Dave Barry on Humor, Writing, and Life as a Florida Man (Ep. 27)
Hello, I’m here today with Dave Barry, and we’re going to talk about humor, Dave’s life, and Dave’s career.
大家好，今天我和戴夫·巴里在这里，我们将讨论幽默、戴夫的生活和戴夫的职业生涯。
My first question about humor has to do with YouTube.
我关于幽默的第一个问题与 YouTube 有关。
A lot of the funny things you have written, rather than doing stand-up, and now there’s YouTube as a kind of competitor to written humor.
你写了很多有趣的东西，而不是单口喜剧，现在 YouTube 成为了书面幽默的竞争对手。
How has that changed what readers are looking for?
这如何改变了读者的需求？
And what new constraints does that put on you?
这给你带来了哪些新的限制？
Well, the second part is easy: none for me.
嗯，第二部分很简单：对我来说没有。
I’m too old to change.
我已经太老了，无法改变。
I basically do what I’ve always done.
我基本上做我一直做的事情。
I do think YouTube and the Internet in general have radically changed the humor industry, especially for younger audiences, which are much more oriented towards meme-y things that they see.
我确实认为 YouTube 和互联网总体上已经从根本上改变了幽默产业，特别是对于年轻观众来说，他们更倾向于看到他们所看到的迷因事物。
Other people would get shorter things, shorter bits, things that require a lot of inside knowledge, which everybody seems to have now, thanks to the Internet.
其他人会得到更短的东西，更短的部分，需要大量内部知识的东西，而现在每个人似乎都拥有这些知识，这要归功于互联网。
And if I can extend it to not just YouTube, but Twitter and Instagram and Facebook .
如果我可以将其扩展到 YouTube、Twitter、Instagram 和 Facebook。
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Everything happens so fast, and everything builds on everything else so quickly.
一切都发生得如此之快，一切都如此迅速地建立在其他一切之上。
Things become old almost instantaneously, or become mutated so much instantaneously, it’s really hard to keep up, which is why I don’t really try that hard, to be honest.
事物几乎在一瞬间就变旧了，或者瞬间就发生了如此大的变异，真的很难跟上，这就是为什么我并没有真正努力，说实话。
If I think of the humor I consume, I’ve realized, today compared to when I was a kid, how much of it is from amateurs.
如果我想想我所消耗的幽默，我就会意识到，与我小时候相比，今天的幽默有多少来自业余爱好者。
There’s some one-star reviews on Amazon that are actually hilarious.
亚马逊上有一些一星评论实际上很搞笑。
Twitter can be funny; it’s very context-dependent.
Twitter 可以很有趣；这非常依赖于上下文。
Maybe you know this South Korean video of Robert Kelly, the man doing an interview.
也许您知道罗伯特·凯利（Robert Kelly）接受采访的韩国视频。
He’s trying very hard not to be funny, and his two children barge into the room and are removed by his wife.
他竭尽全力不让自己变得有趣，结果他的两个孩子闯进房间，被他的妻子带走了。
Truly, if you were to hire professional writers to write a scene and professional actors to act, you could not possibly have outdone that particular 30-second sequence.
确实，如果你聘请专业编剧来编写场景并聘请专业演员来表演，你不可能超越那个特定的 30 秒序列。
It was just so wonderful because it was real.
它是如此美妙，因为它是真实的。
And because he’s trying not to be funny.
因为他试图不显得好笑。
Exactly.
确切地。
But if there are billions of people out there, and say each one is really funny once in their lifetime, and some of that gets captured on YouTube, and you have aggregators or filters — as a professional comedian, you’re competing against the funniest moment of each amateur, often unintentional.
但是，如果有数十亿人，并且说每个人在一生中都真的很有趣，并且其中一些被捕获在 YouTube 上，并且你有聚合器或过滤器 - 作为一名专业喜剧演员，你正在与每个业余爱好者最有趣的时刻竞争，而这通常是无意的。
So do you think it’s the case that professionals now, they become more like brands?
那么你认为专业人士现在的情况是不是变得更像品牌了？
If I watch Stephen Colbert, to me it’s funny — he’s not as funny as that moment by Kelly.
如果我看斯蒂芬·科尔伯特，对我来说这很有趣——他不像凯利那一刻那么有趣。
He almost to me is a kind of watchman, or he reassures me.
他对我来说几乎是一种守望者，或者说他让我放心。
And that’s made the comedian, in a sense, deliberately not that funny.
从某种意义上说，这使得这位喜剧演员故意变得不那么有趣。
They play a different role.
他们扮演着不同的角色。
How do you see that?
你怎么看？
I don’t know, I think that the real comedians .
我不知道，我认为真正的喜剧演员。
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Colbert, he’s basically delivering jokes written by a staff of writers and curating whatever they got from the Internet, or presenting whatever they curated from the Internet.
科尔伯特，他基本上是在传递一群作家写的笑话，并策划他们从互联网上获得的任何内容，或者展示他们从互联网上策划的任何内容。
But guys like Louis C.
但像 Louis C.
K.
K.
and Dave Chappelle are still creating their own humor, and it’s still really funny.
和戴夫·查普尔仍在创造他们自己的幽默，而且仍然非常有趣。
And it’s them, it’s not anybody else.
是他们，不是其他人。
It doesn’t look like anybody else.
它看起来不像其他人。
So yeah, there’s way, way more of it out there.
是的，还有更多这样的事情。
It’s probably tougher to be really original, to sound really original, than it used to be, but there’s an awful lot of consumers as well, and there just seems to be this huge appetite for more funny.
与以前相比，变得真正原创、听起来真正原创可能更加困难，但消费者也非常多，而且似乎对更多有趣的东西有着巨大的胃口。
I don’t know that it’s worse, and in some ways, it may be easier.
我不知道情况是否更糟，而且在某些方面，它可能更容易。
If you are a kid who wants to get known as a comedian, you don’t really have to, anymore, go the incredibly difficult route that most of the stand-up comedians I know went, which is starting out at Catch a Rising Star or someplace much worse than that, and doing all those stand-ups in front of three drunks, and slowly getting noticed, and finally getting hired by somebody.
如果你是一个想成为一名喜剧演员的孩子，你真的不必再像我认识的大多数单口喜剧演员那样走极其困难的路线，从《抓住新星》或比这更糟糕的地方开始，在三个醉汉面前做所有这些单口喜剧，慢慢地引起注意，最后被某人雇用。
You can just go on the Internet, make a funny video, and sometimes that will produce fantastic results for you.
您可以上网制作一个有趣的视频，有时这会给您带来奇妙的结果。
Is the half-life of a joke much shorter now?
现在笑话的半衰期是不是短多了？
Yeah, for sure.
是的，当然。
As I said, I cannot keep up.
正如我所说，我跟不上。
Personally, I don’t even try to keep up.
就我个人而言，我什至没有尝试跟上。
I see something that everybody tells me is funny, I look at it, but to try to stay on top of all the stuff that’s coming out, you can’t do it.
我看到一些每个人都告诉我很有趣的东西，我看着它，但试图掌握所有即将出现的东西，你做不到。
But does that mean we end up in a world where, in a sense, humor is rarely intentional?
但这是否意味着我们最终会进入一个从某种意义上说幽默很少是有意为之的世界？
And it’s the moments that weren’t expected to be captured, that’s what we laugh at.
而正是那些我们没有预料到会被捕捉到的时刻，才是我们所嘲笑的。
And humor is a kind of science, what will dwindle, or .
而幽默是一种科学，什么都会减少，或者……。
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Yes, that’s part of it, but as I said, there are still a lot of people who are very creative and are going to continue to be funny.
是的，这是其中的一部分，但正如我所说，仍然有很多人非常有创造力，并且会继续变得有趣。
They’re just going to use whatever is going on around them, and it may be a lot more Internet-oriented than it used to be.
他们只会利用周围发生的一切，而且可能比以前更加面向互联网。
But in the end, I don’t think people’s sense of humor has changed that much.
但最终，我认为人们的幽默感并没有改变那么多。
It’s sort of more the way it gets fed to us now.
这更像是我们现在的饮食方式。
Say, 20 years from now, do you think there will be more professional comedians in this country or fewer?
比如说，20年后，你认为这个国家的专业喜剧演员会更多还是更少？
I do not represent the humor bureau, so I have no earthly idea.
我不代表幽默局，所以我没有世俗的想法。
I do think that, in the particular field that I’m in, which is writing — the archaic form of actually writing words down — it certainly has changed.
我确实认为，在我所处的特定领域，即写作——“实际写下单词的古老形式”——它肯定已经发生了变化。
The day of the newspaper humor columnist, which is what I was, is pretty much over.
报纸幽默专栏作家的日子，也就是我，已经结束了。
Because the newspaper’s over.
因为报纸已经结束了。
Newspapers are over, that there’s no more audience for it, that people have no more time for it.
报纸已经结束了，没有更多的读者，人们没有更多的时间看它。
So longer-form humor does seem to be disappearing.
因此，较长形式的幽默似乎正在消失。
On the other hand, there’s a million good TV shows, I think, more than there ever used to be.
另一方面，我认为现在有上百万部好电视节目，比以往任何时候都多。
Funny TV shows.
有趣的电视节目。
They keep popping up — they’re on Amazon, they’re on Netflix.
他们不断出现 ——他们在亚马逊上，他们在Netflix上。
Some of them are really pretty funny.
其中一些真的很有趣。
I can’t keep up with them all, but I’m always surprised at the quality.
我无法跟上所有这些，但我总是对它们的质量感到惊讶。
There seems to be more outlets, maybe, than there used to be — if for not the kind of humor that I did, but still it’s written humor, it’s scripted humor.
也许，似乎比以前有更多的出路——如果不是我所做的那种幽默，但它仍然是书面幽默，这是有脚本的幽默。
On anti-establishment humor, then and now
论反建制幽默的过去和现在
If we think of the political content of humor — I think back, say, to the 1960s — there’s Lenny Bruce, there’s Richard Pryor.
如果我们思考幽默的政治内容——“我回想一下 20 世纪 60 年代”——“有莱尼·布鲁斯，有理查德·普赖尔。
What’s funny at that time, it seems mostly to be anti-establishment, in some way, or left wing.
当时有趣的是，在某种程度上，它似乎大多是反建制的，或者是左翼的。
Jon Stewart today, again Colbert.
今天乔恩·斯图尔特，又是科尔伯特。
There’s some conservative or libertarian comedians.
有一些保守派或自由主义喜剧演员。
There’s P.
有P。
J.
J。
O’Rourke, there’s yourself, there’s Drew Carey.
奥罗克，有你自己，还有德鲁·凯里。
But do you think that the medium of humor today has a slant politically one way or the other?
但你认为当今的幽默媒介是否有某种政治倾向呢？
And what is that slant?
那倾斜是什么？
Definitely, it is a leftist slant.
毫无疑问，这是一种左倾倾向。
But why?
但为什么？
Because that’s what the cool kids think all the other cool kids are doing.
因为这就是酷孩子认为所有其他酷孩子都在做的事情。
It’s kind of funny because it’s not very subversive anymore.
这有点有趣，因为它不再具有颠覆性了。
What could be less subversive than the humor industry during the eight years of Barack Obama, where we never made fun of Barack Obama?
在巴拉克·奥巴马执政的八年里，还有什么比幽默产业的颠覆性更小，我们从来没有取笑过巴拉克·奥巴马呢？
COWEN: Correct.
考恩：正确。
BARRY: He was the president of the United States.
巴里：他是美国总统。
He got a Nobel Prize for doing absolutely nothing, but nobody made fun of him as they continued pounding on .
他因为什么都没做而获得了诺贝尔奖，但没有人取笑他，因为他们继续努力。
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I’ll never forget, and here I will be unable to summon up the details, but it was one of the many White House press association dinners while Barack Obama was president.
我永远不会忘记，在这里我无法回忆起细节，但这是巴拉克·奥巴马担任总统期间众多白宫新闻协会晚宴之一。
And he’s there, and Donald Trump’s there.
他在那里，唐纳德·特朗普也在那里。
I can’t remember who the comedian was, but he spent the whole time ripping Donald Trump, who was, at the time, some schmo in the audience.
我不记得那个喜剧演员是谁，但他一直在撕扯唐纳德·特朗普，当时他在观众席上是个傻子。
The president’s sitting right next to him, and it, to me, epitomized the way it is.
总统就坐在他旁边，对我来说，这就是情况的缩影。
We’re allowed to, in the humor biz, beat up all we want on Republicans because they’re stupid idiot Republicans, and their followers are all redneck morons.
在幽默圈里，我们可以随心所欲地殴打共和党人，因为他们是愚蠢的白痴共和党人，而他们的追随者都是乡巴佬白痴。
But, at some point, that ceases to be even remotely creative.
但到了某个时候，这就不再具有创造性了。
That point was reached a long, long time ago.
这个点在很久很久以前就已经达到了。
So I think there was a steep decline in the quality of American political humor from which we haven’t really recovered, combined with the fact that a lot of what passes for humor now, on both sides, is just vicious attacks.
因此，我认为美国政治幽默的质量急剧下降，我们还没有真正从中恢复过来，再加上现在双方认为的许多幽默只是恶毒的攻击。
Sure.
当然。
And some of them are very clever, and some of them are very funny, but it isn’t that funny, it isn’t that creative.
其中有些很聪明，有些很有趣，但没那么有趣，没那么有创意。
It’s just, “I’m going to smear .
只是，“我要涂抹。”
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。
.” How many times do you have to be told Donald Trump has weird hair?
”。你有多少次被告知唐纳德·特朗普的头发很奇怪？
At some point, you would think this would be exhausted as a source of humor, but it’s not.
在某些时候，你可能会认为这作为幽默的来源已经用尽了，但事实并非如此。
Do you think there’s room for a new right-wing kind of humor?
您认为新的右翼幽默还有空间吗？
Maybe not a kind of right wing that you like, but, say, now there’s alt-right — it’s at least perceived as new, it’s outrageous to many people.
也许不是你喜欢的右翼，但是，比如说，现在有了另类右翼——它至少被认为是新的，对很多人来说是令人愤慨的。
Is this the new direction of funny?
这是搞笑的新方向吗？
Or is there something intrinsic about humor that it’s left wing, there’s a left-wing slant to what humor is?
或者幽默有什么内在的东西，它是左翼的，幽默是什么有左翼倾向？
No, definitely not.
不，绝对不是。
Humor should be subversive, and it’s a lot more subversive to be right wing than left wing these days .
幽默应该是具有颠覆性的，现在右翼比左翼更具颠覆性。
A pro-Trump humorist — I don’t know if any exist — would be a lot more subversive than any of the nine billion .
一个支持特朗普的幽默家 ——“我不知道是否存在”—— 会比 90 亿人中的任何一个更具颠覆性。
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Trump himself is the pro-Trump humorist.
特朗普本人就是支持特朗普的幽默家。
That’s right.
这是正确的。
COWEN: In a sense he’s too funny to make fun of.
COWEN：从某种意义上说，他太有趣了，无法取笑。
Yeah, or just too out there.
是的，或者太离谱了。
He’s such a caricature by himself that it’s hard to caricature.
他本身就是一个漫画人物，很难被漫画化。
But, OK, there’s a guy .
但是，好吧，有一个人。
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Are you familiar with the blog Ace of Spades?
您熟悉博客 Ace of Spades 吗？
Yes.
是的。
Guy’s funny.
这家伙很有趣。
The guy is a funny, funny writer.
这家伙是个有趣、有趣的作家。
I don’t always agree with him, but he’s funny, he’s really good, and he’s viciously anti-left.
我并不总是同意他的观点，但他很有趣，他真的很好，而且他是恶毒的反左派。
Yes.
是的。
And that’s rare, but when you see it, it’s like, “Wow!
这种情况很少见，但当你看到它时，你会觉得，“哇！
That’s different.” I admire the skill that it takes to do what he does, and I don’t see it that often.
那是不同的。”我钦佩他做事所需要的技巧，但我并不经常看到这种情况。
Malcolm Gladwell, in one of his podcasts, he criticized the Tina Fey skits of Sarah Palin.
马尔科姆·格拉德威尔在他的一个播客中批评了莎拉·佩林的蒂娜·菲短剧。
Gladwell, of course, doesn’t like Sarah Palin, and he thought that Tina Fey, even by mocking Sarah Palin — since Tina Fey was a likeable person, a likeable character — it humanized Sarah Palin for the audience, and that the satire was counterproductive.
格拉德威尔当然不喜欢莎拉·佩林，他认为蒂娜·菲即使是通过嘲笑莎拉·佩林——“因为蒂娜·菲是一个可爱的人，一个可爱的角色”——也让观众对莎拉·佩林变得人性化，而这种讽刺会适得其反。
What do you think of that argument?
你觉得这个论点怎么样？
It’s just overthinking it so badly.
这只是想太多了。
That’s not how any normal person reacted to Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin, which was brilliant.
这不是任何正常人对蒂娜·菲饰演的莎拉·佩林的反应，她的演技太棒了。
So no, I’m sorry, I don’t know Malcolm Gladwell, and I know he’s a brilliant man, but that’s way overthinking it.
所以，不，对不起，我不认识马尔科姆·格拉德威尔，我知道他是一个才华横溢的人，但这是想太多了。
And Alec Baldwin doing Donald Trump, how funny do you think that is?
亚历克·鲍德温（Alec Baldwin）扮演唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump），你觉得这有多有趣？
It’s pretty funny, but again, this is a pretty easy target to be taking a swing at.
这很有趣，但同样，这是一个很容易被攻击的目标。
There’s a big piñata up there, and everybody’s got a stick, and everybody likes to swing at the Trump piñata.
那里有一个大皮纳塔，每个人都有一根棍子，每个人都喜欢挥舞特朗普皮纳塔。
I personally have gotten to the point where I don’t pay that much attention to Trump jokes anymore because they all seem to be the same joke to me: “Hey, look at what he said.
我个人已经不再那么关注特朗普的笑话了，因为对我来说它们似乎都是同一个笑话：“嘿，看看他说了什么。
He doesn’t know what he’s doing.
他不知道自己在做什么。
He’s a moron.”
他是个白痴。”
On crossing cultural borders with humor
用幽默跨越文化边界
Some things cross borders fairly easily: A lot of different kinds of foods, though not all kinds of foods, some but not all kinds of music.
有些东西很容易跨越国界：很多不同种类的食物，虽然不是所有种类的食物，有一些但不是所有种类的音乐。
It’s striking to me that humorous movies cross borders less, it seems from box office data, than say action movies or even what would appear to be quite culturally specific dramas.
令我惊讶的是，从票房数据来看，幽默电影的跨界性似乎比动作片甚至是具有特定文化背景的戏剧要少。
What do you think it is about the border that limits the appeal of humor?
您认为是什么边界限制了幽默的吸引力？
Probably, in part, the English language.
可能部分是英语。
I just speak from personal experience.
我只是从个人经历来说说。
What little I know of anything I’ve seen of mine that was translated, and what little I understand of the other language, it’s extremely difficult to translate humor and have it come off the same way.
我对我所见过的翻译过的东西知之甚少，而且我对另一种语言也知之甚少，翻译幽默并以同样的方式表达出来是极其困难的。
It’s easy to translate somebody beating the crap out of somebody else, so action movies are going to lend themselves far better.
翻译一个人打败另一个人很容易，所以动作片会更适合自己。
Now, if it’s English to English, I think probably American comedies do OK in English-speaking countries.
现在，如果是英语到英语，我认为美国喜剧在英语国家可能会很受欢迎。
I don’t know for sure.
我不确定。
I know English-speaking comedies from England do pretty well over here, so it seems .
我知道英国的英语喜剧在这里表现得很好，看来是这样。
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。
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Canadians, on average, seem funnier to me.
平均而言，加拿大人对我来说似乎更有趣。
Canada is the funniest country in the world.
加拿大是世界上最有趣的国家。
It just hides it much better than everyone else.
它只是比其他人隐藏得更好。
That’s correct.
这是正确的。
But so much British humor, I literally feel I don’t understand it.
但这么多英式幽默，我真的觉得我听不懂。
There’s something about it that’s very flat to me, in a sense, that the British audience or in New Zealand, they’re guffawing.
从某种意义上说，这对我来说非常平淡，英国观众或新西兰观众都在大笑。
And that word guffaw — I would never use the word guffaw to apply to myself.
狂笑这个词—— 我永远不会用狂笑这个词来形容我自己。
I might giggle or snort.
我可能会咯咯笑或哼哼。
They don’t actually guffaw out loud a lot of times.
他们实际上并没有经常大声笑。
They just acknowledge the humor of it in their own British way.
他们只是以他们自己的英国方式承认它的幽默。
That’s right.
这是正确的。
But yeah, you have to accept, with British humor, that no British person has ever in history ever said what he actually thought about anything.
但是，是的，你必须以英国式的幽默来接受，历史上没有一个英国人说过他对任何事情的真实想法。
Everything that every British person ever says is meant sarcastically.
每个英国人所说的一切都带有讽刺意味。
So it’s because they’re less direct that they have such a different sense of funny.
所以正是因为他们不那么直接，所以他们有如此不同的搞笑感。
They are way less direct, and they refuse to ever say anything directly, and that’s the wonder of them.
他们不那么直接，他们拒绝直接说出任何事情，这就是他们的奇妙之处。
I’m the kind of person, I hardly ever find slapstick funny.
我就是这样的人，我几乎不觉得闹剧有什么好笑的。
Me too.
我也是。
I’m with you.
我和你在一起。
If I look at old slapstick, it doesn’t seem funny at all.
如果我看旧的闹剧，它看起来一点也不好笑。
Intuitively, you would think slapstick, being only physical, would have a much longer half-life.
直觉上，你会认为闹剧只是物理性质的，会有更长的半衰期。
What I find funny is very culturally specific references.
我觉得有趣的是非常具有文化特色的参考。
Now, am I strange?
现在，我很奇怪吗？
Well, not about slapstick.
嗯，不是闹剧。
When I was a little guy, I maybe thought that the Three Stooges were kind of funny but that stopped a long time ago.
当我还是个小家伙的时候，我可能觉得三个臭皮匠有点有趣，但这种感觉很久以前就停止了。
Some physical humor is still funny to me.
一些肢体幽默对我来说仍然很有趣。
Abbott and Costello were pretty physical, but they were funny without being slapstick.
阿博特和科斯特洛的身体素质非常好，但他们很有趣，但并不打闹。
Just hitting each other in the nose and going, “nyuk, nyuk, nyuk” never struck me as funny at all.
只是互相打对方的鼻子，然后说“nyuk，nyuk，nyuk”，我一点也不觉得好笑。
I have forgotten the second part of your question.
我忘记了你问题的第二部分。
On different comedians and what’s not funny anymore
关于不同的喜剧演员以及什么不再好笑
You mentioned Abbott and Costello.
你提到了雅培和科斯特洛。
If you’re willing, I’ll talk about a few comedians, or mention a few, and you can tell me what you found funny with them, didn’t find funny.
如果你愿意的话，我就讲几个喜剧演员，或者提几个，你可以告诉我他们什么地方好笑，什么地方不好笑。
Let’s start with Abbott and Costello.
让我们从雅培和科斯特洛开始。
Favorite of my father.
我父亲的最爱。
I’ve watched almost all the movies.
我几乎看过所有的电影。
As I kid, I didn’t find them funny, but I actually started to find them funny in retrospect after having watched a bit of Seinfeld and Larry David.
当我开玩笑时，我并不觉得它们很有趣，但在看了一些《宋飞正传》和拉里·大卫之后，我实际上开始觉得它们很有趣。
What’s your take on Abbott and Costello?
您对雅培和科斯特洛有何看法？
Yeah, I can see the connection there.
是的，我可以看到那里的联系。
It more relies on you letting it — the humor — slowly develop and the characters themselves being the humor without coming right out and saying what’s funny about it: The one who never understands what’s going on, the one who’s always losing his patience with the other one.
它更依赖于你让它————幽默————慢慢地发展，让角色本身成为幽默，而不是直接说出来有什么好笑的：一个永远不明白发生了什么的人，一个总是对另一个人失去耐心的人。
The first, maybe, three or four times, it’s just mildly amusing.
第一次，也许，三四次，只是有点有趣。
But after a while, when you see it coming, that becomes very funny to you.
但过了一段时间，当你看到它的到来时，你就会变得很有趣。
It’s very rare to find that kind of patience in humor anymore.
这种幽默中的耐心已经很少见了。
I don’t think the audience is as generous as it used to be, allowing humor to build the way it did in an Abbott and Costello sketch.
我认为观众不再像以前那样慷慨，允许幽默像雅培和科斯特洛的素描那样构建。
And is Abbott or Costello funnier to you?
对你来说，雅培和科斯特洛哪个更有趣？
Abbott being the straight man.
阿博特是个直男。
Yeah, I think Abbott is funnier.
是的，我觉得雅培更有趣。
I think he’s much funnier.
我觉得他更有趣。
Someone who just passed away, I was watching him on YouTube recently, Don Rickles.
一个刚刚去世的人，我最近在 YouTube 上看到了他，Don Rickles。
Don Rickles was a funny man.
唐·里克斯是个有趣的人。
One of the things I liked about him, I’d say, he was a little out of control.
我想说，我喜欢他的一件事是，他有点失控。
I know that was contrived, but I think, at least early in his career, it was pretty real.
我知道这是做作的，但我认为，至少在他职业生涯的早期，这是相当真实的。
You see some of the older performances, he says things sometimes on the old Tonight Shows that everybody’s just dying, and then you realize none of them really knows exactly why that was so funny.
你看到一些较旧的表演，他有时会在旧的《今夜秀》中说每个人都快死了，然后你意识到他们中没有人真正知道为什么这如此有趣。
It was just that he said something that nobody would have thought to say.
只是他说了一些没人想到会说的话。
But he says some things that we, or at least I, wince at.
但他说的一些话让我们，或者至少是我，感到畏缩。
Could there be a Don Rickles today?
今天会有唐·里克斯吗？
He’s a kind of equal-opportunity insulter.
他是一个机会均等的侮辱者。
A lot of it would at least seem to be in bad taste, but since it’s applied so liberally — I mean that word in the multiple sense.
其中很多至少看起来品味很差，但由于它的应用如此广泛 —— 我指的是多重意义上的这个词。
To everybody.
给大家。
Well, it would work anywhere except on a college campus, where, of course, you can’t say anything at all.
好吧，它在任何地方都适用，除了大学校园，当然，在大学校园里你什么也不能说。
But I think we have to distinguish between college campuses and comedy clubs.
但我认为我们必须区分大学校园和喜剧俱乐部。
Comedy clubs you can still say .
你仍然可以说喜剧俱乐部。
.
。
.
。
You can be racial.
你可以是种族的。
A lot of comedians still are very racial, and everybody says, “Yeah, it’s fine.
很多喜剧演员仍然很种族化，每个人都说：“是的，没关系。
He’s kidding.
他在开玩笑。
He’s not really a racist.
他并不是真正的种族主义者。
He’s just going on the stereotypes that everybody’s aware of.”
他只是延续了每个人都知道的刻板印象。”
But I see nonwhite comedians much more deploying racial humor than white comedians.
但我发现非白人喜剧演员比白人喜剧演员更多地运用种族幽默。
Generally, because they can, but even white comedians will do it as long as the understanding is, “Hey, I’m kidding.
一般来说，因为他们可以，但即使是白人喜剧演员也会这么做，只要理解是，“嘿，我在开玩笑。
You know I’m kidding.” Which of course you can’t do on a college campus anymore because nobody’s allowed to kid.
你知道我在开玩笑。”当然，你不能再在大学校园里这样做了，因为没有人被允许开玩笑。
Do you think there’s anything people don’t find funny anymore, even in a comedy club, campuses aside?
你认为有什么事情人们不再觉得有趣了，即使是在校园之外的喜剧俱乐部里？
I will speak for my own personal experience as a dad of a daughter.
我将谈谈我作为女儿父亲的个人经历。
If I saw a guy get up and doing underage rape jokes, it just wouldn’t .
如果我看到一个人站起来讲强奸未成年人的笑话，我就不会这么做。
.
。
.
。
even if it were really brilliantly funny.
即使它真的非常有趣。
The only guy who even came close was, Louis C.
唯一接近的人是 Louis C.
K.
K.
did a really edgy joke not too long ago, basically about pederasts, that came really close.
不久前做了一个非常尖锐的笑话，基本上是关于鸡奸者，非常接近。
And even then, everybody kind of winced when he did it, but it was daring and funny, but I myself would draw a line there.
即便如此，当他这样做时，每个人都有点畏缩，但这是大胆和有趣的，但我自己会在那里划清界限。
I want to say the Holocaust, but I’ve seen people make incredibly funny Holocaust jokes.
我想说的是大屠杀，但我见过人们开过非常有趣的大屠杀笑话。
Again, it all depends on the context, and it all depends on your understanding of their sensibility, and what you’re really laughing at.
再说一遍，这一切都取决于上下文，也取决于你对他们情感的理解，以及你真正在笑什么。
You’re not really laughing at the Holocaust.
你并不是真的在嘲笑大屠杀。
You’re laughing at the anxiety or something around it.
你在嘲笑焦虑或与之相关的事情。
But that takes certain skill on the part of the comedian.
但这需要喜剧演员一定的技巧。
It’s hard to say in general.
一般情况下很难说。
How about Eddie Murphy?
艾迪·墨菲呢？
How funny is he?
他有多有趣？
Well, he used to be really funny.
嗯，他以前真的很有趣。
His stand-up in his day was as good as it got.
在他那个时代，他的单口相声非常出色。
And what was it, Beverly Hills Cop, and a couple movies like that.
那是什么，《比佛利山警探》，还有几部类似的电影。
Yes, yes.
是的，是的。
Coming to America is one of my favorites.
来美国是我最喜欢的事情之一。
I really don’t know what happened.
我真的不知道发生了什么事。
I guess he just got too successful to need to be funny anymore, or maybe he just got tired of it, which I think happens.
我想他只是太成功了，不需要再搞笑了，或者也许他只是厌倦了，我认为这种情况发生了。
And, God bless him, if you get tired of it, you don’t have to keep doing it, then that’s fine, you don’t have to.
而且，上帝保佑他，如果你厌倦了，你不必继续这样做，那没关系，你不必这样做。
You don’t have to live up to my expectations, Eddie Murphy.
你不必辜负我的期望，艾迪·墨菲。
But he was really funny.
但他真的很有趣。
Now, one of your favorites, if you could tell us what you find of value in him, and that is Robert Benchley.
现在，如果你能告诉我们你认为他的哪些价值所在，你最喜欢的人之一就是罗伯特·本奇利。
A lot of what he wrote was in the 20s.
他写的很多东西都是在20世纪20年代。
I was just rereading his essay on New Yorkers versus midwesterners, and who are the true Americans, and I thought it was better than things I might have read last year on the same topic.
我刚刚重读了他关于纽约人和中西部人以及谁是真正的美国人的文章，我认为这比我去年读过的关于同一主题的文章更好。
What is it about Benchley that makes a fair amount of it pretty enduring and influenced you so much?
本奇利的哪些内容让它经久不衰并对你产生如此大的影响？
Well, he was radiantly intelligent.
嗯，他非常聪明。
This was a very well-educated, cultured man who made a very good living as a critic, and would’ve been able to have a quite successful career as a theater critic or a literary critic.
这是一个受过良好教育、有文化的人，作为批评家过着很好的生活，并且作为戏剧评论家或文学评论家能够拥有相当成功的职业生涯。
He was in the movies like you, his career in some ways .
他和你一样在电影中，在某些方面他的职业生涯也是如此。
.
。
.
。
He was sorry that he did that, in a way.
在某种程度上，他对自己这么做感到抱歉。
He took the money and he regretted, I think, at least .
他拿了钱，至少我觉得他后悔了。
.
。
.
。
He might have regretted more if he didn’t do it.
如果他不这么做的话，他可能会更加后悔。
Maybe so, maybe so, and he did make some pretty funny shorts.
也许是这样，也许是这样，他确实制作了一些非常有趣的短裤。
But the other thing — the reason that I loved him and still love him — it was that he was that rare comic writer who was willing to be really silly.
但另一件事——“我爱他并且仍然爱他的原因”——就是他是那个罕见的愿意犯傻的漫画家。
Silliness is an underrated part of humor.
愚蠢是幽默中被低估的一部分。
Most people, in the end, would rather be cool than silly, and snide and condescending than just be out there, being genuinely silly.
归根结底，大多数人宁愿表现得很酷，也不愿愚蠢，宁愿冷嘲热讽、居高临下，也不愿呆在外面，真正地愚蠢。
Robert Benchley was silly.
罗伯特·本奇利很傻。
He would take extreme left turns in the middle of an essay about one thing, and it’d suddenly be an essay about something completely different, he didn’t care.
他会在一篇关于一件事的文章中间急转，然后突然变成一篇关于完全不同的事情的文章，他不在乎。
As long as he thought it was funny, he went for it.
只要他觉得有趣，他就去做。
And that was the thing that, when I was a kid, just drew me to him.
当我还是个孩子的时候，正是这一点吸引了我。
I was used to being presented with Mark Twain as a humorist.
我习惯于将马克·吐温视为幽默家。
Now, Mark Twain is a funny guy, and he wrote some funny stuff, but you don’t laugh out loud .
现在，马克吐温是一个有趣的人，他写了一些有趣的东西，但你不会笑出声。
.
。
.
。
Well, you maybe do once in a great while reading Mark Twain, you smile and chuckle.
嗯，你在阅读马克·吐温的时候可能会偶尔微笑一下。
Robert Benchley made me laugh out loud when I was a kid, and I thought that’s what I wanted to do.
当我还是个孩子的时候，罗伯特·本奇利让我大笑起来，我想这就是我想做的事。
On jokebooks
关于笑话书
How about jokes in books?
书本上的笑话怎么样？
When I was a kid — I think I was eight — I had a book of jokes, and there was one I kept on bringing around to my mother.
当我还是个孩子的时候——“我想我八岁了”——我有一本笑话书，我一直把其中一本带给我妈妈。
I read it to her about five times a day.
我每天给她读大约五遍。
The punch line was, “I’m sick and tired of all this bickering about oatmeal.” Now today, if I say that sentence to myself in my mind, I still laugh, but I know the joke was never funny.
妙语是，“我厌倦了所有关于燕麦片的争吵。”今天，如果我在心里对自己说这句话，我仍然会笑，但我知道这个笑话从来都不好笑。
Are just jokes listed in books .
只是书本上列出的笑话。
.
。
.
。
Is that a joke?
这是一个笑话吗？
Because I missed it.
因为我错过了。
No, that’s only the punch line.
不，这只是妙语。
The joke is not funny.
这个笑话不好笑。
I missed that one.
我错过了那个。
OK, go ahead, I’m sorry.
好吧，继续吧，抱歉。
How funny are jokes listed in books?
书中列出的笑话有多好笑？
It used to be you could buy these books all the time, and now you don’t see them much.
以前这些书你可以随时买到，但现在你很少看到它们了。
There’s Chuck Klosterman, there’s Sedaris, there’s you, but .
有查克·克洛斯特曼，有塞达里斯，还有你，但是……
.
。
.
。
Now we have Twitter and now we have the Internet.
现在我们有了 Twitter，现在我们有了互联网。
But even before Twitter, it seems those books were disappearing.
但即使在 Twitter 出现之前，这些书似乎就已经消失了。
They were, they are.
他们曾经是，现在也是。
Is it because they weren’t funny?
是因为他们不好笑吗？
No, people don’t read books anymore, as far as I can tell, but if they want humor, they look on their phone.
不，据我所知，人们不再读书了，但如果他们想要幽默，他们就会看手机。
Whatever is funny now on their phone, that’s what they’re looking at.
无论他们手机上现在有什么有趣的内容，他们都会看到。
A printed page with a bunch of jokes on it would seem incredibly archaic to somebody like my daughter.
对于像我女儿这样的人来说，一张印有一堆笑话的印刷页似乎非常过时。
Here’s a movie, if you don’t know it we’ll just pass, but Mike Judge’s Idiocracy.
这是一部电影，如果你不知道，我们就跳过，但是迈克·贾吉的《白痴》。
Yeah, I never saw the movie.
是的，我从来没有看过这部电影。
I do know the principle of it.
我确实知道它的原理。
It’s way in the future, some professional wrestlers, the president of the United States .
这是未来的事情，一些职业摔跤手，美国总统。
.
。
.
。
And everyone’s an idiot.
每个人都是白痴。
The first half hour is brilliant, I think.
我认为前半个小时非常精彩。
At least watch that much of it.
至少看这么多。
When did Mad magazine stop being funny?
《Mad》杂志什么时候不再有趣了？
And why did that happen when it did?
为什么会发生这样的事呢？
I don’t know if it stopped being funny.
我不知道它是否不再有趣了。
I stopped reading it when I started reading National Lampoon, which struck me as more, I don’t know, a little more grown-up.
当我开始读《国家讽刺》时，我就不再读它了，我不知道，这本书给我的印象是更加成熟了一点。
Maybe I was wrong because some of the old parodies in Mad were just brilliant.
也许我错了，因为《疯狂》中的一些旧模仿实在是太精彩了。
It seems it was an influence on you, right?
看来这对你也有影响吧？
It was.
是的。
I read a lot of Mad, read every issue of Mad magazine when I was 10, 11, 12, 13.
我读了很多《Mad》，在我 10、11、12、13 岁的时候读了每一期《Mad》杂志。
And I can’t honestly say that it stopped being funny.
老实说，我不能说它不再有趣了。
I stopped reading it, so I don’t know.
我停止阅读它，所以我不知道。
But maybe by the mid-’80s, it became harder for it to be daring because you have other comedians in mainstream media, well before the Internet, but being more daring.
但也许到了 80 年代中期，大胆变得更加困难，因为早在互联网出现之前，主流媒体就有其他喜剧演员，但他们更加大胆。
Eddie Murphy would be an example.
艾迪·墨菲就是一个例子。
So Mad didn’t seem so outrageous anymore.
所以Mad看起来不再那么离谱了。
Do you think that’s it?
你认为就是这样吗？
It could be.
可能是。
And then we had a crossover into television.
然后我们跨界进入电视领域。
Saturday Night Live brought the sensibility of my generation to TV, a complete willingness to mock everything, mock commercials, the way Mad used to.
《周六夜现场》将我们这一代人的情感带到了电视上，完全愿意嘲笑一切，嘲笑广告，就像《疯狂》过去那样。
Nobody on television mocked television, and suddenly there was this show that was mocking everything about television.
电视上没有人嘲笑电视，突然间出现了这个节目，嘲笑关于电视的一切。
And then the Larry Sanders Show, where it became kind of a staple of television to mock television.
然后是拉里·桑德斯秀，它成为了电视上嘲笑电视的主要内容。
And Letterman, who has gone on to make a whole career out of that.
还有莱特曼，他的整个职业生涯都以此为基础。
So maybe we didn’t need a magazine anymore to say, “Hey, look how silly TV is.” TV was doing that for us.
所以也许我们不再需要一本杂志来说：“嘿，看看电视多傻。”电视正在为我们做这件事。
On religiously driven humor
宗教驱动的幽默
You said in one of your essays that you can’t really pin down what makes things funny in a consistent sense; there’s something surprising about it.
你在一篇文章中说过，你无法真正确定是什么让事情在一致的意义上变得有趣；这有一些令人惊讶的事情。
But you think a lot of humor stems from fear and despair.
但你认为很多幽默都源于恐惧和绝望。
What is it you think that we fear and are despairing of so much?
您认为我们如此恐惧和绝望的是什么？
Well, the simplest thing is, we fear that we’re going to die, and that before we do, our lives are really pretty meaningless.
嗯，最简单的事情是，我们担心自己会死，而在死之前，我们的生活真的毫无意义。
I mean, the world is a completely unfair .
我的意思是，这个世界是完全不公平的。
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ridiculously unfair place.
可笑的不公平的地方。
Things keep happening to people that should never happen to anybody, and it seems to be pretty random how they happen.
一些不应该发生在任何人身上的事情不断发生在人们身上，而且它们的发生方式似乎是相当随机的。
Basically, the two reactions to that are religion — in other words, there really is a reason for all this, and it really is going to end up OK — and if you don’t buy that, then there’s humor, which is to me this weird psychological reaction human beings have developed to tolerate how scary and unfair the world is.
基本上，对此的两种反应是宗教——换句话说，这一切确实有一个原因，而且最终确实会好起来的——如果你不相信这一点，那就有幽默，对我来说，这就是人类为了容忍世界的可怕和不公平而发展起来的奇怪的心理反应。
There’s no good reason to have humor, no practical reason that I can think of.
我没有充分的理由保持幽默，也没有我能想到的实际理由。
No evolutionary benefit to it other than it keeps us from going insane.
除了防止我们发疯之外，它没有任何进化上的好处。
So, in your theory, religious people are less funny because religion is their substitute, or they become more skilled at dealing with despair and so they’re more funny?
那么，在你的理论中，宗教人士不那么有趣是因为宗教是他们的替代品，或者他们变得更擅长处理绝望，因此他们更有趣？
I think they’re less funny.
我认为他们没那么有趣。
So comedians tend to be atheists.
所以喜剧演员往往是无神论者。
I think that’s true, and this is not to dismiss religious .
我认为这是真的，这并不是要否认宗教。
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My dad was a religious person, and he was a funny guy.
我的父亲是一个虔诚的人，而且他是一个有趣的人。
But generally, the two things .
但一般来说，有两件事。
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One tends to mitigate the other.
一种倾向会减轻另一种的影响。
And to be really edgy funny, it’s probably better if you don’t believe in anything good is coming.
真正前卫有趣的是，如果你不相信任何好事即将到来，可能会更好。
Is this why so many successful comedians have been Jewish in this country?
这就是为什么这个国家这么多成功的喜剧演员都是犹太人吗？
Well, that’s assuming that Jewish people are more likely to be atheist.
嗯，这是假设犹太人更有可能是无神论者。
Which I think is atheistic in regards .
我认为这是无神论的。
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Which is probably a pretty good assumption.
这可能是一个很好的假设。
That and the fact that they’re a historically persecuted group that managed to somehow find ways to survive, using often their wits.
事实上，他们是一个历史上受迫害的群体，经常利用自己的智慧设法以某种方式找到生存之道。
Yeah, that’s probably part of why there are so many Jewish comedians.
是的，这可能就是为什么有这么多犹太喜剧演员的部分原因。
That and the fact that, if you’re Jewish, everybody you know is funny — trying to be funny, anyway.
事实上，如果你是犹太人，你认识的每个人都很有趣——无论如何，你都在努力变得有趣。
It’s revered in that community, that skill, the ability to make people laugh.
在那个社区里，这种技能、让人发笑的能力受到尊重。
Mormons historically have been a persecuted community .
摩门教徒历史上一直是一个受迫害的群体。
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And they are a wacky, fun group.
他们是一个古怪、有趣的团体。
Are they?
他们是吗？
No, not really.
不，不是真的。
I don’t know if there’s any Mormon comedians.
我不知道是否有摩门教喜剧演员。
Sarah Silverman.
莎拉·西尔弗曼.
But they came along just for the purpose of giving — who were those guys?
但他们来到这里只是为了给予 —— 那些人是谁？
The South Park guys — something to make fun of, and that may be their divine purpose on Earth.
南方公园的家伙们——值得取笑的东西，这可能是他们在地球上的神圣目的。
They’re also too libertarian-oriented to have comics.
他们也太自由主义了，没有漫画。
Yeah, yeah.
是啊是啊。
We libertarians love the Mormons.
我们自由主义者热爱摩门教徒。
But social conservatives as comedians — that’s a lot tougher, right?
但社会保守派作为喜剧演员 ——这要困难得多，对吧？
Social conservatives — yeah, people who think there should be strict drug laws and .
社会保守派 ——是的，那些认为应该有严格的毒品法的人......
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have a prudish approach to sex.
对性有一种拘谨的态度。
Can’t they be funny about something else?
难道他们就不能对其他事情感到有趣吗？
You’re not going to see that much, no. I don’t think so.
你不会看到那么多，不。我不这么认为。
But our ability to compartmentalize as human beings — just the fact that we could, say, at times, find a joke about the Holocaust funny — that suggests we’re wonderful compartmentalizers.
但我们作为人类的划分能力——“事实上，我们有时可以发现有关大屠杀的笑话很有趣”——这表明我们是出色的划分者。
But the people who are social conservatives, they can’t compartmentalize?
但是社会保守派的人就不能区分开来吗？
What does that tell us about humor?
关于幽默，这告诉我们什么？
Well, you have to look at the reason they are social conservatives to begin with.
好吧，你首先必须看看他们是社会保守派的原因。
It’s probably, in part, because they are religious people, which goes back to my feeling: It’s not that it’s funny the world is set up the way it is.
部分原因可能是因为他们是宗教人士，这又回到了我的感觉：世界的现状并不有趣。
It’s because there’s a divine plan for it and rules we need to follow.
这是因为有一个神圣的计划和我们需要遵循的规则。
This is not how a humorist thinks.
这不是幽默家的想法。
The humorist thinks, “No, there’s no divine plan and these rules are stupid.” You have to be, on some level, pretty subversive to be funny.
幽默家认为：“不，没有神圣的计划，这些规则很愚蠢。”在某种程度上，你必须具有相当的颠覆性才能变得有趣。
Here’s a question from Chuck Klosterman, from his Cocoa Puffs book.
这是查克·克洛斯特曼 (Chuck Klosterman) 在他的《可可泡芙》书中提出的一个问题。
Let’s see what your answer is.
让我们看看你的答案是什么。
“Every person you have ever slept with is invited to a banquet where you are the guest of honor.
“每一个和你睡过的人都会被邀请参加一场宴会，而你是其中的主宾。
No one will be in attendance except you, the collection of your former lovers, and the catering service.
除了你、你以前的恋人的集合以及餐饮服务之外，没有人会出席。
After the meal, you’re asked to give a 15-minute speech to the assembly.
餐后，您将被要求在大会上发表 15 分钟的演讲。
What do you talk about?”
你们在聊什么？”
I would try to seduce the catering service, they being the only people there I haven’t already slept with.
我会尝试引诱餐饮服务人员，他们是那里唯一我还没有睡过的人。
Oh man, that would be .
噢，伙计，那就是。
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I would complain about the catering service.
我会抱怨餐饮服务。
First of all, it might be, in my case, not that huge a group, to be honest.
首先，老实说，就我而言，这可能不是一个庞大的群体。
I could just address them individually.
我可以单独对他们讲话。
It wouldn’t take that long.
不会花那么长时间的。
But it would include your wife.
但其中也包括你的妻子。
Yes, yes, I have slept with my wife.
是的，是的，我和我老婆睡过。
Are there common targets of humor you think are unfairly maligned, other than the common tendency to attack, say, Republicans or the Right, but at the social level?
除了攻击共和党人或右翼人士的普遍倾向之外，您是否认为存在不公平诽谤的共同幽默目标，但在社会层面？
Well, not so much anymore.
好吧，不再那么多了。
There was a time when half the jokes you heard, and this was in my lifetime, were Polish jokes, whatever.
曾经有一段时间，你听到的笑话有一半是波兰笑话，那是在我的一生中。
And as we think back, it was kind of stupid.
当我们回想起来，这有点愚蠢。
Polish people are not less intelligent.
波兰人的智力并不低。
Chopin, right?
肖邦，对吗？
Let’s joke about Chopin.
我们来开个肖邦的玩笑吧。
And yet that was a staple of humor, and some of those were pretty funny jokes.
然而，这是幽默的主要内容，其中一些是非常有趣的笑话。
You don’t hear them anymore.
你再也听不到他们的声音了。
But now, it’s more likely to be a political target, and whichever side it is, I’m inclined to view that kind of humor as lazier.
但现在，它更有可能成为一个政治目标，无论是哪一方，我都倾向于认为这种幽默比较懒惰。
It’s more like, “I know you’re on my team, so if I mock that person, we’ll both get a good laugh, and it also will prove we’re smarter than them.”
更像是，“我知道你是我团队的一员，所以如果我嘲笑那个人，我们都会开怀大笑，这也将证明我们比他们更聪明。”
That’s kind of the format, the template, for a lot of humor now.
这就是现在很多幽默的格式、模板。
And for the most part, it’s not really based on anything real.
在大多数情况下，它并不是真正基于任何真实的东西。
It’s kind of silly to pretend that all Republicans are stupider than all Democrats, in my opinion, or the other way around.
在我看来，假装所有共和党人都比所有民主党人都愚蠢，或者反之亦然，这有点愚蠢。
Either way, it’s kind of a dumb template to start with, and yet that is the template now for both sides.
不管怎样，一开始这都是一个愚蠢的模板，但现在这就是双方的模板。
One of my readers sent in a question: “Would love to hear him talk about sentence structure and its relationship to the effectiveness of written humor.” Do you have any comments on that?
我的一位读者提出了一个问题：“很想听他谈论句子结构及其与书面幽默有效性的关系。”你对此有何评论？
I do, I do.
我愿意，我愿意。
This is my life, writing sentences that are intended to make people laugh.
这就是我的生活，写出让人发笑的句子。
And you start with the idea of the joke, but then to execute it so that it actually works — it’s very similar to what a stand-up comedian does, but he does it with timing and emphasis.
你从笑话的想法开始，然后执行它，使其真正发挥作用——这与单口喜剧演员的做法非常相似，但他的做法是有时机和重点的。
In written humor, you do with it spacing and punctuation and a few other tricks.
在书面幽默中，你需要使用空格、标点符号和其他一些技巧。
But the key — and this is the most obvious example of why sentence structure is important, and yet it is violated all the time in humor writing by amateurs — is that the funny part has to come last.
但关键——这是为什么句子结构很重要的最明显的例子，但业余爱好者在幽默写作中却总是违反这一点——那就是有趣的部分必须放在最后。
And then, when it comes, it has to end there and go on to something new.
然后，当它到来时，它必须就此结束并继续进行新的事情。
Very often, the funniest part of the sentence, if it’s poorly done, will be in the middle, and then there’ll be words after.
很多时候，如果做得不好，句子中最有趣的部分会在中间，然后后面就会有单词。
If you watch a stand-up comedian, he’ll never deliver a joke where there’s more words after the funny part.
如果你看一个单口喜剧演员，他永远不会讲一个在有趣的部分之后还有更多台词的笑话。
But in written humor, that’s done a lot by people who don’t know what they’re doing.
但在书面幽默中，很多都是由不知道自己在做什么的人做的。
So yes, sentence structure is really important.
所以，是的，句子结构确实很重要。
On why business writing is so terrible
为什么商业写作如此糟糕
And how formally do you think about grammar when you do this?
当你这样做时，你对语法的思考有多正式？
A lot.
很多。
For a long time — well, it seemed like a long time — seven or eight years, I taught effective writing seminars to business people.
很长一段时间——嗯，似乎很长一段时间——七八年，我向商界人士教授有效写作研讨会。
I was young, and I looked even younger.
我还年轻，而且看起来更年轻。
But I had to get up in front of engineers, chemists, lawyers, sometimes accountants, people who were accomplished in their fields but were not necessarily good at writing, and I was supposed to talk to them about how to write reports and letters and memos.
但我必须站在工程师、化学家、律师、有时是会计师、在各自领域有成就但不一定擅长写作的人面前，我应该和他们谈论如何写报告、信件和备忘录。
And they challenged me because I looked like I was 10 years old, and they expected to be bored also.
他们向我提出挑战，因为我看起来就像 10 岁一样，他们也认为我会感到无聊。
I became a grammar fanatic in self-defense because I got challenged so often: Why do I say it’s OK to end a sentence with a preposition when they were told that you can’t do that?
我成为自卫方面的语法狂热分子，因为我经常受到挑战：当他们被告知你不能这样做时，为什么我说可以用介词结束句子？
Why did I say it was OK to start a sentence with “and” or “but” when they were told you can’t?
为什么我说可以用“and”或“but”开始一个句子，而他们却告诉你不能？
They had all these rules that they were told that aren’t rules of grammar and never were.
他们拥有所有这些规则，但他们被告知这些规则不是语法规则，而且从来都不是。
I could — I don’t think I can anymore — I could diagram sentences, I could cite usage experts.
我可以 —— 我想我再也不能了 —— 我可以用图解表达句子，我可以引用使用专家的观点。
So I became very interested in grammar.
于是我对语法产生了浓厚的兴趣。
I was always a pretty good writer, but I was a much more aware writer when I came out of that experience.
我一直是一个非常好的作家，但当我从那次经历中走出来时，我是一个更有意识的作家。
Now, I use grammar more to mess it up for humorous effect.
现在，我更多地使用语法来搞乱它以获得幽默的效果。
I don’t try to teach anybody grammar, but I did find the grounding I got was helpful.
我不想教任何人语法，但我确实发现我所获得的基础很有帮助。
You once wrote that, after eight years of trying to teach business writing, you became convinced it would never get any better.
您曾经写道，在尝试教授商务写作八年之后，您确信它永远不会变得更好。
But this is now later, we’re in different time, there’s the Internet, which actually gets many people writing much more, not always for the better.
但现在已经是后来的事了，我们处于不同的时代，有了互联网，它实际上让很多人写了更多的东西，但并不总是为了更好。
But do you think, fast-forwarding to 2017, has business writing in any way improved?
但快进到 2017 年，您认为商务写作有任何改进吗？
I’m not as on top of it as I was when I was reading hundreds of letters and memos every week, but my guess is no. There are certain fundamental things that businesspeople have trouble with.
当我每周阅读数百封信件和备忘录时，我不再像以前那样专注，但我的猜测是否定的。商人在某些基本问题上遇到了麻烦。
What’s the main thing they get wrong from the business mentality?
他们从商业心态上犯的主要错误是什么？
OK, the most consistent mistake .
好吧，最一致的错误。
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not mistake, but inefficiency of business writing — and it was very consistent — is the absolute refusal on the part of the writer to tell you right away what message he or she is trying to deliver.
不是错误，而是商业写作效率低下 ——而且非常一致—— 是作者绝对拒绝立即告诉你他或她想要传达什么信息。
I used to say to them, “The most important thing you have to say should be in the first sentence.” And “Oh, no, you can’t.
我曾经对他们说：“你要说的最重要的事情应该在第一句话中。” “哦，不，你不能。
I’m an engineer.
我是一名工程师。
We did a 10-year study, this is way too complicated.”
我们做了十年的研究，这太复杂了。”
And inevitably, they were wrong.
不可避免的是，他们错了。
Inevitably, if they really thought about it, they were able to, in one sentence, summarize why it was really important.
不可避免的是，如果他们认真思考的话，他们就能用一句话总结出为什么它真的很重要。
But they refused to do that because the way they found out was by spending 10 years of study and all this data and everything, and that’s the way they wanted everyone to look at what they did.
但他们拒绝这样做，因为他们花了 10 年的时间研究所有这些数据和一切才发现这一点，这就是他们希望每个人都看看他们所做的事情的方式。
They wanted their supervisors to go plowing through all they had done to come to this brilliant conclusion that they had come to.
他们希望他们的主管仔细研究他们所做的一切，以得出他们所得出的这个辉煌的结论。
Through their history, through their thought patterns.
通过他们的历史，通过他们的思维模式。
Drag everybody through it.
把每个人都拖过去。
And it was the one thing the newspaper people were taught to do that made more sense.
这是报纸工作人员被教导要做的一件事更有意义。
You don’t have your reader’s attention very long, so get to the point.
你不会长时间吸引读者的注意力，所以直入主题吧。
I found it was very difficult to get even really smart businesspeople to get to the point.
我发现即使是非常聪明的商人也很难明白要点。
Sometimes it was because they really couldn’t tell you what the point was.
有时是因为他们真的无法告诉你重点是什么。
What I wanted to say, but rarely felt comfortable saying, was, “If you don’t know what the point is, then you can’t really write this report.” But it was always too complicated for a layperson like me to understand.
我想说但又不太舒服的是，“如果你不知道重点是什么，那么你就无法真正写出这份报告。”但对于我这样的外行来说，总是太复杂了，无法理解。
That was the way they did it.
他们就是这样做的。
I was being hired by their bosses to tell them, “No, we want you to write clearly, and we want you to get to the point.”
他们的老板雇用我来告诉他们，“不，我们希望你写清楚，我们希望你抓住重点。”