英語爲何成了英美的劣勢?

The English language used to be an asset of the US and UK. Now it has become a weakness.

英語曾經是美國和英國的一份資產。如今，它卻變成了一項劣勢。

Let’s zoom out from the Russian hacking of the American election. More broadly, hacking means extracting someone else’s information or inserting the hackers’ own information. English-speaking countries are particularly easy to hack because their enemies understand what they are saying. Being an English-speaking society is like living in a glass house: it makes you transparent. Conversely, foreign countries are opaque to mostly monolingual Britons and Americans. Foreigners know us much better than we know them. This asymmetry probably helped Russia get its favoured candidate into the White House, and it will handicap Britain in the Brexit negotiations.

讓我們從俄羅斯對美國大選的黑客攻擊收回目光，觀察更爲全局性的形勢。廣義地說，黑客攻擊意味着獲取他人信息，或者插入黑客自己的信息。英語國家尤其容易遭受黑客攻擊，是因爲他們的敵人明白他們在說什麼。一個說英語的社會就像生活在一個玻璃房裏：它會讓你變得透明。相反，對於多數只會說英語的英國人和美國人而言，外國是不透明的。外國人對我們的瞭解遠遠超出我們對他們的瞭解。這種不對稱很可能幫助了俄羅斯將其中意的候選人送入白宮，它也會讓英國在退歐談判中處於不利地位。

The role of English has been changing fast. Until the 1990s Russia and China didn’t know much about what went on in western societies. Most Russian and Chinese anglophones had been killed or exiled after the communist revolutions, and were never replaced. Even the KGB was short of English-speakers: much of the intelligence sent to Moscow by British spies Kim Philby and Guy Burgess was never translated.

英語的作用變化很快。在上世紀90年代之前，俄羅斯和中國不甚瞭解西方社會的情況。多數俄羅斯和中國的講英語者在共產黨革命勝利後被殺或被流放，而且從未替換。甚至連克格勃(KGB)也缺少說英語的人：英國間諜金?菲爾比(Kim Philby)和蓋伊?伯吉斯(Guy Burgess)發送給莫斯科的大量情報從未被翻譯。

But from the mid-1980s, the opening of China, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the coming of the internet all boosted English. Chinese and Russian elites sent their children to study in the US and UK. From 1990 through to about 2010, British and American media and films gained unprecedented global influence.

但從上世紀80年代中期開始，中國的開放、柏林牆的倒塌以及互聯網的問世都讓英語興旺起來。中國和俄羅斯精英把他們的子女送到美國和英國讀書。從1990年一直到2010年，英美媒體和電影展現出空前的全球影響力。

In this period, the asymmetry of knowledge between English-speaking countries and their rivals became extreme. “There are now several million Russian citizens who are essentially bilingual and intimately acquainted with anglo societies,” says Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, political scientist at Oxford university. By contrast, most anglos stopped bothering to learn foreign languages.

在此期間，英語國家和其競爭對手之間的知識不對稱性變得極其嚴重。牛津大學(Oxford University)政治學家裏卡多?索爾斯?德奧利韋拉(Ricardo Soares de Oliveira)表示：“現在有幾百萬俄羅斯公民基本上具備雙語能力，對英美社會非常熟悉。”與此形成反差的是，多數英美人不願費力學習外語。

This first became a problem after September 11. The US and UK found the Arab world opaque. John Nixon, the CIA’s expert on Saddam Hussein, couldn’t interrogate him in Arabic. Nixon recounts in his new memoir Debriefing the President that, during the interrogations, the CIA’s interpreter would quarrel with the military interpreter: “No, that’s not what he said!” A watching Saddam cunningly took advantage, bonding with the military interpreter.

這在9/11後首先成爲一個問題。美國和英國發現阿拉伯世界不透明。中央情報局(CIA)研究薩達姆?侯賽因(Saddam Hussein)的專家約翰?尼克松(John Nixon)無法用阿拉伯語審問他。尼克松在他剛出版的回憶錄《提審總統》(Debriefing the President)中回憶道，在審問期間，中央情報局的翻譯會與軍方的翻譯發生爭吵：“不，他不是這麼說的！”冷眼看着這一幕的薩達姆狡猾地利用了這一點，與那位軍方翻譯搞好了關係。

Just as English let down the anglophone powers in Iraq, so did their other traditional weapon of influence: warfare. They have given up on invasions. The US now spends $597bn a year on its military and still can’t stop Russian adventuring.

就像英語在伊拉克讓那些英語強國吃虧一樣，它們的另一件傳統影響力工具——戰爭——也失去威力。他們已放棄入侵。美國現在每年的軍事開支高達5970億美元，但仍無法阻止俄羅斯的冒險。

The new weapon is cyber warfare, but it works best for the US’s enemies. Hacking foreign files is worthwhile only if you can use the information. Russia and China have lots of well-informed people who can sift English documents looking for intelligence, says Adam Segal, author of The Hacked World Order. If they find anything embarrassing, they can disseminate it through English-language social media or the useful idiots of WikiLeaks. American media can then be relied on to amplify the story. Alternatively, foreigners can simply make up fake news in English.

新的武器是網絡戰，但它對美國的敵人最有用。只有在你能利用竊取的信息的情況下，黑進外國文件纔有意義。《遭到黑客攻擊的全球秩序》(The Hacked World Order)一書的作者亞當?西格爾(Adam Segal)表示，俄羅斯和中國有很多知識淵博的人士，他們能夠從英語文件中篩選情報。如果他們發現了令人尷尬的信息，他們可以通過英文社交網站或維基解密(WikiLeaks)這種有用的白癡傳播出去。接着他們就能依靠美國媒體放大故事。或者，外國人也完全可以用英語編造假新聞。

“It’s harder to do it in the other direction,” says Segal. The US lacks linguists who understand which foreign information matters most. Nor can it easily send the information back to ordinary Russians and Chinese, as China, in particular, censors the internet. The west’s old practice of “democracy promotion” has been superseded by the east’s “autocracy promotion”, says Soares de Oliveira. English-language newspapers and the once mighty BBC now face millions of new competitors on social media.

西格爾表示：“反過來就難了。”美國缺乏那些搞得懂哪些外國信息最重要的語言學家。美國也無法輕易將信息回傳給普通的俄羅斯人和中國人，尤其是在中國審查互聯網的情況下。牛津大學的索爾斯?德奧利韋拉表示，西方的“促進民主”老一套已被東方的“促進威權”取代。英文報紙以及曾經影響力巨大的英國廣播公司(BBC)現在在社交媒體上面臨數百萬新的競爭者。

Britain has its own problems with English. Its twin centres of political power, Westminster and the tabloid newspapers, are almost entirely monolingual. Brits therefore voted for Brexit blithely unaware of how other European countries would respond. The Brexiter fantasy broadly went like this: “We’ll stop immigration, keep free trade with Europe, and sign whizzo new trade deals with everybody else.”

英國的英語有着自己的問題。英國的兩個政治權力中心——議會和小報——幾乎只通曉一種語言。因此，英國人隨隨便便地投票支持退歐，對於歐洲其他國家將作何什麼反應一無所知。支持退歐的人士的美夢大致如此：“我們將阻止移民，與歐洲保持自由貿易，同時與其他所有國家簽訂新的一流貿易協定。”

Britain does have a coterie of multilingual experts (mostly diplomats) who knew this wouldn’t fly. But precisely because these people understand European thinking, they are distrusted by Westminster and the tabloids. A case in point is last week’s resignation of Sir Ivan Rogers, the UK’s permanent representative to the European Union.

英國確實有一羣多語種專家（多數是外交官），他們知道這種美夢不會成真。但恰恰是因爲這些人瞭解歐洲人的思路，所以他們不被英國議會和小報信任。最近英國常駐歐盟代表伊萬?羅傑斯爵士(Sir Ivan Rogers)辭職就是一個很好的例子。

Just as Donald Trump’s people have ignored the US state department, the UK’s Foreign Office — the one bit of the British state packed with foreign knowledge — has been sidelined ahead of the Brexit negotiations. Instead, the new department for exiting the EU will lead. Its boss, David Davis, is the man who said the Germans would give the UK a good deal because they sell cars in Britain. “The British political class is astonishingly ignorant of the EU, whether they are pro it or against,” says Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform.

就像唐納德?特朗普(Donald Trump)的支持者忽視美國國務院一樣，英國外交部(Foreign Office)（英國政府內部真正瞭解外國的部門）在英國退歐談判之前受到冷落。新的退歐部門將領導談判。該部負責人大衛?戴維斯(David Davis)曾經說過，德國將給予英國一項不錯的協議，因爲他們在英國銷售汽車。歐洲改革中心(Centre for European Reform)主任查爾斯?格蘭特(Charles Grant)表示：“英國政治階層對歐盟出奇無知，支持或是反對歐盟的人都一樣。”

The European principals in the Brexit talks understand Britain rather better. Grant continues: “They do watch the BBC, they can read English, they do read tweets of what the Daily Mail is saying.” Even Angela Merkel, schooled in East Germany, taught herself English by reading the communist Morning Star newspaper.

在英國退歐談判中，歐方主要官員對英國更爲了解。格蘭特繼續表示：“他們會收看BBC，會讀英文，還會閱讀有關《每日郵報》(Daily Mail)內容的推文。”就連在東德接受教育的德國總理安格拉?默克爾(Angela Merkel)當年也通過閱讀英國共產黨機關報《晨星報》(Morning Star)自學了英文。

The US has just been outsmarted by foreigners it didn’t understand. Britain may be next.

美國剛剛被它不瞭解的外國人贏了一局。英國可能是下一個。