某個荒無人煙的小鎮(zhèn)

某個荒無人煙的小鎮(zhèn)

It happens on every road trip — you're driving from city to city, natural wonder to natural wonder. Every hour is a magical combination of rustic beauty and historic landmarks and fascinating people.

每次公路之旅都會發(fā)生這種情況--你開車從一個城市到另一個城市，從一個自然奇觀到另一個自然奇觀。每個小時都是鄉(xiāng)村美景、歷史地標(biāo)和很棒的人的神奇結(jié)合。

Until, one day, things change: The scenery turns gray; the people lose their charm. You find yourself at a rest stop with no toilet paper. It's 90 miles to the nearest motel.

直到有一天，一切都變了:風(fēng)景變得黯淡;人們失去魅力。你發(fā)現(xiàn)自己在一個沒有衛(wèi)生紙的休息站。離最近的汽車旅館有90英里。

Akin to "nowheresville" and "hicksville," people use "Podunk" as a stand-in for anywhere they think doesn't have much going on.

與“nowheresville”和“hicksville”類似，人們用“Podunk”代替他們認(rèn)為沒什么大不了的地方。

It's a depressing place: bleak, empty, isolated. The people there are probably a little creepy. Any good thing that happens there is highly unexpected (I was in some Podunk town in God-knows-where when I heard that my grandson got engaged!).

這是一個令人沮喪的地方:荒涼、空曠、與世隔絕。那里的人可能有點嚇人。那里如果發(fā)生好事那是非常出乎意料的(我是在一個鬼才知道的荒無人煙的小鎮(zhèn)上聽說我孫子訂婚的消息的!)

A common implication of Podunk is that it's a place so dreary and remote that it's not even worth situating on a map.

公眾對Podunk的定義是一個枯燥和偏遠(yuǎn)的地方，甚至不值得在地圖上標(biāo)出來。

But there are a couple of things that people who use the term probably don't know. First, Podunk is the name of a few real towns. There's a Podunk in Connecticut, one in New York, Vermont, Massachusetts.

但是有幾件事，用這個詞的人可能不知道。首先，Podunk是幾個真實存在的城鎮(zhèn)的名字。康涅狄格州有一個，紐約州有一個，佛蒙特州有一個，馬薩諸塞州有一個。

The Connecticut Podunk is well-known (OK, not that well-known) for an annual bluegrass festival. And folks who live in the various Podunks are pretty well-practiced at pushing back against its common usage.

康涅狄格的Podunk以一年一度的藍(lán)草音樂節(jié)而聞名(好吧，不是那么有名)。住在各處的Podunks的人都很反駁它的常用用法。

In 1981, someone took The New York Times to task for publishing a Podunk-bashing cartoon. The cartoon, Francis H. Schaefer Jr. wrote, "is a slur to the Podunk. ... Our Podunk may be no more than a junction in the road, with a population of 30 at tops, but it is definitely a real place."

1981年，有人指責(zé)《紐約時報》刊登了一幅抨擊podunk的漫畫。小弗朗西斯·h·謝弗寫道，這幅漫畫“是對Podunk的詆毀……我們的Podunk可能只是路上的一個樞紐，最多有30個人，但它絕對是一個真實的地方。”

The other thing people likely don't know? Podunk was a place name before it became a punchline. Podunk is an Algonquian word. Algonquian languages are a family of indigenous languages spoken from New England to Saskatchewan to the Great Plains.

人們可能不知道的另一件事是什么?Podunk在成為笑柄之前是一個地名。Podunk是一個阿爾岡琴語。阿爾岡琴語是從新英格蘭到薩斯喀徹溫到大平原的一個土著語言。

Those languages include Fox, Cree and Ojibwe. There are a bunch of words in English that have Algonquian roots: skunk, moose, caribou. And according to Arok Wolvengrey, a professor of Algonquian languages and linguistics at First Nations University of Canada, many of those languages are in danger.

這些語言包括Fox, Cree和Ojibwe。英語中有很多單詞的詞根都與阿爾岡琴語有關(guān):skunk(臭鼬)、moose(駝鹿)、caribou(馴鹿)。根據(jù)加拿大第一民族大學(xué)阿爾岡琴語言和語言學(xué)教授阿洛克沃溫格林的說法，這些語言中的許多都處于危險之中。

"Half of those [languages] might be gone within a hundred years," he says. "And we've already suffered a fairly large loss just in the last 500 years in the Americas."

“這些(語言)中有一半可能在一百年內(nèi)消失，”他說。“在美洲國家過去的500年里，我們（的語言）已經(jīng)遭受了相當(dāng)大的損失。”

But beyond its Algonquian roots, much of the linguistic history of Podunk is kind of murky.

但是除了它的阿爾岡琴詞根之外，Podunk的語言歷史還有很多不為人知的地方。

"We have no idea what the word means," says Ives Goddard, senior linguist emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution and a leading expert on Algonquian languages. "You'll be able to find guesses in the sources if you look around. Don't believe any of it."

“我們不知道這個詞是什么意思，”史密森學(xué)會的資深語言學(xué)家、阿爾岡琴語系的主要專家艾夫斯·戈達(dá)德說。“如果你四處看看，就能在資料來源中找到猜想。但別全相信這些。”

He hadn't known that Podunk was an Algonquian word before we got in touch, but he said he didn't think there was anything particularly sinister about its use.

在我們聯(lián)系他之前，他并不知道Podunk是一個阿爾岡琴詞，但他說他并不認(rèn)為這個詞的用法有什么特別兇兆的地方。

Wolvengrey says there are obviously words that "reflect a racist attitude towards indigenous people" — but Podunk doesn't seem to be one of them. And, he adds, there are all kinds of words for places, both negative and positive, that get detached from their original meaning: Shangri-La, for instance, or Xanadu: "Words have interesting histories. They can deteriorate and they can sometimes become much stronger than they were in the first place."

沃溫格林說，很明顯，有些詞“反映了對土著人的種族主義態(tài)度”，但Podunk似乎不在其中。而且，他補(bǔ)充說，有各種各樣的表示地方的詞，有褒義的，也有貶義的，它們都脫離了原意:例如，香格里拉，或者世外桃源。詞語有有趣的歷史，它們可能會被惡化，有時還會比原來的意義變得更強(qiáng)。”