英文自修75：不可忽视的临界点

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。

译者：王宥轩

审读：武太白

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Thought for the Day 20140508 - Bishop Tom Butler

王宥轩译

A recent science festival was a sold out success. The subject, Tipping Points, is perhaps best illustrated by grain after grain being added to a stable pile of sand. There comes a point when one extra grain will make the whole pile unstable and a mini-avalanche occurs. The same phenomenon occurs in climate change, computer science, banking and politics – tipping points can unexpectedly be encountered in all of them, sometimes with dramatic results.

最近的一次科技节办得非常成功。其主题“临界点”，最生动的诠释方法或许就是一点一点地把沙子堆成稳固的一堆。堆到再多一粒沙就会破坏稳固性，并且会有崩落的现象时，就到了临界点。同样，在气候变化、计算机科学、银行业和政界也有这种现象——临界点会出人意料地发生，有时还会引起剧变。

We came across an episcopal tipping point a couple of weeks ago. On Easter Day a new large diocese of West Yorkshire and the Dales 西约克郡暨约克郡谷地教区 was created from three former smaller dioceses. In closing down the office of the Bishop of Bradford 布拉德福德（英格兰北部城市） a mini-archive was unearthed, the papers relating to Bishop Blunt, Bishop of Bradford in 1937 at the time of the abdication crisis of Edward 8th.

几周前，英国国教就发生了这样的临界点。在复活节，西约克郡暨约克郡谷地设立了新的大教区，其前身为三个小教区。在关闭布拉德福德主教办公室时，出土了一份小档案，其中的资料涉及到1937年爱德华八世退位危机时，布拉德福德教区的布朗特主教。

温莎夫妇（爱德华八世和辛普森女士）

Stories of the affair which the king was having with Mrs Simpson, an American divorcee, were being carried in newspapers all over Europe and America, but there was a news embargo in the British media and nobody was breaking it, so the British people were in ignorance of the biggest news story of the day. Then Bishop Blunt delivered a sermon to a church conference. The theme of the sermon was Grace. "We are all in need of God's grace"' he said, "including the king if he is to do his duty faithfully" then, the Bishop went on, warming to his subject, "we hope he is aware of his need. Some of us wish that he gave more positive signs of such awareness."

欧洲和美国的各大报纸都刊登了关于国王爱德华与辛普森女士的传闻。但是英媒对此有传播禁令，没人打破沉默，所以英国群众就对当时最重要的事实真相一无所知。后来，布朗特主教在一次教会会议上发表了布道讲话，主题是“慈悲”。“我们都需要上帝的慈悲，”他说道，“包括国王，如果他还想恪尽职守的话”，接着，主教更明确地道破，“我们希望他认清自己的职责。有人还希望他能更多地、积极地表现出这种认识。”

Those simple words proved to be the media’s tipping point. The press believed that the bishop had breached the embargo on the king’s affair and so they were free to do likewise, and so the constitutional landslide gathered pace with stories in every newspaper, and the king, locked into an unwinnable dispute with prime minister and archbishop, eventually was forced to abdicate.

后来这简单的几句话就引爆了媒体的临界点。媒体认为这位主教打破了人们对国王私事的缄默，于是他们才敢跟着报道这件事。进而在各大报纸的热议中，宪政危机发生了。在与首相及大主教的争论中，国王陷入完败的境地，最终不得不退位。

The uncovered archive relates the vitriolic letters which the bishop then received, and his diaries reveal that he was both surprised and hurt by them, for he always maintained that, when he prepared his sermon, he knew nothing of the king's affair; he was merely meaning to be mildly critical of the fact that the king didn't always attend church on Sundays. Be that as it may, those few words changed history in a way perhaps totally unintended by the bishop.

被查阅的档案中描述了主教当时收到的言辞尖酸的信件，从他的日记可以看出，当时他既惊讶又难过，因为他坚持认为，自己准备那篇布道文时还完全不知道国王的私事；鉴于国王没有每周六都做礼拜，他只是想稍作提醒。即便是这样，仅只言片语就改写了历史，完全超出了主教的预料。

I guess there's a moral in this for public figures including bishops. Words meant to be prophetic often fall on deaf ears, whereas simple words can have unexpected and sometimes catastrophic consequences – everything depends upon whether they’re spoken into a situation near tipping point. It should be called the Bishop Blunt effect.

对此，我想公众人物是有道德约束的，包括主教们。预言通常被人们忽视，而简单的话却可能有意想不到的效果，有时候甚至导致灾难性后果——这都要看说话的时候是否到了一个临界点。这应该被称作“布朗特主教效应”。