Then, it is over, and I with the teachers, ask as always, how the library is, and if the pupils read. And here, in this privileged school, I hear what I always hear when I go to schools and even universities.
“您知道是怎么一回事。这些男学生当中，有许多人压根儿是一点儿都不读书，图书馆利用率不超过一半。”?
“You know how it is. A lot of the boys have never read at all, and the library is only half used.”
“您知道是怎么一回事。”是的，我们的确知道是怎么一回事。我们大家都知道。?
“You know how it is.” Yes, we indeed do know how it is. All of us.
我们生活在一种支离破碎的文化当中，几十年前我们认为确定无疑的东西，现在遭到了质疑。现在，青年男女上了很多年的学，到头来却对这个世界一无所知，什么都没有读过，只对某一个专业，比如说计算机，有所了解。
We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education, to know nothing about the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers.
发生在我们身上的是一个惊人的发明，计算机、因特网和电视机，一个革命啊。这不是我们人类所经历过的第一次革命。印刷革命，虽然不是在短短几十年就进行了的，其进行的时间要长得多，但是这场革命改变了我们的思想以及思维方式。我们这群盲从者，和过去一样，对这场革命是全盘接受，从来不问一问“有了这种印刷的发明，我们现在会怎么样？”正如我们从来不停下来问一问，我们，我们的思想随着这种新的因特网的到来，会发生什么样的变化。因特网这种东西吸引了整整一代人对它如醉如痴，连相当理性的人都会承认，一旦上了网，就很难下来，他们就会发现，上博客啊（博格原文是blug，疑为blog的变体，故暂译为博格）什么的，就这么一整天就过去了。?
What has happened to us is an amazing invention, computers and the internet and TV, a revolution. This is not the first revolution we, the human race, has dealt with. The printing revolution, which did not take place in a matter of a few decades, but took much longer, changed our minds and ways of thinking. A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked “What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print?” And just as we never once stopped to ask, How are we, our minds, going to change with the new internet, which has seduced a whole generation into its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging and blugging etc.
就在不久前，任何一个人，哪怕是有一点点文化的人，都敬重学问，敬重教育，对我们那巨大的文学宝库心怀敬意。当然了，我们大家都知道，我们处在那个快乐的状态之中时，人们会装作看书，装作敬重学问，然而有据可查的是，劳动人民向往书籍，劳动人民的图书馆、书院以及18、19世纪的学院都可以证明这一点。?
Very recently, anyone even mildly educated would respect learning, education, and owe respect to our great store of literature. Of course we all know that when this happy state was with us, people would pretend to read, would pretend respect for learning, but it is on record that working men and women longed for books, and this is evidenced by the working men’s libraries, institutes, colleges of the 18th and 19th centuries.
阅读、书籍曾经是普通教育的一部分。老一辈的人和年轻人谈话时，必须明白教育要读多少书，因为年轻人知道的要少得多。如果孩子们不会读书，那是因为他们还没有读过书。?
Reading, books, used to be part of a general education. Older people, talking to young ones, must understand just how much of an education it was, reading, because the young ones know so much less. And if children cannot read, it is because they have not read.
然而我们都知道这一悲哀的故事。
But we all know this sad story.
然而我们却不知道这个故事的结局。?
But we do not know the end of it.
我们想到了那句古老的格言，“读书使人充实”——就不要提那些个和吃多了有关系的笑话了——读书可以使人充分掌握信息，了解历史，学到各种各样的知识。?
We think of the old adage, “Reading maketh a full man”—and forgetting about jokes to do with over-eating—reading makes a woman and a man full of information, of history, of all kinds of knowledge.
然而我们不是世界上仅有的人啊。不久前，有一个朋友给我打电话，她说，她去了一趟津巴布韦，在一个村子里，他们三天都没有吃饭了，但是他们在谈论书籍，在谈论怎么样才能搞到书籍，在谈论教育。?
But we are not the only people in the world. Not long ago I was telephoned by a friend who said she had been in Zimbabwe, in a village where they had not eaten for three days, but they were talking about books and how to get them, about education.
我参加了一个小小的组织，当初建立这个组织的初衷就是把书籍运到这些村子里。还有一班人马，通过另一条线路，走访了津巴布韦的乡村地区。他们报告说，这些村庄可不像人们报告的那样，村里到处是聪明的人，有退休的教师，有在度假的教师，有放了假的孩子们，还有老人。我自己出资做了个小小的调查，了解人们想读什么书，发现结果和一个瑞典人的调查结果一样。这个瑞典人的调查我了解得不多。欧洲人想读什么书，那些人就想读什么，如果他们还读一点儿书的话——就读各种小说，科幻小说、诗歌、侦探小说、戏剧、莎士比亚，而像如何开立银行账户之类的实用性书籍，在这个书单上则排名比较靠后。莎士比亚所有的作品，他们都知道名字。为村民们找书的一个问题是，他们不知道哪些书能弄得到，所以一本学校指定的书像《卡斯特桥市长》（注：英国著名小说家托马斯·哈代的长篇小说）就很受欢迎，因为他们知道那里有这本书。《动物农场》（注：英国著名小说家乔治·奥威尔的长篇小说）在所有的小说里最受追捧，其原因也是不言自明的。?
I belong to a little organisation which started out with the intention of getting books into the villages. There was a group of people who in another connection had travelled Zimbabwe at its grass roots. They reported that the villages, unlike what people reported, are full of intelligent people, teachers retired, teachers on leave, children on holidays, old people. I myself paid for a little survey, of what people wanted to read, and found the results were the same as a Swedish survey, that I had not known about. People wanted to read what people in Europe want to read, if they read at all—novels of all kinds, science fiction, poetry, detective fiction, plays, Shakespeare, and the do-it-yourself books, like how to open a bank account, were low in the list. All of Shakespeare: they knew the name. A problem with finding books for villagers is that they don’t know what is available, so a school set book, like the Mayor of Casterbridge, becomes popular because they know it is there. Animal Farm, for obvious reasons is the most popular of all novels.
我们那个小小的组织从我们能搞到书的地方弄到了书，可是要记住，一本从英国寄来的平装本的书可是要花上几个月工资的哟：这还是穆加贝（穆加贝罗伯特·加布里埃尔）的恐怖统治之前的情况。现在有通货膨胀，一本书要花上几年的工资呢。然而带了一箱子的书到一个村子里去——要记住汽油可是短缺得厉害着呢，人们满含热泪迎接那箱子书。图书馆可能就是在一棵树下面的砖摞上架一块木板。一个星期之内就会开一个扫盲班——识字的教那些不识字的，叫公民班——在一个偏远的村庄，由于没有用汤加文写的长篇小说，有几个小伙子就坐下来用汤加文写起小说来。津巴布韦大约有六种主要的语言，这六种语言的小说都有，有暴力，有血亲相奸的乱伦，充满了犯罪和谋杀。?
Our little organisation got books from where we could, but remember that a good paperback from England cost a months wages: that was before Mugabe’s reign of terror. Now with inflation, it would cost several years wages. But having taken a box of books out to a village—and remember there is a terrible shortage of petrol, the box will be greeted with tears. The library may be a plank under a tree on bricks. And within a week there will be literacy classes—people who can read teaching those who can’t, citizenship class—and in one remote village, since there were no novels in Tonga, a couple of lads sat down to write novels in Tonga. There are six or so main languages in Zimbabwe and there are novels in all of them, violent, incestuous, full of crime and murder.
