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主题：【讨论】未来的中国 -- 转兼翻译一篇文 -- 颜子
今天在theglobalist.com看见一篇文章，希望和大家分享。
关于作者：
He is also currently president of the Middle East Policy Council, co-chair of the U.S. China Policy Foundation, vice-chair of the Atlantic Council, a trustee of the Institute for Defense Analyses — and a director of the Pacific Pension Institute.
Mr. Freeman has been published in The New York Times and wrote two books titled "Arts of Power: Statecraft and Diplomacy" and "The Diplomat's Dictionary." He attended the National Autonomous University of Mexico, received his A.B. from Yale University and a J.D. from the Harvard Law School.
He speaks fluent Chinese, French, Spanish and conversational Arabic. Mr. Freeman is the recipient of two Distinguished Public Service Awards, three Presidential Meritorious Service Awards and a Distinguished Honor Award.
简单来说就是曾经服务于美国政府的公务员（美国前驻沙特阿拉伯大使、前国防部负责国际安全事务的部长助理），会说中文(nixon拜访老毛时的主要翻译)。
文章写于2007年5月21日，有四段，我会根据theglobalist的分章来转载并翻译这篇文章。
第二段
第三段
第四段
此公能听懂湘潭话？
只有有了愿景，才会不感到恐慌，这个道理是对的，心态是健康的、自信的。
But they are also mindful that no one has ever before tried to govern a republic of 1.3 billion people in a territorial expanse the size of a continent. And they are humbled by the task of transforming so many ambitious individuals and obstreperous regions into a harmonious but innovative whole. What are the implications of China's success or failure at this task?
引言：
经历了几个失意的世纪，中国终于重返世界舞台的中央。忙于复兴的中国，其领导人对未来显出坚定的信心。但是他们同样清楚地知道：从来没有人曾经尝试治理一个拥有13亿人口，地域可比一个大洲的共和国。他们虚心的接受了这一庞大的任务：如何将众多充满雄心壮志的人民，以及暗潮涌动的各个地区，融合成一个和谐而充满创意的个体。而中国在这个任务的成功和失败，到底意味着什么？
The United States came into being as the age of Atlantic dominance and the Industrial Revolution began to eclipse China and India. Americans therefore have no experience with the more normal condition of human history, in which Asia was for millennia the global center of gravity.
One way or another, in the 21st century, China and its neighbors will determine what the resumption of Asian leadership in more and more fields of human endeavor means for an emerging post-industrial world, including for Americans.
Despite the challenges of doing so, we have ample reason to try to understand China and other Asian countries as they are, not as our politicians and pundits prefer to depict them.
中国的重要：
美国成型时，恰逢大西洋文明以及工业革命的光芒开始掩盖中国和印度。美国人因而对亚洲千年以来一直是世界中心这一人类历史的常态毫无概念。而在21世纪，无论通过怎么样的方式，中国以及其邻居将决定亚洲重新领导各项人类活动对后工业化的世界，包括美国，意味着什么。因此，无论面临怎么样的障碍，我们有充分的理由去尝试了解中国以及其他亚洲国家的本来面目，而不是止于我们（美国）的政治家以及评论家向我们描述的样子。
At the birth of the United States of America, what some then called "the Celestial Kingdom" loomed large in our imagination. At that time, China was well over a third — nearly two-fifths — of the world economy.
America's forefathers were soon enough obsessed with breaking past their former British rulers into a direct relationship with the Chinese economy.
从不列颠到中国：
美联邦诞生之初，我们就对当时某些人称为“天国”的国度充满幻想。当时，中国占据了超过三分之一，将近五分之二的世界经济总量。美国的开国先贤们很快的便执著于摆脱他们的前英国主子，而直接与中国经济体衔接。
They knew little of China itself, but they had inhaled the European idealization of it as the most ethically advanced and orderly, as well as the most populous, realm on the planet.
As they designed the U.S. system of government, the brilliant political engineers who were America's founding fathers drew on Leibniz' and Voltaire's musings on the secrets of the good society China exemplified to its Jesuit admirers.
And they took note of Montesquieu's condemnation of China's reliance on civility and the rule of manners rather than the rule of law to assure public tranquility. Of course, none of them really knew what they were talking about.
旧世界的遗训：
他们对中国知之甚少，但是他们继承了欧洲人理想化中的中国：在这个地球上教化最完整，人口最众多的国度。当这些身为美国建国者的出色政治工程师在设计美联邦政府时，他们从莱布尼兹和伏尔泰对传教士们口中的中国完美社会的遐想及探讨中获得灵感。同时他们也借鉴了孟德斯鸠对中国注重礼治而忽略法治的批判。当然，他们当中并无一人对自己讨论的东西有任何概念。
译者注：
1。关于中国对欧洲启蒙时代(The Enlightenment)的影响，可阅：
The Idea of China in Modern Political thought: Leibniz and Montesquieu
The European China: From Leibniz to Kant
2。孟德斯鸠对中国的法治历史理解的缺乏有一定的历史客观因素。当时作为中欧桥梁的传教士比较注重中国在“宗教”上的文化，所以传入欧洲的第一本中国文学是《论语》而不是《唐六典》。如果当时当时欧洲的法治派有机会接触中国完整的法律系统，相信今日的法律教程也有所改变吧？
3。莱布尼兹是德国人，而伏尔泰是法国人。
China has now once again captured the American imagination. And, as always, it is a place where ignorance remains no impediment to confident prediction. So it is not surprising that politically expedient assertions about China have become as American as fortune cookies, and as sententiously meretricious as the prophecies and advice these encase.
Almost every ideological faction and interest group in our country now asserts its own vision of the People's Republic. Some do so out of fascination, others out of dread. Many seek to use China to prove their point in our political process or to raise money for the cause to which they are committed.
新一轮的遐思：
现在中国重新回到美国人的遐想之中。而一如既往，对中国的无知并不能阻止人们做出自信的预测。因此，对中国做出政治方便的论断，便如同幸运饼干一般的美国。而这些论断便和饼干里所包藏的预言一般的俗不可耐。[见注]
现在我们国家几乎所有的思想派系都对(中国)人民共和国做出判定。有些出于中国让他们眼前一亮，而有些则出于对中国的恐惧。很多团体利用中国来在我们的政治体系中表明自己的立场，甚或为自己团体的活动筹款。
注：
这个作者的英文确实很漂亮。sententiously是从sentence演化出来的，本身具有“判决”和“句子”的双重意思。在这里形容fortune cookies字条上的预言其实是一种具有普遍性的判断性句子。meretricious是低俗的吸引力。这两个词的运用深得英语的精髓。
Sometimes, for example, in the matters of Taiwan, Tibet or the democracy movement in Hong Kong, Americans are enlisted by lobbyists acting on behalf of separatist or dissident movements in greater China. Those who wish the United States to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy can always find one worthy of our attention there. China has become a screen on which Americans can project both our reveries and our nightmares. Some points of discord can't be helped. The fact that the majority of Chinese are agnostics has always been an affront to American Protestant evangelists. Chinese, for their part, have bad memories of gunboats escorting foreign missionaries up their great rivers and of tens of millions of deaths from rebellions instigated by cult religions like the Taiping version of Christianity.
Some Americans will always stand with his Holiness, the Dalai Lama, against Chinese sovereignty in Tibet. Meanwhile, Chinese proponents of Tibetan independence are rarer than British advocates of discarding Wales. China's family planning practices are anathema to the abortion-obsessed religious right in the United States.
The Chinese, for their part, explain that if the United States had their ratio of arable land to population, as many as three billion people would live in the United States — and Americans might well see population control as a public policy imperative too. And so forth. These and other tensions deriving from things that China rightly or wrongly regards as its own business rather than ours, rest on honest differences between Americans and Chinese.
分歧：
在某些议题上，比如台湾，西藏，以及香港的民运，美国人民是被分裂分子的政治说客所利用[1]的。希望美国到海外上演屠龙记的，总是能在那里（中国）找到合适的目标。中国已经成为一面让美国人投射自己的幻想及梦魇的屏幕了。
一些分歧点是无可避免的。美国的新教徒对于大多数中国人的疑神论观点[2]自是难以接受，而中国人则对外国传教士溯流而上时随行的军舰，以及太平军造成的死伤有着难以磨灭的恶劣回忆。有些美国人肯定会支持达赖喇嘛反对中国在西藏的主权[3]，相对的，支持西藏独立的中国人比支持放弃威尔斯的英国人还少。中国的计划生育对反堕胎的美国保守[4]右派来说更加是无法接受的。而中国人则会解说，如果美国的可耕种地与人口的比例与他们相同，则美国将有30亿人口，而美国人很有可能也会同意计划生育是一项不可或缺的公众计划。类似的例子不胜枚举。
中国人，无论对错，认为这些事与我们无关，因而产生了许多摩擦。而究其根本，是由于美国人和中国人之间，存在一些客观上的差别。
注：
[1]原文用Enlist，词义比“利用”中性。
[2]原文为agnostic，和无神论的atheist不同。
[3]这个老外很够意思。原文是sovereignty，主权。
[4]原文为religious，宗教信仰很强烈的意思。如果照字面翻译行文会很怪。
本帖一共被 1 帖 引用 (帖内工具实现)
“阿拉伯大使，国际安全理事会的助理秘书”应为：
“美国前驻沙特阿拉伯大使、前国防部负责国际安全事务的部长助理”。
This will not be resolved unless we or they change. Neither side is likely to do that anytime soon. So if we are to
cooperate to mutual advantage in less contentious arenas, we must manage the bilateral tensions that differing
moral judgments about more controversial matters make inevitable. To do this, we must not only understand why each
side feels as it does, but what it is and isn't actually doing and what the real — as opposed to the imagined —
consequences of what it is doing are likely to be. Such insights are even more clearly essential when it comes to
elements of our bilateral and global interactions that affect our vital interests in economic prosperity, national
well-being or security. Here the stakes are considerably higher for both societies.
如何共处？
除非其中一方做出改变，这些分歧将继续存在。而在可预见的将来这是不会发生的。因此，如果我们还要继续在较少争议性的领域继续进行对双方都有益的合作，我们必须处理好这些由于不同道德观念而造成的无
可避免的争议。
要达到这一目的，我们不止必须了解对方的感受及缘由，更重要的是对方到底在做什么，以及对方在进行的活动有什么真实而非想象中的影响。当双方在自己的全球重要利益，包括经济以及国家安全方面，与对方
接触磋商时，这些深入的理解将显得更加重要。因为其中涉及的利益是双方都无法忽视的。
颜字辛苦！！！