谢逊知道真相吗:看看高手怎么写英文报告: The Economist, Libya and the Ira...

看看高手怎么写英文报告／导




语言只是一个工具，因为你可以用它来修理语言自身。所以，好的英语不等于好的文章，而语法和词汇甚至连工具都不如。那么，什么是好的英语文章?

答案似乎只有一个: "言之有物，生动宜读"。这不是跟好的中文文章的要求是一回事么?

正确，文章高于语言，这是盲目追求英语＂高分＂＂高水平＂的人所不容易理解的地方，也是"文人"跟"语人"的区别所在:  中国从古代就知道，只有文人可以等同于知识分子。语人就 "等而下" 之好几流了。当然，这不是说词汇语法等等语言基本功不重要，而是说仅仅这些还不够。

在国外，媒体刊物满天飞，繁华地段公寓的信箱房甚至连卖剩下的精美时装杂志也经常成摞地被商家塞进来。可是，中国人会发现可读的东西很贫乏。看时代周刊太"正统"了点，看体育杂志喜好的体种与国内不同，而其他的流行杂志里面则几乎全是广告。选来选去，还是感觉看华尔街日报（The Wall Street Journal）和《经济学家》杂志（The Economist）好一些:  一报一杂志，风格上一美一欧，内容从深刻分析到肆意骂街都有 (把它俩一读，单薄而日趋流于刻薄的时代周刊就可以放弃了)。更有趣的是，它们都喜爱写中国，一看WS日报头版通栏目录或者TE杂志的Contents 就可以发现: 每期都有中国的＂事儿＂。

其实，The Wall Street Journal和The Economist 都是穿着经济衣服的时事政治刊物，污蔑颜色起中国来一个不输一个。当年因为看到WS污蔑说因为中国人用油而造成美国油价高升 (造成许多美国红脖憎恨中国人到是属于发表后的客观事实)，对此报的感觉立刻跟其他流言小报没任何区别。有趣的是，少了层所谓＂名气和学术＂包装玻璃纸之后，它反而更容易读了。所以，学习中千万不能迷信和神化对方，它卖字你检验，努力合格了赏它声好，这才是正确的学习态度。

The Economist 就更加老套一些，它对待中国也更是有股子不列颠没落的霉腐味，--------看到它不为中国说好话和对茉莉们的激动样子，那自然是见怪不怪了。


不过，总不能把自己封起来什么都不看吧?

保持自己的观点，别人怎么写是别人的目的，我们学会用自己的观点和判断能力来看就是了。

新闻刊物要抓得住读者，因此，写法要求都是明摆在那里，适者才能生存。所以它们反而更加言之有物。读了Libya and the Iraq syndrome 的第一段你就看得出作者是怎么stand out 和吸引你往下读了。另外，好的英文文章经常活用成语 (人家尊重语言，不会去乱改成语)，一句＂历史偏爱嘲讽＂，"But history likes a jest"，就把读者的兴趣调动到一直看完全篇文章。

如果我们的其他研究或者实验室学术报告甚至研究论文里面能有这种＂气息＂，那就不愁论之无物和没有听众与读者了。

下面这篇算是篇老道的分析报道，--------"老" 在分析能力之外，英文写做很有技巧和章法。埋伏不少，包袱抖开之后就是读者的深刻印象。大家不妨学学:  对比，埋伏，引证，入理分析，调侃和漫画之后，还是一篇结构细密又引人入胜的文章。

这样一写，即使观点不同的读者也没有抵触感，搞不好还不知觉中赞同起作者来了。



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当然，够格做合适的英语读物还是需要有一点公正的名声和道德观的。媒体作者不管多么有名气，偏见过多就成了垃圾。CNN那个采访温总理的主持人法里德扎卡里亚的名气可谓当头吧?  然而，就凭他对中国的鄙视态度，那些封面上是他的嘴脸的书，一概可以免看， --------水平尚不够浪费我们上厕所的时间。

英国《经济学家》杂志因为销售量上不去而狂用社会主义国家的宣传画背景在中文媒体上做广告，目前用的是金日成和朝鲜儿童在一起的红色招贴画。这么看来，法里德们还得努力呵。

  
                                            
  
  
              
Lexington      

Libya and the Iraq syndrome
Does their caution in Libya show that Americans will make war no more?        

Mar 3rd 2011                    | from the print edition         

   

         

“THE spectre of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian peninsula. It’s a proud day for America—and, by God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.” That, at any rate, is what Bush the elder believed 20 years ago, shortly after the army he sent to Saudi Arabia booted Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. But history likes a jest. As Barack Obama ponders whether force should be part of his response to Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, is a new syndrome—an Iraq syndrome, contracted in the same sands of Arabia by Bush the younger—one of the things staying Mr Obama’s hand?
  
Bloody wars beget caution. As after Korea, as after Vietnam, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have made Americans battle-averse. In 2005 John Mueller, a professor of political science at the Ohio State University, predicted in Foreign Affairs that an “Iraq syndrome” would eventually make America more sceptical of unilateral military action, especially in places that presented no direct threat to it, and less inclined to dismiss Europeans and other well-meaning foreigners as wimps. “The United States may also become more inclined to seek international co-operation, sometimes even showing signs of humility.”
  
A bull’s eye for the professor. Against a backdrop of two wars and a surly economy, Mars is no longer ascendant in Mr Obama’s Washington. His drones may be zapping Taliban encampments in Pakistan, but Mr Obama always opposed the “dumb” war in Iraq, and much of his own party hates the war he calls necessary in Afghanistan. Having been elected as the anti-Bush, he needs another entanglement in the Middle East like he needs a hole in the head. So although Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state, says that no option will be taken off the table, and America has sent warships nearer to Libya, the emphasis for the present is firmly on diplomacy. On Capitol Hill this week, Mrs Clinton talked about “using the combined assets of smart power” in Libya. In a reversal of the usual pattern, America is said to be pouring some cold water on heated talk in Europe, and especially in Britain, of NATO clearing Colonel Qaddafi’s aircraft from Libya’s skies.
      
  To the prudent and the pacific, the Iraq syndrome may seem no bad thing. The younger Bush’s wars have claimed almost 6,000 American lives and drained the country’s finances. It would doubtless be better in future for America to embark on such adventures, if at all, with a clearer view of the costs, less faith in a military “cakewalk” and a more modest view of what force can achieve. But what if this salutary caution turns into an unwillingness to use force at all, even when it is called for by the national interest or on humanitarian grounds? And what if dangerous men come to believe that America will never fight? Saddam thought (and said) 20 years ago that after its losses in Vietnam, America would not risk war to rescue Kuwait. The alacrity with which Ronald Reagan scuttled from Lebanon after the marine barracks bombing in 1983 confirmed this belief that America’s aversion to casualties was the superpower’s Achilles heel.

As he soon discovered, Saddam was wrong about the Vietnam syndrome. No doubt the Iraq syndrome can be overstated too. During ten years of fighting in Afghanistan, and more than seven in Iraq, America has, after all, proved its extraordinary staying power: it takes a lot for Americans to accept defeat once they have joined battle in earnest. And the public appetite for new encounters, though it has dwindled, has not fallen to zero. Only 12% of respondents to this week’s Economist/YouGov poll favoured military intervention in Libya, but 38% supported a no-fly zone.

Still, a good deal of the risk-aversion is reflected at the top, where it matters most. At West Point last week, Bob Gates, the defence secretary who took over from Donald Rumsfeld in the Bush administration and whom Mr Obama kept on, said that “any future defence secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.” What little war talk Libya has aroused has come from the usual suspects: Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman, for example, and Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the Iraq war. But even they propose, at most, arming Libya’s rebels or enforcing a no-fly zone.

It may be that America would have exercised the same caution in Libya even if it had not been for Iraq. Mrs Clinton may be right that outside support for the uprising would be counter-productive. But Iraq has surely coloured other decisions America has taken in recent years, not only on Mr Obama’s watch but also on his predecessor’s. Bill Clinton (before Iraq) used air power in the Balkans, but Mr Bush (after) did not intervene in Darfur even during the massacres by Sudan’s government-supported janjaweed militia. He refrained from military action against Iran’s nuclear installations, and by all accounts told Israel to hold back too.

  
The loop and the underlying constant
One interpretation of America’s attitude to war is that it is stuck in a loop. Successful ventures with low casualties (such as the first Gulf war or the early, misleading, stages of the Afghan war) breed hubris and further adventures. Costly engagements such as Korea, Vietnam and Iraq then breed caution.

That view is over-simple. Mr Mueller, the predictor of the Iraq syndrome, notes that apart from a mild rise in isolationism after the Vietnam war and a brief drop after the first Gulf war, changes in sentiment have been fairly modest. In general, Americans will tolerate high casualties to ward off what they see as direct threats, such as communism in Korea or Vietnam, or terrorism after 9/11, but almost none to police distant and seemingly perennially troubled countries, such as Somalia (where 18 American casualties in one firefight in 1993 put paid to America’s mission). What that means for the democrats of Libya remains to be seen.