By Malcolm Moore 譯 / 蔚然

看扎克伯格說中文

Pay Attention to Mark Zuckerberg's Mandarin

By Malcolm Moore 譯 / 蔚然

Facebook創(chuàng)始人、主席兼首席執(zhí)行官馬克·扎克伯格

孔子曰，吾道一以貫之

一個再尋常不過的周三，穿著自己喜歡的灰色T恤，帶著憨厚微笑的馬克·扎克伯格，在中國最負聲望的大學之一清華大學與主持人進行了半個小時的普通話交談。

這個紐約牙醫(yī)的兒子因此獲得了一個獎勵，中國人通常會說獲得了一朵大紅花——他不僅在30歲就掌控了互聯(lián)網(wǎng)，而且不知怎么還擠出時間，學會了世界上最難學的語言。

馬克·扎克伯格剛說完“大家好”，觀眾（作為精英商科學生都會說英語）就發(fā)出了興奮的呼喊。“有三個原因使我決定學習漢語。首先，我的妻子是中國人，她的祖母只會說中文，當我用中文告訴她我將和普莉希拉結婚時，她顯得很震驚，第二個原因是我想學習中國的文化，第三個原因是因為中文很難學，而我喜歡挑戰(zhàn)?！?/p>

在他展示了一個視頻后，全世界都羨慕起他。講普通話，假設可以打開中國這個新的全球超級大國的市場，無疑是一個成功的社交，扎克伯格進行普通話聊天后立馬被貼上了天才的標簽。

許多其他的企業(yè)大亨、政治家抵達北京時聲稱他們會好好學習漢語，但我從未見過有誰在用中文進行簡單的禮貌問候之后還試圖繼續(xù)用中文交談。扎克伯格并沒有沉溺于自己舒適的溫室中，而是選擇繼續(xù)前行。

Confucius said the superior man puts all his energy into everything he does...

It was an normal Wednesday, armed only with his favourite grey T-shirt and goofy smile, Mark Zuckerberg held court in one of China’s most prestigious universities for half an hour. In Mandarin.

So this son of a New York dentist gets a gold star – or a red flower, as they are called in China – for not only mastering the internet by the age of 30 but also somehow finding time to learn the world’s most difficult language.

“Hello everyone,” he said, to whoops of excitement from the audience (who, being elite business students could all speak English). “There are three reasons I decided to learn Chinese. The first, my wife is Chinese. Her grandmother can only speak Chinese. When I told her in Chinese I was going to marry Priscilla, she was very shocked. Then I want to study Chinese culture. The third: Chinese is hard and I like a challenge!”

After he posted a video, there were also swoons of envy across the world. Speaking Mandarin, with the assumption that it bring the keys to the new global superpower, is now such a prized social goal that Mark Zuckerberg was instantly labelled a genius for his Chinese chitchat.

Plenty of other tycoons, politicians arrive in Beijing claiming to be beavering away at Chinese, but I have never seen anyone attempt more than a few polite interchanges before reverting to English. Zuckerberg was out of his comfort zone, but he just kept going.

千里之行，始于足下

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

So how good was Zuckerberg’s Chinese? It was good enough to wow the world, but in truth, four years of studying has brought him only to base camp. Mandarin still rises up before him, a mountain that most adult learners will climb for ever, with no peak to reach. One of my American colleagues wrote that Zuckerberg’s pronunciation was as if he had a “mouthful of marbles”. That is fine in French, where you can just about rub by with a wonky accent, but in China it is fatal. One slip of your tones and all meaning is lost. Zuckerberg was trying to say “China”, but it came out sounding like “Middle Kiss”.

那么扎克伯格的中文到底怎么樣？雖然好到足以讓世界震驚，但事實上，4年的學習只讓他達到了山底的大本營，普通話這座大山仍然屹立在他面前，這是一座大部分成年學習者將要傾其一生去攀登，卻永遠達不到頂點的山峰。我的一個美國同事寫道，扎克伯格的中文發(fā)音好像他嘴里塞滿了大理石，這在法語里是無所謂的，在法語里，你可以任由不靠譜的口音來改變聲調(diào)，但在中文里，這是毀滅性的災難，任何一個音調(diào)的滑落都會改變句子本身的意思。扎克伯克試圖說“中國”，但聽起來像是說“中間吻”。

而且，不只是外國人發(fā)現(xiàn)漢語是棘手的。2014年9月，中國國家語言文字工作委員會主任李衛(wèi)紅表示：將近1/3的中國人，也就是約4億人，不會說普通話，他們寧愿說自己的方言。她還表示，在會說普通話的9億人中，只有10%的人表達流利。

Still, it is not just foreigners who find Chinese tricky. In September 2014, Li Weihong, the director of China’s State Language Commission, said about a third of China’s population, roughly 400 million people, cannot speak Mandarin either, preferring their local dialects. And of the 900 million people who can speak Mandarin, only 10 percent speak it “fluently”, he said.

彼此相愛的已婚夫婦無須通過語言就可以交流許多事情

扎克伯格的優(yōu)勢真的是因為他可以與妻子普莉希拉·陳交談嗎？

事實上，扎克伯格的妻子更喜歡說粵語（相對于只有4個音調(diào)的普通話，粵語有8個音調(diào)），粵語接近于普通話的程度就如同英語接近于波蘭語。

普莉希拉是越南華僑的女兒，她成長于馬薩諸塞州，隨后在哈佛主修生物學。也就是說，在他們家搬去美國的時候，她就基本是個美國人了。許多外籍人士稱，有個中國女朋友的好處就是有了個練習中文的伙伴，但扎克伯格夫婦間的枕邊話是用英語交談這一假定可能是合理的。

Married couples who love each other tell each other a thousand things without talking

Surely Zuckerberg has an advantage because he can chat away with his wife, Priscilla Chan?

His wife is reportedly more comfortable in Cantonese (eight tones, compared to Mandarin’s four), which is as close to Mandarin as English is to Polish.

Chan, the daughter of a Vietnamese-Chinese immigrant, was raised in Massachusetts and studied biology at Harvard. In other words, she is about as American as they come. Many expats in China claim that having a Chinese girlfriend brings the bonus of having a practice partner, but it is probably fair to assume the pillow talk in the Zuckerberg household is in English.

革命不是請客吃飯

學習中文是艱難的，簡而言之，努力的回報率是非常低的，以至于許多最頑強的外國人最后都放棄了。

中國人當然就沒有選擇余地了，孩子們在放學后要花費幾個小時來完成家庭作業(yè)，試圖把成千上萬個文字保存到他們的長期記憶中。

每個試圖學習中文的人都會在某一時候碰壁，接著就琢磨為什么它們這么讓人困擾。在攀登漢語這座大山時，許多人像我一樣，會找個借口在低山麓處安定下來，害怕在它面前付出的艱巨努力。正如扎克伯格發(fā)現(xiàn)的那樣，掌握一個簡單的發(fā)音都會花費好幾年的時間。你充滿熱情地去上課，幾個月后，當你只是試圖跟人打招呼或者問別人的名字，迎來的卻仍是不解的凝視，沒有什么比這更讓人心靈備受拷打了。

語法確實更加直觀，但是如果沒有規(guī)則的話，學習者就很難理解講話者所說是哪一部分，也就是說，如果你不認識句子里的所有漢字，你也就無法猜到它的含義。

The revolution is not a dinner party

Learning Chinese is hard. In short, the ratio of effort to reward is so dismal that all but the most mindlessly dogged foreigners give up.

The Chinese, of course, have no choice, and their children have hours and hours of after-school homework, trying to drill the tens of thousands of characters into their longterm memory.

Every person who tries to learn Chinese will at some point hit a wall and wonder why on earth they are bothering. Like me, many will find an excuse to settle on the low foothills, terrified at the daunting effort before them. Simple pronunciation, as Zuckerberg discovered, can take years to master. There is nothing more soul-sapping than enthusiastically going to lessons for months and still being faced with blank stares of incomprehension when you simply try to say hello and ask someone’s name.

Grammar is more straightforward, but without rules it is difficult for learners to grasp which part of speech they might have heard. Which means if you do not know all the words in a sentence, you cannot guess its meaning.

上刀山下火海

接下來是寫作，漢語中沒有字母表，你需要的是死記硬背漢字，然后將成千上萬的漢字灌輸?shù)阶约旱拇竽X中。

A mountain of knives and a sea of fire

And then there is the writing. There is no alphabet. You simply have to rote-learn Chinese characters, forcing thousands, or tens of thousands of them into your leaky brain.

Anyone writing English can piece together the spelling of a word by saying it aloud to themselves in their head. But here you have to try to remember how many brush strokes it takes to write a character.

Even professors of Chinese find it daunting to be handed a bookand asked to read a passage. When my Chinese colleague looks at a text message on his phone, it takes him a good minute to decipher its meaning.

任何一個進行英語寫作的人都可以通過在腦海中回想發(fā)音而將單詞拼寫出來，但寫漢字時，你必須努力記住要寫多少筆畫。

如果你給漢語教授一本書，讓他讀一篇文章，連他都會畏縮。當我的一個中國同事看手機上的信息時，他總會花費好幾分鐘來理解它的含義。

華裔妻子普莉希拉（左）是否是扎克伯格（右）學習中文的秘密武器？

有朋自遠方來不亦樂乎

幸運的是，中國人知道漢語是多么的難學，這也是為什么扎克伯格的努力獲得了一致好評，我已經(jīng)記不清有多少次，我蹩腳的漢語得到了人們的好評和贊揚，從出租車司機到政府官員。

在傲慢的外國人踏入中國的幾十年（或者在中國人看來是幾個世紀）不學漢語后，學習漢語也是一種值得發(fā)揚下去的對中國的尊重。

可悲的是，當你取得進步時，新奇感就會消退。在中國待了7年后，當初那些表揚并鼓勵我的人們開始指責我音調(diào)不對，我把這當作一個需要改正以取得進步的標志，而不是簡單的想贏得屈尊俯就的表揚，但不可否認，我懷念從前的日子。

How happy it is to have friends from far away!

Fortunately, the Chinese know how hard their language is – which is why efforts like Zuckerberg’s are applauded. I have lost count of the number of times that my dismal Chinese has been praised and complimented, by everyone from taxi drivers to government officials.

After decades (or in the Chinese mind, centuries) of arrogant foreigners arriving in China and not bothering to learn the language, it is a mark of respect to have a go.

Sadly, as you make progress, the novelty wears off. After seven years here, those who once praised and encouraged me now chide me for getting a tone wrong. I suppose it is a sign of progress to be corrected, rather than simply to win patronising praise, but I miss the old days.

愚公移山

中國有個寓言故事可以用來說明學習普通話需要同其做堅定不移的斗爭。一位老人在90歲時開始搬運石頭以夷平兩座大山，考慮到這一巨大工程耗費的時間之久，而他所剩的時間無幾，人們說他太傻，他說：“我死了有兒子，兒子死了還有孫子，孫子過后還有曾孫子，子子孫孫無窮無盡，而山又不會增大，為什么就不會夷平呢？”

The foolish old man who moved the mountains

There is a Chinese folk tale that sums up the effort required to struggle with Mandarin. A man in his nineties began picking up stones in order to level two huge mountains. When told he was an idiot, given the scale of the task and the time he had left, he simply said: “Certainly I cannot do it. But when I die, there will be my children to carry on the work, and the children will have grandchildren, and the grandchildren will again have children. So my children and grandchildren are endless, while the mountains cannot grow bigger in size. Why can’t they be levelled some day?”

不入虎穴焉得虎子

對于外國學生來說，學習漢語沒有捷徑?！昂喴字形摹笨ㄆ錆M魅力，但它畢竟不是一顆神奇的子彈，你可能會記住幾個漢字的象形圖，但它不會教會你發(fā)音，并且非象形文字的海洋已經(jīng)延伸到地平線了。

當孩子們在英語課堂學習普通話時，這可能反而會激發(fā)他們想來中國游玩的好奇心。到了中國之后，如果他們找到了一個自己迷戀的地方，他們就會有個學習語言的良好機會。（摘編并譯自英國《每日電訊報》）

You cannot catch a cub without venturing to the tiger’s den

For foreign schoolchildren, there is no short cut. The popular“Chineasy” pictogram cards are charming, but not a magic bullet. You may learn to recognise a few Chinese pictograms, but they do not teach pronunciation and the sea of non-pictographic characters stretches to the horizon.

While children will not pick up much Mandarin in English classrooms, it may open their minds to visit China. And here, if they can find a place to immerse themselves, they have a good chance of learning the language.

中國人出境游日美熱度高

Japan and US are China’s Top Overseas Travel Destinations for 2015

最新調(diào)查顯示，日本和美國成為2015年最受中國大陸旅客歡迎的旅游目的地，香港和東南亞國家則不再是熱門。這項調(diào)查由旅游度假信息服務全球性互聯(lián)網(wǎng)媒體公司“旅游族”發(fā)起，共有4300名參與者。參與者被要求從44個候選旅游目的地中選出5個最喜歡的。日元貶值和日本放寬簽證政策是日本成為熱門目的地的重要原因。美國同樣因為簽證政策的改變吸引中國旅客。

An opinion poll surveying which overseas destinations

top mainland Chinese people’s wish lists has revealed that Japan and America are the favourites for 2015, whilst Hong Kong has seen a sudden decline in popularity.

In the survey conducted by Travelzoo, 4,300 participants were asked to rate their top 5 choices from a selection of 44 countries. The depreciation of the Yen and recent relaxation of Japanese visa policies have contributed to the rising popularity of Japan as a travel destination.The US has also made amendments to visa policies recently in a bid to attract Chinese tourists.

乘客坐火車禁止攜帶自行車

New Cycle Ban on Trains

從2015年1月5日起，旅客禁止攜帶自行車(含折疊自行車)等易影響旅客列車車內(nèi)通行、容易污損鐵路車輛、影響站車環(huán)境秩序的物品乘坐火車。如果騎行愛好者需要攜帶自行車，則需要到快運處將自行車隨車托運，如中鐵快運等物流公司可提供相應服務，從上海到北京托運一輛自行車費用約為50元。

From January 5, bikes are no longer permitted on trains. The ban has been enacted due to problems with space and bicycles blocking corridors.This includes folding bicycles.If cyclists wish to take their bike with them, they must dismantle, pack the bike in a box and carry it on as luggage.

There are also services such as China Railway Express that will ferry bicycles between main cities. According to Shanghai Daily, to transport a bicycle from Shanghai to Beijing will cost around 50 RMB.

北京籌建新機場

Plans for Third Beijing Airport Get the Go-Ahead

為緩解北京首都機場容量飽和的運行壓力，北京新機場工程獲發(fā)改委批復。北京新機場選址北京市大興區(qū)，投資額約為800億元，新機場主要建設呈“三縱一橫”布局的4條跑道，70萬平方米的航站樓，全部工程將于2018年年底結束。

Plans to construct a new international airport in the south of Beijing to cope with increased passenger flow demands have been approved by the National Development and Reform Commission. The proposed project is estimated to cost around 13 billion USD and will be located in Daxing District. The airport will have four runways and a terminal covering an area of 700,000 square meters. If all goes to plan the airport will be operational by 2018.