TED | 不读书的人到底输在哪？

演讲精彩片段（节选）欣赏

When it came to São Tomé and Príncipe, it was a chance not only to learn something new and discover a new collection of stories, but also to bring together a group of people and facilitate a joint creative endeavor. My weakness had become the project’s strength.

说到圣多美岛和普林西比岛 ，不单是一个学习新知识的机会 ，探索新文学作品的机会 还将人们聚集起来 ，团结起来创新努力的机会，我的局限反倒成了这个项目的优势。

The books I read that year opened my eyes to many things. As those who enjoy reading will know, books have an extraordinary power to take you out of yourself and into someone else’s mindset, so that, for a while at least, you look at the world through different eyes.

那一年我看过的书开拓了我的视野。那些享受阅读的人就能体会，书籍有着强大能力把你带出自我，进入别人的思想。所以，至少有一段时间 你能看到别人眼中的世界。

That can be an uncomfortable experience, particularly if you’re reading a book from a culture that may have quite different values to your own. But it can also be really enlightening. Wrestling with unfamiliar ideas can help clarify your own thinking. And it can also show up blind spots in the way you might have been looking at the world.

这或许不会是一段好过的经历。尤其是你在读一本文化上与自己的观念大为不同的书 。但它却可能很有启发性。与不熟悉的想法产生碰撞，能帮你更好认识自己的想法，也能帮你告诉自己在你看到这个世界的方式上有哪些盲点。

When I looked back at much of the English-language literature I’d grown up with, for example, I began to see how narrow a lot of it was, compared to the richness that the world has to offer.

当我回头看我从小到大读过的大多数英文文学，相比世界上其他书籍的丰富程度，这些书籍确实太狭隘了。

And as the pages turned, something else started to happen, too. Little by little, that long list of countries that I’d started the year with, changed from a rather dry, academic register of place names into living, breathing entities.

每翻一页 ，便长一智 ，积少成多，我年初列出的国家列表从一些列枯燥充满学术的地名，变成了活生生会呼吸的实体。

Now, I don’t want to suggest that it’s at all possible to get a rounded picture of a country simply by reading one book. But cumulatively, the stories I read that year made me more alive than ever before to the richness, diversity and complexity of our remarkable planet. It was as though the world’s stories and the people who’d gone to such lengths to help me read them had made it real to me.

现在，我并不想建议说，单靠读一本书就能大致了解一个国家。但积少成多，那一年我读过的故事，它们的对这个世界展示的丰富性，多样化性，和复杂性，让我更有存在感，就好像是这些世界性的故事，以及那些想办法帮我阅读这些书籍的人们，是他们让我变得真实。

These days, when I look at my bookshelves or consider the works on my e-reader, they tell a rather different story. It’s the story of the power books have to connect us across political, geographical, cultural, social, religious divides. It’s the tale of the potential human beings have to work together.

这些天来，当我看着我的书架的时候 ，或者在我的电子阅读器上思考这些作品时，它们在诉说这一个不一样的故事。这是一个关于书籍的故事。书能将我们联系在一起，跨越政治，区域，文化，社会，宗教的隔阂，它是人们拥有协同工作的潜能的故事。

And, it’s testament to the extraordinary times we live in, where, thanks to the Internet, it's easier than ever before for a stranger to share a story, a worldview, a book with someone she may never meet, on the other side of the planet. I hope it’s a story I'm reading for many years to come.

还有，它是一个证明的故事，证明了我们现在的这个时代，由于有互联网，让一切变得前所未有的方便——让一个陌生人来与来自地球另一半素未谋面的另一陌生人 ，分享一个故事，一种世界观，一本书。我希望这是一个我阅读这么多年所追求的故事。

And I hope many more people will join me. If we all read more widely, there’d be more incentive for publishers to translate more books, and we would all be richer for that.Thank you

我也希望会有更多的人可以与我同阅。如果我们都扩宽我们的阅读面，那么对于出版商来说，就更有动机去翻译更多书籍，我们就有机会更广地阅读了。谢谢！