当英语成为劣势
作者:赖小琪数了一下, 今天是来爱尔兰的第十四天. 在这十四天里, 我遇到了很多困难, 包括生活上的和学习上的. 但是我想最大的困难就是我的英语.
Today is the fourteenth day since I arrived in Ireland. During these days, I have encountered a myriad of troubles, both in life and study, while the greatest difficulty, I suppose, is my English.
我想, 如果和我一同来都柏林大学读书的深大朋友们看到我的这句话, 肯定会瞪大眼睛来 “臭骂”我一顿, 还会说一句: “你都说英语不行了, 那我们该怎么办?” 是的, 我不得不说, 我们的英语在这边都不行.
Seeing my statements, most of my fellow schoolmates who came with me to UCD, I suppose, may open their eyes real round and scold me, “Damn! If you complain about your English, how shall we live on?” But I really have to say that our English is not good enough.
我并不是因为谦虚而说这句话, 更不是因为虚伪. 回想起这些天来和老外交流的点点滴滴, 我不禁感慨万千. 初到都柏林时, 宿舍没有开放, 我和裕深还有少娟住在青年旅馆里. 那里进进出出都是外国人, 我们可以时不时和他们搭讪聊天. 越聊越发现, 很多时候我听不懂他们在讲什么, 或者说, 大意懂了, 可是细节却非常模糊. 那段时间由于人生路不熟, 我们经常在外面要向当地人问路. 那时我才发现, 在爱尔兰问路所用的英语和我们在中学时代学的差异相当大. 我们以前问路的回答都是一直走, 走到第几个路口向左拐或者向右拐, 然而在现实生活中, 答案根本没有这么简单, 往往是九转十八弯. 而且这里的人口音相当重, 带有Irish的声调, 让我听起来感到困难重重.
I don’t intend to make this remark out of modesty, nor do I do it out of sham. Looking back at every detail I had with foreigners, I could not help sighing. When we freshly arrived at Dublin, as our dorm was not available then, we had to live in a hostel. There were mainly foreigners living there, so we could chat with them now and again. The more we talked with them, the more we did not understand. Or sometimes I grasped the main idea of their speaking, but when it came to details, I could not catch them right. At that time, as we were not familiar with the ways, we had to ask the locals for help. Only then did I realize the difference between the English in real scene and the English we had learnt in school. In the past when we learnt how to ask the way, the answer always tended to be: Go along this road and turn left in the second turning, or so. But in real life, it is not that simple. The path may be extremely complex. Worse still, the locals here mostly have a strong Irish accent, which adds to the difficulty of my understanding.
这两天都要坐车到主校区办事, 在公交车上都会和坐在旁边的爱尔兰人聊天. 爱尔兰人真的很好很好, 好到我无法形容. 和他们聊天时, 大意我是可以听懂的, 可是要说把每一个词听出来, 我只能说听懂百分之八十五. 特别是当谈话深入, 涉及到中国的经济政治时, 老外口里往往很多专业术语, 让本来学经济的我有时也感到很吃力. 剩下的百分之十五哪去了? 剩下的百分之十五可能要靠我在这一年的努力来弥补了．
These two days I had to shuttle to the main campus to deal with some affairs. On the bus I usually had a chat with some locals sitting next to me. People in Ireland are literally very kind, far beyond my description. When talking with them, I can on the whole understand their statements, but if I am required to note down every word they speak, I cannot. I can only claim that I have merely understood eighty-five percent of the talk. Especially when the talk goes deeper, like dealing with Chinese economy or politics, they often pour out tons of professional terms, which makes me, a major of economy, feel tough to interpret. Where is the last fifteen percent? It may depend on my following-up efforts to make up for it.
出国前从来不会为自己的英语感到担忧，总觉得英语只会为我的学习锦上添花，而不会成为负累．来到这里以后，我才逐渐发现，原来我们的英语，对比起当地人来讲，只能算是小学生的水平．今天早上上International Business Management, 老师Ann讲了两个小时的课, 仅管我全神贯注地听, 也只能听懂百分之八十, 时不时会有一些句子让我感到莫名其妙, 不知所云. 有时我很想叫老师放慢一下速度, 把单词读清晰点, 可是这里不是中国的外教课, 这里是来自世界各地尖子生聚集的地方, 而这里的老师也把我们全都当成母语是英语的学生. 他们只会畅所欲言, 而不会顾及到你是否听得懂. 中午看了一下老师发给我们的做总结的材料, 发现里面有不少生词, 只得对着电脑挨个挨个地查啊记啊, 弄了一个小时才把整篇文章读透.
Before I went abroad, I never felt worried about my English. I had full confidence that my English would only contribute to my study instead of dragging it. Nevertheless, when I came here, I got to realize that our English level was only the same as that of primary school students. Today I took the course named International Business Management. Professor Ann had lectured for about two hours. Attentively as I listened, I could only understand eighty percent. There would be some sentences at times that made me confused. Sometimes I really wanted to ask the teacher to slow down a little bit and pronounce more clearly, but I knew that it was not the English class in China. UCD is the place where top scholars around the world gather, so the teachers here all treat us as English natives. Therefore, they will speak freely without considering whether you can catch them or not. At noon I had a glance at the reading materials given to us by Ann and realized there were a lot of alien words to me. Hence, I had to spend one hour looking them up on online dictionary one by one.
下午吃过饭后, 倒了一杯果汁坐在厅里, 望着落地玻璃外的草地发呆. 突然感到一阵悲哀, 冷笑起来. 我想, 以后暂且不论要花多大功夫在专业课上, 单是英语也得猛攻, 特别是听力和词汇. 来了这里以后, 我觉得中国的英语 “太标准”了. 我们考试的所有听力材料都是地道的美式和英式的英语, 这本身有利于我们的学习, 但是也有其不利的地方. 当我们的耳朵习惯了标准的英语, 一旦到了英语并不是那么标准的国家, 如爱尔兰或者澳大利亚, 我们就听不懂. 可能我的情况稍微好一点, 那天在Main Entrance Hall遇到一个来自南京大学的托福考105分的中国学生, 他说他上课能听懂的不到一半, 所以课后得拼命听BBC练听力和记单词. 这也难怪, 托福里本身就是美国英语, 天天浸在美式英语里, 对于别的英语听起来自然没那么顺耳.
After dinner, I took a cup of juice and sat on the sofa in the dining room, staring at the lawns lying outside the window. All of a sudden, I felt a stroke of sadness and laughed at myself ironically. I thought that in the future, regardless of my major, I have to spend a lot of time learning English, especially listening and vocabulary. I came to realize that English taught in China is “too standard”. All the listening materials in the tests are all taped in American or British English. It is helpful to our study, but it also has some drawbacks. Once our ears get used to “Standard” English, we cannot understand well other countries’ English, like Ireland or Australia. My situation is a relatively better compared with other students. I met a Chinese student who came from Nanjing University with a TOFEL score of 105 the other day in the Main Entrance Hall. He said that he could understand less than half of the teacher’s speeches, so he had to study English hard after class by listening to BBC and remembering vocabulary. It is quite normal in my eyes, because TOFEL’s English is American English. If you always listen to American English and overlook other accents, it is not easy for you to listen to Ireland English.
今晚学了好久英语, 记了好久单词. 我得重新拾起以前学英语的热情, 因为来了爱尔兰以后, 英语成为我的劣势. 在这里也顺便和访问我空间以及看到这篇文章的师弟师妹说一下: 如果以后你们要出国或者在工作中要和外国人打交道, 一定要加倍努力地学好英语, 多听各国口音的英语, 不要仅仅局限在美音里. 我们在中国学的英语, 永远不够用.
Tonight I have studied English for a long time and remembered a lot of new words. I must pick up the passion for English as I’v ever had. After coming to Ireland, English becomes my weakness. Here I want to take this chance to say something to my younger schoolmates who happen to visit my zone and see this article: If you want to go abroad or deal with foreigners in your job in the future, you should spare no efforts to learn English well. You should listen to different countries’ English and get used to their accents instead of merely focusing on American English. The English we learn in China is far from enough!
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