所以你可能会好奇为什么有些人对于这些美好的发展有所顾忌，为什么英语作为一个国际通用语言会使得有些人对英语的不适应？交流上的革命确实存在问题，并且这些问题并不仅仅是经济上的。最根本的东西是，语言和文化之间的不可分割的关系是一个社会的核心，而我们忽视了一些最关键的事情。
Different cultures are not simply groups of people who label the world differently; languages give us the means to shape our views of the world and languages are different from one another. We express what we see and feel through language, and because languages are so clearly culture-related, often we find that what we can say in one language cannot be expressed at all in another. The English word \\different state of mind, something that is not quite homesickness and involves a kind of longing. Homesickness and nostalgia put together are almost, but not quite, the Portuguese \state of mind that is not despair, angst (English borrowed that from German), sadness or regret, but hovers somewhere in and around all those words.
不同的文化不仅仅是给不同组别的人贴上标签，语言是帮助我们理解世界的工具，每个语言之间都是有区别的。因为我们通过语言来表达我们的所见所想，而语言是跟文化密切相关的，所以有时候就可能产生我们能用一种语言表达出来的东西，是不能用另外一种语言来表达出来的。英语的“想家 ”翻译成意大利语就变成了“怀乡病”，但是英语有时候必须要用同样的词来表示另外一种意思，这种意思不是单纯的想家，而是包含了一层渴望的意思在里面。尽管不是同一种意思，英语的想家和怀乡病放在一起的意思还有所接近的。但是葡萄牙语的 “saudade”所表达的意思却是不能用其他语言来翻译的。这个词表达的意思是不绝望，不愤怒，不悲伤或者后悔，它的意思是在以上这些意思之间。
The early Bible translators hit the problem of untranslatability head-on. How do you translate the image of the Lamb of God for a culture in which sheep do not exist? What exactly was the fruit that Eve picked in the Garden of Eden? What was the creature that swallowed Jonah, given that whales are
not given to swimming in warm, southern seas? Faced with unsurmountable linguistic problems, translators negotiated the boundaries between languages and came up with a compromise.
早期的圣经翻译者就碰到了有些意思是不可翻译的这么个问题。比如你要如何把上帝的羔羊的形象翻译给一个连羊都不存在的人类文明？爱娃从伊甸园拿走的水果具体是什么？如果鲸鱼在温暖的南部海域是不存在的，那么吞掉约拿的生物又是什么？面对这些不能克服的语言问题，翻译家在各语言之间反复琢磨，然后想出了一个折中的方案。
Compromising is something that speakers of more than one language understand. When there are no words in another language for what you want to say, you make adjustments and try to approximate. English and Welsh speakers make adjustments regarding the colour spectrum in the
grey/green/blue/brown range, since English has four words and Welsh has three. And even where words do exist, compromises still need to be made. The word \and even a word like \means totally different things to different people. The flat breads of Central Asia are a long way away from Mother's Pride white sliced toasties, yet the word \
这个折中的方案是用不同种语言交流的人们都能理解的说法。当你想表达的单词在另外一种语言里不存在的时候，你要想办法来调整接近原来单词的意思。说英语的和讲威尔士语的在灰，绿，蓝，棕表达光谱的单词上进行了一些调整。因为英语能表达出这4个单词而威尔士语只能表达出其中的三个。尽管各语言之间意思相同的单词确实存在，有时候仍然要使用折中的方案。民主这个词在不同的背景下表达出来的意思是完全不一样的，连像面包这种词汇对不同人的意思都是完全不同的，面包指的是那些主要原材料是面粉的食品。中亚的扁面包和“母亲骄傲”的烤面包是完全不一样的食品，面包这个单词却要同时包含这两种食物。
Inevitably, the spread of English means that millions of people are adding another language to their own and are learning how to negotiate
cultural and linguistic differences. This is an essential skill in today's hybrid world, particularly now when the need for international understanding has rarely been so important. But even as more people become multilingual, so native English speakers are losing out, for they are becoming ever more monolingual, and hence increasingly unaware of the differences between cultures that languages reveal. Communicating in another language involves not only linguistic skills, but the ability to think differently, to enter into another culture's mentality and shape language accordingly. Millions of people are discovering how to bridge cultures, while the English-speaking world becomes ever more complacent and cuts down on foreign language learning programmes in the mistaken belief that it is enough to know English.
不可避免的，英语的广泛传播意味着成百上万的人们需要学习另外一种语言，并且要学会如何识别文化的区别和语言上的区别。这项技能在现在的混合社会里尤其重要，尤其是在这个国际之间的理解如此重要的时代。当越来越多的人们掌握了多种语言，以英语为母语的人却正在失去优势，因为他们已经变成只会一种语言的人，所以他们不可能知道文化所产生的语言上的差别。用另外一种语言来交流不仅仅是使用语言技能，也包括要能使用另外一种文化的思维方式，来组织自己的语言。当成百上万的人正在探索如何缩小文化之间的差距时，以英语为母语的社会却变的越来越自满，并且开始删减外语课，因为他们相信会说英语就足够了。
World peace in the future depends on intercultural understanding. Those best placed to help that process may not be the ones with the latest technology and state of the art mobile phones, but those with the skills to understand what lies in, under and beyond the words spoken in many different languages.
在将来，世界和平需要各文化之间的互相理解。那些最能促进这种互相理解的人可能并不是那些掌握最新技术，和最新科技水平的手机的人。相反，这些人一定是那些具有理解不同语言所表达的意思的人。
They say a cat has nine lives, and I am inclined to think that possible since I am now living my third life and I’m not even a cat. My first life began on a clear, cold day in November 1904, when I arrived as the sixth of eight children of a farming family. My father died when I was１５, and we had a hard struggle to make a living. As the children grew up, they married, leaving only one sister and myself to support and care for Mother, who became paralyzed in her last years and died while still in her 60s. My sister married soon after, and I followed her example within the year.
人们说猫有9条命, 我倾向于认为这是可能的, 因为我现在活的是第三次生命, 而我不是猫。1904年11月的一个晴朗、寒冷的日子, 我开始了我的第一次生命。我成了一个务农家庭8个孩子中的第6个。我15岁时父亲去世, 我们全家都得为生计艰辛奔忙。孩子们长大后, 一个个结婚出嫁, 只剩下我和一个姐姐抚养和照顾妈妈。她晚年时瘫痪, 60多岁就去世了。我姐姐不久就嫁了人, 我也在当年结了婚。
This was when I began to enjoy my first life. I was very happy, in excellent health, and quite a good athlete. My wife and I became the parents of two lovely girls. I had a good job in San Jose and a beautiful home up the peninsula in San Carlos. Life was a pleasant dream. Then the dream ended. I became afflicted with a slowly progressive disease of the motor nerves, affecting first my right arm and leg, and then my other side. Thus began my second life. . .
这时我开始享受我的第一次生命。我非常幸福, 非常健康, 而且是一名相当出色的运动员。我们有两个可爱的女儿。我在圣何塞有份满意的工作, 在半岛北部的圣卡洛斯有幢漂亮的房子。生活是称心如意的梦想。好景不长, 美梦中断了。我得了缓慢发展的运动神经病, 先是我的右臂和右腿活动受阻, 而后是左侧。我的第二次生命就此开始??
In spite of my disease I still drove to and from work each day, with the aid of special equipment installed in my car. And I managed to keep my health and optimism, to a degree, because of 14 steps.
尽管我有病, 但是借着安装在车里的特殊设备, 我仍然每天开车上下班。我设法保持健康和乐观, 从某种程度来说, 是缘于１４级台阶。
Crazy？Not at all. Our home was a split-level affair with １４steps leading up from the garage to the kitchen door. Those steps were a gauge of life. They were my yardstick, my challenge to continue living. I felt that if the day arrived when I was unable to lift one foot up one step and then drag the other painfully after it――repeating the process １４times until, utterly spent, I would be through――I could then admit defeat and lie down and die. So I kept on working, kept on climbing those steps. And time passed. The girls went to college and were happily married, and my wife and I were alone in our beautiful home with the 14 steps.
在说疯话吧？完全不是。我们的房子是个错层式建筑, 从车库到厨房门有14级台阶。这些台阶是生活的标尺, 是衡量我的标准, 也是我继续生存的挑战。我认为哪一天要是我不能提起一只脚登上一级台阶, 再费劲地拖上另一只脚--如此重复14次直到精疲力竭, 那我就完了--那时我只能承认我失败了, 可以躺下来等死了。因此, 我坚持工作, 坚持爬那１４级台阶。时光荏苒, 两个女儿上了大学, 相继幸福地结婚成家, 只剩下我们夫妻俩相濡以沫, 守居在有14级台阶的漂亮家中。
You might think that here walked a man of courage and strength. Not so. Here hobbled a bitterly disillusioned cripple, a man who held on to his sanity and his wife and his home and his job because of １４miserable steps leading up to the back door from his garage. As I became older, I became more disillusioned and frustrated.
你们或许会想, 在这里行走的是个有勇气和力量的人, 事实并非如此。这里行走的是一个痛苦地失去理想的一瘸一拐的残疾人, 一个因为那从车库通向后门折磨人的１４级台阶才保持精神正常、没有失去他的妻子、房子和工作的人。随着年龄增长, 我变得更失望和沮丧。
