智慧人生篇章 （41）你在亵渎神灵吗?
As a boy I’d have been in dead trouble if I’d ever used the name of Jesus as a swear word at home. Blasphemy just wasn’t tolerated, even though my parents were non-believers. The boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable language are shifting all the time. John Terry, for instance, has just been acquitted in court of racial abuse. But when I started out as a court reporter many years ago, the mere uttering of a very rude word would have been enough to get you arrested, without racial connotations.
作为一个男孩，如果我要是用耶稣的名字来骂脏话的话，我会陷入很大的麻烦中。尽管我的父母不是信徒，亵渎神明是完全不被容许的。可接受的语言和不可接受的语言之间的界限一直在变。 例如，约翰?特里刚刚在种族歧视法庭被无罪释放。但我很多年前开始做法院书记官时，仅仅说一个粗鲁的词，即使没有种族上的隐含意义，也足以让你被逮捕。
I remember how the alleged word could never be said out loud, and had to be ceremoniously written down by the witness, usually a police officer. The paper was then folded and handed to the magistrate, who carefully unfolded it and duly looked shocked, all in disapproving silence. The most offensive swear words used to be religious rather than sexual. They contravene the Commandment “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” which was seen as blasphemy. That was so serious, in fact, that a whole coded language was developed so that people could go on swearing and yet stay away from the stocks, or the gallows, where open blasphemy might’ve put them.
我记得，当时证词都不能大声说出来，必须由证人（通常是一名警察）正式地写下来。然后文件会被折叠起来，交给地方法官。法官会小心的打开文件，然后随即会被他所看到的震惊。这一切都是在一种不赞成的寂静中进行的。 最无礼的脏话通常与宗教有关，而不是与性有关。它们违反了 “你不可徒然地采用耶和华的名字”的戒律，因为这会被看作是亵渎神灵。实际上，这后果太严重了，以至于人们发展处了一套暗语。它可以使人们能够继续骂脏话，而同时又可以远离手脚枷或是绞刑架，而如果公开亵渎神灵的话，就会是这样的下场。
This is technically known as the process of “mincing”, as in the phrase “mincing your words”. It disguises the word’s origins just enough to keep the swearer clear of the law. Swearing offers us a brief glimpse of the religious history of our country. Before the 16th century Protestant Reformation, ordinary people would commonly have referred to the Blessed Virgin Mary as “Our Lady”, as Roman Catholics still do. Hence the oath “By Our Lady”, which was minced into the swearword “bloody”, has to be at least 500 years old. Another familiar swearword refers to the Albigensian heresy in the 13th century. Other examples of minced oaths include the now harmless “cripes” or “crikey”, which were disguised forms of the word “Christ”. “Blimey” originally meant “God Blind Me!” which was a way of invoking divine punishment if I’m not telling the truth, so you’d better believe me. A few religious swearwords are still on the banned list, so I’m not going to tell you what they are. Others have dropped out altogether. Outsidecomic books, nobody says “Zounds!” any more, which was a minced version of “By God’s Wounds”, a reference to the Crucifixion and clearly of Mediaeval origin.
这在技术上被称作“mincing（矫饰）”，如在短语“mincing your words（说话不要拐弯抹角）”中的意思一样。它伪饰单词的起源，使得脏话能够不受法律的限制。 脏话可以让我们简要地了解我们国家的宗教历史。在16世纪宗教改革之前，普通人通常会称圣母玛利亚为“Our Lady（圣母玛利亚）”，而罗马的天主教徒如今仍这么做。因此，誓言“By Our Lady（圣母作证）”，后来被委婉地改成了脏话“bloody（该死的）”。所以这个脏话至少有500年的历史了。另一个熟悉的脏话是指13世纪的阿尔比派异教的。还有一些被矫饰过的脏话的例子，如现在已经无害的“cripes（天啊）”或“crikey（哎呀）”，这两个词都由“Christ（基督）”伪装而来。“Blimey（啊呀）”原来是指“God Blind Me！（上帝使我盲目）”，是用来表达“如果我没说实话的话，就让上帝惩罚我，所以你最好相信我！”的一种方式。 有些与宗教有关的脏话如今仍然是禁止说的，所以我不会告诉你们它们是什么。其它一些脏话已经过时。除了漫画书，没人再说“Zounds!（咄）”。这是“By God’s Wounds（上帝的伤口）”的委婉版，意指上帝在十字架受难，很明显是起源于中世纪。
Just as churches are such a familiar part of our visible local landscape you hardly notice they are there, so profane oaths and swearwords are part of our everyday verbal landscape, and again we hardly notice them. But the fact that we still know they’re not polite, to say the least, means we haven’t completely lost track of where they came from.
正如教堂是我们当地风景中熟悉的一部分，所以我们很难注意到它们的存在一样，亵渎神灵的一些诅咒和脏话也是我们日常口语中的一部分，所以我们很难注意到它们。但事实上，我们仍然知道它们是不礼貌的。这至少意味着我们还没有完全忘记它们的起源。