全球性的英语让作家虽然走得没那么远，但用时却减少了一半。

The writer Robert McCrum wrote in his recent book Globish that there are 4bn people who understand English, if we're generous about what we mean by English. One can only rub one's eyes. Anyone who is now 38 years old or older was alive at a time when 4bn was more than the whole population of the planet. It reached that level in 1974, just seven years before Fran•ois Mitterrand came to power in France. His culture minister, Jack Lang, waged a fight against the linguistic imperialism of English. A later government would specify that 40 per cent of popular songs on the radio had to be in French. That law gave rise to a lot of laughter in Washington and London. It doesn't seem quite so crazy as it did back then.

作家罗伯特•麦克拉姆(Robert McCrum)在他最近所写的《全球语》(Globish)一书中谈到，如果我们对英语下一种宽泛的定义，那么目前世界上有40亿人懂英语。你或许会对此大感意外。如果你现在的年龄在38岁或以上，那么你的人生中曾经有过这样一段日子：那时，全世界的人口总和还不到40亿。全球人口在1974年时达到40亿，7年后，弗朗索瓦•密特朗(Fran•ois Mitterrand)执掌了法国的政权。密特朗时期的文化部长雅克•朗(Jack Lang)发起了一场反抗英语语言霸权的斗争。那之后的历届法国政府将会规定：电台播放的流行歌曲中，法语歌必须占到40%。这部法律在华盛顿和伦敦一度成为笑料。今天，这个主意似乎并没有当初看上去那样疯狂。

The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard

注：本文作者为《旗帜周刊》(The Weekly Standard)高级编辑。

译者:薛磊