苏格兰公投文明的统独之争

2014-09-24 17:57:34来源：可可英语

　　It is harder than you might think to explain inChinese the background to Scotland’sindependence debate, not least because the threeEnglish words “nation”, “country” and “state” are inMandarin all generally translated as a single word:guojia.

　　用中文解释苏格兰独立辩论的背景或许会比你以为的更难，这主要是因为在中文中，nation(国家，民族)、country(国家)和state(国家，政府)这三个词都被笼统地翻译为同一个词：“国家”。

　　As an exiled Scot, I had to wrestle with this lack of linguistic precision many times whileliving in China during the 1990s and 2000s. Why, friends and acquaintances asked, wasScotland considered a nation when it was part of the highly centralised UK state? Why did it in1999 suddenly acquire a parliament after three centuries without one? And – of greatestinterest to Beijing cab drivers – why did it have a national football team but compete in theOlympics as part of Great Britain?

　　我是一个背井离乡的苏格兰人，在上世纪90年代至本世纪头十年、我在中国生活的那些年里，我多次遇到无法用中文精确表述的麻烦。朋友与相识的人那时会问我，苏格兰为何既被视为一个国家(nation)、同时又属于高度集权的英国?之前的3个世纪里都没有的苏格兰议会，为何在1999年忽然成立了?而北京的出租车司机最感兴趣的问题是，苏格兰为何有自己的国家足球队，但又作为大不列颠国家队的一部分参加奥运会?

　　But the hardest thing for many of my Chinese friends to understand was how Scottishnationalism could be an accepted part of the British political landscape. In China, a statefounded on the carcass of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, independence movements areanathema. Any “splittism” in Tibet or western Xinjiang is ruthlessly crushed and Taiwan’s defacto independence only grudgingly granted temporary toleration.

　　不过，我的许多中国朋友们那时最难以理解的是，苏格兰民族主义为何居然能成为英国政治图景中一个可接受的组成部分?中国是在1912年被推翻的清朝的残骸上建立起来的，独立运动在这个国家是个禁忌。西藏、新疆的“分裂主义”都受到无情地镇压，台湾事实上的独立也只不过被勉强、暂时地容忍下来。

本文关键字: 苏格兰公投文明的统独之争