Okay. Now this is the major change that I've seen -- how teaching English has morphed from being a mutually beneficial practice to becoming a massive international business that it is today. No longer just a foreign language on the school curriculum. And no longer the sole domain of mother England. It has become a bandwagon for every English-speaking nation on earth. And why not? After all, the best education -- according to the latest World University Rankings -- is to be found in the universities of the U.K. and the U.S. So everybody wants to have an English education, naturally. But if you're not a native speaker, you have to pass a test.

  言归正传,我见过最大的改变,就是英语教学的蜕变如何从一个互惠互利的行为变成今天这种大规模的国际产业。英语不再是学校课程里的外语学科,也不再只是英国的专利。英语(教学)已经成为所有英语系国家追逐的潮流。何乐而不为呢?毕竟,最好的教育来自于最好的大学,而根据最新的世界大学排名,那些名列前茅的都是英国和美国的大学。所以自然每个人都想接受英语教育,但如果你不是以英文为母语,你就要通过考试。

  Now can it be right to reject a student on linguistic ability alone? Perhaps you have a computer scientist who's a genius. Would he need the same language as a lawyer, for example? Well, I don't think so. We English teachers reject them all the time. We put a stop sign, and we stop them in their tracks. They can't pursue their dream any longer, till they get English. Now let me put it this way, if I met a monolingual Dutch speaker who had the cure for cancer, would I stop him from entering my British University? I don't think so. But indeed, that is exactly what we do. We English teachers are the gatekeepers. And you have to satisfy us first that your English is good enough. Now it can be dangerous to give too much power to a narrow segment of society. Maybe the barrier would be too universal.

  但仅凭语言能力就拒绝学生这样对吗?譬如如果你碰到一位天才计算机科学家,但他会需要有和律师一样的语言能力吗?我不这么认为。但身为英语老师的我们,却总是拒绝他们。我们处处设限,将学生挡在路上,使他们无法再追求自己的梦想,直到他们通过考试。现在容我换一个方式说,如果我遇到了一位只会说荷兰话的人,而这个人能治愈癌症,我会阻止他进入我的英国大学吗?我想不会。但事实上,我们的确在做这种事。我们这些英语老师就是把关的。你必须先让我们满意,使我们认定你的英文够好。但这可能是危险的。把太多的权力交由这么小的一群人把持,也许会令这种障碍太过普及。

  Okay. "But," I hear you say, "what about the research? It's all in English." So the books are in English, the journals are done in English, but that is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It feeds the English requirement. And so it goes on. I ask you, what happened to translation? If you think about the Islamic Golden Age, there was lots of translation then. They translated from Latin and Greek into Arabic, into Persian, and then it was translated on into the Germanic languages of Europe and the Romance languages. And so light shone upon the Dark Ages of Europe. Now don't get me wrong; I am not against teaching English, all you English teachers out there. I love it that we have a global language. We need one today more than ever. But I am against using it as a barrier. Do we really want to end up with 600 languages and the main one being English, or Chinese? We need more than that. Where do we draw the line? This system equates intelligence with a knowledge of English which is quite arbitrary.

  于是,我听到你们问"但是研究呢?研究报告都要用英文。”的确,研究论著和期刊都要用英文发表,但这只是一种理所当然的现象。有英语要求,自然就有英语供给,然后就这么循环下去。我倒想问问大家,为什么不用翻译呢?想想伊斯兰的黄金时代,当时翻译盛行,人们把拉丁文和希腊文翻译成阿拉伯文或波斯文,然后再由拉伯文或波斯文翻译为欧洲的日耳曼语言以及罗曼语言。于是文明照亮了欧洲的黑暗时代。但不要误会我的意思,我不是反对英语教学或是在座所有的英语老师。我很高兴我们有一个全球性的语言,这在今日尤为重要。但我反对用英语设立障碍。难道我们真希望世界上只剩下600种语言,其中又以英文或中文为主流吗?我们需要的不只如此。那么我们该如何拿捏呢?这个体制把智能和英语能力画上等号这是相当武断的。

  And I want to remind you that the giants upon whose shoulders today's intelligentsiastand did not have to have English, they didn't have to pass an English test. Case in point, Einstein. He, by the way, was considered remedial at school because he was, in fact, dyslexic. But fortunately for the world, he did not have to pass an English test. Because they didn't start until 1964 with TOEFL, the American test of English. Now it's exploded. There are lots and lots of tests of English. And millions and millions of students take these tests every year. Now you might think, you and me, those fees aren't bad, they're okay, but they are prohibitive to so many millions of poor people. So immediately, we're rejecting them.