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我知道你們在想什麼,你們以為我迷路了,一分鐘後就會有人上臺來,溫柔地將我帶回我的座位。(掌聲)。我在杜拜總是遇到這種情況,「親愛的,來這兒度假嗎?」。(笑聲)。「來看孩子嗎?打算待多久?」
好吧,事實上,我還希望能待更久些。我已在阿拉伯灣區生活和教學超過30年了。(掌聲)。在這段時間當中,我看到了很多變化,而統計資料相當令人驚訝。我今天想講述的是,關於語言的消失以及英語的全球化。我想告訴你們關於我朋友的事,她在阿布達比教導成人英語,一個晴朗的日子,她決定帶他們到花園,教他們一些自然萬物的辭彙,但最終她學習到的是所有當地植物的阿拉伯名稱,以及它們的用途:醫療用途、化妝品、烹飪、草藥。學生們如何得知這所有的知識?當然,從他們的祖父母,甚至他們的曾祖父母。我不需要告訴你們,能夠隔代溝通是多麼重要。
但可悲的是,今天語言正逐漸消失,以前所未有的速度。每14天就有一種語言消失,同時,英語毫無疑問是全球語言。其中有任何關聯嗎?好吧,我不知道,但我知道的是,我已看到了很多變化。當我第一次離開灣區,前往科威特,在那時候,它仍是一個動亂的國家。事實上並不是那麼久以前,我說的有點早了些。總之我是由英國文化協會招募,還有其他約二十五位老師,我們是第一批非穆斯林,在科威特公立學校任教,我們被請去教英語,因為政府希望國家現代化,藉由讓公民受教育。當然,英國得到利益,從那些美妙的石油財富中。
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以下為系統擷取之英文原文
I know what you're thinking. You think I've lost my way, and somebody's going to come on the stage in a minute and guide me gently back to my seat. (Applause) I get that all the time in Dubai. "Here on holiday are you, dear?" (Laughter) "Come to visit the children? How long are you staying?"
Well actually, I hope for a while longer yet. I have been living and teaching in the Gulf for over 30 years. (Applause) And in that time, I have seen a lot of changes. Now that statistic is quite shocking. And I want to talk to you today about language loss and the globalization of English. I want to tell you about my friend who was teaching English to adults in Abu Dhabi. And one fine day, she decided to take them into the garden to teach them some nature vocabulary. But it was she who ended up learning all the Arabic words for the local plants, as well as their uses -- medicinal uses, cosmetics, cooking, herbal. How did those students get all that knowledge? Of course, from their grandparents and even their great-grandparents. It's not necessary to tell you how important it is to be able to communicate across generations.
But sadly, today, languages are dying at an unprecedented rate. A language dies every 14 days. Now, at the same time, English is the undisputed global language. Could there be a connection? Well I don't know. But I do know that I've seen a lot of changes. When I first came out to the Gulf, I came to Kuwait in the days when it was still a hardship post. Actually, not that long ago. That is a little bit too early. But nevertheless, I was recruited by the British Council along with about 25 other teachers. And we were the first non-Muslims to teach in the state schools there in Kuwait. We were brought to teach English because the government wanted to modernize the country and empower the citizens through education. And of course, the U.K. benefited from some of that lovely oil wealth.
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好,這是我已看到的主要改變。英語教學是如何從一種互惠的做法,變成像今天這樣,成為大規模的國際趨勢?不再只是一門學校的外語課程,不再只是英格蘭母國的獨有現象,對地球上每一個說英語的國家來說,它已成為潮流。為什麼不呢?畢竟,最好的教育,根據最新世界大學排名,都在英國和美國大學中,自然每個人都想學習英語課程。但如果你的母語不是英語,你必須通過一個測試。
這會是對的嗎?只因為語言能力而拒絕一個學生?也許有個天才電腦科學家,他會需要跟一名律師使用同樣的語言嗎?嗯,我不這麼認為。我們英語教師總是拒絕他們,我們立起一個禁止標示,我們阻斷了他們的路,他們無法再追求自己的夢想,直到他們學會英語。這麼說吧!如果我遇到一個只會說荷語的人,他能治癒癌症,我會阻止他到我的英國大學就讀嗎?我不這麼認為。但事實上,我們正是這麼做的。我們英語教師是守門人,你必須先以夠好的英語滿足我們的要求,這可能是危險的,給予過多權力,使社會變的狹隘,也許這個壁壘太普遍了。
好,「但是」,我聽到你說,「那做研究怎麼辦?全都是用英語寫的。」因此,書都是用英語寫的,期刊也是英語,但這是一個自我應驗的預言,它滿足英語的需要,所以就這麼繼續下去了。我問你們,那翻譯呢?如果你們想想伊斯蘭的黃金時代,那時有大量的翻譯作品,從拉丁文和希臘文翻譯成阿拉伯語、波斯語,然後它被翻譯成歐洲的日耳曼諸語及羅曼諸語,所以光芒照射在黑暗時代的歐洲。不要誤會我的意思,我並不反對英語教學,還有你們所有在場的英語教師,我喜歡我們擁有一個全球性語言,我們今天比以往任何時候都需要這個。但我反對讓它變成一道障礙,我們真的希望棄用600種語言,而主要使用英語或中文?我們需要的不止這樣,我們是在何處畫上界線的?這個將聰明才智與英語能力畫上等號的系統是太武斷了。
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Okay. Now this is the major change that I've seen -- how teaching English has morphed from being a mutually beneficial practice to becoming a massive international business that it is today. No longer just a foreign language on the school curriculum. And no longer the sole domain of mother England. It has become a bandwagon for every English-speaking nation on earth. And why not? After all, the best education -- according to the latest World University Rankings -- is to be found in the universities of the U.K. and the U.S. So everybody wants to have an English education, naturally. But if you're not a native speaker, you have to pass a test.
Now can it be right to reject a student on linguistic ability alone? Perhaps you have a computer scientist who's a genius. Would he need the same language as a lawyer, for example? Well, I don't think so. We English teachers reject them all the time. We put a stop sign, and we stop them in their tracks. They can't pursue their dream any longer, till they get English. Now let me put it this way, if I met a monolingual Dutch speaker who had the cure for cancer, would I stop him from entering my British University? I don't think so. But indeed, that is exactly what we do. We English teachers are the gatekeepers. And you have to satisfy us first that your English is good enough. Now it can be dangerous to give too much power to a narrow segment of society. Maybe the barrier would be too universal.
Okay. "But," I hear you say, "what about the research? It's all in English." So the books are in English, the journals are done in English, but that is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It feeds the English requirement. And so it goes on. I ask you, what happened to translation? If you think about the Islamic Golden Age, there was lots of translation then. They translated from Latin and Greek into Arabic, into Persian, and then it was translated on into the Germanic languages of Europe and the Romance languages. And so light shone upon the Dark Ages of Europe. Now don't get me wrong; I am not against teaching English, all you English teachers out there. I love it that we have a global language. We need one today more than ever. But I am against using it as a barrier. Do we really want to end up with 600 languages and the main one being English, or Chinese? We need more than that. Where do we draw the line? This system equates intelligence with a knowledge of English which is quite arbitrary.
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我想要提醒你們,讓今日知識份子立足於其肩上的巨人們並不一定需要英語,他們不需要通過英語測試。舉例來說,愛因斯坦,順帶一提,學校認為他需要矯治,因為他事實上有閱讀障礙,幸好在當時的世界中他不需要通過英語測試,因為託福考試從1964年才開始,就是美國的英語能力測試。現在這類考試爆增,有一大堆的英語測試,每年有千萬個學生參加這些測試。現在你們可能會想,對你們和我來說,測試費用不算太多,還可以接受,但卻讓無數窮人望而卻步,所以我們立即將他們拒之門外。
(掌聲)
這使我想起最近看到的一個標題,「教育:大鴻溝」,現在我明白了,我理解為什麼人們對英語趨之若鶩,他們希望給孩子生命中最好的機會,要做到這一點,他們需要西方教育,因為,當然,最好的工作都給了畢業於西方大學的人,我之前提過,這是一種循環。
好,讓我告訴你們一個關於兩位科學家的故事。兩位英國科學家,他們正在做一個遺傳學方面,關於動物前後肢的實驗,但他們無法得到想要的結果,他們實在不知道該怎麼做,直到來了一位德國科學家,他瞭解他們正使用兩個意指前肢及後肢的字眼,但遺傳學在各地並沒有差異,在德國也一樣,因此,賓果!問題解決了。如果你想不出一個辦法,束手無策,但如果另一種語言可以想出這一點,然後通過合作,我們能夠得出結果,並瞭解更多。
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nd I want to remind you that the giants upon whose shoulders today's intelligentsia stand did not have to have English, they didn't have to pass an English test. Case in point, Einstein. He, by the way, was considered remedial at school because he was, in fact, dyslexic. But fortunately for the world, he did not have to pass an English test. Because they didn't start until 1964 with TOEFL, the American test of English. Now it's exploded. There are lots and lots of tests of English. And millions and millions of students take these tests every year. Now you might think, you and me, those fees aren't bad, they're okay, but they are prohibitive to so many millions of poor people. So immediately, we're rejecting them.
(Applause)
It brings to mind a headline I saw recently: "Education: The Great Divide." Now I get it, I understand why people would focus on English. They want to give their children the best chance in life. And to do that, they need a Western education. Because, of course, the best jobs go to people out of the Western Universities, that I put on earlier. It's a circular thing.
Okay. Let me tell you a story about two scientists, two English scientists. They were doing an experiment to do with genetics and the forelimbs and the hind limbs of animals. But they couldn't get the results they wanted. They really didn't know what to do, until along came a German scientist who realized that they were using two words for forelimb and hind limb, whereas genetics does not differentiate and neither does German. So bingo, problem solved. If you can't think a thought, you are stuck. But if another language can think that thought, then, by cooperating, we can achieve and learn so much more.
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我女兒從科威特來到英格蘭,她曾用阿拉伯語學習科學和數學,在一所阿拉伯語中學。她在文法學校中得將這些翻譯成英文,她這些科目的表現都是班上最棒的。這告訴我們,當學生們從國外來到我們這裡,我們或許並沒有對他們知道的東西給予足夠信心,他們已經由母語學習而得知。當一種語言消失,我們不知道伴隨著這個語言我們失去了什麼。
這是-我不知道你們最近是否有在CNN上看到,他們將英雄獎頒給一位年輕的肯亞牧童。在村莊裡,他無法在晚上學習,就像所有村裡的孩子們一樣,因為煤油燈會冒煙,損害眼睛,而且煤油總是不夠,因為,每天只有一美元能買什麼?於是他發明了一個不花錢的太陽能燈,現在他村裡的孩子們在學校得到的成績,就跟家裡有電的孩子一樣。(掌聲)。當他領到他的獎項,他說了這句可愛的話,「孩子們可以帶領非洲,從現在的它-一片黑暗的大陸,走向一片光明的大陸。」一個簡單的想法卻能產生這麼深遠的影響。
沒有光的人們,無論是實質上或是隱喻的,無法通過我們的考試,永遠無法知道別人知道的事。別再讓他們和我們自己留在黑暗中,讓我們慶祝多樣性,重視你們的語言,用它來傳播偉大的想法。
(掌聲)
非常感謝。
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My daughter, came to England from Kuwait. She had studied science and mathematics in Arabic. It's an Arabic medium school. She had to translate it into English at her grammar school. And she was the best in the class at those subjects. Which tells us that, when students come to us from abroad, we may not be giving them enough credit for what they know, and they know it in their own language. When a language dies, we don't know what we lose with that language.
This is -- I don't know if you saw it on CNN recently -- they gave the Heroes Award to a young Kenyan shepherd boy who couldn't study at night in his village like all the village children, because the kerosene lamp, it had smoke and it damaged his eyes. And anyway, there was never enough kerosene, because what does a dollar a day buy for you? So he invented a cost-free solar lamp. And now the children in his village get the same grades at school as the children who have electricity at home. (Applause) When he received his award, he said these lovely words: "The children can lead Africa from what it is today, a dark continent, to a light continent." A simple idea, but it could have such far-reaching consequences.
People who have no light, whether it's physical or metaphorical, cannot pass our exams, and we can never know what they know. Let us not keep them and ourselves in the dark. Let us celebrate diversity. Mind your language. Use it to spread great ideas.
(Applause)
Thank you very much.