TED演讲：单一故事的危险性(6)

 　　I remember walking around on my first day in Guadalajara, 我还记得当我到达瓜达拉哈拉的第一天，

　　watching the people going to work, rolling up tortillas in the marketplace, smoking, laughing. 看着人们前往工作，在市集上吃着墨西哥卷、抽着烟、大笑着。

　　I remember first feeling slight surprise. And then, I was overwhelmed with shame. 我记得我刚看到这一切时是何等的惊讶，但随后我的心中便充满了羞耻感。

　　I realized that I had been so immersed in the media coverage¹ of Mexicans 我意识到我当时完全被沉浸在媒体上关于墨西哥人的报道，

　　that they had become one thing in my mind, the abject² immigrant. 以致于他们在我的脑中幻化成一个单一的个体--卑贱的移民。

　　I had bought into the single story of Mexicans and I could not have been more ashamed of myself. 我完全相信了关于墨西哥人的单一故事，对此我感到无比的羞愧。

　　So that is how to create a single story, show a people as one thing,  这就是创造单一故事的经过，将一群人一遍又一遍地呈现为一个事物，

　　as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become. 并且只是一个事物，时间久了，他们就变成了那个事物。

　　It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. 而说到单一的故事，就自然而然地要讲到权力这个问题。

　　There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think about the power structures of the world, and it is "nkali." 每当我想到这个世界的权力结构的时候，我都会想起一个伊博语中的单词，叫做“nkali”。

　　It's a noun that loosely translates to "to be greater than another." 它是一个名词，可以在大意上被翻译成“比另一个人强大”。

　　Like our economic and political worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali: 就如同我们的经济和政治界一样，我们所讲的故事也是建立在nkali的原则上的。

　　How they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power. 这些故事是怎样被讲述的、由谁来讲述、何时被讲述、有多少故事被讲述，这一切都取决于权力。

　　Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive³ story of that person. 所谓的权力，不单单是讲述一个关于别人的故事的能力，而是将那个故事转变为关于那个人的决定性故事。

1 coverage   

n.报导，保险范围，保险额，范围，覆盖

参考例句：

• There's little coverage of foreign news in the newspaper.报纸上几乎没有国外新闻报道。
• This is an insurance policy with extensive coverage.这是一项承保范围广泛的保险。

2 abject   

adj.极可怜的，卑屈的

参考例句：

• This policy has turned out to be an abject failure.这一政策最后以惨败而告终。
• He had been obliged to offer an abject apology to Mr.Alleyne for his impertinence.他不得不低声下气，为他的无礼举动向艾莱恩先生请罪。

3 definitive   

adj.确切的，权威性的；最后的，决定性的

参考例句：

• This book is the definitive guide to world cuisine.这本书是世界美食的权威指南。
• No one has come up with a definitive answer as to why this should be so.至于为什么该这样，还没有人给出明确的答复。