外刊听读| 经济学人 被玷污的世界杯

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背景故事

Losing the World Cup

输掉世界杯

The tournament in Qatar is tarnished. Should fans enjoy it anyway?

在卡塔尔举行的世界杯被玷污了，球迷们应该继续享受它吗？

 

1 IT IS, ONCE again, July 4th 1990. You are watching the semifinal of the World Cup on a friend’s sofa. At half-time, the score is still nil-nil; Paul Gascoigne, known as Gazza, a peerless but troubled English footballer, is in his magical pomp. The deathly penalty shoot-out that West Germany is fated to win is a distant prospect. Everything is still possible: for Gazza, for England, and for you.

 

时间又回到1990年7月4日。你正在朋友的沙发上观看世界杯的半决赛。半场结束时，比分仍然是零比零；保罗-加斯科因（Paul Gascoigne），被称为加扎（Gazza），一位无以伦比但又麻烦不断的英国足球运动员，正处于传奇的巅峰期。联邦德国命中注定要赢的点球大战是一个遥远的前景。一切都是可能的：对加扎、对英格兰、对你。

 

2 The World Cup is a time machine. Each tournament evokes memories of previous ones, old pals and past selves, including, for this columnist, that bittersweet teenage evening 32 years ago. And even as it carries fans backwards, it draws them together from around the world. Collectively they follow the eclectic match-ups—such as, in the contest beginning in Qatar on November 20th, Ghana v Uruguay—or the piquant clashes between geopolitical foes, as in America v Iran. From distant bars, town squares and time-zones, millions of strangers gawk in unison at a wondrous overhead kick, or the wing-footed tyro who dribbles his name into history.

 

世界杯是一台时间机器。每届比赛都会唤起人们对以往比赛、老伙伴和过去自己的回忆，包括对本专栏作者来说，32年前那个苦乐参半的少年之夜。即使世界杯带着球迷回溯过去，它也把世界各地的球迷吸引到一起。他们共同关注着各种比赛--例如11月20日在卡塔尔开始的比赛中，加纳对乌拉圭，或地缘政治仇敌之间的交锋，美国对伊朗。在遥远的酒吧、城市广场和不同的时区，数以百万计的陌生人齐刷刷地注视着一个绝妙的倒挂金钩，或将自己的名字盘带进足球历史的速度型新人。

 

3 With its personal liturgies and worldwide communion, the World Cup can seem a kind of secular religion, or a benign global conspiracy for quadrennial fun. As Kafka might have put it had he been a football fan, there is plenty of hope, infinite hope, even, every four years, for England. It is a precious and unique event. This year, alas, it is also a scandal and a disgrace.

 

凭借其个人的礼拜和世界范围的圣餐仪式，世界杯似乎成为了一种世俗宗教，或者是一个良性的全球阴谋，四年一度的乐趣。如果卡夫卡是个足球迷，他可能会这样说，对英格兰来说，每四年就有很多希望，甚至是无法衡量的希望。世界杯是一个珍贵而独特的事件。今年，遗憾的是，它也是丑闻和耻辱。

 

4 The authorities in Qatar, a tiny gas-rich Gulf kingdom, have always strongly denied that their bid to host the cup involved corruption of any kind. Yet cash seems to have sloshed around. An indictment in America alleged three decision-makers at FIFA, football’s governing body, took backhanders, but didn’t say from whom. Inquiries have unearthed possible conflicts of interest stretching from politics to private transactions, like the £2m ($3.2m) allegedly wired to a FIFA bigwig’s child. A prominent Qatari spread largesse, apparently on his own account. Somehow, FIFA officials overlooked Qatar’s blistering summer heat, which meant kick-off was shunted to November.

 

卡塔尔是一个富含石油的海湾王国，该国当局一直强烈否认他们申办世界杯的流程涉及任何形式的腐败。然而，贿赂资金似乎已经大量存在。美国的一份起诉书称，国际足联（足球管理机构）的三名决策者收受了贿赂，但没有具体说是谁收的。调查发现了可能的利益冲突，从政治到私人交易，据称200万英镑（320万美元）被汇给了国际足联的一个大人物的孩子。一位知名的卡塔尔人显然是用自己的账户来散布大笔款项。不知何故，国际足联官员对卡塔尔炎热的夏季视而不见，这意味着开球时间被推迟到11月。

 

5 The footballers have thus been spared the venue’s most punishing temperatures. The legions of foreign construction workers who built the glitzy new stadiums and other infrastructure were not. Some have died (the toll is disputed). Many more were paid paltry wages and forced to stump up exploitative recruitment fees.

 

因此，足球运动员们避免了场地最严酷的温度，而那些建造华丽体育场和其他基础设施的外国建筑工人则没有。一些工人死亡（人数有争议），更多的人领着微薄的工资，并被迫为剥削性的招聘费用自掏腰包。

 

6 True, in the glare of attention before the tournament, labour conditions in Qatar have improved, albeit not for everyone. Better, however, if respect for basic rights were a prerequisite for staging it, not a halting consequence. To dispel the fantasy that hosts become better global citizens, you need only recall another World Cup memory—of the one held in Russia in 2018. The images of Vladimir Putin palling around at the final with Emmanuel Macron were nauseating even then; now they are repulsive.

 

诚然，在赛前的关注下，卡塔尔的劳工条件已经得到了改善，尽管不是对所有人都是如此。然而，如果尊重基本人权是举办比赛的先决条件，而不是断断续续的结果就更好了。为了打消东道主成为更好的全球公民的幻想，你只需要回忆另一个世界杯--2018俄罗斯世界杯。弗拉基米尔-普京在决赛中与埃马纽埃尔-马克龙打成一片的画面即使在当时也令人作呕；现在则令人厌恶。

 

7 Meanwhile Qatar’s criminalisation of homosexuality may put gay supporters off going there. Some players plan to wear rainbow armbands in a stand against discrimination. Murky dealing, exploitation, prejudice: what ought to be a festival of harmony will instead be a showcase of international woes, not least the rise of petro-fuelled autocracy.

 

同时，卡塔尔对同性恋的非法化可能会使同性恋的支持者不再愿意前去。一些球员计划戴上彩虹臂章，以反对歧视。肮脏的交易、剥削、偏见：这本应是一个和谐的节日，却成了国际困境的展示，尤其石油专制国家崛起。

 

8 Where does all that leave ordinary football fans—the middleaged nostalgics with their reveries of Gazza, Pele or Maradona, the initiates poised to fill in their tournament wall-charts? They cannot switch the TV channel to an alternative World Cup, one less entangled in the 21st-century nexus of power and money. Much as many may wish it otherwise, it is this version or nothing; these new memories or none.

 

这一切让普通球迷--那些怀念加扎、贝利或马拉多纳的中年人，以及准备赛事挂图的新球迷情何以堪？他们无法将电视频道切换到另一个世界杯，一个不与21世纪权钱纠缠的世界杯。尽管许多人可能希望如此，但这只是一个版本，或者什么都不是；这是新的记忆，或者什么也不是。

 

9 A few will tune out altogether. Others, this writer included, will be loth to give up the shoot-out agonies and extra-time miracles (missing the Qatari self-promotion in the opening ceremony will be easier). Like long-haul travel in the era of climate change, though, enjoying this tarnished World Cup may require an offset for your conscience, a donation to a humanrights group, say, or an anti-corruption charity. An event that punctuates and brightens millions of lives is set to feel grubby and shameful.

 

少数人将完全不再理睬世界杯。其他人，包括本作者在内，不愿放弃点球大战的痛苦和加时赛的奇迹（错过开幕式上卡塔尔人的自我吹嘘会更容易坚持观看世界杯）。不过，就像气候变化时代的长途旅行一样，享受这届被玷污的世界杯可能需要对你的良心进行补偿，比如向人权组织或反腐慈善组织捐款。一个点缀和鼓舞数百万人生活的事件，将注定让人感到肮脏和可耻。

 

10 A lot can happen in four years, to a football team, a family and the world. New faces can appear in your country’s midfield, or beside you on the sofa, while others recede, perhaps for ever. Pandemics can strike and wars erupt. And life can teach hard lessons, one of them being that fun is sometimes much less innocent than it had seemed.

 

在四年里，一支足球队、一个家庭和整个世界都可能发生很多事情。新的面孔可能出现在你的国家队中场，或在你的沙发上出现，而其他的面孔则会消失，也许是永远消失。疫情会袭来，战争会爆发。生活会给人以深刻的教训，其中之一就是快乐有时并不像它看起来那么清白。