主题：The Forces Driving the Middle Class into Exile

   In all the anxiety about migration, which is an infuriating new euphemism for immigration, little is said about emigration.

    Yet just as immigration has hugely increased, so has emigration. In particular, large numbers of skilled Britons are emigrating.

    Perhaps that doesn't mean much and perhaps, in the churning melting pot of 21st-century globalisation, it doesn't matter much, but it is striking.

人们对于人口迁移忧心忡忡——“人口迁移”现在已成为“入境移民”的委婉语，这个新说法令人气愤——但却很少有人论及“出境移民”。

然而正如入境移民大幅增长，出境移民同样在大幅增长。尤其明显的是英国，大量能力出众的英国人正在移居他国。

也许，这没什么大不了。也许，在21世纪全球化这个猛烈翻腾的大熔炉里，这些都无关紧要。但是，其现状已惹人注目。

作者：Minette Marrin

 译者：Jacky Xiao

   According to new figures from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Britain is going through the biggest brain drain of any country and its biggest exodus for more than 50 years; one in 10 of our most highly skilled graduates has left and no other nation is losing so many qualified people; overall, only Mexico has more emigrates.

There are now more than 3.2m British-born people living abroad; of them 1.1m are highly skilled university graduates, according to the exhaustive OECD report. Of these professionals, more than three-quarters have lived abroad for more than 10 years. 

      经济合作与发展组织的最新数据表明：英国正出现全世界最严重的人才流失，其人才流出数量是英国近50年以来最大的。我国（作者为英国人）每10名能力出众的毕业生中就有一位离开了本国，没有哪个国家像我们一样损失这么多高级人才。从总的来看，只有墨西哥的出境移民比我国多。 

      按照经合组织的详尽报告，目前有超过320万英国出生的人居住在国外，其中110万是具备高级能力的高校毕业生。在这些职业人士之中，超过四分之三的人已在国外居住10年以上。

作者：Minette Marrin

 译者：Jacky Xiao

    Their most favoured destinations, rather unsurprisingly, are North America, the Antipodes, Spain and France. Figures from the Office for National Statistics for 2006 show that 207,000 Britons left that year--one every three minutes.

    Do we care? The British have had a long history of expatriate life, more so than most countries, and in a time of easy travel and global opportunity one might well expect it. It may not be permanent anyway and, besides, huge numbers of highly skilled foreigners are arriving here to replace the highly skilled natives who leave.

      他们最钟意的目的地，——毫不出奇，是北美、澳大利亚、新西兰、西班牙以及法国。来自国家统计局的数据显示：2006年有207000名英国公民离开本土——每三分钟就有一个人出境。

      我们在乎吗？英国人居住在国外已有悠久的历史，在这点上是大多数国家无可比拟的。而且在如今旅行便利、有机会全世界跑的时代，离开本国当然不足为怪。然而，这样的好时代也许并非永久。另外，大量国外的高级专业人才正在涌入我国，取代那些离国而去的英国本土专业人才。

作者：Minette Marrin

 译者：Jacky Xiao

    All these changes are happening so fast that it is only possible to guess at what they mean. What we are seeing is clearly a brain drain but not, it seems, a net brain drain. It appears to be a net drain of well educated natives. If so, there will surely be profound consequences for British culture. This clears the way, fortunately for the columnist, for anecdote and prejudice.

      所有这些变化都发生得非常快，对其含义我们只能去猜测。呈现在我们眼前的很明显是人才流失，但是似乎又不是净人才流失。看来净流失的是受过良好教育的英国本土人士。如果真的是这样的话，那当然会对英国的文化产生重大影响。那些栏目作家有福了，因为这为他们提供了诸多趣闻轶事和见仁见智的话题。

作者：Minette Marrin

 译者：Jacky Xiao

    It is difficult not to suspect, despite the lack of hard evidence, that so many educated people, many of them still young and keen to work, are leaving because they are giving up on this country. At least that is what many of them say. Whether on blog sites, in letters to newspapers, in casual conversations or in my own reader's letters, I come across voices of anger and grief, particularly among the middle-aged or elderly. This country isn't what it was, they say. What's best about it is disppearing fast; it's becoming unrecognisable.

      尽管还缺乏确凿证据，但却让人不得不好奇：为什么如此多受过良好教育的同胞——其中很多人还非常年轻，对工作充满热情——都在离开。原因是他们对这个国家已经绝望。至少大部分人是这样说的。不管是在网络博客上，还是报刊的读者信箱里，不管是在日常闲聊间，还是我自己的读者来信中，我常常听到各种愤怒和悲伤的声音，尤其是发自中年人群和老年人群。他们说：这个国家已经不是她过去的模样。她曾经的美好如今正在迅速消逝，她开始变得面目全非。

作者：Minette Marrin

 译者：Jacky Xiao

    This country certainly has changed a great deal and fast. Nobody can deny that in recent years society has become much less civil, much more fragmented and newly divided into alarming ghettos; a large, disordered underclass is growing of people who don't know how to bring up their children, with disastrous results; schools and hospitals in some places are not just bad but dangerous; the streets in cities are so frightening for young people that more carry knives and use them; the old are poor and neglected; we have lost our trust in pensions and in banking.

      毫无疑问，这个国家已经有了翻天覆地的变化，而且变化节奏很快。无人能否认：近几年来，社会变得更不文明，更加四分五裂，而且最近按阶层分化成了很多令人忧虑的聚居区；一个数额庞大、秩序紊乱的贫民阶层正在扩大，他们不知如何抚养小孩，其后果不堪设想；一些地区的学校和医院不仅差，而且可怕；很多城市的街道对于青少年来说非常凶险，因为越来越多的人携带并使用刀具；老年人生活困窘，无人照看；我们已失去对养老金和银行业务的信任。

作者：Minette Marrin

 译者：Jacky Xiao

    More than anywhere else in the supposedly civilised world, we are spied on, intruded on and cross-questioned by incompetent bureaucrats who then lose our confidential details; in a country with a proud reputation for freedom, our liberties are being eroded, either by new laws or by politically correct conventions; our taxes are wasted on incompetent government and public services; uncontrolled migration has inflamed anxieties about overcrowding, crime and public services as well as national identity; Britannia is being struck off coinage for the usual daft reasons. And so on. At least it's not Italy.

      在这个我们自以为文明的世界，英国人的处境比其他任何国家的民众都更糟。我们更频繁地被窥探，被侵犯，被无能的政府官僚盘问，然后他们泄漏我们的私密信息；在这个有着自由美名的国度，我们的自由权正被吞噬，有时候是归功于各种新法规，有时候是归功于那些政治上正确的习俗；我们上缴的税收被浪费在无能的政府和公共服务机构身上；不受控制的移民已经激起民众对过度拥挤、犯罪、公共服务机构以及民族特征的焦虑；出于一贯愚蠢的原因，我们货币上的不列颠正被删去。等等等等。至少这不是意大利。

作者：Minette Marrin

 译者：Jacky Xiao

    It is often merely part of growing older to think that things were better in the past and to feel a sense of displacement. As L P Hartley famously wrote,"the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there". But actually, what some people seem to feel more acutely is that it is the present, not the past, that is a foreign country.

      通常情况下，只有人在变老时，才会自然而然地认为从前的事物更好，并有一种格格不入之感。正如哈特莱曾写下的名言：“过去是个陌生的国度；那个国家的人行为迥异。”但是事实上，一些人更敏锐地察觉到的却好像是：是现在，而非过去，才是个陌生的国度。

作者：Minette Marrin

 译者：Jacky Xiao

    In reviewing Roger Scruton's England: An Elegy a few years ago, the journalist Christine Tyler described that feeling particularly well. "For people in later middle age," he wrote, "the present is a place of exile in which they are condemned to live estranged from the country they knew and loved as children. Brought up in the culture and mores of one place, they are involuntary immigrants to another; there they can choose either to acclimatise or to live locked up in a state of permanent regret." Or they can choose to become emigrants.

      几年前，在给罗杰·斯克鲁顿的著作《英国：一曲挽歌》写书评的时候，记者克里斯蒂安·泰勒把这种感觉描述得很到位。“对处于中年后期的人来说，” 他写道，“现在就像是异国他乡。他们屈就于此，与他们孩提时代所熟知和喜爱的国家脱离。他们从小在一个地方的文化和传统中长大，如今却被迫迁往另一处；身在异域，他们要么入乡随俗，要么与世隔绝，心存惆怅到永久。” 或者，他们还可以选择移民他国。

作者：Minette Marrin

 译者：Jacky Xiao

    That might be why some people leave this country. But I think the most important one must be economic; Britain is a wonderful place to live if you are rich and can pay your way around any inconveniences. Britain is relatively good if you are poor, particularly if your country of origin was even poorer. But for the educated middle classes Britain is no longer a good deal. The main reason for that is simple: it is the oppressive price of property.

      那也许就是一些人离开这个国家的原因。但是我认为最重要的原因应该是经济方面的；如果你是富人，能够用钱摆平一切不便，那么英国会是一个理想住处。如果你生活困窘，尤其是出生国比英国还落后，那么英国也算是不错的选择。但是对于受过良好教育的中产阶级来说，呆在英国就不再划算了。原因其实很简单：那就是恼人的房价。

作者：Minette Marrin

 译者：Jacky Xiao

    Property here isn't where you live; it is your entire way of life. It means how bad your local schools and hospitals are, how efficient your local authority, how nice your neighbours, how safe your streets. Property prices have become frightening.

       在这里，房产并不仅仅是你的住处；它是你的整套生活方式。它意味着你当地的学校和医院有多差，当地政府机构的办事效率有多高，左邻右舍有多友善，四周的街道有多安全。房价已经变得很恐怖。

作者：Minette Marrin

 译者：Jacky Xiao

    As a result, professionals have to put up with a way of life that is much worse than that of their counterparts in Australia or America, and the cost of living elsewhere is lower as well. The same applied to retired Britons who own a house; they can get a better house and plenty of change, in a more civil society, if they abandon this country.

        这样一来，各行各业的人不得不屈就于一种不怎么理想的生活方式。在澳大利亚或美国，和他们同等条件的人过得优越得多。而且其他地方的日常费用也更低。同样的情况也发生在那些拥有房屋的退休的英国人身上。他们可以去一个更文明的社会，换一栋更好的房子，还能余不少钱，只要他们抛弃这个国家。

作者：Minette Marrin

 译者：Jacky Xiao

    What's remarkable, surely, is that still more people are not leaving. Perhaps that is because it is hard to stop loving this country, for all its faults. It is hard to abandon, as well as one's family and friends, Britain's humour, its lack of conventionality and its quirks.

        当然，非同寻常的是，仍然有很多人没有离开。也许那是因为要停止热爱这个国家很难，尽管她缺点缠身。要抛弃她很难，同样难抛弃的还有我们的家人和朋友、英国式的幽默、英国人出人意表的行为方式以及各种怪癖。

作者：Minette Marrin

 译者：Jacky Xiao