异类之不一样的成功启示录 第117期:成功源自优势的不断积累

 　　The southerners, by contrast, were downright deferential 1 in normal circumstances, stepping aside with more than nine feet to go.

　　与此相反，在正常情况下南方人非常恭敬，在九英尺以上的距离就会让路；
　　But if they had just been insulted? Less than two feet.
　　但如果他们受到了侮辱，他们至少会走近对方两英尺以内，然后才让开。
　　Call a southerner an asshole, and he's itching 2 for a fight.
　　如果对一个南方人说“混蛋”，他就会想要与你打架。
　　What Cohen and Nisbett were seeing in that long hall was the culture of honor in
　　action:在那个长长的大厅里，科恩和尼斯贝特看到的是荣誉文化的表现：
　　the southerners were reacting like Wix Howard did when Little Bob Turner accused him of cheating at poker 4.
　　像当年小鲍勃·特纳指责威克斯·霍华德在打牌时作弊一样，南方人作出了威克斯·霍华德那样的反应。
　　That study is strange, isn't it?
　　这项研究很奇怪，对吗？
　　It's one thing to conclude that groups of people living in circumstances pretty similar to their ancestors act a lot like their ancestors.
　　我们得出这样的结论，当人们的环境与其祖先的生存环境非常相似时，他们的行为也和其祖先相似。
　　But those southerners in the hallway study weren't living in circumstances similar to their British ancestors.
　　但是，走廊里南方人的学习生活环境与其英国祖先不尽相同。
　　They didn't even necessarily have British ancestors.
　　甚至，他们的祖先不一定是英国人。
　　They just happened to have grown up in the South.
　　他们只不过刚巧在南方长大，
　　None of them were herdsmen.
　　他们都不是牧民。
　　Nor were their parents herdsmen.
　　他们的父母也不是牧民
　　They were living in the late twentieth century, not the late nineteenth century.
　　他们生活在二十世纪后期，而不是十九世纪末期。
　　They were students of the University of Michigan, in one of the northernmost States in America, which meant that they were sufficiently 5 cosmopolitan 6 to travel hundreds of miles from the south to go to college.
　　他们是在在美国最北端的密歇根大学学习，这意味着他们从南面千里迢迢地来到北方上大学。
　　And none of that mattered.
　　这一点并不重要。
　　They still acted like they were living in nineteenth-century Harlan, Kentucky.
　　他们的行为仍然好比生活在十九世纪的肯塔基州哈兰一样。
　　"Your median student in these studies comes from a family making over a hundred thousand dollars, and that's in nineteen-ninety dollars," Cohen says.
　　“参与实验的有来自10万美元资产的富裕家庭的学生，这是1990年的美元，”科恩说。
　　"The southerners we see this effect with aren't kids from the hills of Appalachia.
　　“我们看到，受此影响的那些南方孩子并非来自阿巴拉契亚山，
　　They are more likely to be the sons of upper-middle management Coco-Cola executives in Atlanta.
　　他们更像是那些在亚特兰大可口可乐公司任职中上层管理人员的儿子，
　　And that's the big question.
　　这就引起了一个很大的疑问。
　　Why should we get this effect with them?
　　我们为什么得到这样的结果？
　　Why should one get it hundreds of years later?
　　为什么在数百年后才得出结果？
　　Why are these suburban-Atlanta kids acting 3 out the ethos of the frontier?"
　　为什么这些亚特兰大郊区的孩子传承了边远地带的性格？”
　　Cultural legacies 7 are powerful forces.
　　遗留下来的文化充满巨大的力量。
　　They have deep roots and long lives.
　　它们有深远的根基并影响久远。
　　They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that spawned 8 them have vanished,
　　它们不断坚持，靠着一代又一代人传承，这种文化几乎完好无损。即使当人们赖以生存的经济、社会和人口条件消失的时候，
　　and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them.
　　他们依然在人们的态度和行为中发挥着重要的指导作用。没有这些文化，我们无法想象世界会是怎样。
　　So far in Outliers we've seen that success arises out of the steady accumulation of advantages: when and where you were born, and what your parents did for a living,
　　到目前为止，我们已经从本书中看到，成功源自优势的不断积累：你出生在何时何地，你父母的职业
　　and what the circumstances of your upbringing were like all make a significant difference in how well you do in the world.
　　以及你成长的环境，这三者互相作用才塑造出这个世界上独特的你。
　　The question for the second part of Outliers is whether the traditions and attitudes we inherit from our forebears can play the same role.
　　本书第二部分的问题是，时至今日，我们从祖先那里继承到的传统和态度是否依然在发挥同样的作用。
　　Can we learn something about how people succeed and how to make people better at what they do by taking culture legacy 9 seriously?
　　通过学习别人成功的原因，通过认真思考文化遗产的继承，我们是否可以获得更多，以便把事情做得更好？
　　I think we can.
　　我认为我们可以。