Tunisia’s Economic Ills Undermine Democracy
突尼西亞勒緊褲帶 危及民主
By Borzou Daragahi

When Tunisians rose up against their longtime ruler seven years ago, a pair of idealistic young teachers joined in, hoping the protests would usher their North African nation of 10 million into the ranks of the world’s democracies.
七年前，當突尼西亞人群起反抗他們的長期領導人時，兩個滿懷理想的年輕教師也加入了，盼望抗議活動能引領這個千萬人口的北非國家進入世界民主政體之列。

But today Adel and Marwa Jaafri are struggling financially as the country’s economy sputters, its currency falters and the government imposes fresh belt-tightening measures.
而時至今日，這個國家經濟問題重重，貨幣波動不穩，政府強推新的撙節措施，阿岱爾和瑪瓦．賈佛瑞的財務也發生困境。

Adel Jaafri, 35, a high school computer science teacher, recently took a second job installing satellite dishes and moonlights fixing computers. “I still can’t afford my life,” he said. “We are just making it, but we have taken out a lot of loans. Everything is more expensive – food, schoolbooks for the children.”
35歲的阿岱爾．賈佛瑞是高中電腦科學教師，最近接了第二份工作，架設衛星天線碟盤，並兼差修電腦。他說：「我仍然養不活自己，我們只是勉強打平，但是我們借了很多貸款。所有東西都變貴了－食物和孩子們的教科書。」

Marwa Jaafri, 34, a university professor of computer programming, finished his lament: “Clothes, shoes for the kids. Of course we’re worried. We’re struggling.”
34歲的大學電腦程式設計教授瑪瓦．賈佛瑞，接續說完阿岱爾的悲嘆：「還有孩子的衣服和鞋子。我們當然會擔憂，我們在苦撐。」

Tunisia, often hailed as the sole success story of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, is in danger of being crippled by budget-cutting economic policies that critics say are imperiling the country’s democratic experiment.
突尼西亞常被稱頌為2011年阿拉伯之春民主運動唯一轉型成功的國家，目前卻處於被撙節預算的經濟政策所癱瘓的危機之中，批評者說，這些政策正危及國家的民主試驗成果。

Scholars and economists have warned for years that Tunisia’s economic problems could thwart its political progress. But now a raft of critics are blaming financial measures promoted by international lenders and advisers, and taken up by inexperienced Tunisian politicians, for making them worse and setting off an economic and political crisis.
學者和經濟學家多年來不斷警告，突尼西亞的經濟問題可能妨礙其民主進程。而現在許多批評者更把矛頭對準國際借貸和顧問機構所鼓吹，再由缺乏經驗的突尼西亞政客推行的財政措施，指責這些措施使事態更形惡化，且引發一場經濟與政治危機。

“When you impoverish the poor and middle class you undermine democracy,” said Jihen Chandoul, an economist and co-founder of the Tunisian Observatory of Economy, a research institute. “What’s hurting the democratic process are austerity measures we’ve been asked to implement to access loans. Tunisian democracy is in danger.”
「當你讓貧窮和中產階級更加貧困時，你便是破壞民主。」研究機構「突尼西亞經濟觀察所」共同創辦人、經濟學家吉漢．尚多爾說。「傷害民主過程的，是我們為獲得貸款而被迫採行的撙節措施，突尼西亞的民主岌岌可危。」

It is a pattern that has played out around the world, in Latin America, Asia and recently Greece, as the International Monetary Fund and other Western lenders demand that governments balance their budgets and open their economies. Those policies often produce jarring hardship and political upheaval that can undermine support for the very kind of democratic and capitalist systems the West is trying to build.
這種模式已普見於世界各地，拉丁美洲，亞洲，以及最近的希臘，國際貨幣基金和其他西方借貸機構要求各國政府，平衡預算並開放經濟。這些政策往往導致民生的重大痛苦和政治動盪，減損了對於西方意欲建立的那種民主和資本體制的支持。

In Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began, those measures are doubly biting for a people who had harbored such great hopes for a fairer society in one of the Arab world’s few democracies.
對於阿拉伯之春源起的突尼西亞而言，這些措施倍加傷人。這個民族一直企盼能在阿拉伯世界為數不多的民主政體之一，建立一個更公平的社會。

原文參照：
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/world/middleeast/tunisia-democracy-economy-reform.html

2018-05-27 聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析 莊蕙嘉

說文解字看新聞 莊蕙嘉

本文報導阿拉伯之春發祥地突尼西亞在發動爭取民主的抗爭後，近7年來卻陷入經濟危機，文中出現不少表現損害及危機的動詞。

sputter意為「飛濺」，形容人說話時口沫橫飛的模樣，或是油鍋內的水霹霹啪啪四處噴濺的樣子，文中第二段the country’s economy sputters，指國家經濟蹣跚、顛躓，陷入困境，sputter意同falter。

falter有多種意思，可形容人說話結巴、支吾，或是行動躊躇，又或是走路不穩、搖搖晃晃。

文中its currency falters，則是形容突尼西亞貨幣匯率受經濟危機影響而震盪。

cripple意為「使殘疾、使損傷」，同義詞是impair，文中用來指民主政治可能受經濟政策損害。imperil指「使（生命、財產等）陷於危險」，指突尼西亞民主可能因經濟而陷入危機，意同endanger。

再下一段，突尼西亞經濟問題could thwart its political progress，thwart指「妨礙、阻撓」。以上，撰文記者運用cripple、imperil和thwart等字義類似的不同單字作變化，表達同一主旨：突尼西亞的經濟危機將影響民主政治發展。

Jo Nesbø Reimagines ‘Macbeth’
奈斯博版《馬克白》黑色犯罪故事
By James Shapiro

In 1937, The New Yorker published James Thurber’s “The Macbeth Murder Mystery,” about an avid reader of Agatha Christie who picks up a paperback copy of “Macbeth,” mistakenly assuming it’s a detective story. She soon discovers it’s a Shakespeare play but is already hooked and reads it as a whodunit. It takes her a while to identify who killed Duncan, after initially refusing to believe the Macbeths were responsible: “You suspect them the most, of course, but those are the ones that are never guilty – or shouldn’t be, anyway.” Her prime suspect had been Banquo, but “then, of course, he was the second person killed. That was good right in there, that part. The person you suspect of the first murder should always be the second victim.”
1937年，《紐約客》出版了美國作家詹姆斯．瑟伯的《馬克白謀殺案之謎》，描述英國偵探小說家阿嘉莎．克莉絲蒂的一名粉絲讀者，選購了一本平裝的《馬克白》，誤以為它是本偵探小說。她很快就發現它是莎士比亞的劇作，但已欲罷不能，仍把它當推理小說閱讀。她花了點時間才理清誰殺了（蘇格蘭國王）鄧肯，起初拒絕相信是馬克白夫婦下的手。「當然，他們嫌疑最大。但無論如何，他們是始終未犯罪的人，也不該會犯罪」她眼中的主要嫌犯是馬克白的朋友班柯，但是「當然，他是第二個被殺害的人。就是那裡非常好。那個部分。你懷疑是第一個謀殺案的凶手，永遠應該是第二個受害人。」

It’s a very funny story and an insightful one, for Thurber shows how closely Shakespeare’s tragedy follows the contours of detective fiction. Thurber wasn’t the first to draw such connections; over a century earlier, in a brilliant essay about the play – “On the Knocking at the Gate in ‘Macbeth’” – Thomas De Quincey had reflected on how deeply Shakespeare understood the interplay of murder and suspense. If the many allusions to “Macbeth” in the works of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, P.D. James and other crime writers are any indication, Shakespeare’s play may be seen as one of the great progenitors of the genre, making Jo Nesbø, the celebrated Norwegian writer of thrillers, an ideal choice to update the play for Hogarth Shakespeare, a series in which best-selling novelists turn Shakespeare’s works into contemporary fiction.
這是極其有趣且饒富洞察力的一本小說，因為瑟伯說明，莎翁的悲劇和偵探小說的情節有多麼相近。瑟伯不是建立這項關聯的第一人；一個多世紀前，在討論這部戲劇的一篇精彩文章〈論馬克白大門上的敲門聲〉中， 托馬斯．德昆西即對莎翁深諳謀殺與懸疑的相互作用多所著墨。阿嘉莎．克莉絲蒂、桃樂絲．榭爾絲、P.D. 詹姆斯和其他犯罪故事作家的作品中，都有許多與《馬克白》相關的影射，若說這些影射有任何意義，它代表莎翁的劇作可視為這類作品的一大始祖，挪威知名驚悚作家尤．奈斯博也因此成為《挑戰莎士比亞系列》中，重新改寫莎翁這部名劇的理想人選。《挑戰莎士比亞系列》是英國霍加斯出版社發行的系列產品，邀請暢銷小說家將莎翁作品改寫成當代小說。

Nesbø has spoken of finding himself on familiar terrain here, arguing that “Macbeth” is essentially a “thriller about the struggle for power” that takes place “in a gloomy, stormy crime noir-like setting and in a dark, paranoid human mind.” True enough, yet many features of this 400-year-old tragedy don’t easily fit the demands of a modern, realistic thriller. One of the pleasures of reading this book is watching Nesbø meet the formidable challenge of assimilating elements of the play unsuited to realistic crime fiction, especially the supernatural: the witches, prophecies, visions, and the mysterious figure of Hecate.
奈斯博曾說，他發現自己身處熟悉的領域中，《馬克白》基本上是一本「權力鬥爭的驚悚故事」，發生在「近似於陰沉、狂暴黑色犯罪的背景中，談的是闇黑、偏執的人心」。這點雖然屬實，但這部悲劇已有400年歷史，其中許多特質與現代、寫實犯罪小說的要求已格格不入。閱讀這本書的樂趣之一，是觀看內斯博如何迎向這項艱鉅挑戰，將這部戲劇中不適合寫實犯罪小說的元素加以同化，尤其是超自然的部分，如女巫、預言、幻覺，以及神秘人物赫卡特。

Nesbø’s most consequential decision was when and where to set his story. While he follows Shakespeare in locating it in Scotland, rather than taking us back to the 11th century he places it in the early 1970s. He doesn’t name the city, though there are many hints that it’s Glasgow. This choice signals Nesbø’s ambitions for his novel, giving it a sharp social edge as well as a timely political resonance.
奈斯博最重要的決定是他小說的時空背景。儘管他追隨莎翁，將地點定在蘇格蘭，卻選擇將時間擺在1970年代初期，不帶領我們重回11世紀。奈斯博並未提及城市名稱，雖然許多暗示指向蘇格蘭最大城市格拉斯哥。這項選擇突顯奈斯博對他這本小說的野心，賦予他的小說尖銳的社會感，以及適時的政治共鳴。

原文參照：
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/books/review/jo-nesbo-macbeth.html

2018-05-27 聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析 王麗娟