双语：跨国婚姻的大势所趋

　　IF SHAKIRA, a Colombian pop star, marries her boyfriend, the Spanish national footballer Gerard Piqué, the only unusual things about it would be that she is even more famous than he is and ten years older. Otherwise, theirs would be just a celebrity example of one of the world’s biggest social trends: the rise of international marriages—that is, involving couples of different nationalities. A hundred years ago, such alliances were confined to the elite of the elite. When Randolph Churchill married Jennie Jerome of New York, it seemed as if they had stepped from the pages of a Henry James novel: brash, spirited American heiress peps up the declining fortunes of Britain’s aristocracy. Now, such alliances have become almost commonplace. To confine examples to politicians only: the French president Nicolas Sarkozy is married to the Italian-born Carla Bruni and his prime minister Fran??ois Fillon has a Welsh wife, Penelope Clarke. Nelson Mandela is married to Gra??a Machel (from Mozambique). Denmark’s newprime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt is married to a Briton, Stephen Kinnock. And two leading ladies of Asian countries, Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar and India’s Sonia Gandhi, are both widows from international marriages. In rich countries alone such unions number at least 10m.

　　试想哥伦比亚流行明星夏奇拉和她的男朋友西班牙国脚Gerard Piqué结婚了，唯一引人关注之事就只是她比她丈夫更有名气，她丈夫比他小十岁这两件事。他们的结合其实只是一个当今社会最大趋势之一的名人案例。什么趋势呢？那就是跨国婚姻的崛起，既包含了两个不同国籍的夫妇的婚姻。一百年前，这样的婚姻只限定在精英与精英之间的联姻。Randolph Churchill 和 Jennie Jerome的婚姻，就像是从Henry James的小说走出的现实故事：自以为是、年轻气盛的美国年轻女继承人让英国没落的贵族在资产财富上重新振兴。现在这样的婚姻已经是司空见惯的事了。单单就政治家而言，就有很多例子:法国总统萨科奇，他的夫人Carla Bruni就是意大利生的，法国总理Fillon有一个威尔士夫人Penelope Clarke，纳尔逊曼德拉娶了来自莫桑比克的夫人Gra??a Machel，丹麦新的总理Helle Thorning-Schmidt也娶了外籍的英国的妻子Stephen Kinnock，还有两个亚洲国家女领导人缅甸的昂山素季和印度的索尼娅??甘地，她们都是跨国婚姻的遗孀。就只发达国家，跨国结婚的夫妇至少有一千万。

　　International marriages matter partly because they reflect—and result from—globalisation. As people holiday or study abroad, or migrate to live and work, the visitors meet and marry locals. Their unions are symbols of cultural integration, and battlefields for conflicts over integration. Few things help immigrants come to terms with their new country more than becoming part of a local family. Though the offspring of such unions may struggle with the barriers of prejudice, at their best international marriages reduce intolerance directly themselves, and indirectly through their progeny.

　　跨国婚姻之所以重要，部分原因是因为它不仅符合并且就是全球化浪潮的产物。人们在国外度假，到异域留学，在别国生活或工作，这些拜访的客人遇见了心上人，然后和当地人喜结连理。他们的结合象征着文化的融合，也充满了文化融合过程中的摩擦。比起成为当地家庭的一分子，他们更多的感触是接受移民国家时的无助无奈。也许他们的后代会与由于偏见产生的隔阂抗争，但这些跨国情侣会以最佳的方式宽容忍让，或是直接通过自身的努力，或是通过他们的后代。

　　Though the gap in background, age and education between spouses in international marriages is greater than in those between compatriots, it does not seem to affect these unions’ durability. Doo-Sub Kim plotted the time that cross-border marriages have lasted in South Korea against the couples’ ages and educational backgrounds. Amazingly, the bigger the difference, the longer the marriage. It is hard to know why this should be. Maybe those who marry foreigners invest more in their marriages. Or maybe younger, poorer wives find it harder to leave.

　　尽管婚姻双方在背景、年龄、受教育水平上都有巨大的区别，非同胞可比，但这似乎并没有影响到婚姻的长长久久。Doo-Sub Kim绘制出了关于跨国婚姻的持续年限与夫妻双方的年龄、教育背景之间的关系的图。令人吃惊的是，双方差异越大，婚姻越是维持长久。原因我们不知，也许是投入婚姻的精力更多吧，又或是那些年轻又贫穷的妻子们觉得离开不易吧。

　　Vietnamese girls are seen in much of Asia as the paradigm of the submissive foreign bride. But a study of their role in Taiwan by Ms Bélanger shows that many are married to men whose companies trade with Vietnam—and they are vital to the companies’ future. As one man told her, revealingly: “I have six trusted subordinates. One is my wife. One is her younger sister. They will not betray me.” Remittances to their families help keep the practice alive in Vietnam, even though many young men there dislike it and say they have been driven out of their villages by the shortage of brides and forced to migrate to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Similarly, marriage abroad is seen as so desirable by the Punjabi diaspora that the press in Punjab is full of advertisements offering to arrange marriages abroad.

　　亚洲大部分地区都把越南女孩视为恭顺的外籍新娘。但是Bélanger先生关于台湾地区的越南媳妇的研究表明，那些娶了越南媳妇的男人们多数都在越南做生意，联姻对公司的未来至关重要。一个男士向其透露，“我有六个值得信赖的下属，其中我老婆和她的妹妹就不会背叛我。”把生意交给家里人对生意的持续兴隆有好处，就算很多当地适婚男子不喜欢这种状况，声称新娘的短缺将他们去赶出了家园，被迫移居到Hanoi或胡志明市。同样，聚居在旁遮普省(印度、巴基斯坦的)的犹太人迫切希望和外国人结婚，以至于媒体上充斥着跨国婚姻的广告，安排提供相外国亲的机会。

　　Not all international marriages in Asia are those of poor brides in rich lands. In a “reverse migration” Japanese women from rich Tokyo have married into poor peasant families in South-East Asia—especially in Bali and Thailand—and settled down to live a more “authentic” rural life, perhaps as a way of escaping the strictness of Japanese family life. That same impulse may well be behind the surprising growth in the numbers of Japanese women married to Africans in Japan (probably as many as 3,300 in all). As one wife told Djamila Schans of Maastricht University, “I had doubts marrying a foreigner but he waited for me at the station every day. Sometimes even with flowers! A Japanese man would never do such a thing.”

　　在亚洲并不是所有的跨国婚姻都意味着生活在富饶土地上的贫穷新娘。在“反移民潮”中，来自日本的女人，离开东京，远嫁东南亚的小乡村，尤以巴里岛和泰国为甚，定居当地，过着“真正”的乡村生活，这也许是就是逃离日本严厉紧张的家长式生活的方法。同样的冲动也可见于数量惊人攀升的“日非”婚姻（大约总数为3300）。一个和非洲人成婚的日本新娘向Maastricht大学的Djamila Schans讲述，“我本对嫁给一个外国人持怀疑态度，但是当看到他每天都在车站等我，甚至有时拿着鲜花，我不再怀疑了！日本男人永远不会如此。”

　　Most demographic trends are irresistible forces. It is rare that government policy can make a big difference. But international marriage is sensitive to public policy. In the mid-2000s, Taiwan’s government, for example, took alarm at the number of foreign brides coming into the country. It did not slam the gates but started to wrap the marriage process in licensing and permits, insisting on better treatment of immigrant women. This reduced the number of foreign brides by more than half between 2003 and 2010. Malaysia also maintains an array of secular and religious permits which foreigners must get not only for marriage, but also for residence and work. It seems effective: less than 2% of all Malaysian marriages involve a foreigner, against almost 40% in neighbouring Singapore.

　　人口的大潮无法阻挡，政府政策总是收效甚微。但跨国婚姻却对政策敏感。例如，21世纪的第一个十年的中期，台湾政府向境外新娘的数量发出警告。这项政策并没有直接“砰”的一声关上跨国婚姻的门，但是开始将此类婚姻“保护”在发放证件环节，并坚持用更体贴的方式对待移民妇女。这样，2003至2010年间的境外新娘数量降低了一半。马来西亚也设置了一连串的宗教的和非宗教的许可，不仅包括婚姻，更针对居住权和就业工作。结果似乎有效：相较邻国新加坡几近40%的数字，马来西亚仅有不到2%的婚姻属于跨国婚姻。

　　Governments impose restrictions in the belief that cross-border marriages can destabilise their societies. Sometimes, their fears are understandable. In Taiwan, the share of international marriages doubled in five years. But such rapid change is highly unusual. By and large, marriage between people of different nationalities has grown more slowly than immigration. In the past few years, the increase in marriage has slowed further, probably reflecting global economic problems.

　　政府强行管制，是因为坚信跨国婚姻不利于社会稳定。有时候看，这种担忧是可以理解的。台湾地区这类婚姻所占比重五年内翻番，引起的变化是极不简单的。总的来说，其增速慢于移民增速。近几年，其增幅减速，大概也反映了全球经济问题。

　　International marriages are often attacked as exploitative, because they typically take place between an older richer man and a younger, less well-educated woman from a poor country. Terrible examples of abuse do exist. Yet the evidence suggests that international marriages often last longer than average and that migrant wives come to play important roles in their husband’s host country.

　　跨国婚姻总是背着剥削的骂名，之所以这样的原因就是它总发生在一个年迈的富人和一个生于贫国的缺乏良好教育的女人之间。极端的虐待的例子的确存在，但证据却表明此类婚姻历时更久，也表明了移民了的女人在其丈夫所在国渐渐扮演着重要角色。

　　Marriage remains, for the most part, an institution that promotes economic improvement and personal happiness. It also tends to boost social assimilation—the main exception being when a second-generation immigrant weds a girl from a village his parents had left long before. Over the next few years, international marriage is likely to continue its quiet upward crawl. Governments should protect its victims—but not prevent the process.

　　大多数国家中，婚姻始终是促进经济发展、提升个人幸福的一种制度。现在也趋于促进社会同化，唯一的逆势的例外就表现在移民的第二代和一个来自其父母远离已久之处的女孩结婚。以后的几年内，可能跨国婚姻的步伐依旧平缓而向上，政府要做的不是阻碍其进程，而是想办法保护这过程中的受害者。