英文自修43：鸟鸣，性别选择与机械进化论

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

本篇译者：默谦，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 20140311 Rabbi Lord Sacks

Amid the doom and gloom of yesterday’s news, one stray item caught my eye. It was headed: “Darwin wrong about birds and bees”, and it was about birdsong. 

昨天，在不乏厄运和阴霾的新闻中，一条另类消息吸引了我，其题为“达尔文误读了小鸟和蜜蜂”，是有关鸟鸣的。

A century and a half ago Darwin argued that birdsong was all about sexual selection. It was males who did the singing, hoping to make female birds swoon at hearing the ornithological equivalent of Justin Bieber, giving the most tuneful males a better chance of handing on their genes to the next generation. 

一个半世纪以前，达尔文表明鸟鸣声是为了择偶。雄鸟鸣叫，希望雌鸟听到这堪比B宝的声音会迷醉其中，从而歌声悦耳的雄鸟更有机会将其基因传给下一代。

Well, it turns out to be not quite like that after all, because scientists have now discovered that female birds do almost as much singing as the males, and it has less to do with sexual selection, than with simply saying: I’m here. 

但事实证明并非如此，因为现在科学家发现，雌鸟的鸣叫和雄鸟几乎一样多，这和择偶没多大关系，就是说句“我在这儿”。

The reason the story caught my eye was that after stepping down as Chief Rabbi last summer, I’ve gone back to my first love, which is teaching. I’ve just spent six weeks doing that in New York. Which meant that I missed the British rain, and instead found myself deep in the snow of the coldest New York winter in living memory. 

这个故事吸引我的原因是，自去年夏天从首席拉比的位置退下来后，我就做回最初喜爱的教书匠。我曾在纽约任教六个月。这意味着我错过了英伦的雨，而置身于记忆中最冷的纽约冬雪之中。

Rarely has coming back felt more magical, to be greeted by the first auguries of spring, crocuses in the grass, blossoms on the trees, and best of all hearing the dawn chorus from my bedroom window. That was when I realised that what I’d missed was the birdsong, something you don’t hear in downtown New York above the hooting taxis, speeding cars and the sheer pace and pressure of life. And suddenly it felt like an epiphany, like all those psalms that speak of creation singing a song to the creator, and the wonderful closing line of the last psalm of all: Let everything that breathes praise the Lord. 

归来罕有如此神奇的感受：初春的气息向我迎面扑来，草坪里的番红花，树木的新芽，最好的是，黎明时分还从卧室窗口传来天籁般的合唱。这时我意识到，我怀念的是鸟儿的歌唱，这是纽约闹市区听不到的，这里计程车和跑车的喧嚣、紧张的节奏、生活的压力淹没了一切。那一瞬间，你会感觉上帝显灵，所有言说创造的诗篇都在高歌赞颂伟大的造物主，诗篇的最后一句写道：让万物生灵都歌颂上帝！

I think we miss something essential when we take Darwinian selection to be more than a law about biology, and turn it into a metaphor for life itself, as if all that matters is conflict and the struggle to survive, so that love and beauty and even birdsong are robbed of their innocence and reduced to genetic instincts and drives. 

我想，我们把达尔文的“物竞天择”不止看作生物法则，我们将其比作生活本身，这时我们就缺少了某种本质，仿佛矛盾和挣扎求存就是一切，从而爱和美，甚至鸟鸣声，都被剥夺了天真，贬斥为基因造就的天性和冲动。

Wordsworth was surely right when he spoke about the power of nature’s beauty so to lift us “that neither evil tongues, rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men … Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold is full of blessings.” Not all is wrong in a world where birds sing for the joy of being alive.

华兹华斯言说自然之美的力量，要鼓舞我们：“没有邪恶的语言，轻率的判断，也没有自私鬼的讥笑…曾凌驾于我们之上，或者来搅扰我们愉悦的信仰，我们所见皆是祝福。”此言确真。当鸟儿为生之喜悦歌唱时，这世界并非一无是处。