(本文选自《经济学人》20200104期)
背景介绍：
长期以来，日本人在名字书写方式上有着一个奇特的现象。当以日文书写时，他们会把姓放在前、名放在后；但当以英文书写时，他们则会把名放在前、姓放在后。如今，随着一项新法令的生效，从2020年1月1日起，日本人在以英文书写名字时，将把姓放在前、名放在后。
Why Japanese names have flipped
为什么日本人要将姓名颠倒过来
They will now be written in English in the same order as in Japanese
如今，日本人姓名的英文书写顺序将与日文顺序相同
On January 1ST a minor lexical revolution rolled through Japan. A new decree ordained that official documents should reverse the order of Japanese people’s names when they are rendered in the Latin alphabet. Hitherto in, say, English documents, Japanese names have been written with the given name first, using the Western practice.
今年1月1日，一场小小的词法变革席卷日本。一项新法令规定，官方公文在以罗马拼音记录日本人的名字时应将其颠倒过来。直至目前，比方说在英文文件中，日本人的名字都是按照西方习惯先写名后写姓的。
Henceforth the family name will come first and, to banish any ambiguity, may be entirely capitalised. One backer of the change is the prime minister. From now on The Economist will refer to him as Abe Shinzo rather than Shinzo Abe.
但从今以后，姓氏将被放在前面，同时为了避免产生歧义，姓氏或将全部大写。日本首相正是这项变革的支持者之一。从现在开始，《经济学人》在提到他时将会使用“安倍晋三”，而非“晋三安倍”。
Like other newspapers, we have long followed the convention of writing Japanese names in the Western order (while scholarly publications have tended to use the Japanese order). If Japan wants to change, why should anyOne object? As is common in East Asian cultures, in Japanese the family name always comes first.
就像其他报刊那样，《经济学人》长期以来一直遵循西方的姓名顺序习惯来书写日本人的名字的（但学术刊物更倾向于使用日语的顺序）。当日本想要做出改变时，为何有人会反对呢？正如东亚文化所常见的那样，在日本，姓总是在前面。
National pride motivates many advocates of the change. From a Japanese perspective, writes Peter Tasker, a Tokyo-based commentator, in the Nikkei Asian Review, it represents “authenticity and normalisation”. The fact that Asian powers are on the rise, both geopolitically and culturally, is part of the point, Mr Tasker argues.
民族自豪感促使许多人倡导这项变革。东京时事评论员彼得·塔斯克在《日经亚洲评论》中写道，从日本的角度来看，它代表着“真实性和规范化”。塔斯克认为，事实上，亚洲大国在地缘政治和文化上的崛起也是原因之一。
Japanese conservatives do not see why they should say their names backwards just for the convenience of Western minds too lazy to grasp a basic facet of Japanese culture. Some 59% of Japanese in a recent opinion poll favoured reverting to surname-first.
日本保守派人士不明白为什么他们要把自己的名字倒着念，难道只是为了方便那些懒得去了解日本基本文化的西方人。最近的一次民意调查显示，59％的日本人支持恢复姓氏在前。
Yet there is an irony. Japan first decided to put given names first when talking to foreigners way back in the 1870s, during the Meiji era. It was actually a gesture by nationalist reformers who wanted to keep Western imperialists at bay.
然而，具有讽刺意味的是，早在19世纪70年代的明治时代，日本就决定在与外国人交流时将名放在前面。实际上，这是日本民族主义改革者想要抗击西方帝国主义的一种姿态。
Japan, they argued, could keep its independence only by abandoning the paternalism of Confucius, imported from China, which had long governed society and family life. Instead it should rapidly learn modern Western ways in everything from military affairs to education, both to ward off Western powers and to impress them.
他们认为，只有抛弃孔子的家长式作风（从中国所引进，长期统治着日本社会和家庭生活），日本才能保持其国家的独立性。相反，日本应该在从军事到教育等各方面迅速学习现代西方模式，从而既能抵御西方列强，又能给其留下深刻印象。
English name-order was a tiny part of the package. Reformists had drunk deeply of the social Darwinism then prevailing in the West, which taught that only the strongest societies would survive. One, Mori Arinori, even proposed adopting English as Japan’s language.
英文名字的顺序只是整个计划中的一小部分。改革派深受当时盛行于西方的社会达尔文主义的影响，他们认为只有最强大的社会才能生存。当时一位名叫森有礼的人甚至提议将英语作为日本的官方语言。
In 1885 a friend of Mori’s, Fukuzawa Yukichi, penned a polemic, “Goodbye Asia”, arguing that Western civilisation was like measles: if it didn’t kill you, it would make you stronger and should be embraced.
1885年，森有礼的好友福泽谕吉写下了一篇题为《再见亚洲》的议论文，他认为，西方文明就像麻疹一样：如果它没有杀死你，那么只会让你变得更强大，而你应该去拥抱它们。
He said the static cultures of China and Korea would make those countries more vulnerable to Western conquest. He urged Japan to cut its spiritual and civilisational ties with them. It was, with hindsight, a small step from there to a sense of Japanese exceptionalism, and then to militarism.
他说，中国和韩国的静态文化使得它们更容易被西方所征服。他敦促日本切断与这些国家的精神和文明联系。事后看来，这正是日本从例外主义走向军国主义所迈出的一小步。（注：例外主义，是指对其它国家、文化等的一种态度，认为自己的国家或文化在很多重要方面不同并优越于其它国家或其文化。）
重难点词汇：
lexical [ˈleksɪkl] adj. 词汇的；词典的
ambiguity [ˌæmbɪˈɡjuːəti] n. 含糊；不明确；暧昧
perspective [pərˈspektɪv] n. 观点；远景
abandon [əˈbændən] v. 遗弃；离开；放弃；终止
polemic [pəˈlemɪk] n. 争论，辩论文章；辩论者；辩论术
hindsight [ˈhaɪndsaɪt] n. 后见之明；事后诸葛亮
本文转自：每日双语经济学人
