2022年经济学人 单口喜剧——认真搞笑（1）

（单词翻译）

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。”