葡语在澳门重获新生

《经济学人》2018年11月10日【中国版】

The other official language
In Macau, the old colonial tongue is back in vogue
在澳门，作为官方语言之一的葡萄牙语正走向复兴之路

China’s global trade is fuelling interest in the study of Portuguese
中国的全球贸易推动了人们学习葡语的兴趣

THESE DAYS Manuel Machado has a spring in his step. The school of which he is headmaster, Escola Portuguesa de Macau, is the only one in the southern Chinese city that still follows the curriculum taught in Portugal, which until 1999 had held sway in Macau, more or less, for nearly four-and-a-half centuries. What gives Mr Machado cheer is that enrolment has been rising for the past three years. The school now has more than 600 pupils. He predicts the trend will continue.
最近澳门葡文学校校长曼努埃尔·马查多（Manuel Machado）心情不错。该校是澳门现存的唯一一所以葡文作为教学语言的学校，而在1999年前的450年间，葡语教学曾一度蔚然成风。令校长先生心情大好的原因是，过去3年里学校的招生人数接连攀升，目前该校在校学生人数超过600人，校长预计招生人数会进一步上涨。

There is certainly plenty of room for catch-up growth. When the school was founded in 1998, a year before Portugal handed Macau back to China, it had nearly twice as many students (and there were at least three other such schools through much of the 1990s). The vast majority of pupils were children of Portuguese expatriates, who then dominated the senior ranks of Macau’s public sector. Today the school’s fastest-growing ethnic group is Chinese.
学生人数上升空间一直存在。澳门葡文学校始建于澳门回归前的1998年，当时在校生人数是现在的两倍（90年代的澳门类似这样的葡文学校至少还有3家），学生主要是葡萄牙侨民子弟，那时候在澳葡萄牙人占据着澳门公共部门中的大部分高级职位。而今天该校快速增长的学生多数都是中国人。

Only 2.3% of the city’s 660,000 people claim fluency in Portuguese (about 1.8% of them are wholly or partly ethnic Portuguese). But the language is still in official use, along with Chinese, of which the local spoken form is Cantonese. In recent years interest in Portuguese has surged. The number of students taking courses in it at Instituto Português do Oriente, a Macau-based cultural centre backed by the Portuguese government, was around 5,000 last year, more than double the figure in 2012. Many are officials who want to “reach the top” of Macau’s government, says Joaquim Ramos, the centre’s director. In its economic plan for 2016-20, Macau’s government pledged to “give priority to guaranteeing employment” for “talented people who are bilingual in Chinese and Portuguese”. It promised to boost subsidies for those studying Portuguese at university.
澳门的66万居民中只有2.3%的人能说流利的葡萄牙语（澳门土居民中葡萄牙人和土生葡人的比例为1.8%），但葡语仍和汉语一样是官方语言之一，不过当地人说的汉语是广东方言。近几年人们对葡语的学习兴趣大增，去年在受葡萄牙政府资助的研究机构“东方葡萄牙学会”参加葡语课程的学生人数达到约5000人，比2012年时增长一倍多。据学会秘书若阿金·莱姆士（Joaquim Ramos）称，学生中许多人是想在澳门政府中谋求更大发展的公务人员。在2016-2020年五年计划中，澳门政府称将优先录取中葡双语人士。政府保证向大学中的葡语学习者提供补助。

At present most civil servants can speak good English, but few have even passable Portuguese. That is partly because Portuguese was never a compulsory subject in most schools. So why the growth of interest in it? The answer lies in China’s burgeoning trade with the Lusophone world, about three-quarters of which is with Brazil. In 2003 the central government founded an organisation called Forum Macau to boost such commerce. Every three or four years government ministers from member countries gather in the eponymous city, which like nearby Hong Kong—a former British colony—is now a “special administrative region” of China. Last year China traded goods worth $118bn with the forum’s foreign participants (eight of them, since the African state of São Tomé and Príncipe joined in 2017, having severed its ties with Taiwan). This amount was still relatively small—only 3% of China’s total trade in goods. But it was nearly 30% higher than in the previous year.
当前大部分公务员英语流利，但葡语能力差强人意，部分原因是葡语在大部分学校从来不是必修课程。那么人们对普语的学习热情从何而来？原因在于中国和葡语国家日益紧密的贸易来往，其中四分之三来自于中巴（西）贸易。2003年中央在澳门成立了“中国-葡语国家经贸合作论坛（澳门）”（简称中葡论坛），致力于推动中国和葡语国家之间的贸易往来，每隔三四年都会在澳门举行部长级会议，目前澳门和前英国殖民地香港一样是中国的特别行政区。去年中国和“中葡论坛”成员国之间的贸易额达1180亿美元（去年圣多美和普林西比加入以后，成员国达到8个，都与台湾断绝了外交关系），这一数额并不多，只占到中国全球贸易量的3%，但去年实现了30%的同比增长。

A young native of Macau who prefers to be identified by his surname, Ho, says he wants to be an interpreter for a Chinese company with interests in Portugal or Lusophone Africa, such as Mozambique or Angola. Perhaps anticipating the needs of people like him, the University of Macau recently opened, to much fanfare, a “bilingual teaching and training centre”. It offers Portuguese-language workshops tailored for professionals.
接受采访的澳门本地人胡先生说他希望成为一名翻译，供职于在葡萄牙或葡语非洲（比如莫桑比克或安哥拉）开展业务的中国公司。可能是为满足类似胡先生一类人的需求，最近澳门大学大力开设了“双语教学和培训中心”，它提供葡语课程和环境，定位高大上。

For Mr Ho, the decision to take up Portuguese is also a personal matter. The language is “part of Macau’s identity”, he notes. Since around 2011 residents have rated their identity as citizens of Macau as being stronger than their Chinese identity, according to annual surveys by the University of Hong Kong (the year 2015 was an exception). Native-born youngsters, who have no memory of Portuguese rule, are especially proud of Macau’s Portuguese heritage, Mr Ho says. A similar kind of “localism”, as it is often described, is also on the rise in Hong Kong. There, however, it is intermingled with demands for greater democracy or even outright secession from China. Happily for the government in Beijing, the people of Macau show little interest in pushing the case for either.
据胡先生介绍，学习葡语也是他的一种个人身份认同，他说葡萄牙语是澳门自我认同的一部分。根据香港大学所做的一份年度调查，自2011年以来，选择“我是澳门人”的受访者比例一直高于“我是中国人”的受访者比例（2015年除外）。胡先生说，现在澳门本地的年轻人对葡萄牙统治没有什么记忆，但正是这些人最重视澳门的葡语遗产。这种所谓的“本地化”思潮同样出现在香港，但是香港的情况更加复杂，他们要求更多的民主甚至是谋求独立。而令中央欣慰的是，澳门人并没有显示出和香港人一样的兴趣。