【英国流行文化】Manners 礼貌

来源：英国总领事馆文化教育处 2011-03-21 09:00

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Hello and welcome to Trend UK, your shortcut to popular culture from the British Council. In the next few minutes we’re going to be talking about modern manners. It’s an argument that, on the face of it, has been going on between the generations, for hundreds of generations. Older people can often be heard saying the youth of today lack the basics in good behaviour and with newspapers and the media focusing on the anti-social activities of a minority of young people, it’s easy for them to be branded with a negative stereotype. So are British manners really getting worse? Our reporter Mark went to find out.

在接下来的几分钟里，我们将要讨论的是现代礼仪。不同辈之间对于这个问题的争论粗粗看来已历经几百个年代，时常听到老一辈的人说现在的年轻人缺乏最基本的文明礼貌，报纸等媒体也经常关注那些小众青年团体的反社会行为，总是给他们贴上不良典型的标签。难道英国人的举止行为真的越来越糟糕？我们的记者马克会为我们找出答案。

Well I’ve come to a typical UK high-street on a weekday to talk to the young Mums and Dads, business people, elderly people and students that are out doing their shopping. So we should get an interesting mix of views. Let’s go see what people think.

某个工作日，我来到了英国一条著名的大街，和那些正在逛街买东西的年轻父母，商业人士，老年朋友还有一些学生聊一聊。

Excuse me Sir, would you say that manners are getting better or worse in the UK?

不好意思，先生请问您能谈谈英国人的举止文明是否是世风日下呢？

I actually think they’re getting worse. I think that the standards are declining generally. I think they are getting worse but not terribly so. Generally in busses and trains I think that people’s manners have improved in many ways. There are cultural differences, and you might meet someone from a different culture and your set of manners will quite be different to theirs.

我认为确实一日不一日，我觉得我们的道德底线正在不断降低。我说情况越来越糟，但还没到那么糟糕。一般公共汽车上啊、列车上，人们的举止文明在不同程度上都有所改观。当然这儿还有个文化差异的问题，可能你遇到一位来自不同文化环境的人那么你适应的文明礼仪就和他们的大为不同。

Well, is it all a question of individual taste or is there some common ground? With me here is Simon Fanshawe, author of a book called ‘The Done Thing’, all about modern British manners. Simon, What are the basic do’s and don’ts?

那么，这是一个个人品味问题呢还是说还是有那么点共通的地方的？现在站在我旁边的这位是Simon Fanshaw，他写的一本书名为The Done Thing(小编：这本书国内尚未翻译出版，这里暂译《天经地义》吧，各位请赐教），内容是关于现代英国人的举止礼仪。Simon，最基本的行为规范有哪些？

（以下请练习翻译，分享翻译稿请点击图片右方‘贡献翻译稿’。）

I think one of the things that’s confusing for people is when they come here is there appears to be hundreds and hundreds of rules, hundreds of things you should and shouldn’t do. And the truth of it is that most of them are about class. And lots of them are trip-wires actually for people who don’t know them. So what I tried to do in my book was take it back to the first principle and say look – there are anthropological reasons why we have certain kinds of manners. So I’ll give you a very good example, in Britain there are sort of two ways of holding a knife very broadly. And broadly speaking the middle-classes hold it with the index finger on the top, gripped in the hand. And working-class people hold it like a pen. Tiny a class depiction and people mercilessly exploit it if they want to. The truth of it is, the one way not to hold a knife at the table, is clasped in your fist, raised as if to kill your guest. And what does that tell us about eating? Well what that tells us about eating is two things, which is never confuse your guests with either the food or the enemy. Don’t eat them and don’t kill them. That’s about how you should hold your knife, because actually manners are really about the reduction of violence. There’s a lot in there about reducing violence. So that’s just an illustration of what one tries to do so actually when you look at real table manners they’re about people feeling comfortable with each other, sharing food around a table. Very important human thing.

And are things actually getting worse?

Very broadly speaking, we all rub along together pretty well actually, we don’t do so badly. The trouble with bad manners is that when you experience it it completely occupies your field of vision. So you feel completely knocked back and rather hurt by somebody.

Should foreigners, say, comply with British manners when in Britain or just be themselves?

Well I think one issue we should be very gentle with is because we’re not terribly good at understanding that there are lots of different customs from round the world, so you know, be gentle. But I think the thing what I would say to anybody going to any other culture, any other country in the world: Number one – be curious, ask yourself. The other thing is don’t think there’s a right and a wrong way to do things in terms of little funny details. Always remember that fundamentals matter more than anything else. ‘Please’ and ‘Thank You’ is a gift and a grace in any language so treat people in the fundamental purpose of manners which is to make life easier. If I can give you a definition of manners, is it the reduction of actual or potential violence between strangers. So always seek to defuse conflict, always seek to reach out and offer yourself to other people, always seek to open the door and let them through. Always do those kind of things because actually you’ll find people love it and they’ll respond to you.

Simon Fanshaw, it would be very bad manners of me not to say, ‘thank you’ for coming to talk to us.

Our reporter Mark, minding his p’s and q’s there. And that’s it for this time. Please remember that the opinions expressed in Trend UK are those of the individuals concerned, and not necessarily the views of the British Council. Don’t forget, you keep up with contemporary UK by using our local British Council Information Centre. Or by checking our website , that’s hcouncil [all one word] .org. Just follow the links under ‘Contact Us’. And while you’re on the website you can also update your English by checking out the words and phrases in the Trend UK online glossary. And tell us what you think by sending us a comment or voting in the online poll. But for now, from me and all the Trend UK Team, bye bye.