美語情景對話 第817期:Touchy Topics 敏感話題

Greg: Hi, Todd.

格雷格：你好，託德。

Todd: Hey, Greg.

託德：嗨，格雷格。

Greg: Hey, thanks a lot for interviewing me and letting, I don't know, the world know about my book.

格雷格：嘿，非常謝謝你採訪我，讓世界瞭解我的書。

Todd: No, problem. It's a good book.

託德：不客氣。這是本好書。

Greg: Yeah, I've noticed you don't have any topics like these on your web site. Why not?

格雷格：嗯，我注意到，你的網站上沒有這種話題。這是爲什麼？

Todd: Right. I don't have too many controversial topics. There's actually technical reasons. One is it just takes too long for people to talk about a controversial topic, so for example if you really want to get into controversy, you know, it leads to long conversation and people expressing their view and arguing and the way that the audio is set up on elllo, it's kind of short. I try to keep it under three minutes, so that's one reason. But actually the main reason is because, you know, when people come in, I don't know them a lot of the times I don't know the speakers very well and so they're not really comfortable arguing with me or arguing with somebody else they don't know about something that's controversial, so we tend to not do that.

託德：對。我們網站上沒有太多爭議話題。這其實是技術原因。其中一個原因是，討論爭議話題需要很長時間，如果要討論爭議問題，那就會進行很長時間的對話，人們要表達他們的觀點和主張，可是ello網站上的音頻都很短。我儘量將每期節目的時長控制在3分鐘以內，這是其中一個原因。不過主要原因是，大多數時候我不認識錄製節目的嘉賓，我不太瞭解他們，所以如果他們和我或是其他他們不認識的嘉賓就爭議話題進行辯論的話，他們可能會感覺不舒服，所以我們儘量不這麼做。

Greg: OK, alright, it's something you might want to think about. I mean, I think there are lot of people in the world who are really interested in controversial topics.

格雷格：好，這可能是你要思考的事情。我的意思是，世界上有很多人對爭議話題感興趣。

Todd: Well, I think there are some, like with you we talked about some like income disparity and medical issues, and I'm comfortable talking about that but I am not comfortable talking about let's say homosexuality, religious beliefs, abortion, politics. Things like that I just don't feel comfortable doing.

託德：我和你談論了收入差距和醫療問題，我覺得談論這種話題還是很自在的，可是我不想談論同性戀問題、宗教信仰、墮胎、政治問題。談話這些話題我會感覺不自在。

Greg: OK, it's your site: your right to do whatever you want, but I just think maybe ... maybe some of your listeners would appreciate that and maybe you could have ... my suggestion is that you have a little one page, controversial page, or something. Just, you know, try it out, and if you get a lot of good reaction, you might want to continue and if it doesn't work out stop it.

格雷格：好，這是你的網站，你有權利做你想做的事，不過我認爲也許……也許一些聽衆會希望你……我的建議是，增設一個爭議問題網頁。你可以試試，如果良好的反應很多的話，你可以繼續做下去，如果反應不好，那就可以關掉這個網頁。

Todd: Well, actually, I'll give you an example of one I did recently. I had a woman come in, Stella, she did a great job on the videos, and one of her videos was about an usual sport in your country and hers was on cock fighting, and she explained cock fighting, or hen fighting, in Kenya, and right off the bat I knew that was going to be a problem because that's illegal in some countries and some people — animal activists — would be offended, but on the other hand, it's her culture and I don't feel comfortable saying — you know — what's right or what's wrong about someone else's culture so I just ended up not putting it on just because I didn't want to have to take a side. You know, I think you can kind of see the problem, that sometimes you can put stuff up and it's so easy to alienate maybe a small portion of your audience and I just don't want to do that. You know, I don't have a side about the issue but I just don't want to alienate people. I don't want people on one side of an issue to feel upset so I just play it safe, and I don't talk about it.

託德：我給你講一個例子吧，是我最近錄的一期節目。那期節目請的是一個女嘉賓史黛拉，她做了很多很棒的視頻，其中一個視頻是她們國家的常見運動，她講的是鬥雞，她在視頻裏解釋了肯尼亞的鬥雞運動，我馬上就意識到這個話題可能有問題，因爲這項運動在一些國家是非法的，動物保護者可能會感到很生氣，不過另一方面，這是她的文化，我不太好去評價其他人的文化是對還是錯，所以最後我沒有把這期節目放在網站上，因爲我不想偏袒哪一方。你看，像這樣的問題很容易會使一小部分聽衆疏遠網站，我不想這樣。我在這個問題上不支持任何一個觀點，我只是不想讓聽衆疏遠我的網站。我不想讓在這個問題上持某個觀點的聽衆感覺苦惱，所以我要謹慎行事，不去討論這個問題。

Greg: OK, well, you seem to have a lot of listeners who are very happy so don't worry about changing it.

格雷格：好，看起來你的很多聽衆都很開心，不要擔心改變。

Todd: I hope so. I hope so.

託德：希望如此，希望如此。

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重點講解：
1. be interested in 感興趣的；有興趣的；關心的；
例句：He is not interested in second hand information.
他對間接的消息不感興趣。
2. try out 試驗；測驗；
例句：She is raring to try out her new skates.
她很想試試她那雙新溜冰鞋。
3. work out （如期）發生；進展（順利）；
例句：He hopes this plan will work out.
他希望這項計劃將是切實可行的。
4. right off the bat 馬上；立刻；
例句：He learned right off the bat that you can't count on anything in this business.
他立刻明白在這一行業中不能依靠任何東西。
5. end up 最終；結果；到頭來；
例句：If you speak too slowly, you might end up sounding unnatural.
但如果說得太慢，就有可能導致發音不自然。
6. play it safe 謹慎行事；避免冒險；
例句：The pilot decided that Christchurch was too far away, and played it safe and landed at Wellington.
飛行員認爲克賴斯特徹奇距離太遠，爲求穩妥，就降落在了惠靈頓。