2019年经济学人 约翰逊语言专栏--用委婉语掩盖性暴力会导致更恶劣后果(3)（在线收听）

But there are unintended consequences. Sexual assault is usually defined (for example, by American and British authorities) as sexual contact without consent. This means that the gamut runs widely, from groping to the most savage rapes. That can make it hard for those not directly involved to understand the gravity of individual cases. It might even let the most vicious rapists take advantage of a perception that perhaps they committed a lesser crime.

但也有一些意想不到的后果。性侵犯通常被定义为(例如，美国和英国官方)未经同意的性接触。这意味着范围很广，从猥亵到最野蛮的强奸。这使得那些没有直接参与的人很难理解个别案件的严重性。它甚至可能让最恶毒的强奸犯利用一种观念，即他们可能犯了较轻的罪行。

And the old words are often the most powerful. Activists have berated newspapers which reported that Jeffrey Epstein, a disgraced and now-dead financier, “cavorted” with “underage women”; he raped and trafficked teenage girls. Similarly, some want to ditch the term “child pornography”, since it refers to a heinous criminal enterprise, not consenting performances as in the adult kind. It sometimes seems people cannot talk about sexual violence except in terms adapted from consensual relations.

而古老的话语往往是最有力的。一些报纸报道称，已名誉扫地、现已过世的金融家杰弗里?爱泼斯坦与“未成年女性”“ cavorted 嬉戏”；他强奸、贩卖少女。同样地，一些人想要抛弃“child pornography 儿童色情”这个术语，因为它指的是一种十恶不赦的犯罪行为，而不是像成人那样自愿表演。有时人们似乎不能谈论性暴力，除非是在双方知情同意的基础上改编的。

Now feminists are saying “we need to talk about rape”, as Deborah Cameron, a linguist, does in a recent post on her blog, “Language: a feminist guide”. Applying the right vocabulary to a crime will not curtail it, but the abstractions and legalese common in the media and politics can drain the task of urgency, by making the scourge seem less acute. Just as “murder” should not be routinely dressed up as “homicide”, nor “torture” consigned to the catch-all bin of “human- rights abuses”, so it is with the vocabulary of sexual abuse. It is hard to tackle a problem you are afraid to name.

现在女权主义者说“我们需要讨论强奸”，正如语言学家黛博拉·卡梅隆最近在她的博客“语言:女权主义指南”上发表的文章中写道。对犯罪使用正确的词汇并不能减少它，但是在媒体和政治中常见的抽象和法律术语可以使灾难看起来不那么尖锐，从而耗尽紧急任务。正如“murder 谋杀”不应该被例行地伪饰成“homicide 杀人”，“torture 酷刑”也不应该被扔进“human- rights abuses 侵犯人权”这个包罗万象的垃圾箱，同理性侵犯的词汇也是如此。