英语全球化的功与过_BEC初级作文_BEC初级-查字典英语网

英语全球化的功与过

Not all cultures have the same historical anguish over English that Malaysians and Québécois do. But almost all are being dragged ineluctably towards giving English a bigger role in their societies. More than a dozen EU countries require that English be taught in schools. In Thailand and China, the government has fostered English-language learning circles. Francophone Rwanda switched over in 2009 to English school instruction. English spreads wherever there is democracy or markets or even the slightest inclination towards them.

在英语这个问题上，并不是所有文化都遭遇了马来西亚人和魁北克人遭遇的那种历史痛苦。但如今，几乎所有的文化都不得不在各自的社会中赋予英语更加重要的角色，这已成为一种不可避免的趋势。已有十余个欧盟(EU)国家要求本国学校教授英语。在泰国和中国，政府对英语学习圈子进行了扶持。法语国家卢旺达2009年时将学校教学语言改为英语。一个地方只要拥有民主或市场、甚至只要具备向民主或市场靠拢的最轻微倾向，英语就会该地蔓延开来。

So now we can all talk, we peoples of the world. The universalisation of English has happy consequences. But like the building of the Tower of Babel, it has negative ones, too. English as a lingua franca offers unfair advantages to the half-billion people who speak English as a native language. We sometimes assume that English is a world standard only for superficial interactions — hotel personnel saying "How was your stay?" or business consultants importing words like "benchmarking" into their own languages. But French and German professors, for instance, often grumble that it is hard to build a career when academic journals are all in English.