经济学人双语精读｜川普时代

正文

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Old certainties means the "Status Quo", the way things have always been. We could always rely on certain issues being the same. Now we cannot be sure those issues will be the same.

Para.

1

第一段用柏林墙的倒塌反比特朗普当选，凸显特朗普当选的“灾难性”。

原文

THE fall of the Berlin Wall, on November 9th 1989, was when history was said to have ended. The fight between communism and capitalism was over. After a titanic ideological struggle encompassing the decades after the second world war, open markets and Western liberal democracy reigned supreme. In the early morning of November 9th 2016, when Donald Trump crossed the threshold of 270 electoral-college votes to become America's president-elect, that illusion was shattered. History is back—with a vengeance.

解析

我们先来看前两句话，经济学人怎么开篇：

THE fall of the Berlin Wall, on November 9th 1989, was when history was said to have ended. The fight between communism and capitalism was over. After a titanic ideological struggle encompassing the decades after the second world war, open markets and Western liberal democracy reigned supreme.

这句话大意很简单，也比较好理解，只有几个小点，我们先来讲一下：

-ism 结尾的词表示“ ...主义 ”，如文中的 communism 共产主义 和 capitalism 资本主义 ，再如 chauvinism 沙文主义（极端的民族主义） extremism 极端主义 等。

titanic 源于希腊神话中的" Titan " 泰坦 ，因形体高达，后用小写的" titan "引申为“ 巨人、泰斗 ”，泛指“ 巨大的、重要的事物 ”，比如 intellectual 学界泰斗 ，它还有一个常见的搭配， a clash of the titans ，表面意思是“巨人的冲突”， 用来比喻比赛的激烈 ，可以根据语境翻译为“ 龙争虎斗 ”。 Titanic 是其形容词，指“巨大的”，相当于 large, giant, colossal 等，也可以比喻战斗、表演的激烈、宏大，比如： a titanic battle/performance/struggle 。

encompass 相当于 include ，指“ 包括 ”， a titanic ideological struggle encompassing the decades after the second world war 这部分是说， 这场意识形态大斗争(a titanic ideological struggle)包括二战以来的数十年时间(the decades after the second world war) ，在这里， encompassing 可以用 spanning 代替。

reign 指“ 为王，统治 ”，但在文中指 " to be the main feeling or quality in a situation or person " 主宰，起支配作用，盛行 。比如：

The bomb attacks produced a panic which reigned over the city .

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