英文自修38：求赐标题

本系列内容英文原文取自BBC Thought or the Day节目网站，朋友们也可以下载节目录音收听。

本篇译者：Young，沪上某名牌大学英语专业学生

审读、定稿、图片、背景图文：武太白

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Thought for the Day 20140307 Vishvapani

A year ago Hilary Mantel, the double-Booker Prize-winning author, made a comment on the Duchess of Cambridge’s public image. The uproar that followed largely drowned the novelist’s protestations that she’d been describing the media’s view of the Duchess, not her own. Looking back this week she said that a trivializing and sensationalist media culture is compromising public life. 

一年前，两届布克文学奖得主希拉里•曼特尔对剑桥公爵夫人公众形象的评论引起一片哗然，淹没了曼特尔的抗辩——她说她描述的是媒体眼里的公爵夫人，而非个人看法。曼特尔本周回顾说，如今的媒体文化斤斤计较、哗众取宠，已危害到公众生活。

Hilary Mantel and her Book 

Duchess of Cambridge 

At the time, people made their minds up about whether the media or the novelist was at fault, but the ethical issues she’s raising now go much wider. I’m struck by the suggestion that freedom of speech isn’t just about our capacity to speak out. More subtly, it also depends on how our words are received. 

当时人们在意的是错在媒体还是曼特尔，而她提出的道德问题现在涵盖面更宽了。有人提出言论自由非止大胆发表意见的能力，更为微妙的是，它也取决于他人怎样接受我们的言论，这一观点打动了我。

We all edit, metaphorically speaking. We listen selectively to what others say and focus on the bits that grab our interest. It’s so enjoyable to turn an experience into an anecdote and social media magnify the effect. We’re all literal editors now, incessantly publishing versions of the world that tell the stories we like. 

比方说，我们都要编选。我们选择性听取，注意力集中在感兴趣的点上。把经历变成轶事多么令人愉悦，社交媒体又放大这一效应。现在我们事实上都成了编辑，不断发布周遭世界的不同版本，讲述我们喜欢的故事。

When communication becomes problematic many of us feel inclined to withdraw. A teacher recently told me that some of her teenage students are relieved to return to school on Monday after the weekend’s messages and texts, with their spirals of gossip and abuse.

沟通出现问题时，很多人就想抽身退出。最近有位老师说，一些青少年学生周一返校时感觉到放松，因为周末他们会陷入信息和短信的漩涡，其中充斥着传闻和辱骂。

For such reasons, communication is a central concern in Buddhist ethics, and four of the ten precepts I follow address it. The precept of speaking truthfully addresses the tendency to distort what happens. The advice to practice kindly speech suggests the importance of the tone of what we say. The next precept is speaking in a way we hope will be helpful and constructive; and the last is using our speech to create harmony, rather than division. 

因此，沟通是佛教伦理关注的一个中心问题，我遵行的佛教十大戒律中有四条论及：不妄语针对的是扭曲事实的倾向。不恶口这一建议表明了语气的重要性。下一条“不绮语”指言论方式要用有益处、有建设性。最后一条“不两舌”是以言论达成一致而不是制造分歧。

The words of certain, rare individuals who exemplify skillful or ethical speech have a distinctive authority and beauty. Of course, my personal practice of the speech precepts, not to mention what I experience around me, typically falls well short of this. But I’ve come to believe that effective communication and better relationships mean letting go of the self-interested stories we weave from our experience. Then both parties can speak and listen to each other more honestly and more completely. 

少数言语有技巧、有德行之人，说起话来具有独特的威严和美感。当然，我个人在践行言论戒律上显然做的远远不够，更不要提我周遭的人了。但我开始相信，有效的沟通和良好的人际关系意味着我们可以弃用那些出于自身兴趣从个人经历编造出的故事，然后双方都能更诚恳、更透彻地相互倾诉、倾听。

Hilary Mantel’s recent comments are a complaint about our culture’s capacity to listen. It's a point worth considering and prompts me to reflect how different our lives would be if, individually and collectively, we could both speak and listen with a little more truthfulness, kindness, helpfulness and harmony.

曼特尔最近的言论是在抱怨我们的文化倾听能力。这是值得深思的一点，它促使我反思，如果我们都能在倾诉和倾听时多一分真诚、友善、有益和融洽，那么个人和集体的生活该会多么不同。