赵翠英THE FLIGHT FROM MARRIAGE 全文翻译
The flight from marriage 逃避婚姻(2011-08-21 10:05:43)转载标签：杂谈分类：转载
Asians are marrying later, and less, than in the past. This has profound implications for women, traditional family life and Asian politics
亚洲人比过去结婚更晚、更少。这对女性、传统家庭生活以及亚洲政治产生了深刻影响。拼凑的拼音
WITH her filmy polka-dot dress, huge sunglass and career as a psychologist, Yi Zoe Hou of Taiwan might em likely to be besieged by suitors. Yet, at 35, she is well past Taiwan’s unspoken marriage deadline. “It’s a global village,” she shrugs. “If I can’t find a Taiwane guy that accepts my age, I can find another man somewhere el.” Maybe—but since she still wants children, Ms Hou is also wondering whether to u a sperm bank or ask a male friend to be a sperm donor. She reprents a new world of family life for Asians.
穿着薄而透明的短上衣，戴着大大的太阳镜，以心理医生为职业，台湾人侯宜如（音译）看上去似乎不乏追求者。但是35岁的她早过了约定俗成的台湾社会结婚年龄上限。“这是个全球村，”她耸耸肩。“如果我找不到接受我年龄的台湾男人，我可以找其他地方的男人。”或许这可能。但由于侯小姐仍然想要孩子，她也在想是否要使用精子库或者向男性朋友求助捐献精子。
Conrvatives in the West are fond of saying that the traditional family is the bedrock of society. That view is held even more widely in Asia. The family is the focus of Confucian ethics, which holds that a basic moral principle, xiushen (lf-improvement), can be pursued only within the confines of
荜露蓝蒌
the family. In an interview in 1994 Lee Kuan Yew, a former prime minister of Singapore, argued that after thousands of years of dynastic upheaval, the family is the only institution left to sustain Chine culture. It embodies a t of virtues—“learning and scholarship and hard work and thrift and deferment of prent enjoyment for future gain”—which, he said, underpins Asia’s economic succ ess. He feared that the collap of the family, if it ever happened, would be the main threat to Singapore’s success.
西方的保守者喜欢说传统的家庭是社会的基石。这一观点在亚洲更为普遍。家庭是儒家道德的中心，儒家认为基本的道德准则“修身”只有在家庭范围内才可以进行。在1994年的一次采访中，新加坡前总理李光耀说，经过几千年的王朝更迭，家庭成为唯一留存下来的传承中华文化的组织。他认为，中华文化蕴含的一系列美德——“学习，学问，勤奋，节俭，吃苦在前，享乐在后”——支撑了亚洲的经济成功。他担忧如果发生家庭解体，那将构成新加坡的成功的主要威胁。
His Malaysian contemporary, Mahathir Mohamad, went further. In a book written in 1995 with a Japa
ne politician, Shintaro Ishihara, Dr Mahathir contrasted Asians’ respect for marriage with “the breakdown of established institutions and diminished respect for marriage, family values, elders, and important custom s” in the West. “Western societies”, Dr Mahathir claimed, “are riddled with single-parent families… with homoxuality, with cohabitation.” He might well have concluded that the abnce of traditional family virtues from the streets of London recently showed the continued superiority of Asia.
马来西亚现任总理马哈蒂尔•默罕默德（Mahathir Mohamad）则更进一步。在1995的与日本政治家石原慎太郎合著的一本书中，马哈蒂
尔比较了亚洲的对婚姻的敬重和西方的“打破现成组织，漠视婚姻、家庭价值观、老人以及重要传统习俗”。他说，“西方社会被单亲家庭、同性恋、非法同居等等现象整得千疮百孔。”现在他或许还可以这样总结，最近伦敦街头的暴力表明西方传统家庭美德的缺失，显示了亚洲持续的优越性。
爬山可以减肥吗
Asians, in fact, have veral distinct family systems. To simplify: in South Asia it is traditional to have arranged, early marriages, in which men are dominant and the extended family is important. East Asia also has a male-dominated system, but one that stress the nuclear family more; nowadays it has abandoned arranged marriages. In South-East Asia, women have somewhat more autonomy. B
ut all three systems have escaped many of the social changes that have buffeted family life in the West since the 1960s.
实际上亚洲存在若干个有差别的家庭系统。简单来说包括：南亚传统上实行包办婚姻和早婚，婚姻由男人主导，大家庭具有重要地位。东亚的家庭系统也是男人主导的，但更注重小家庭；如今东亚已经抛弃了包办婚姻。在东南亚，女性从某种程度讲具有更多自主权。但是这三个系统都避免了诸多自上世纪60年代以来一直困扰西方家庭生活的社会变化。
In South Asia and China marriage remains near-universal, with 98% of men and women tying the knot. In contrast, in some Western countries, a quarter of people in their 30s are cohabiting or have never been married, while half of new marriages end in divorce. Marriage continues to be the almost universal tting for child-bearing in Asia: only about 2% of births took place outside wedlock in Japan in 2007. Contrast that with Europe: in Sweden in 2008 55% of births were to unmarried women, while in Iceland the share was 66%.
南亚和中国仍然保持着几乎全民结婚，98%的男人和女人都会结婚。相比之下，在许多西方国家，30多岁的人有四分之一选择同居或从
未结婚，新婚一半以离异终结。在亚洲，婚姻仍然是抚养孩子的普遍前提：2007年日本只有约2%的
新生儿为非婚生。欧洲情况迥异：2008年瑞典55%的新生儿由未婚女性所生，冰岛这一比重为66%。
公园里的树Most East and South-East Asian countries report little or no cohabitation. The exception is Japan where, among women born in the 1970s, about 20% say they have cohabited with a xual partner. For Japan, that is a big change. In surveys between 1987 and 2002, just 1-7% of single women said they had lived with a partner. But it is not much compared with America where, according to a 2002 Gallup poll, over half of married Americans between the ages of 18 and 49 lived together before their wedding day. In many Western societies, more cohabitation has offt a trend towards later marriage or higher rates of divorce. That has not happened in Asia.
大多东亚和东南亚国家很少有或没有同居现象。日本是例外，70后
如何绘制地图的女性中约有20%表示曾与性伴侣同居。对于日本来说这是个很大的变化。在1987-2002年的调查中只有1-7%的单身女性表示和异性同
居过。但这同美国比起来可谓小巫见大巫，据2002年的一份盖洛普调查显示，18-49岁的已婚美国人中超过一半有过婚前同居。在很多西方社会，同居的增加抵消了晚婚率或离婚率的增长。这一现象还没有在亚洲发生。
养鹰
Traditional attitudes live on in other ways. Compared with Westerners, Asians are more likely to agree that “women’s happiness lies in marriage”. They are more likely to say women should give up work when they get married or have children, and more likely to disapprove of pre-marital x. Surveys by Pew
Global Rearch, a social-rearch outfit in Washington, DC, show that Muslims in South and South-East Asia are more likely than Muslims elwhere to say that families should choo a woman’s husband for her.
亚洲传统观念还以其他方式存在。和西方人相比，亚洲人更愿意同意“女人的幸福在于婚姻”，更有可能认为女人婚后或有孩子之后应该放弃工作，更有可能反对婚前性行为。位于华盛顿的社会研究团队“皮尤全球研究”的调查报告指出，南亚和东南亚的穆斯林比其他地区的穆斯林更愿意认为家庭应为女性择偶。
Over the hill翻山越岭
Yet, as Ms Hou shows, Asia is changing. Although attitudes to x and marriage are different from tho in the West, the pressures of wealth and modernisation upon family life have been just as relentless. They have simply manifested themlves in different ways. In the West the upshot has be
en divorce and illegitimacy. In Asia the results include later marriage, less marriage and (to some extent) more divorce. The changes in the West may be more dramatic. But both East and West are eing big changes in the role of women and traditional family life.
然而，正如侯女士的现象所反映的，亚洲正在发生变化。尽管性观念和婚姻观念和西方不同，金钱和现代化给家庭生活带来的压力同样残酷。只是在亚洲压力通过不一样的方式显现出来。西方的表现是离婚和非婚生子。在亚洲表现为晚婚、不婚以及（一定程度上）离婚增多。西方的变化也许更加激烈。但无论是西方还是东方都正经历着女性角色和传统家庭生活的重大变化。声乐课程
The first change is that people are getting married later, often much later. In the richest parts—Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong—the mean age of wedlock is now 29-30 for women,
