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In the US, in common speech, the word “Asian” has tended to mean East or Southeast Asian. In the UK, the same word more often refers to the Indian subcontinent. Look, I don’t decide these things. It has to do with historic patterns of migration: who went where. It is also liable to change. But it shows that America’s exposure to the world’s largest continent is nothing like Britain’s.
在美國的日常用語中，「亞洲」一詞往往指東亞或東南亞。在英國，這個詞更常指印度次大陸。聽著，這些事情不是我能決定的。這與歷史上的移民模式有關：誰去了哪裏。它也可能發生變化。但這表明，美國與世界上最大大陸的接觸與英國截然不同。
That is the least of the differences. The forebears of a Black Briton probably arrived in the country after 1945, willingly. Those of a Black American might have come centuries ago, forcibly. In America, the settlers’ treatment of people who were already there is recent enough to be a raw topic. As harsh as the Emperor Claudius no doubt was, the displacement of “native” Britons has lost some of its salience over the intervening millennia.
這只是最小的差異。英國黑人的祖先可能是在1945年後自願來到這個國家的，而美國黑人的祖先可能是幾個世紀前被迫來到這裏的。在美國，定居者對待原住民的方式是一個仍然敏感的話題。儘管克勞狄烏斯皇帝(Emperor Claudius)無疑很嚴厲，但「本土」不列顛人的流離失所問題在幾千年間已經失去了一些顯著性。
“Woke”, if that means a focus on group identities, has turned out to be a bad fit in the US. But at least it was dreamt up with the US in mind. What possessed people in Britain to think it made sense in their different (which isn’t to say better) context? Or in Europe’s? I’d toast the apparent demise of this dogma but even the crusade against it in Britain has a US flavour — faintly religious, very online — which will unnerve the public in no time.
如果「覺醒」意味著關注羣體身份，那麼它在美國並不合適。但至少，它是以美國爲背景構想出來的。是什麼讓英國人認爲它在他們不同的環境中有意義？或者在歐洲呢？我爲這一教條的明顯消亡而乾杯，但即使是在英國對它的討伐也帶有美國的味道——略帶宗教色彩，非常網路化——這很快就會讓公衆感到不安。
There is but one consolation in what Donald Trump has done of late. Strategically, the transatlantic rift is a disaster. Culturally, it might not be the worst thing if America and Europe have a bit less to do with each other. Their educated elites in particular should start seeing other people.
唐納•川普(Donald Trump)最近的所作所爲只有一個安慰。從戰略上講，跨大西洋的裂痕是一場災難。從文化上講，如果美國和歐洲之間的聯繫減少一些，可能並不是最糟糕的事情。尤其是他們受過教育的精英應該開始與其他人交往。
Looking back, the relationship was at its healthiest in the cold war, when the political enmeshment was almost airtight but there was much less pretence of sameness
回顧過去，冷戰時期的關係是最健康的，那時政治上的糾纏幾乎密不透風，但假裝一致的情況要少得多。
The undue obsession isn’t all one way. How did JD Vance become so exercised about free speech in Britain that he raised it in a televised Oval Office setting? If we fall short of First Amendment standards, that is because we don’t have a First Amendment, because we are a different country. As with Elon Musk’s dabblings in Germany, the conceit here — born of the internet, I think — is that the north Atlantic is a common cultural space.
過度的癡迷並非都是單向的。JD•萬斯(JD Vance)是如何對英國的言論自由如此關注，以至於在橢圓形辦公室的電視直播中提出這個問題的？如果我們沒有達到第一修正案的標準，那是因爲我們沒有第一修正案，因爲我們是一個不同的國家。正如伊隆•馬斯克(Elon Musk)在德國的嘗試一樣，這種自負——我認爲是網路的產物——認爲北大西洋是一個共同的文化空間。
Still, the fault lies mostly with Europe. The US is not “culturally imperialist”. It has CNN but no public mission to shape world news, at least not one to match the BBC, France 24, Deutsche Welle and Al Jazeera. It has no Melville Institute to go against those named after Goethe and Cervantes. Its grip on film, academia and postwar painting was never a conscious, top-down project, even if the CIA was more of a cultural actor in the cold war than was known at the time.
不過，問題主要在於歐洲。美國並非「文化帝國主義」。它有CNN，但沒有塑造世界新聞的公共使命，至少無法與BBC、法國24頻道、德國之聲(Deutsche Welle)和半島電視臺(Al Jazeera)相提並論。它沒有梅爾維爾學院(Melville Institute)來對抗那些以歌德和塞萬提斯命名的學院。它對電影、學術界和戰後繪畫的影響從來都不是一個有意識的、自上而下的項目，即使中情局(CIA)在冷戰中的文化角色比當時人們所知道的還要多。
No, it is a European choice to live vicariously through America. (Not just a British one, unless I am misremembering those George Floyd protests in France.) I myself am always setting the continent’s feeble economic growth rate against America’s, as though it were the natural comparator. Given their respective ages and histories, is it? Even if Europe is the Norma Desmond of continents, drunk on the past, how could it not be?
不，這是歐洲人的選擇，他們希望透過美國來獲得生活的代入感。我自己總是把歐洲大陸微弱的經濟成長率與美國的相提並論，彷彿這是自然的比較。考慮到它們各自的年齡和歷史，真的是這樣嗎？即使歐洲是各大洲中的諾瑪•德斯蒙德(Norma Desmond)，沉醉於過去，又怎能不是呢？（譯者注：諾瑪•德斯蒙德是1950年經典電影《日落大道》(Sunset Boulevard)中的虛構角色。她曾是默片時代的巨星，但在有聲電影興起後逐漸被時代拋棄。無法接受自己過氣的現實，她沉溺於昔日的輝煌幻想之中，最終走向悲劇。作者在此以「歐洲是各大洲的諾瑪•德斯蒙德」作比，暗指歐洲沉迷於過去的輝煌，而忽視當下的現實狀況。）
Looking back, the relationship was at its healthiest in the cold war, when the political enmeshment was almost airtight but there was much less pretence of cultural sameness. A staple of 20th-century Toryism was mild distaste for the US, which often informed a corresponding fancy for the European project. (Jeremy Clarkson, a subtler conservative than his schtick implies, is an echo of that world.) This sentiment crossed over at times into witless anti-Americanism. But it helped to inoculate the continent against laughably out-of-context ideas and practices. As a child in the height of the Atlantic bond, I never heard “upspeak”, that tic by which grown men and women in modern Britain adopt the vocal cadence of 13-year-olds in Pasadena. What we have lived through is the inverse of the cold war: political estrangement alongside deepening cultural mimicry.
回顧過去，冷戰時期的兩國關係是最健康的，當時政治關係幾乎密不透風，但文化上的相似性卻少得多。20世紀保守主義的一個主要特徵是對美國的輕微反感，這通常會引發對歐洲項目的相應興趣。這種情緒有時會演變成愚蠢的反美主義。但它幫助歐洲大陸抵禦了可笑的斷章取義的想法和做法。作爲大西洋紐帶鼎盛時期的孩子，我從未聽過「upspeak」，即現代英國的成年男女採用帕薩迪納13歲孩子的腔調說話。我們所經歷的是冷戰的反面：政治上的隔閡與文化上不斷加深的模仿。
Perhaps the Trump shock will bring a cooling off on all fronts. Last weekend, in a startling speech as Canada’s Liberal leader, Mark Carney cast the US as Other, in its approach to language and the absorption of immigrants and other cultural fundamentals. Whether to regret his belligerence, or wish our prime minister would say the same, it is hard in these times to know.
也許川普的衝擊會讓各方面都冷靜下來。上週末，加拿大自由黨(Canada』s Liberal)領袖馬克•卡尼(Mark Carney)在一場令人震驚的演講中，將美國在語言、移民吸收和其他文化基本方面的做法視爲『他者』。在這個時代，很難判斷是對他的好鬥感到遺憾，還是希望我們的總理也能這樣說。