新概念雙語：語死早如何和別人閑聊：試試中度交談

A couple of weeks ago, I went to someone's birthday party at a bar after work. The birthday girl was a friend of a friend — I was there to hang out with the friend. As often happens at such events, I found myself standing next to someone I didn't know and positioned in a way where we basically had to talk to one another. It would have been weird, otherwise — we had been accidentally shunted out of the main conversational circle (it was a small gathering) and weren't close enough to its center to be able to pretend to listen to what was going on. We were marooned with one another.

幾周前，我下了班到酒吧參加一位朋友的生日聚會。過生日的女孩是朋友的朋友——我只是跟著自己朋友去玩的。我又一次遇到了在這種場合下經(jīng)常發(fā)生的事，那就是站在一位陌生人身旁，而且好像非要交談一下不可。如果不說話會有點(diǎn)奇怪——因為我們碰巧都在主要的談話圈子外面(那是一個小聚會)，我們離圈子中心太遠(yuǎn)了，沒法假裝成在聽別人交談。我們躲不掉彼此交談了。

These sorts of conversations are weird. When the connection between you and the other person is tenuous, as it was between myself and this woman, both parties know there's a pretty good chance this will be the only conversation the two will ever have with one another. You will meet, talk briefly about your jobs or the weather, part ways, and then, in the long run, live the rest of your lives and die without ever speaking again.

這種交談是非常怪異的。你和那個人之間沒什么關(guān)系，就像我和這位女士一樣，我們倆都知道很可能這一輩子只會和對方說這么一回話。你們會相遇，簡單地聊聊工作或天氣，然后分開，再然后，在相當(dāng)長的一段時間里，過著各自的日子，至死也不會再交談。

Our conversation quickly fell into the usual rut: What do you do oh that's cool here's what I do wow okay. She said she worked at a small museum that contained the papers and various artsy artifacts of some deceased rich guy (I can't even remember which one). Without even thinking about it, I asked, “What's your least favorite piece in the collection?” Something shifted in the conversation. She said something like, “Nobody's ever asked me that. People always ask what my favorite piece is.” I mentally high-fived myself, usually an awkward person who does not thrive in small-talk scenarios, for having at least thrown things off their usual course.

我們的對話也很快陷入了慣常的套路：“你是做什么的呀!”“真棒!”“我是做這個的”“哇，真好!”她說她在一個小博物館工作，館里收藏了某位過世富豪(我甚至想不起是誰了)的文字和各種各樣的手工藝品。我想都沒想就問道：“你最不喜歡哪件作品?”這場談話的氛圍變了。她好像接著說：“從來沒有人問過我這個，大家一般都問我最喜歡哪件作品。”我在心里給自己點(diǎn)了個贊，因為我通常是個不擅長聊天的人，今天至少說了點(diǎn)別人想不到的話。

Little did I know there was a name for what I had done: medium talk. “What kind of questions would you ask to make medium talk, instead of small talk?” asked user Sentinel_P, and the query garnered more than 3,500 comments.

我并不知道自己的做法還有一個名字：中度聊天(medium talk)。一位名為Sentinel_P的用戶在網(wǎng)站上提問：“如果你想展開一場中度聊天(medium talk)而不是閑談聊天(small talk)，你會問些什么問題呢?”這個提問貼得到了3500多條回復(fù)。

The question got the reaction it did because it walks a tricky line: Everyone has an intuitive sense of what “medium talk” might mean, but the term isn't fully defined. That tension leads to some fascinating answers. Most people seem to interpret the question the way you'd expect — how do you lift a fleeting and likely unimportant-in-the-grand-scheme conversation up out of dulls-ville so that you'll at least remember or learn something from it?

這個問題之所以能得到這么多回復(fù)，是因為它問得非常巧妙：每個人都能從直覺上理解“中度聊天”一詞可能的含義，但是這個術(shù)語又沒有準(zhǔn)確的釋義。這個小矛盾帶來了一些精彩的答案。大多數(shù)人好像是以你期待的方式闡釋了這個問題——你怎樣才能讓短暫的假大空聊天擺脫無聊模式，至少聊完了能記住點(diǎn)什么或者學(xué)到點(diǎn)東西?

Who knows? Maybe medium talk will even lead to large talk if you get trapped next to the right person at the right time.

誰知道呢?如果你在正確的時間和正確的人困在一起，也許中度聊天還會變成深度談心呢。