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On the first day of my recent trip to Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post had a front-page story bemoaning the neglect of English.
我不久前去香港，刚到的第一天，《南华早报》(South China Morning Post)在头版刊发了一篇感叹英语受到忽视的文章。
While Hong Kong was officially bilingual, local ministers were increasingly giving speeches and blogging in Chinese without providing an English translation, the paper said.
该报称，尽管香港官方使用两种语言，但政府部门首长在讲话和写博客时越来越多地使用中文，而且不提供英语版本。
It is not just officials abandoning English. There are frequent complaints that Hong Kong generally has lost its ability to communicate in the language.
抛弃英语的不只是官员。经常有人抱怨，香港人普遍丧失了用英语交流的能力。
This was my third visit to Hong Kong in a year, and I too have been struck by how many people struggle to speak English. It is a contrast with everywhere else I have travelled in recent years.
这是我一年内第三次去香港，对香港那么多人讲不好英语，我感到很吃惊。这跟我近年来去过的所有其他地方形成了对比。
I have written before about how hard it is to practise European languages because people insist on replying in English.
以前我写过文章，讲述学说欧洲语言是多么困难，因为人们执着地用英语回答。
Because English has Germanic and Romance roots, with plenty of Greek words, it is, of course, far easier for Europeans to learn English than it is for Chinese speakers.
由于英语的源头包括了日耳曼语和罗曼语，其词汇里有大量的希腊语单词，所以，欧洲人学英语当然比讲中文的人学英语要容易得多。
But it is not just in Europe that people appear to speak better English. Singaporeans seemed, when I went there last year, to speak English more fluently — and with a playfulness and joy that I missed in Hong Kong.
但是，英语讲得好的地方并不限于欧洲。去年我去新加坡时，发现当地人的英语似乎讲得更流利，带着一种香港人讲英语时没有的活泼和欢快。
In Shanghai, which I visited in 2009, I was struck by the number of people who spoke excellent English. Some had been to university in English-speaking countries, but others had just worked hard on the language at home.
在上海——2009年我去过那里——我对很多人英语讲得特别棒感到吃惊。有些人曾经到讲英语的国家读大学，其他人只是在国内下了很大功夫学英语。
More extensive surveys have reached the same conclusion. The EF English Proficiency Index, which analysed test data from 750,000 adults in 63 countries, found that Hong Kong was well behind Malaysia and Singapore. The survey found that South Korea, Japan, Indonesia and Taiwan were all ahead of Hong Kong in English.
覆盖面较广的调查得出了相同的结论。对63个国家75万名成年人的测试成绩进行分析得出的英孚英语熟练度指标(EF English Proficiency Index)显示，香港的英语熟练程度远远落后于马来西亚和新加坡。调查发现，韩国、日本、印尼和台湾的英语水平都好于香港。
For the first time ever, the survey said, Shanghai had overtaken Hong Kong in English proficiency.
该调查表明，上海的英语熟练程度有史以来第一次超过了香港。
Answering a question in the Legislative Council in December on how this had happened, Eddie Ng, Hong Kong’s education secretary, said the EF index was based on the responses of self-selected online participants and that more objective tests, both internal and external, showed that Hong Kong’s English was either steady or slightly improving.
去年12月在香港立法会回答为何会出现这个局面时，香港教育局局长吴克俭(Eddie Ng)表示，英孚指标是基于自行选择的在线参与者的应答，而更客观的测试，无论是本地的还是国际测试，都显示香港人英语水平保持平稳或有轻微进步。
It is true that the EF index is not a scientific survey. And worries about declining English standards in Hong Kong are not new.
没错，英孚指标并非科学调查的结果。而对香港人英语水平下降的担忧也不是新鲜事儿。
In 2000, David Eldon, then Hong Kong-based head of HSBC in Asia, complained that recruits from Beijing and Shanghai who had never left China spoke better English than those in Hong Kong. “If you are going to have multinationals investing here, they are going to want people who are conversant and fluent in English. Today, they would be hard pressed to find them,” he said.
2000年，当时驻香港的汇丰(HSBC)亚太区主席大卫•埃尔登(David Eldon)抱怨称，在北京和上海招募的从未离开过内地的员工，比香港的员工英语讲得更好。“如果你想让跨国企业到这里来投资，他们会想要精通英语并且表达流利的员工。如今，他们要找到这样的人才会很困难，”他说。
Several people I spoke to blamed the decline on local education policy which, since the 1997 handover from Britain to China, prevents most schools using English as the language of instruction for other subjects.
好几个跟我交谈过的人认为原因在于香港的教育政策。自1997年从英国回归中国之后，本地政策阻碍大多数学校把英语作为其他科目的授课语言。
But complaints about English predate the handover. The first Financial Times article on the decline appeared in 1988, when we reported that the University of Hong Kong had become so concerned about students’ English that it had added a foundation year to its three-year courses.
对港人英语水平下降的抱怨在回归之前就有了。在1988年，英国《金融时报》刊登了第一篇有关这一话题的文章，我们报道称，香港大学(University of Hong Kong)对学生的英语水平特别担心，于是决定为三年期的课程增设为期一年的预科。
You could argue that, with China’s growing power, it is natural for young people today to turn away from English. But Johannes Chan, a law professor at the university, told me there were few signs that their Mandarin was improving as their English deteriorated.
你可能会说，随着中国实力上升，年轻人如今疏远英语是自然的事。但香港大学法学教授陈文敏(Johannes Chan)告诉我，英语水平下降的同时，香港人的汉语水平也没有提升的迹象。
While he said his law students still spoke good English, “in general, if one goes into the community and looks at the young people, there is a decline not only in their English, but in their Chinese as well. Their Mandarin is not as good as it should be. Their written Chinese is awful.”
尽管他表示，他的法学系学生英语还是说得不错，“但总体看，如果你到社会上，看看年轻人，会发现他们不但英语越来越差，而且中文水平也在下降。他们的汉语水平没有达到应有的水平。他们的中文写作惨不忍睹。”
In any case, Hong Kong wants to be more than China’s window on the world. It sees itself as a world city, a match for London or New York, and world cities speak English.
无论如何，香港的目标并不只是充当中国面向世界的窗口。香港把自己视为一个世界性城市、一座可与伦敦或纽约媲美的城市，而世界性城市都说英语。
It takes a lifetime to master a foreign language and, everywhere, people have poured their efforts into English. They are not going to switch suddenly to Mandarin, much less to Cantonese.
我们用一生时间才能精通一门外语，在世界各地，人们都在努力学习英语。他们不会突然转向学汉语，更别提粤语了。
Whatever happens to the international balance of power, English will remain the world’s language for years. Hong Kong’s rivals in Singapore and Shanghai understand that.
无论国际力量对比发生何种变化，英语在未来多年仍将是世界性语言。香港在新加坡和上海的对手们了解这一点。
