In Britain, Even Children Are Feeling the Effects of Austerity
英國厲行撙節 兒童也受影響
By Patrick Kingsley

It was half past eight, and the school day was just starting at Morecambe Bay Primary, a state-run elementary school in northwest England. Siobhan Collingwood, the head teacher, pointed to a cheerful boy munching his way through two slices of toast – his first meal of the day.
上午八點半，英國英格蘭西北部莫克姆灣公立小學的上課日剛開始，校長希歐班．柯林伍德用手指著一個開心的男孩，他正大聲咀嚼兩片吐司—這是他當天的第一餐。

Teachers, she said, had sometimes found him sifting through trash cans for discarded fruit. “He’d eat his way through whatever we put in front of him.”
柯林伍德說，老師們有時會發現他在垃圾桶裡翻找別人不要的水果，「不論我們在他面前擺放任何食物，他都會狼吞虎嚥」。

Some students trickled through without stopping; they had already eaten. But a few dozen headed straight to the food counter. Of 350 students, roughly one in three would not have breakfast unless the school provided it, Collingwood reckoned.
一些學生三三兩兩經過，沒有停留，他們吃過了，不過有幾十個學生直接朝取餐台走去。柯林伍德估計，在全部350名學生中，大約三分之一要是學校不提供，就沒有早餐可吃。

During Collingwood’s 13 years as head teacher at Morecambe Bay Primary, there were always a few hungry children. But two years ago, the staff noticed an increasing number of youngsters returning undernourished after spending school breaks at home.
柯林伍德擔任莫克姆灣小學校長13年期間，一直都有些沒吃飽的孩童。不過兩年前，職員注意到，孩童在家度過學校假期重新返校後，營養不良的愈來愈多。

Initially, Collingwood and her staff were puzzled: Many parents held jobs, even if they struggled to cover the bills. Then it dawned on them that the rising number of hungry children at Morecambe Bay coincided with sharp reductions in welfare benefits associated with the clumsy introduction of a new welfare program.
起初，柯林伍德和職員感到困惑：許多家長儘管付清帳單很吃力，總有工作。後來他們明白了，莫克姆灣飢餓孩童增加，與社會福利津貼大幅刪減同時發生，而社福津貼大減又跟粗糙引進新福利制度有關。

“As we spoke to parents,” Collingwood said, “it became clear that for many of them, it was caused by changes to the benefit system rolled out in recent years, which were forcing families into crisis.”
柯林伍德說：「當我們跟家長交談後，事情變得清楚了，對許多家長來說，小孩餓肚子是近年來推動的津貼制度變革造成，這些變革使家庭面臨危機。」

Across Britain, the number of children living in poverty has jumped sharply in the past six years, a trend that critics blame in part on the Conservative-led government’s policy of austerity, the budget-slashing response to the 2008 financial crisis that is steadily reshaping British life.
在英國各地，近六年來貧困兒童暴增，批評者說，這種趨勢部分要歸咎於保守黨政府的撙節政策，這種為了回應2008年金融危機而大砍預算的政策，正逐步改變英國人的生活。

And there is no immediate relief on the horizon. The County Councils Network, a group of local governing bodies, warned recently of more than $1 billion in budget cuts nationwide next year, draining more money from social services, including some for children.
而且目前還看不到情況緩解的可能性。英國地方政府組成的團體「郡政府網絡」最近警告，明年全國預算將減少10億美元以上，社會服務經費會失血更多，包括針對兒童的部分。

To be clear, Britain is not Venezuela. Reports of hungry children showing up in Morecambe doctors’ offices with rickets have proved false. But that is cold comfort in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, one that over the years has made a strong commitment to child welfare.
當然，英國並非委內瑞拉，罹患佝僂病的飢餓孩童在莫克姆灣看醫生的消息是假的。不過，這在英國簡直起不到安慰作用，畢竟英國是全球最富裕國家之一，多年來堅決承諾照顧兒童福利。

While hunger is not the only social pathology associated with childhood poverty, it is perhaps the hardest to conceal. In that respect, it is a flashing signal of a deepening problem.
飢餓並不是與兒童貧困有關的唯一社會病態，卻可能是最難掩蓋的一個。就這方面而言，它是一個更深層問題閃亮的信號。

原文參照：
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/world/europe/uk-austerity-child-poverty.html

2018-11-11 聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析 李京倫

說文解字看新聞 李京倫

這篇文章說的是英國近年來力行撙節，大砍預算，導致社福津貼減少，一些兒童在家裡餓肚子。文中用了slash、cut和reduce，意思大致都是「削減」，但細究仍有差異。

slash原意是揮砍，由此引申出的非正式用法，是「大砍」價格或「大幅削減」數量，例如slash prices是大降價，slash public spending是大砍公共開支，slash 50 positions是裁掉50個職位。

reduce是使某物的「數量、規模或程度」變小或變少，如reduce costs是降低成本，reduce the risk是降低風險，reduce bodyfat是減少體脂肪。reduce也可以當不及物動詞，如reduce in size規模變小，reduce slightly略為減少。

cut則是減少某物的「數量」，如cut down (on) my sugar intake減少我的糖分攝取，cut back (on) costs降低成本，cut taxes減稅。

Andy Warhol Said He Came From ‘Nowhere.’
安迪沃荷 自稱來自不知名處
By Andrew Higgins and Miroslava Germanova

A Slovak cousin of Andy Warhol, the Pop Art icon, knew his American relative was a painter of some sort.
普普藝術代表人物安迪．沃荷的一個斯洛伐克表弟知道，這位美國親戚是某種painter（畫家或油漆匠）。

He gathered that much from the letters his aunt, Warhol’s mother, sent to Mikova, the hamlet in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains where both the artist’s parents lived before emigrating to the United States.
他從他姑媽、沃荷的母親寄到喀爾巴阡山脈山腳丘陵小村莊米科瓦的信中，得到這有限的資訊。米科瓦是這位藝術家的父母移居美國前居住的地方。

“I thought he painted houses,” said Jan Zavacky, 73.
「我以為他是給房子上漆的。」73歲的札瓦基說。

Nobody in Mikova has made that mistake for a long time.
米科瓦已經很久沒有人犯過這種錯誤了。

Since Warhol’s death in 1987, the tiny village in Slovakia has – more or less – embraced its role as a place of pilgrimage for his fans. They come seeking to understand how Warhol’s family origins may have played in his rise into a global art star who grabbed so much more than just 15 minutes of fame.
自從1987年沃荷過世後，斯洛伐克這個迷你村多少已經接受作為「沃荷粉絲朝聖地」的角色。粉絲前來是想了解，在沃荷崛起成為全球藝術巨星、引起如此多的注意、成名遠超過15分鐘的過程中，他的家庭淵源起了什麼作用。（譯者按：「未來，人人都能名聞全球15分鐘」是沃荷的名言）

The nearby town of Medzilaborce has turned a large Communist-era post office into the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art. The town’s main drag has been renamed Andy Warhol Street. On it stands the Andy Hostel.
附近的梅濟拉博爾采鎮已將一間很大的共產時代郵局改為安迪．沃荷現代藝術博物館。鎮上主街道已更名為安迪．沃荷街。街上有座安迪旅社。

On the road to Mikova, a sign with Warhol in his trademark wig of wild hair proudly announces the village as his family home.
在通往米科瓦的路上，一面印有沃荷頂著招牌蓬亂假髮的牌子得意地宣告，這個村莊是他家族的故鄉。

After waves of emigration, few villagers remain – a cow herder, a few dozen pensioners and a cluster of Roma families. But all know the story of how the U.S.-born son of Andrej Varchola and Julia Zavacky-Varchola made it big in New York, after changing his surname to Warhol.
米科瓦經歷幾波人口外移後，村民所剩無多：一個牧牛人、幾十個退休族和一群羅姆人家庭。不過所有人都知道，瓦柯拉與茱莉亞．札瓦基-瓦柯拉那個在美國出生的兒子，把姓氏改成沃荷後，如何在紐約功成名就。

Few of the 100 or so residents, though, think much of his art.
然而，這100個左右的居民，卻沒幾個看得上他的藝術。

In America, “you don’t need to be very good at something,” observed Julia Varcholova, another cousin, who uses a different spelling of the family name. “You just need to be different. You don’t need to sing or paint well so long as you do it differently.”Warhol, she said, “was very good at being different.”
沃荷的堂妹茱莉亞．瓦柯洛瓦說，在美國，「你不必把某件事做到很好，只需與眾不同。不必唱得好或畫得好，只要能標新立異就成了」。她用的是家族姓的另一個拼法。

She much prefers Rembrandt because “at least you can see he put a lot of work into his paintings.”
她說，沃荷「很會標新立異」。她覺得荷蘭畫家林布蘭要好得多，因為「至少你看得出來他很用心在畫」。

On the edge of Varcholova’s property in Mikova, which she left years ago to move to the city but still visits regularly, stands an old stone well, the only remaining structure from when Warhol’s father lived on that piece of land. Warhol enthusiasts from the United States and across Europe have come to admire it, she said.
瓦柯洛瓦多年前離開位於米科瓦的舊家，搬到城裡，不過仍定期回來看看。在舊家邊緣有一口古老的石井，是唯一從沃荷父親居住在此的時代遺留下來的建物。她說，美國和歐洲各地的沃荷迷會來此處憑弔。

A dozen documentary films in multiple languages feature the village, which is so far from the beaten track that it may clarify what the often-cryptic Warhol meant when he said, “I come from nowhere.” Mikova doesn’t even have a cafe or bar, usually an indispensable feature of the smallest Slovak villages.
有12部不同語言的紀錄片介紹米科瓦，這個村落是如此偏僻，以至於也許能讓我們明白，講話經常晦澀難懂的沃荷所謂「我來自不知名的地方」是什麼意思。米科瓦甚至連咖啡館或酒吧都沒有，而斯洛伐克的村莊不管再小，通常也少不了二者之一。

For many years, Warhol’s perceived strangeness was a big handicap in how he was regarded in these tradition-bound lands.
多年來，在這些受到傳統束縛的土地上，沃荷的怪異形象大大阻礙了人們對他的肯定。

原文參照：
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/world/europe/andy-warhol-slovakia-mikova-medzilaborce.html

2018-11-11 聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析 李京倫