2022年经济学人 单口喜剧——认真搞笑（1）

Culture

文化

Stand-up comedy -- Seriously funny

单口喜剧——认真搞笑

Phil Wang's jokes take on controversial subjects with the nuance¹ as well as wit

菲尔·王的段子对那些有争议的话题进行了细致又风趣的呈现

During his stand-up set at the London Palladium, Phil Wang explored his mixed heritage -- his mother is British, his father is Chinese-Malaysian -- his love of unusual delicacies² and his enthusiasm for male contraception.

在伦敦守护神剧院的单口喜剧表演中，菲尔·王探讨了自己的混合血统——母亲是英国人，父亲是马来西亚华人——他对不同寻常的美食的热爱，以及他对男性避孕的热衷。

He closed with some advice for these fractious and sensitive times: in particular, on how to gauge³ "whether or not it is morally acceptable to do another person's accent".

最后，他给这个易怒而敏感的时代提了点建议：尤其是关于如何评判“模仿别人的口音在道德上是否可以被接受”。

First and foremost, he argued, the speaker must put in the time and effort to make the impression convincing.

他认为，首先，演讲者必须投入时间和精力来使这些滑稽模仿令人信服。

Beyond that, any country that has had an empire -- or was on the "naughty" side in the second world war -- is fair game.

除此之外，任何曾拥有过帝国——或在第二次世界大战中处于“顽皮”一方的国家——都是极佳的素材。

This "gets you more accents than you think": as well as many European ones, Chinese, Egyptian, Japanese, Russian and Turkish are permissible⁴.

这意味着能够模仿的口音“比你想象中的更多”：除了许多欧洲口音外，汉语、埃及语、日语、俄语和土耳其语的口音都是可以模仿的。

Just the thought of such impersonations makes his left-leaning white friends queasy⁵, he confided⁶.

他坦言，光是想想这种模仿都会令他的左倾白人朋友们感到反胃。

Yet given their country's vaulting⁷ ambitions, for the Chinese, at least, such neuroses are trivial, he insisted.

不过考虑到他们的国家都在雄心勃勃做大事，这些神经质的小事是微不足道的，至少对于中国人来说是这样，他坚称。

After all, "the eagle does not concern itself with the impressions of the worm."

毕竟，“老鹰才不关心虫子在模仿什么。”

Mr Wang is one of Britain's sharpest and most surprising stand-up comedians⁹, widely known for his observations on race and the legacy¹⁰ of colonialism.

菲尔·王是英国最犀利、最出色的单口喜剧演员之一，他因对种族和殖民主义遗留问题的观察而广为人知。

The set he performed at the Palladium and elsewhere on his recent tour, called "Philly Philly Wang Wang", was released on Netflix last year; he embarks¹¹ on his first American tour, with fresh material, this month.

他最近在伦敦守护神剧院和其他地方的巡演中表演的一场名为《菲尔·王：自恋如我》于去年登陆Netflix；这个月，他带着新鲜的素材开始了他的第一次美国巡演。

His new memoir¹², "Sidesplitter: How To Be From Two Worlds At Once", includes incisive¹³ essays on language, cultural assimilation and dating.

他的新回忆录《Sidesplitter: How To Be From Two Worlds At Once》包含了关于语言、文化同化和约会的犀利文章。

Meanwhile "BudPod", a podcast co-hosted with Pierre Novellie, a fellow comedian⁸, has exceeded 2m downloads since its debut¹⁴ in 2019.

与此同时，与喜剧演员皮埃尔·诺维利共同主持的播客“BudPod”自2019年问世以来下载量已超过200万次。

His life and career are an accident of history, both grand and intimate.

他的人生和事业是历史的偶然，既是宏大叙事的一部分，又是非常私人的经历。

Britain controlled parts of the Malay peninsula between the 18th and mid-20th centuries; it was exerting a softer kind of power by the time Mr Wang's mother, an anthropologist¹⁵, joined the Voluntary Service Overseas.

英国在18世纪到20世纪中期控制了马来半岛的部分地区；在菲尔·王的母亲——一名人类学家——参加海外志愿服务的时期，英国正施展着较弱的影响。

She was posted to northern Borneo where she met Mr Wang's father, a martial-arts teacher.

她被派往婆罗洲北部，在那里她遇到了菲尔·王的父亲，一位武术老师。

The comedian was born in 1990 in Stoke-on-Trent in central England, but his family returned to Malaysia soon afterwards.

这位喜剧演员于1990年出生在英格兰中部的特伦河畔斯托克市，但没过不久，他们一家就回到了马来西亚。

In his book he interweaves their story with that of Kota Kinabalu, the city in which he grew up, and his attitude towards his own identity.

在他的书中，他们的故事与他长大的城市亚庇的历史以及他对自己身份的态度交织在一起。

"For an enterprise so heavily associated with death," he writes, "I ironically owe the British Empire my life."

“这是一份与死亡紧密相连的事业，”他写道，“讽刺的是，我的人生际遇正是大英帝国给的。”

1 nuance   

n.(意义、意见、颜色)细微差别

参考例句：

• These users will easily learn each nuance of the applications they use.这些用户会很快了解他们所使用程序的每一细微差别。
• I wish I hadn't become so conscious of every little nuance.我希望我不要变得这样去思索一切琐碎之事。

2 delicacies   

n.棘手( delicacy的名词复数 )；精致；精美的食物；周到

参考例句：

• Its flesh has exceptional delicacies. 它的肉异常鲜美。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• After these delicacies, the trappers were ready for their feast. 在享用了这些美食之后，狩猎者开始其大餐。 来自英汉非文学 - 民俗

3 gauge   

v.精确计量；估计；n.标准度量；计量器

参考例句：

• Can you gauge what her reaction is likely to be?你能揣测她的反应可能是什么吗？
• It's difficult to gauge one's character.要判断一个人的品格是很困难的。

4 permissible   

adj.可允许的，许可的

参考例句：

• Is smoking permissible in the theatre?在剧院里允许吸烟吗？
• Delay is not permissible,even for a single day.不得延误，即使一日亦不可。

5 queasy   

adj.易呕的

参考例句：

• I felt a little queasy on the ship.我在船上觉得有点晕眩想呕吐。
• He was very prone to seasickness and already felt queasy.他快晕船了，已经感到恶心了。

6 confided   

v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等）

参考例句：

• She confided all her secrets to her best friend. 她向她最要好的朋友倾吐了自己所有的秘密。
• He confided to me that he had spent five years in prison. 他私下向我透露，他蹲过五年监狱。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 vaulting   

n.（天花板或屋顶的）拱形结构

参考例句：

• The vaulting horse is a difficult piece of apparatus to master. 鞍马是很难掌握的器械。
• Sallie won the pole vaulting. 莎莉撑杆跳获胜。

8 comedian   

n.喜剧演员；滑稽演员

参考例句：

• The comedian tickled the crowd with his jokes.喜剧演员的笑话把人们逗乐了。
• The comedian enjoyed great popularity during the 30's.那位喜剧演员在三十年代非常走红。

9 comedians   

n.喜剧演员，丑角( comedian的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The voice was rich, lordly, Harvardish, like all the boring radio comedians'imitations. 声音浑厚、威严，俨然是哈佛出身的气派，就跟无线电里所有的滑稽演员叫人已经听腻的模仿完全一样。 来自辞典例句
• He distracted them by joking and imitating movie and radio comedians. 他用开玩笑的方法或者模仿电影及广播中的滑稽演员来对付他们。 来自辞典例句

10 legacy   

n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西

参考例句：

• They are the most precious cultural legacy our forefathers left.它们是我们祖先留下来的最宝贵的文化遗产。
• He thinks the legacy is a gift from the Gods.他认为这笔遗产是天赐之物。

11 embarks   

乘船( embark的第三人称单数 )； 装载； 从事

参考例句：

• Patricia is a free-spirited girl who embarks on an erotic odyssey. 翠茜亚是个任性少女、毅然踏上一次性爱之旅。
• Passenger train driver: Punctually embarks. 客车司机：准时出发。

12 memoir   

n.[pl.]回忆录，自传；记事录

参考例句：

• He has just published a memoir in honour of his captain.他刚刚出了一本传记来纪念他的队长。
• In her memoir,the actress wrote about the bittersweet memories of her first love.在那个女演员的自传中，她写到了自己苦乐掺半的初恋。

13 incisive   

adj.敏锐的，机敏的，锋利的，切入的

参考例句：

• His incisive remarks made us see the problems in our plans.他的话切中要害，使我们看到了计划中的一些问题。
• He combined curious qualities of naivety with incisive wit and worldly sophistication.他集天真质朴的好奇、锐利的机智和老练的世故于一体。

14 debut   

n.首次演出，初次露面

参考例句：

• That same year he made his Broadway debut, playing a suave radio journalist.在那同一年里，他初次在百老汇登台，扮演一个温文而雅的电台记者。
• The actress made her debut in the new comedy.这位演员在那出新喜剧中首次登台演出。

15 anthropologist   

n.人类学家，人类学者

参考例句：

• The lecturer is an anthropologist.这位讲师是人类学家。
• The anthropologist unearthed the skull of an ancient human at the site.人类学家在这个遗址挖掘出那块古人类的颅骨。