城市的温度
The Warmth of a City
文、译/林巍1
〔1〕每个城市都是有温度2的，这指的当然不是自然气候，而是一种人文感觉。
[1] Every city, in fact, can be felt by its warmth – not in terms of its natural climate but its human touch.
〔2〕我到过世界上许多城市。初来乍到，新城市对我是陌生的，我对这地方也是陌生人。一来二往3，慢慢熟悉起来，主要是通过人与人的交往。所以我觉得，最能体现一个城市人文温度的，是这城市里的人对于陌生人的态度。
[2] Personally, I have visited many cities in the world. On my first arrival, the new place and I are mutually alien to one another. We gradually become acquainted after getting down to business through social intercourse. In my view, the attitude towards strangers that the people have in the city thus mirrors its warmth.
〔3〕二十多年前，我初到澳大利亚的黄金海岸，在街上拿出地图，寻找地方，便有位长者主动过来，问我是否迷路了、需要帮助不？那时，对于经过“文化大革命”、有着阶级意识的我，感到又惊又喜4。后来，在那里住下了，类似的事情多了，也便习以为常，如路上散步，对面来人，无论认识与否，都问候一句。一天晚上，我在便道上骑车5，一年轻女子喊了一声“带我一段”，便窜上了我自行车的后座。带着一身香水味，她告诉我刚参加完聚会，阴差阳错，没赶上车。我们一路还聊了会儿，又过了一段，她蹦下了车，道了一句：“谢谢，拜拜！”这时，我已经没了惊喜，有的倒是一种莫名的“被信任”感。
[3] About two decades ago, I arrived in the Gold Coast, Australia. Searching for a place on a map in the street, I was approached by an elderly man who asked “How are you? Are you lost? How can I help you?” which really impressed and warmed me, as a survivor of the “cultural revolution” where the consciousness of “class struggle” had overwhelmed common sense. I later became used to the courtesy and friendliness of the people after residing in the city, where people normally greet each other on the road during their strolls. One night, as I was pushing my bike on the sidewalk, a young lady shouted to me: “Carry me please” and then jumped onto the back seat of my bicycle. With a gust of strong perfume, she told me that she had just joined a party and for some reason had been left out. While we had a little chat, she got where she wanted and hopped off my bike with “Thanks, Bye!” At that moment, I had a sense as much of pleasant surprise as of “being trusted”.
〔4〕还是在澳洲，我朋友的孩子与他的师傅要去悉尼参加跆拳道比赛，俩人为省路费，便试着在路边伸手搭车。一小伙子停下了，得知是同路，便让他们上来；由他俩轮流开车，自己躺在后座睡觉去了。八个多小时后，到了，车主醒了，于是互相道谢，各奔东西。这事若在中国，简直是6天方夜谭了。
[4] Still in Australia, a son of a friend of mine who, with his master attempting to participate in a Taekwondo contest in Sydney, decided to hitch their way to there in order to save some money, so they went out onto the road to start thumbing. A young man stopped, luckily he was also going to Sydney, and so he let them in and even allowed them to drive while he went to sleep on the back seat. About eight hours later, they arrived and he woke up. Saying thanks to each other, they went their separate ways. Had this story set in China, it would be seen as something rivaling the Arabian Nights.
〔5〕十几年前，我到了台湾的高雄，上机场大巴，司机旁边的收费箱上写着“十八台币”，我摸遍全身没有零钱，这时后面一男士将一大把硬币放了进去，说：“这是给你的。每个人在外都会遇到这种情况。”我和他素不相识啊！上车后，他告诉我：他是一家工厂老板，姓徐，在大陆东莞有投资；听我是大陆口音，故有亲切感7。我们后来一直保持联系，直到我手机丢了，找不到他的号码，甚是遗憾。
[5] A little over ten years ago, I visited Kaohsiung in Taiwan, China. When I entered the airport bus, I saw a ticket box marked “18 TW Yuan” beside the driver. Apart from big notes there was nowhere I could find the right fare from all my pockets then. Suddenly a handful coins was put into the box by a man behind me, “All yours. Everyone may encounter such embarrassment in a new place,” he said. But we were strangers! While we were seated, he told me that he was the boss of a factory, surnamed Xu, and he had also invested heavily in Dongguan in the Chinese mainland. My Beijing accent had appealed to him, and we kept in touch for quite some time until my cellphone was lost, unfortunately.
〔6〕原来以为，市场经济发达的地方，会人情冷漠，因为人们只是追求利益，匆匆忙忙，无暇顾及他人。后来发现错了，二者其实没有必然关系。在香港这样高度商业化的社会，人们也会很热情; 有次问路，一位女士竟然陪我走过了桥之后，又转身回去赶路了。
[6] It was thought that as a market economy develops people tend to be more apathetic since they all rush for profits which leaves little time for caring for others. The facts have proved that is incorrect, for the two are not necessarily related. Hong Kong, for example, is a highly commercialized city, where people can still be very considerate. One day, a lady accompanied me across a bridge to find a route I was looking for, and then went back along her own way.
〔7〕多年的经历，使我似乎悟出8了一个规律：一个地方，在一定文明程度上，当人们的素质（不是种族）越相近（水平越相当），人们越少互相提防，越容易互相信任，因而对陌生人的态度也会越好。这里有两个条件，一是到达一定高度，一是高度的接近性。
[7] Having gone through these years, a regular pattern seems to strike me: wherever a place, when the quality of its citizens (whatever its races) has reached a certain level of civilization rather evenly (at an approximate level), people tend to take less precautions against but more easily trust one another, and a friendlier attitude towards strangers can be expected. For which two key points have to be met: a certain level and certain approximation of their overall quality.
〔8〕德国的美因茨，是个不大的城市，我在那里住的不长，但每天走同样的路，坐类似的车，有着各种形式的友好互动，与到访的地方和人们熟悉了起来，临走时竟然有了一种惜别旧友的感觉。
[8] During my short stay in Mainz, a little city in Germany, I commuted roughly the same route and communed with similar people and places every day, we became acquainted through various friendly interactions. On my day of departure, I somehow felt like I was bidding farewell to an old friend.
〔9〕在国外生活了十余年之后，回到国内，意外地感到“防范意识”最高的地方居然9是中国。老师、家长不断地告诫孩子们不要和陌生人说话、更不能跟陌生人走，而拐卖儿童、欺骗长者、老人摔倒了没人敢扶或摔倒了的老人讹诈搀扶者等，也远非奇闻，而跟陌生人打招呼更难免会被认为是“脑残”了，于是给人总的感觉是“偏冷”。一次，在车站，我向一位学生样的女孩问路，她一头把脸扭了过去，不再理我。想了想，也正常，孩子们也只有这样，似乎才会更安全。
[9] After more than a decade of living overseas, I returned to my hometown and surprisingly found that the most highly alert place, in terms of self-guarded consciousness, is actually nowhere but here, China, where teachers and parents constantly remind children not to talk to and go with strangers, because cases of this kind are hardly news to people anymore: children-trafficking, cheating the elderly or ignoring them when they have fallen down, even extorting kind people and so on. Not to mention greeting strangers – the greeter is definitely to be mocked as a “brain-damaged guy”. One day, when I enquired from a girl student about a place at a bus-station, she decisively turned aside her head, refusing to say a word. Understandably, for it is only in this way that Chinese students can feel safe.
〔10〕当然，任何地方，个别的例外总是有的。譬如，在日本的京都，一次我请一位女士帮我照相，她明确表示拒绝，扭头走了（也许是有什么特殊原因），但我并不觉得那里是个冷漠的地方，因我同时得到了许多其他人的帮助。所以，就多数人而言，还是可以有一种总体的感觉。
[10] Certainly, there are always exceptions in any places. In Japan’s Kyoto, for example, a lady bluntly declined my request to take a photo of me, she just simply ran away (perhaps due to some untold reason). However, it did not disappoint me at all since at the same time I was offered plenty of kind helps from all sorts of people in the city. In a way, you can always get the general feeling of a place by the people you meet on most occasions.
〔11〕我想，一个地方，经济再发达，设施再先进，如果给人（特别是陌生人）的感觉是冷冷冰冰，甚至是防不胜防，恐怕也不能算是文明之地。
[11] In my opinion, no matter how developed and advanced its economy and infrastructure are, if in general a place presents itself with a cold and indifferent face to people, especially to strangers, even keeping them highly alert not to be cheated all the time, can perhaps hardly be classified as a land of civilization.
〔12〕其实，广义而言，每个人，即便生活在自己的家乡，也是生活在陌生人的世界：我们吃陌生人制作的粮食，住陌生人建造的房子，得到陌生人传播的信息，乘坐陌生人驾驶的公交车，接受陌生人的教育，受到陌生警察的保护等等。所以，对待陌生人的态度，恰恰是一个地方人们整体素质的最自然的外在表现。
[12] Generally speaking, for all of us, including those living in their homeland, our wellbeing is in fact dependent on numerous strangers: the food we eat, the building we live in, the news we get, the public transport we use, the education we receive, the protection we acquire from the police and so on – are all provided by people unknown to us, living and dead. In this sense, people’s attitude towards strangers in a place naturally reflects their overall quality.
〔13〕从文化根源上讲，西方发达国家大都信仰基督教，而中国的主流传统文化是儒学。耶稣和孔子的共同点是利他主义者；面临饥荒，他们都会把干粮分给他人，但耶稣会不分亲疏地给，孔子则要讲究名分，这就是区别。儒家的“推己及人10”是有条件的，因而如何处理公共空间11、对待陌生人，是中国传统文化中的一个薄弱环节, 而改革开放后单纯对物质的追求和信仰理想的淡薄，更使得问题严重了。
[13] Tracing back, the cultural roots of Christianity and Confucianism, which underpin the developed countries in the West and the mainstream traditional Chinese culture respectively, may be responsible for the differences as well. Confronted with famines, for example, while Jesus distributed food indiscriminately, Confucius would identify different statuses before handing out provisions. Since the Confucian doctrine of “devolving our own thought to others” is conditional, the theory of traditional Chinese culture concerning public affairs and strangers has thus been poorly established and the pursuit of materialistic goals and the weakening of faith since the “opening-up and reform” have only made the problem worse.
注释：
1. 博士，暨南大学翻译学院特聘教授。
2. 一般译成temperature、hotness、heat等，但这里主要是指人情冷暖，故亦用warmth、warmness等。
3. 字面意思为One to two to the ground，如“一来二往地，他们相爱了”（One to two to the ground, they fell in love），还有in the course of contacts。这里主要讲的是人与人的交往，故用了social intercourse。
4. 通俗的译法，还有be surprised but glad、be both surprised and delighted、have mixed feelings of surprise and joy、“half frightened, half pleased”等。
5. 通常译成ride a bike、cycle、bicycling等，但澳大利亚人的俗语是push bike。
6. 一般可为 simply、just、as it were no less than、nothing short of、nothing less than等，此处用rivaling，是一种更强烈的对比。类似的，如：The Ming Dynasty was in fact not bad, in a sense rivaling any other great countries in the world during that time.（明朝其实还是不错的，简直可以与当时世界上的任何一个国家媲美。）
7. 似乎是intimacy、cordial feeling、affinity、affability等，但此处更多的意思是引起了对方的注意和好感，故用了had appealed to…。
8. 最直白的是come to realize…、have leant that …，此处用了to strike me，语气强烈一些。
9. 一般是unexpectedly、actually、go so far as to、to one’s surprise、have the impudence to 等，为了强调地点（竟然是自己的母国），故用了is actually nowhere but here。
10. 还有许多译法，如consider others in one’s own place、do as one would be done by others、do unto others as you would have them do unto you、extend one’s own feelings to others、judge others as you would like to be judged by them、place oneself in another’s place、treat other people as you would yourself 等。
11. 最直接的似乎是 public space，但这里讲的实际是处理这类的事，故用了public affairs。