Pico Iyer在Ted英语演讲：Where is Home?家在何方?(中英双语)
Pico Iyer在Ted英语演讲：Where is Home?家在何方?(中英双语)
Where do you come from? It's such a simple question, but these days, of course, simple questions bring ever more complicated answers.
你从哪里来？ 这是一个很简单的问题， 但是现今，简单的问题 会带来相对复杂的答案。
People are always asking me where I come from, and they're expecting me to say India, and they're absolutely right insofar as 100 percent of my blood and ancestry does come from India. Except, I've never lived one day of my life there. I can't speak even one word of its more than 22,000 dialects. So I don't think I've really earned the right to call myself an Indian.
人们总是问我，我从哪里来， 并且期待我说出“印度”二字， 他们的期待是完全正确的， 因为我有百分百的印度血统，我的祖先也确实来自印度。 只不过，我从来没有在印度生活过。 在超过22，000种印度方言中 我甚至一个字都不会讲。 所以我不认为 我有资格称得上是印度人。
And if "Where do you come from?" means "Where were you born and raised and educated?" then I'm entirely of that funny little country known as England, except I left England as soon as I completed my undergraduate education, and all the time I was growing up, I was the only kid in all my classes who didn't begin to look like the classic English heroes represented in our textbooks. And if "Where do you come from?" means "Where do you pay your taxes?
如果“你从哪里来？” 与“你在哪里出生，成长，受教育”意思等同， 那么我是彻头彻尾的一个 可爱的小国家的人， 它叫英国， 只不过在我完成了大学的学业后 我离开了英国， 在我成长期间， 我是班上唯一一个孩子 不去模仿在我们的教科书上所展现的 经典的英国英雄。 如果“你来自哪里？” 与“你在哪里缴税？
Where do you see your doctor and your dentist?" then I'm very much of the United States, and I have been for 48 years now, since I was a really small child. Except, for many of those years, I've had to carry around this funny little pink card with green lines running through my face identifying me as a permanent alien. I do actually feel more alien the longer I live there.
你去哪里找牙医，去哪里就诊？”意思相同， 那么我是地地道道的美国人， 从我孩童时代到现在， 我在这儿生活了48个年头了。 只不过其中几年， 我需要携带这张有趣的小粉红卡， 照片上的我脸上有一条条绿色线条 证明我是一名有永久居住权的 外籍居民。 在这儿生活得越久 我就感觉自己是一名外星人。
And if "Where do you come from?" means "Which place goes deepest inside you and where do you try to spend most of your time?" then I'm Japanese, because I've been living as much as I can for the last 25 years in Japan. Except, all of those years I've been there on a tourist visa, and I'm fairly sure not many Japanese would want to consider me one of them.
假如“你从哪里来？” 与“你对哪个地方印象最深， 你最想在哪里长久地待下去？”意思相同， 那么我就成了日本人， 因为过去25年， 我尽可能地居住在日本。 只不过那些年我凭借着旅游签证入境的， 而且我也肯定没有多少日本人 愿意接纳我为他们的一员。
And I say all this just to stress how very old-fashioned and straightforward my background is, because when I go to Hong Kong or Sydney or Vancouver, most of the kids I meet are much more international and multi-cultured than I am. And they have one home associated with their parents, but another associated with their partners, a third connected maybe with the place where they happen to be, a fourth connected with the place they dream of being, and many more besides.
我说这些只是强调 我的人生背景有多么的 老派和真率， 因为当我去香港，悉尼或是温哥华， 大多数我遇见的孩子 比我更国际化，也比我更富有多元文化。 他们有一个和父母共同生活的家园， 另有一个和伙伴共同玩耍的乐园， 第三个家是也许是他们碰巧待的地方， 第四个是他们的梦想乐土， 或许还有更多。
And their whole life will be spent taking pieces of many different places and putting them together into a stained glass whole. Home for them is really a work in progress. It's like a project on which they're constantly adding upgrades and improvements and corrections.
他们的全部生活将会是 收集不同地方的生活小碎片并 把它们拼成一整块彩色玻璃。 对他们来说，家是一项进行着的工作。 那就像一项工程， 他们不断地将它更新，完善，修正。
And for more and more of us, home has really less to do with a piece of soil than, you could say, with a piece of soul. If somebody suddenly asks me, "Where's your home?" I think about my sweetheart or my closest friends or the songs that travel with me wherever I happen to be.
对大多数人来说， 用情感铸成的家 远比用泥土铸成的家吸引人。 如果有人突然问我，“你家在哪里？” 我会想到我的心肝宝贝或是我的死党 或是那首陪伴我四处旅行的歌曲。
And I'd always felt this way, but it really came home to me, as it were, some years ago when I was climbing up the stairs in my parents' house in California, and I looked through the living room windows and I saw that we were encircled by 70-foot flames, one of those wildfires that regularly tear through the hills of California and many other such places.
我一直有这种感觉， 但那是我对家真正的感受。 数年前，我在加州的父母家 爬楼梯时 通过客厅的窗户远眺， 我看到我们被70英尺高的火焰包围， 加州的野火就会像 这样窜上一个山丘或其他地方。 3个小时后，那场大火 把我们的家和家里的一切 燃烧成了灰烬。只有我幸免于难。
And three hours later, that fire had reduced my home and every last thing in it except for me to ash. And when I woke up the next morning, I was sleeping on a friend's floor, the only thing I had in the world was a toothbrush I had just bought from an all-night supermarket. Of course, if anybody asked me then, "Where is your home?" I literally couldn't point to any physical construction. My home would have to be whatever I carried around inside me.
第二天早晨，当我醒过来时， 我躺在朋友家的地板上， 我唯一拥有的只有一把牙刷了， 那还是我刚刚从24小时营业的超市买来的。 当然，如果当时有任何人问我， “你的家在哪里？” 我根本无法指向任何建筑物。 我的家只能存在于我的心里了。
And in so many ways, I think this is a terrific liberation. Because when my grandparents were born, they pretty much had their sense of home, their sense of community, even their sense of enmity, assigned to them at birth, and didn't have much chance of stepping outside of that.
在许多方面来说，我认为那是一次极好的解放。 因为当我的祖父母出生时， 他们就有家的归属感， 他们就有社区的归属感， 就有阵营的归属感，开始憎恶敌人， 这些都随着他们的出生而决定， 并且没有太多机会跨出这个生活圈。
And nowadays, at least some of us can choose our sense of home, create our sense of community, fashion our sense of self, and in so doing maybe step a little beyond some of the black and white divisions of our grandparents' age. No coincidence that the president of the strongest nation on Earth is half-Kenyan, partly raised in Indonesia, has a Chinese-Canadian brother-in-law.
而现今，至少一部分人可以选择 自己对家庭的归属感， 创建对社区的归属感， 塑造自我形象， 这样做了之后 我们不再像祖辈们那样 有鲜明的黑白对立了。 世界上最强大国家的总统 有一半的肯尼亚血统也不再是巧合了， 曾在印度尼西亚成长过， 有一个加拿大籍的华裔妹夫。
The number of people living in countries not their own now comes to 220 million, and that's an almost unimaginable number, but it means that if you took the whole population of Canada and the whole population of Australia and then the whole population of Australia again and the whole population of Canada again and doubled that number, you would still have fewer people than belong to this great floating tribe. And the number of us who live outside the old nation-state categories is increasing so quickly, by 64 million just in the last 12 years, that soon there will be more of us than there are Americans.
现在有近2亿2千万的人 居住在这儿而不是他们的故乡， 那是一个难以想象的数字， 那意味着，如果把加拿大的总人口和 澳大利亚的总人口相加， 并再次加上澳大利亚的人口 和加拿大的人口， 然后再把它乘以二得到的数字， 仍然比“流动部落”的 人数要少。 那些没有生活在自己的祖国的 居民人数正在飞速增长， 最近二十年时间了增长了6千4百万， 不久像我们这样的居民人数 就要超过美国本土居民。 我们已经开始代表着世界上第五大国家。
Already, we represent the fifth-largest nation on Earth. And in fact, in Canada's largest city, Toronto, the average resident today is what used to be called a foreigner, somebody born in a very different country.
事实上，在加拿大最大的城市 多伦多， 大多数的居民在过去 被视为外国人。
And I've always felt that the beauty of being surrounded by the foreign is that it slaps you awake. You can't take anything for granted. Travel, for me, is a little bit like being in love, because suddenly all your senses are at the setting marked "on." Suddenly you're alert to the secret patterns of the world. The real voyage of discovery, as Marcel Proust famously said, consists not in seeing new sights, but in looking with new eyes. And of course, once you have new eyes, even the old sights, even your home become something different.
而且我一直认为生活在外国人中的美妙之处 是他们会把沉睡中的你拍醒。 你不能把所以事情当成理所当然。 对于我来说，旅行和恋爱有一丝相像， 因为你所有的感官都会处于“开”的状态。 突然间你开始留意世界的神秘之处。 “真正的发现之旅，”正如马塞尔·普鲁斯特的名言， （注：鸿篇巨著《追忆似水年华》作者） “不在于观赏新的风景， 而在于欣赏风景的眼光。” 当然，一旦你有全新的眼光， 即使是过往风景，即使是你的家园 也会变得独一无二。
Many of the people living in countries not their own are refugees who never wanted to leave home and ache to go back home.
许多在异国他乡生活的人们是难民， 他们从未想离开家园， 一直渴望回到故乡。
But for the fortunate among us, I think the age of movement brings exhilarating new possibilities. Certainly when I'm traveling, especially to the major cities of the world, the typical person I meet today will be, let's say, a half-Korean, half-German young woman living in Paris.
但是，对我们之中的幸运儿来说， 漂泊的年代带来了 令人振奋的新的可能。 毫无疑问，当我在 世界上各大城市间穿梭时， 我遇见的典型的人 可能是，生活在巴黎的 韩德混血的年轻女孩。
And as soon as she meets a half-Thai, half-Canadian young guy from Edinburgh, she recognizes him as kin. She realizes that she probably has much more in common with him than with anybody entirely of Korea or entirely of Germany. So they become friends. They fall in love.
一旦她遇见了 来自爱丁堡的泰加混血的年轻男孩， 她就会把他视为同类。 她意识到和韩国人和德国人相比， 他们俩有更多的相似之处。 因此他们成为朋友，接着他们坠入爱河。
They move to New York City. (Laughter) Or Edinburgh. And the little girl who arises out of their union will of course be not Korean or German or French or Thai or Scotch or Canadian or even American, but a wonderful and constantly evolving mix of all those places.
一旦她遇见了 来自爱丁堡的泰加混血的年轻男孩， 她就会把他视为同类。 她意识到和韩国人和德国人相比， 他们俩有更多的相似之处。 因此他们成为朋友，接着他们坠入爱河。
And potentially, everything about the way that young woman dreams about the world, writes about the world, thinks about the world, could be something different, because it comes out of this almost unprecedented blend of cultures. Where you come from now is much less important than where you're going.
这位美丽的女孩 梦想世界的方式， 书写世界的方式，思考世界的方式， 都可能会为世界带来些许改变， 因为这些思想来自 前所未有的文化大融合。 当今“你要去哪里” 远远比“你来自哪里”重要。
More and more of us are rooted in the future or the present tense as much as in the past. And home, we know, is not just the place where you happen to be born. It's the place where you become yourself.
相较于守护过去， 我们越来越扎根于未来或当下。 而且家已经不仅仅是 你出生的地方了。 家是你找到自我的地方。
And yet, there is one great problem with movement, and that is that it's really hard to get your bearings when you're in midair. Some years ago, I noticed that I had accumulated one million miles on United Airlines alone. You all know that crazy system, six days in hell, you get the seventh day free.
然而， 一个巨大的问题伴随着人口迁徙而来， 那就是当你居无定所时， 你很难找到自己的方向。 几年前，我意识到我在联合航空公司 已经积累了1百万英里的里程了。 你也知道那个疯狂的体制， 六天生活在地狱，才得到第七天的惬意。
And I began to think that really, movement was only as good as the sense of stillness that you could bring to it to put it into perspective.
我开始思考 当“动”和“静”被放在一起观察时， 它们二者才是同样美好的。
And eight months after my house burned down, I ran into a friend who taught at a local high school, and he said, "I've got the perfect place for you."
在我家被烧毁的八个月后， 我遇见了一位在当地高中教书的朋友， 他对我说，“我找了一个适合你的绝佳场所。”
"Really?" I said. I'm always a bit skeptical when people say things like that.
“真的吗？”我问道。当人们这样说时， 我总会有一丝怀疑。
"No, honestly," he went on, "it's only three hours away by car, and it's not very expensive, and it's probably not like anywhere you've stayed before."
“坦诚地讲，并非这样。”他继续说， “到那里坐车只要3小时， 而且价钱也不高, 那里与你居住过的地方很可能都不同。”
"Hmm." I was beginning to get slightly intrigued. "What is it?"
“嗯。”我开始有一点被吸引了，“在哪里？”
"Well —" Here my friend hemmed and hawed — "Well, actually it's a Catholic hermitage."
”嗯--“我朋友欲言又止， ”事实上那是一座天主教堂。“
This was the wrong answer. I had spent 15 years in Anglican schools, so I had had enough hymnals and crosses to last me a lifetime. Several lifetimes, actually. But my friend assured me that he wasn't Catholic, nor were most of his students, but he took his classes there every spring. And as he had it, even the most restless, distractible, testosterone-addled 15-year-old Californian boy only had to spend three days in silence and something in him cooled down and cleared out. He found himself.
那不是一个适合我的好去处。 过去我在英国教会学校待了15年， 所以我唱了足够多的赞美诗，划了足够多的十字， 足以祝福我一生了。 其实是好几辈子。 但是我朋友向我保证他不是一名天主教徒， 他教的大部分学生也不是， 但每年春季他都会带学生去那儿。 正如他所说，即使是最好动的，最容易分心， 荷尔蒙失调的15岁加州男孩， 只要在那里花三天时间静一静， 就能得到内在的平和与净化。 他找到了自我。
And I thought, "Anything that works for a 15-year-old boy ought to work for me." So I got in my car, and I drove three hours north along the coast, and the roads grew emptier and narrower, and then I turned onto an even narrower path, barely paved, that snaked for two miles up to the top of a mountain. And when I got out of my car, the air was pulsing. The whole place was absolutely silent, but the silence wasn't an absence of noise.
我思忖着，”对15岁男孩管用的东西 也应该对我管用。” 因此我跳进汽车， 沿着海岸线行驶了三个小时， 道路变得越来越狭窄和空旷， 之后我转进了一条更窄的小道， 仅仅有路的形状，在那里蜿蜒行驶了两英里 直到山顶。 我下车后， 空气像脉动般流淌。 整个环境是绝对的清净， 但是寂静不是鸦雀无声。
It was really a presence of a kind of energy or quickening. And at my feet was the great, still blue plate of the Pacific Ocean.
那真是活力和朝气的象征。 我脚下是浩瀚静谧的 太平洋。 我周围是800英亩的大荒野。
All around me were 800 acres of wild dry brush. And I went down to the room in which I was to be sleeping. Small but eminently comfortable, it had a bed and a rocking chair and a long desk and even longer picture windows looking out on a small, private, walled garden, and then 1,200 feet of golden pampas grass running down to the sea. And I sat down, and I began to write, and write, and write, even though I'd gone there really to get away from my desk.
我往下走到住宿处。 那里狭小却格外舒适， 有一张床，一张摇椅 还有一张长书桌和一个更长的落地窗 面对这一个私人的小花园 和1200英尺的潘帕斯草原 直冲向大海。 我坐了下来，开始写东西， 写啊写啊， 即使我来这儿的本意是远离我的书桌。
And by the time I got up, four hours had passed. Night had fallen, and I went out under this great overturned saltshaker of stars, and I could see the tail lights of cars disappearing around the headlands 12 miles to the south. And it really seemed like my concerns of the previous day vanishing.
当我搁笔时，已经过去了4个小时。 黑夜降临， 我走进漫天繁星的夜空之下， 看着汽车的尾灯 消失在12英里外的南边海角中。 我前一天的担忧 似乎消失无踪。
And the next day, when I woke up in the absence of telephones and TVs and laptops, the days seemed to stretch for a thousand hours. It was really all the freedom I know when I'm traveling, but it also profoundly felt like coming home.
第二天，我在没有 电话，电视和电脑的世界中醒来， 每天的时光似乎延长到了1000个小时。 这是我在旅行时体验到的真正的自由， 但那也使我深深地感觉到我回家了。
And I'm not a religious person, so I didn't go to the services. I didn't consult the monks for guidance. I just took walks along the monastery road and sent postcards to loved ones. I looked at the clouds, and I did what is hardest of all for me to do usually, which is nothing at all.
我没有宗教信仰， 所以我没有举行宗教仪式， 我向僧侣们寻求指引。 我仅仅是沿着寺院的道路走着 向我的挚爱寄去明信片。 我仰望白云， 我做了对我来说最困难时的事情， 那就是什么也不做。
And I started to go back to this place, and I noticed that I was doing my most important work there invisibly just by sitting still, and certainly coming to my most critical decisions the way I never could when I was racing from the last email to the next appointment.
我开始往回走， 我意识到我在这里做着最重要的工作—— 静静地坐着， 面对我最重要的抉择 用一种 我在电邮和下一个预约之间 奔走着的生活 中所体验不到的方式。
And I began to think that something in me had really been crying out for stillness, but of course I couldn't hear it because I was running around so much. I was like some crazy guy who puts on a blindfold and then complains that he can't see a thing. And I thought back to that wonderful phrase I had learned as a boy from Seneca, in which he says, "That man is poor not who has little but who hankers after more."
我感觉到我身体内有东西 一直渴望着这份平静， 但我不可能听见它的呼喊， 因为平时我四处奔波。 我就像那些眼上蒙着布条 却一直抱怨自己看不见的疯狂人一样。 我想到了那句从一位塞内卡男孩 男孩那里学到的话， 他说，”那些明明拥有很多却贪婪的人 比拥有很少的人更加贫穷。”
And, of course, I'm not suggesting that anybody here go into a monastery. That's not the point. But I do think it's only by stopping movement that you can see where to go. And it's only by stepping out of your life and the world that you can see what you most deeply care about and find a home. And I've noticed so many people now take conscious measures to sit quietly for 30 minutes every morning just collecting themselves in one corner of the room without their devices, or go running every evening, or leave their cell phones behind when they go to have a long conversation with a friend.
当然，我不是建议 在座的各位都去那座寺院。 那不是重点。 但是我始终认为只有停下脚步 我们才能看见未来的路途。 只有暂时跨出你的生活圈 和你在意的大千世界， 才能找到一个家。 我看到现在很多人 有意识地每天早上静坐30分钟 为了在房间的某个角落，远离设备， 找到自我， 或是每天晚上跑步， 或和朋友促膝长谈时 远离手机。
Movement is a fantastic privilege, and it allows us to do so much that our grandparents could never have dreamed of doing. But movement, ultimately, only has a meaning if you have a home to go back to. And home, in the end, is of course not just the place where you sleep. It's the place where you stand.
移动是一种珍贵的荣耀， 它使我们得以做一些 祖辈们从没想过的事情。 但是最终，移动 只有在有家可归时才有意义。 家，说到底， 不仅仅是你居住的地方。 而是你立足的地方。
Thank you.
谢谢大家
本文地址：http://www.dioenglish.com/writing/speech/14745.html
