先別笑 / Don't Laugh Yet

先別笑 金雨田	Don’t Laugh Yet Jin Yu Tian
《上帝也瘋狂》，一部拍得確令人捧腹的影片，從那天上掉下來的可口可樂瓶子打到一個非洲土著的頭開始，“文明人”就一直把這可憐的土著玩到盡。	THE Gods Must Be Crazy, surely a hilariously funny movie, starting with a Coca Cola can from the sky hitting a Bushman in the head, depicts how the poor African is tricked and fooled to the very fullest by the “civilised” people.
可口可樂，百分之百的美國口味加上百分之百的老美無事不樂的作風，熾長的結果，就是無事不笑，無事不可笑。	That shows how the authentic American taste epitomised by Coca Cola plus a purely Yankee-style sense of humour can turn everything into a joke that breeds a good laugh.
但印第安人說：“看到印第安人佩帶羽毛，不要笑，先想想看，這對他而言，有何意義。”	But, “don’t laugh yet,” the American Indians advise, “when you see one of us wearing feathers on his head.  Think first, and find out what that means to him.”
印第安人可不是不會笑的民族，只是，“對於白人身上讓他們不理解的事物，他們或許會笑，但是，他會開始推敲 —— 或許有些隱而不明的道理。”	The Indians are not a people that can’t enjoy a joke.  “We may laugh at something about the Whites that we don’t understand,” they say, “but then we would start figuring it out – there may be some reason behind it.”
在聖安多諾，美國這個南部城鎮的印第安人民族館裏，我這小時着迷西方牛仔片的人，深深感覺到文明的刀是那麼的鋒利可怕。自白人開拓美洲開始，就應了中國人的一句話：笑裏藏刀。	The museum of American Indian heritage I visited in San Antonio, a town down south in the United States, drove home to me what a fearful sharp knife civilisation could become.  As a lover of westerns featuring cowboys ever since my childhood, I came to see how aptly the Caucasians’ colonising of the American continents illustrates an old Chinese saying – a sword may hide amid smiles and laughs.
文明從對話開始，你看神秘，別人卻是生活中的理所當然。羽毛跑到人頭上，菊花跌進了杯子裏，為什麼？要跨過門檻，就先別笑。	Genuine civilisation should start with mutual understanding.  What appears bizarre to one people may come natural and logical to another.  For instance, feathers adorn men’s head in one culture whereas chrysanthemum makes a good drink in another. What’s that for? – you may wonder.  Then, don’t laugh yet, if you wish to cross the threshold and understand.
	(Translated by Allen Zhuang)
參見 See also：花與椰葉 / Flowers and Coconut Leaves   [原載新加坡《聯合早報》(2000)；收入《不著地族 / A Lift-Off People》(潘正鐳著、Allen Zhuang 英譯；Singapore: All Publishing House, 2002)]