双语|正确认识人文专业的价值
导读：由于无法明确自己的真正兴趣，很多同学在选择本科专业时相当迷茫。让教育产生快速回报的冲动使得他们随波逐流地学习那些能够立刻得到应用的技能，而人文学科往往不在选择之列。本文认为随着学习人文学科而形成思路清晰、行文简明，以及一生对文学的兴趣是人生非常宝贵的财富，也为未来职业生涯往更高层次发展奠定重要基础。
In the past few years, I’ve taught nonfiction writing to undergraduates and graduate students at Harvard, Yale,Bard, Pomona, Sarah Lawrence and Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. Each semester I hope, and fear, that I will have nothing to teach my students because they already know how to write. And each semester I discover, again,that they don’t.
在过去几年里，我曾在哈佛大学(Harvard)、耶鲁大学(Yale)、巴德学院(Bard)、波莫纳学院(Pomona)、沙拉劳伦斯学院(Sarah Lawrence)和哥伦比亚大学(Columbia)新闻学研究生院(Graduate School of Journalism)为本科生和研究生教授非虚构写作。在每个学期我都充满希望又十分恐惧，如果我的学生已经掌握了写作，我就没有什么可以教的。而每个学期我都一再发现，他们还是不会写作。
They can assemble strings of jargon andgenerate clots of ventriloquistic syntax. They can meta-metastasize any thematic or ideological notion they happen upon. And they get good grades for doing just that. But as for writing clearly, simply, with attention and openness to their own thoughts and emotions and the world around them — no.
他们能够堆砌辞藻来舞文弄墨，他们也能够随波逐流地跟随各种思潮。这样做就得到好分数。不过说到清晰、简洁的写作，坦诚地阐明自己的思想和情感、描述他们的周边世界——他们可做不到。
That kind of writing — clear, direct,humane — and the reading on which it is based are the very root of the humanities, a set of disciplines that is ultimately an attempt to examine andcomprehend the cultural, social and historical activity of our species throughthe medium of language
人文学科是一系列课程的组合，其最终目的在于通过语言这种媒介来分析和揭示人类的文化、社会和历史活动。而清新、直接、人性化的写作，以及以此基础的阅读，就是人文学科的根本所在。”
The teaching of the humanities has fallenon hard times. So says a new report on the state of the humanities by theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, and so says the experience of nearly everyone who teaches at a college or university. Undergraduates will tell you that they’re under pressure — from their parents, from the burden of debt theyincur, from society at large — to choose majors they believe will lead asdirectly as possible to good jobs. Too often, that means skipping thehumanities.
人文学科的教学已经陷入困境。美国文理科学院(American Academy of Arts and Sciences)的一篇新报告对人文学科的现状做出了这样的判断，而且几乎每位在高等院校教过书的人，经验也是如此。本科生会告诉你，他们承受着巨大的压力，这些来自父母、来自债务的重担，说得更大一点来自全社会的压力使得他们去选择那些他们认为会更快、更有可能带来好工作的专业。这也经常意味着逃避人文学科的课程。
In other words, there is a new andnarrowing vocational emphasis in the way students and their parents think aboutwhat to study in college. As the American Academy report notes, this is theconsequence of a number of things, including an overall decline in theexperience of literacy, the kind of thing you absorbed, for instance, if yourparents read aloud to you as a child. The result is that the number of studentsgraduating in the humanities has fallen sharply. At Pomona College (my almamater) this spring, 16 students graduated with an English major out of astudent body of 1,560, a terribly small number.
换句话说，在学生和父母考虑在大学里该学什么时新出现了一种对职业的狭隘强调。正如美国文理科学院报告指出的，这是一系列事情造成的结果，包括文学体验的整体下降。对文学体验的汲取，举例来说，可以从孩提时代父母为你大声朗读中得到。其结果是，人文学科的毕业生人数大幅下降。今年春天，在我的母校波莫纳学院，英语专业毕业的学生仅有16人，与1560的学生总数相比少得可怜。
In 1991, 165 students graduated from Yalewith a B.A. in English literature. By 2012, that number was 62. In 1991, thetop two majors at Yale were history and English. In 2013, they were economicsand political science. At Pomona this year, they were economics andmathematics.
在1991年，耶鲁大学有165名毕业生获得英语文学士学位。到2012年，这一数字是62。在1991年，耶鲁大学两个最重要的专业是历史和英语。到2013年，它们变成了经济学和政治学。在今年的波莫纳学院，它们是经济学和数学。
Parents have always worried when theirchildren become English majors. What is an English major good for? In a way,the best answer has always been, wait and see — an answer that satisfies noone. And yet it is a real answer, one that reflects the versatility of thoughtand language that comes from studying literature. Former English majors turn upalmost anywhere, in almost any career, and they nearly always bring with them arich sense of the possibilities of language, literary and otherwise.
当孩子们进入英语专业后，他们的父母总会担心，英语专业有什么好的呢？从某一方面来说，最好的答案总是：先耐心等等。但这个答案不会让任何人满意。然而这却是正确答案，它能反映出文学学习给思想和语言上带来的多种才能。从前的英语专业学生分布在几乎每一个领域、每一个职业岗位上，他们总是能够在语言、文学等方面带来丰富的潜力。
The canon — the books and writers we agreeare worth studying — used to seem like a given, an unspoken consensus of sorts.But the canon has always been shifting, and it is now vastly more inclusive thanit was 40 years ago. That’s a good thing. What’s less clear now is what westudy the canon for and why we choose the tools we employ in doing so.
从前，经典著作，也就是我们都认为值得学习的书籍和作家，似乎是毫无争议的，是某种无需讨论的共识。但经典却总是在不停变化，比起四十年前，它如今包括的内容要广泛得多，这是一件好事。但如今不那么明确的是，我们学习经典的目的是什么，为什么我们选择使用这些理论和工具来进行学习。
A technical narrowness, the kind ofspecialization and theoretical emphasis you might find in a graduate course,has crept into the undergraduate curriculum. That narrowness sometimes reflectsthe tight focus of a professor’s research, but it can also reflect a persistentdoubt about the humanistic enterprise. It often leaves undergraduateswondering, as I know from my conversations with them, just what they’ve beenstudying and why.
专业的狭隘性，这种你可能会从研究生课程中看到的对专门化和理论研究的强调，已经逐渐在本科课程里显露了出来。这种狭窄性有时反映的是教授对自己研究领域的狭窄关注，但它同时也显示出，人们对人文学科研究始终存在的怀疑。这往往让本科生困惑，他们到底在学些什么、为什么学这些，这是我通过与他们的交流发现的。
STUDYING the humanities should be likestanding among colleagues and students on the open deck of a ship moving alongthe endless coastline of human experience. Instead, now it feels as though people have retreated to tiny cabins in the bowels of the ship, from which theypeep out on a small fragment of what may be a coastline or a fog bank or theback of a spouting whale.
学习人文学科就像，与同行和同学者一起，站在一艘沿着人类体验无尽历史远航的大船的开放甲板上。相反地，现在的感觉却像是，人们撤回到了船腹的小舱里，从那里他们也许能够看到海岸线、雾堤或是喷水鲸鱼的后背，但仅仅是冰山一角的片段。
There is a certain literal-mindedness inthe recent shift away from the humanities. It suggests a number of things. One,the rush to make education pay off presupposes that only the most immediatelyapplicable skills are worth acquiring (though that doesn’t explain the currentpopularity of political science). Two, the humanities often do a bad job ofexplaining why the humanities matter. And three, the humanities often do a badjob of teaching the humanities. You don’t have to choose only one of theseexplanations. All three apply.
最近这种偏离人文学科的趋势中，毫无疑问地有着追求实用性的考虑。这说明了几个问题。其一，急于让教育产生回报的冲动决定了只有那些能立刻得到应用的技能才值得学习（然而，这无法解释当前政治学的热门）；其二，人文学科自身往往没能很好地阐明其重要性。其三，人文学科往往不善教授人文知识。你无须在这三种解释里仅选其一，三个都适用。
What many undergraduates do not know — and what so many of their professors have been unable to tell them — is how valuable the most fundamental gift of the humanities will turn out to be. Thatgift is clear thinking, clear writing and a lifelong engagement with literature.
许多本科生所不知道的，也是他们许多教授没有能够告诉他们的是，人文学科那些最基本的馈赠未来将会变得多么珍贵。这种馈赠就是思路清晰、行文简明，以及一生对文学的兴趣。
Maybe it takes some living to find out this truth. Whenever I teach older students, whether they’re undergraduates,graduate students or junior faculty, I find a vivid, pressing sense of how muchthey need the skill they didn’t acquire earlier in life. They don’t call thatskill the humanities. They don’t call it literature. They call it writing — theability to distribute their thinking in the kinds of sentences that have amerit, even a literary merit, of their own.
这个真相可能需要有一定的生活经验才能发现。每当我教授较年长的学生，不论他们是本科生、研究生或者是初级教师，我都会从他们身上发现，对这种未能及早掌握的技能，有着鲜明而迫切的需求。他们不将这种技能称为人文学科，也不会将它称为文学，而是将它称为写作。这种能力可以将他们的思考化为字句，而这种字句自身有其价值，甚至是文学上的价值。
Writing well used to be a fundamental principle of the humanities, as essential as the knowledge of mathematics and statistics in the sciences. But writing well isn’t merely a utilitarian skill.It is about developing a rational grace and energy in your conversation with the world around you.
善于写作原本是人文学科的一个根本原则，这就像是数学和统计学在科学领域的角色一样关键。但是，善写不仅仅是一个实用技能，它是一个人在与周边世界的交流中所散发出来的充满理性的优雅和能量。
No one has found a way to put a dollar signon this kind of literacy, and I doubt anyone ever will. But everyone whopossesses it — no matter how or when it was acquired — knows that it is a rare and precious inheritance.
没有人已经找到一种为这种能力定价的方法，我怀疑也不会有人做得到。但每一个拥有它的人——不论如何、何时获得——都知道，这是一种珍稀而宝贵的财富。
作者韦尔兰·克林肯博格（VERLYN KLINKENBORG），系美国著名非虚构文学作家。原文于2013年6月29日发表纽约时报中文版网站，标题为“人文学科不该成为冷门”，译者曹莉、林蒙克，本号对译文略有修改。本文版权归属原作者/译者/原发布媒体所有。点击左下角“阅读原文”链接可查阅原文。本文仅反映原作者观点，并非代表本号立场。
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