2019年经济学人 法国前总统雅克·希拉克(1)（在线收听）

Jacques Chirac, twice president of France, died on September 26th, aged 86

Fans praised his wit and tactile warmth (unlike most French politicians, he enjoyed hobnobbing with the voters, preferably over a beer or slice of saucisson in an unpretentious zinc-clad bar). Jacques Chirac was successful, too: mayor of Paris, twice prime minister and twice president, from 1995 to 2007. He may have bought a chateau in la France profonde, but it was a "little one", sniffed a snobbish predecessor, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

雅克·希拉克曾担任两次法国总统。他于9月26日去世，享年86岁。粉丝称赞了他的智慧和亲民（不像其他的法国政客，他喜欢和选民亲切交谈，最好是在一家朴实无华的镀锌酒吧里，一边喝啤酒，一边吃着酱汁）。雅克·希拉克也很成功:在1995年至2007年间，他担任过巴黎市长，两次总理和两次总统。他可能在法兰西普罗旺斯买了一座城堡，但是是一个“小的城堡”，自命不凡的前任瓦勒里·季斯卡·德斯坦对此嗤之以鼻。

For the French, his love of France and its people made him sympa. Yet cynicism was also his hallmark. Abroad, he seemed to favour dictators over democrats. He told African strongmen not to worry about elections. He sold a nuclear reactor to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. A Russian-speaker (as a student, he translated Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin"), he counted Vladimir Putin as a personal friend and loathed the "badly brought up" east Europeans with their high-minded talk and Atlanticist outlook. Where others had principles, he had prickles.

对法国人来说，他对法国和法国人的热爱使他产生了同情。但是愤世嫉俗也是他的标志。在国外，他似乎支持独裁者而不是民主主义者。他告诉非洲独裁者不要担心选举。他把一个核反应堆卖给了萨达姆·侯赛因统治下的伊拉克。他会讲俄语（他在学生时代翻译了普希金的作品叶甫盖尼·奥涅金），他把普京当做一个私人朋友，憎恨教养差的东欧人的高谈阔论和大西洋主义的观点。其他人有原则，他却有刺。

A proud defender of the French language, he stormed out of a summit meeting when a French businessman dared to use English (he also said, only half-jokingly, that Britain's deplorable cuisine made it inherently untrustworthy). Despite a happy student summer at Harvard, he bridled at America's overweening ways, arguing for a "multi-polar world" as a way to counter its post-war dominance. Equally, he setup France 24 to rival the "Anglo-Saxon imperialism" of the BBC and CNN. He was contrarian too, resuming nuclear testing in the Pacific to international dismay.

他是一位法语的坚定维护者，当一个法国商人在峰会中竟然使用英语时，他愤然离开了峰会。（他还半开玩笑地说，英国糟糕的烹饪方式让它从本质上就不值得信赖）。尽管他在哈佛度过了一个愉快的学生暑假，但他对美国傲慢的行事方式感到愤怒，主张建立一个“多极世界”，以抗衡美国在战后的主导地位。同样，他让法国24小时新闻台与BBC和CNN的“盎格鲁-撒克逊帝国主义”相抗衡。他也违反了民意，在太平洋地区重启核试验，令国际社会感到沮丧。