托福閱讀材料之清宮劇的魅惑
Visions of the 18th century
回顧18世紀
The charms of Qing TV
清宮劇的魅惑
IT'S a good time to be a Manchu on television. Costume dramas such as “Palace” and “Bu Bu Jing Xin”, which feature modern-day protagonists flung back in time to the days of the Qing emperors, rank among the most-watched programmes on China's video-sharing sites. And while these series would seem to mine every possible fish-out-of-water plot element for effect, nobody seems to question that a young woman speaking modern Mandarin would have any trouble communicating with her new Manchu boyfriend.
清宮劇的黃金時代來臨，《宮》《步步驚心》等講述現(xiàn)代人穿越回到清朝宮廷的古裝電視劇，成為了中國網(wǎng)絡(luò)視頻點擊率最高的節(jié)目。然而，這些電視劇里充滿了各種不合邏輯的情節(jié)，但卻沒人質(zhì)疑說一口現(xiàn)代普通話的年輕女孩能和她的滿族新男友毫無障礙地交流。
On yet another popular programme, the breathy 76-episode epic “Hou Gong Zhen Huan Zhuan”, the warring wives and battling concubines of the Yongzheng emperor have sparked their own internet meme. Fans of the show have taken to converting short messages, microblog posts, and even government pronouncements into the elegant and stylised speech of the show's characters. Yet even with that attention to detail, all of the fighting, wailing, and backstabbing is done in a language that is perfectly understandable to the modern-day urbanites who tune in nightly on their laptops.
另一部熱播的76集長篇連續(xù)劇《后宮甄嬛傳》，情節(jié)緊湊，描述了雍正王朝期間后宮妃嬪之間如何勾心斗角、爾虞我詐，劇里的臺詞更受到了網(wǎng)絡(luò)熱捧。劇迷們使用劇中的“甄嬛體”發(fā)短信、寫微博，甚至連政府公告也使用了這些優(yōu)雅風(fēng)范的文體。但是，所有的宮廷斗爭、哭天搶地、背后插刀的情節(jié)都用同一種語言表達出來，這些細節(jié)問題很好地闡釋了現(xiàn)代一族用筆記本電腦熬夜看劇的現(xiàn)狀。
It's a distinction with a difference. The Manchus were a Tungusic people from beyond the Great Wall, distantly related to the Jurchens, who conquered northern China in the 12th century to form the Jin dynasty. In the early 17th century various groups who claimed descent from the Jurchen came together under the leadership of a chieftain named Nurhaci and his family, who had grown wealthy as tributaries of the Ming emperors in Beijing. They had provided the court with ginseng and furs while building their own state in what is today north-eastern China. They spoke a language decidedly different from that of the Chinese. By the time of Nurhaci his people had begun to develop a written script for their language that was derived from written Mongolian, rather than from Chinese characters (it's the one on the right, in the picture to the right, a snapshot from the Forbidden City). By the middle of the 17th century, this nation—now calling themselves the Manchus—were strong enough to challenge the decrepit Ming state. They seized their chance to sweep beyond the Great Wall in 1644 when a Ming general, Wu Sangui, agreed reluctantly to ally with the Manchus. Bandits had already stormed the capital and the last Ming Emperor had committed suicide. With few options left, General Wu turned to the Manchus to support his troops and help restore order. The Manchus readily agreed, annihilating the bandit army and then staying on for the better part of three centuries as the Qing dynasty.
然而當中差距相當之大。滿族人是來自長城以外的通古斯民族，系屬女真一脈，女真人曾在12世紀稱霸中國北方，建立金朝。17世紀初，首領(lǐng)努爾哈赤和他的家族集聚了女真后裔的各個部落，作為明朝的附屬逐漸變得強大起來。他們邊向明朝進貢人參和皮毛等物品，邊在現(xiàn)中國東北建立自己的王朝。他們說的語言與中原人的決然不同，當時，努爾哈赤命人根據(jù)蒙古文字而非漢字造出滿文(下圖中右側(cè)文字為漢字，該圖攝于故宮)。到了17世紀中期，這個民族——現(xiàn)自稱為滿族——已有足夠的實力與腐朽不堪的明朝對抗。1644年，他們把握好時機，橫掃關(guān)外，明朝總兵吳三桂勉強同意與清兵結(jié)成聯(lián)盟，因為當時的寇賊已經(jīng)掃蕩了北京城，明朝亡國皇帝也自盡了。無奈之下，吳總兵轉(zhuǎn)而投降清兵，并協(xié)助恢復(fù)秩序。滿族人亦已同意消滅寇賊軍隊，留在關(guān)內(nèi)，并建立大清王朝，為其接下來三個世紀的統(tǒng)治奠定了良好的基礎(chǔ)。
Mark Elliott, the Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History at Harvard, is the author of “The Manchu Way”, one of the first studies in any language to use Manchu sources in the research of Qing history. Is he bothered by TV's monolingual Manchus?
歐立德是哈佛大學(xué)中國與亞洲內(nèi)陸史Mark Schwartz教授，他的著作《滿洲之路》是首部基于滿文文獻而成的清史研究著作，他是否也納悶電視劇里的滿人只會說一種語言?
I'd say there is little doubt that the Manchu emperors could all speak decent Chinese. Kangxi's was almost certainly not as good as that of his son and grandson, but he could get by just fine. Still, it seems he was more comfortable speaking Manchu, and preferred communicating with the Jesuits at court in Manchu rather than in Chinese. So the issue is not so much that the emperors are speaking Chinese, but that they are never found speaking Manchu, which they most definitely could and did do, especially in dealings with Manchu officials.
我認為滿清皇帝能說一口正宗的漢語這點毫無疑問，可以肯定康熙的漢語還不如他的子孫好，但是他也不差。然而，他更習(xí)慣說滿語，他和天主教傳教士交流的時候更多使用滿語而不是漢語。因此，問題并不在于皇帝說漢語，而是他們從未說過滿語，他們肯定會說，也曾經(jīng)這么做，特別在與滿族大臣交流的時候。
Now we can hardly blame the writers and directors of period pieces for taking creative licence with their linguistics. Actors in Chinese film and television productions routinely speak standard Mandarin, even when portraying historical figures, such as Chairman Mao or Sun Yat-sen, who are well known for their colourful dialects and accents. Although most Chinese TV and film productions have Chinese subtitles anyway, few directors would choose to inflict an impenetrable—if historically accurate—Babel of dialects, regionalisms and dead languages on their audience. “Julius Caesar” probably wouldn't have been quite the same play had Shakespeare been forced to write all the dialogue in Latin.
現(xiàn)在，我們不能責(zé)怪歷史劇的編劇和導(dǎo)演，他們的語言能力只能帶來這種程度的創(chuàng)作。在中國電影和電視劇里，演員們通常都說標準的普通話，即便是如毛主席和孫中山這樣眾所周知帶著濃厚口音的歷史人物也是如此。盡管大部分中國電視節(jié)目和電影都有中文字幕，但很少導(dǎo)演會選擇挑戰(zhàn)難以克服的困難——如果遵照歷史，那么各種各樣的口音、宗教主義、死語都會困擾觀眾。如果莎士比亞被迫用拉丁語寫所有對白，《凱撒大帝》可能就極為不同了。
