VOA慢速英语2014 汉语会取代英语成为世界语言吗?

Will Chinese Replace English as the Global Language? 汉语会取代英语成为世界语言吗?

Facebook founder 1 Mark Zuckerberg recently surprised Chinese students when he spoke 2 to them in Chinese. In a talk at Tsinghua University in Beijing, Zuckerberg spoke Chinese for about 30 minutes. Although his Mandarin 3 was far from perfect, students and faculty 4 cheered his effort.

最近，脸书创始人马克·扎克伯格向中国学生讲起了汉语，这令他们很吃惊。最近在北京清华大学的讲话中，扎克伯格讲了近30分钟的汉语。尽管他的汉语远非完美，但学生们和教员们都为他的努力鼓掌。

Clayton Dube is the head of the U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California. He praises Zuckerberg’s effort and thinks more American CEOs should learn foreign languages.

克莱顿·杜贝是南加州大学美中学院负责人，他赞扬了扎克伯克的努力，认为更多的美国CEO们都应该学习外语。

“To speak Chinese means you begin to think as Chinese people do. You begin to understand how Chinese speakers have the world organized, how they perceive things. And that is a vital step if you’re going to be culturally competent.”

“讲汉语意味着你开始像中国人那样去思考，开始理解讲汉语者如何组织世界，如何感知世界，如果你想具有文化上的竞争力，这就是关键的一步。”

Zuckerberg’s talk raises a larger question: is Chinese the language of the future? Could it replace English as the world’s international language? Mandarin Chinese already has the most native speakers of any language. And, China may soon pass the United States as the world’s largest economy.

扎克伯克的演讲引出了一个更大的问题：汉语将是未来的语言吗？汉语将取代英语成为全世界的国际语言吗？以普通话为母语的人数已经超过了世界上任何一种语言，而且中国可能很快超过美国成为全世界最大经济体。

The study of the Chinese language is increasing in the United States and around the world. In 2009, about 60,000 American college students were studying Chinese. That is three times as many as in 1990.

学汉语在美国和世界各地都在升温，2009年，约有6万名美国大学生在学习汉语，是1990年的三倍。

A small but growing number of American parents are even sending their children to bilingual Chinese immersion 5 schools. Leianne Clements has no cultural connection to China, but her children are learning Chinese at the Yu Ying Public Charter School in Washington D.C. Every other day, classes at this school are 100 percent in Chinese. Ms. Clements thinks knowing Chinese could give her children a competitive advantage.

有数量不多但却在不断增长的美国父母们甚至将孩子送到双语中文侵入式学校，莱昂尼·克莱门茨和中国文化没有什么关系，但她的孩子在华盛顿特区的育婴公立特许学校学习汉语。每隔一天，这个学校的各个班级都用全汉语讲课，克莱门茨认为了解汉语能给孩子竞争优势。

“So far, English has kind of been the universal language, but more and more, with Chinese businesses and just the amount of industry that they have there it seems that that would be, you know, logical thing that could be happening or it seems like it would make you a valuable employee if you also spoke Chinese.”

“到目前为止，英语是最通用的语言，但中国的企业越来越多，看下中国将拥有的行业数量，你会明白顺理成章的事将会发生，如果你会讲汉语那么你就是一名有价值的员工。”

Clayton Dube thinks Chinese will grow in importance, especially for people who want to work and do business in China. But he does not think Chinese will overtake English any time soon.

克莱顿·杜贝认为汉语的重要性将增加，尤其是对那些希望在中国工作和经商的人来说。但他认为汉语不会很快取代英语。

“As China rises you can anticipate that more people will adopt the language. But is China going to replace English? I don’t think so--certainly not in my lifetime, probably not in the next two, three, four generations.”

“随着中国的崛起，你能预测将有更多的人用汉语。但中文将取代英文吗？我不认为如此，当然不会在我的有生之年发生，不会在未来三四十年内发生。”

English rose to prominence 6 through the British Empire in the nineteenth century. American dominance in the twentieth century spread the language even further. Dube says American pop culture is one reason for English’s popularity as a foreign language.  

19世纪英语随着大英帝国得以崛起，美国在20世纪的优势使得英语得到进一步传播。杜贝说美国流行文化是英语作为一门外语得以流行的原因之一。

“American movies, music, television, video games have wide audiences…So far China’s success in this realm has been very limited. Chinese films, Chinese television shows, Chinese music doesn’t have a huge following outside of China.”

“美国的电影、音乐、电视、视频游戏拥有广泛的受众，到目前为止中国在这些领域的成功非常有限。中国的电影、电视秀、中国的音乐在海外没有庞大的追随者。”

Andres Martinez is the editorial director at Zocalo Public Square and a professor of journalism 7 at Arizona State University. He says that he respects Chinese culture and expects the language to grow. But he says English, with its association with freedom, will remain the global language.

安德烈斯·马丁内斯是Zocalo Public Square的编辑主任，也是亚利桑那州立大学的新闻学教授。他说他尊重中国文化，希望汉语能得以发展。但他说和自由有关的英语将仍是世界语言。

 “You don’t have anybody on the Internet stifling 8 speech in English, censoring 9 speech in English. And most of the dominant 10 English-language countries internally also have a tradition of freedom of speech.”

“没有人在互联网上钳制、审查英文演讲，大多数以英语为主的国家都有言论自由的传统。”

Martinez says that English is seen as a more neutral language than Chinese. Unlike Chinese, it is not associated with one country. He says even the ideas of equality are built into English grammar.

马丁内斯说英国被视为是比汉语更中立的语言，与汉语不同，和英语有关的不是一个国家。他说平等观念甚至扎根于英语语法之中。

“If you study German, if you study Spanish, if you study Russian, there are many languages where the “you” form and how you conjugate 11 verbs is very different depending on whether you’re talking to a grandparent or a boss versus 12 one of your children or an employee or a close friend…If I’m talking to President Obama or if I’m talking to my closest friend or my son, its ‘you.’”

“如果你学习德语，学习西班牙语，学习俄罗斯语，第二人称‘你’以及动词如何变形有很大不同，这取决于和你对话是的祖父母、老板、孩子还是雇员或密友。如果我同奥巴马总统讲话，或者和我最亲密的朋友或儿子讲话，都只用‘你’。”

Chinese is also a more difficult language to learn. The U.S. Foreign Service Institute estimates it would take a native English speaker 2,200 hours to reach professional fluency 13 in Chinese. That is four times longer than it would take to reach the same level in Dutch, French, or Spanish. While Chinese grammar is much simpler, Chinese has a tone and writing system that is more difficult for adult learners to master.'

汉语还是一种更难学的语言，美国事务所估计，让英语母语者达到中文专业流利水平需要2200小时，与学习荷兰语、法语或西班牙语达到同等水平相比，汉语需要的时间要长4倍多。尽管汉语语言要简单得多，但汉语的声调和书写体系对成年人来说要难得多。

A recent survey by Gallup showed that only one in four Americans is multilingual, or able to speak more than one language. And most multilingual Americans are immigrants or the children of immigrants. For most Americans, Brits, and Australians, learning a foreign language is a choice, not a necessity. China Daily estimates that 400 million Chinese are studying English. That means China has more English learners than the U.S. has English speakers.

最近盖洛普的调查表明，只有四分之一的美国人会多种语言。而且大多数会多种语言的美国人是移民或移民的后代。对大多数美国人、英国人和澳大利亚人来说，学习外语是一种选择，而不是必要。中国日报估计有超过4亿中国人在英语，这意味着中国的英语学习者数量超过了美国讲英语的人数。

Last month, China hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in the capital city of Beijing. But the meeting was not in Chinese – or any Asian language. The official language of APEC is English. 

上月，中国在首都北京举行了亚太经合组织会议，但这次会议没有采用汉语或任何一种亚洲语言，APEC的官方语言是英语。

Words in This Story

anticipate - v. to think of (something that will or might happen in the future)

realm - n. an area of activity, interest, or knowledge

stifle 14 - v. to stop (someone) from doing or expressing something

conjugate - v. joined together

multlingual - adj. of, having, or expressed in several languages