封面：经济学人关于婚姻的特别报道，发表于2017年11月25日
标题：松开的结（注：此处的结类似于中文中同心结中结的意思，就是用丝线编制成的手工艺品）
正文：
婚姻正变得更加的随性，缺少责任，缺乏约束，但是却越来越重要。——乔尔·巴德
Marriage is becoming less hidebound, less dutiful and less obligatory—but even more important, says Joel Budd
（注：原文为less hidebound, less dutiful and less obligatory 直译为更少的顽固，更少的责任，更少的强制性约束。）
一个年轻女士拉着她朋友的胳膊尖叫道：“这正是太令人激动了”。陈列于她面前的是正在伦敦西部的奥领匹克展览中心举办的国家婚礼展览。已经约有三百余名商人参与（展会）出售任何与任意环节相关的物品，以及一些其他的相关的物品。这里有花艺师，演奏师，美白牙齿的，出售头冠头饰的，卖烟花的和一大批拍照的。有一个新的公司Hich and Pooch专门为新人的狗安排在婚礼中的角色——戒童。每两个小时就有伴随着的音乐而持续进行的婚礼服装表演。
（“THIS IS SO exciting!” trills a young woman, squeezing her friend’s arm. Laid out before her, in the Olympia exhibition centre in west London, is the National Wedding Show. Some 300merchants have turned up to sell everything that is needed to throw a wedding, and a great many things besides. There are florists, harpists, teeth-whiteners,tiara-sellers, a fireworks firm and more than a dozen photographers. A new company, Hitch and Pooch, arranges for people’s dogs to play a role in their weddings—asring-bearers, say. Every two hours a blast of music announces a catwalk show consisting entirely of wedding dresses and grooms’ suits.）
“”婚姻经常被视作是联盟。是时尚的终结，是理所应当。”伊恩·邓肯·史密斯在几年前他还是英国劳动保障部的秘书时评论道。社会保守派争辩道一些因素已经侵蚀了一个曾经伟大的制度。比如更加严肃的对于婚前性行为，同居和离婚的态度，以及最近几年的同性恋婚姻合法化。历届美国总统已经将大批资金投向了致力于推动穷人间婚姻的项目中。
Marriage is often said to be ailing. It is “fashionably dismissed” and “taken for granted”, sniffed Iain Duncan Smith a few years ago when he was Britain’s secretary of state for work and pensions. Social conservatives argue that a once-great institution has been undermined by ever more blasé attitudes to premarital sex, cohabitation and divorce—and, in the past few years, by the legalisation of gay marriage. Successive American presidents have poured money into programmes that aim to promote marriage among poor people.
某种程度上来说这种担心是对的。几百年来在西方国家婚姻是迈向完全成熟路上的重要一步。在前工业革命时期的英国，所有的单身的女士都被成为“lads”，所有的单身男士都被称为“maids”。传道士宣称，婚姻是维持家庭重要的纽带，因而，反过来也成了社会的基础。
In some ways the worriers are right. For hundreds of years, marriage was an essential step on the road to full adulthood in western countries. In pre-industrialEngland all single women, no matter how old, were “maids”, and all single men were “lads”. Preachersargued that marriage was the crucial bond holding together the household, which was, in turn, the foundation of society.
截止到二十世纪中期，婚姻是几乎不可避免的。一个人应当结婚然后形成一个家庭并能够养家糊口这种观点，用一个美国的历史学家Stephanie Coontz的话来说就是“像压路机一样碾碎一切其他观点”。人们在很早的时候就喜结连理。在1950年到1960年代，新娘平均的结婚年龄小到在自己的婚礼上都不能喝酒。欧洲几乎就是结婚狂魔。即便在1972年这么晚的时候。也有整整87%年龄在30到34的法国女郎都已经结婚。
By the mid-20th century, marriage was almost unavoidable. The idea that people ought to wed and then form a household with a primary male breadwinner was, in the words of Stephanie Coontz, an American historian, “like a steamroller that crushed every alternative view”. People tied the knot at ever younger ages: in the 1950s and 1960s, the average American bride was too young to consume alcohol at her own wedding. Europe was almost as marriage-mad. As late as 1972 fully 87% of French women aged between 30 and 34 were married.
如今仅有43%的法国女郎在三十多岁前结婚。而这只是全世界都下降的一部分。在阿根廷婚姻已经少到一个名人Falsa Boda，已经开始通过假的誓言来举办一个结婚派对。在一些国家婚姻与繁衍的联系已经不那么紧密。在2015年全美国约有五分之二的婴儿出生于未婚母亲。在法国这一比例未59%，在哥伦比亚是84%。只有21%的年龄在15到24的人同意人们在想要孩子前应当先结婚。这个比率只有1989年的一半。
These days just 43% ofFrench women in their early 30s are married.Thatispartofa broad retreat. In Argentina, weddings have become so rare that one outfit, Falsa Boda, has started staging wedding-themed parties, complete with fake vows. And in many countries marriage has become unmoored from parenthood. In 2015 two-fifths of all American babies were born to unwed mothers. In France the proportion is 59%; in Colombia is 84%. Just 21% of Britons aged between 15 and 24 now agree that people who want children should get married, half the share in 1989.
西方似乎与世界其他地方特别是与亚洲，走向了不同的道路。在亚洲传统的观念还在维持。在中国农村一个男性在20好几的之后依然单身是值得同情甚至危险的。在日本只有2%的婴儿是未婚妈妈产的。在印度以及跨越北非到中东的大部分地区这个比率甚至更低。在很多贫穷和中等收入国家的法律依然不认可未婚的夫妇，并且假装他们的后代不存在。
The West seems set on a different course from the rest of the world, especially Asia, where traditional attitudes persist. In rural China single man in his late 20s is seen as pathetic and perhaps even dangerous. In Japan only 2% of births are to unmarried women; in India and across much of North Africa and the MiddleEast the share may be even lower. In many poor and middle-income countries, the law still does not recognize unmarried couples and treats their offspring as virtual non-people.
本报道将论证大埔人人认为的他们所了解的婚姻是错的。在西方，制度比原本看起来更有弹性。虽然这些制度在二十世纪中期之后被永久的改变了。在亚洲，这些制度也比原本呈现出来的更具有流动性与不稳定性。那些看起来像是东西方文化本质上的差异往往仅仅是时间和程度上的差异。婚姻被传到了世界各地。在很多地方也是以同样的方式传播。但是不同的国家正处这这段旅程的不同位置。
This special report will argue that much of what people think they know about marriage is wrong. In the West, the institutions more resilient than it seems, although profoundly changed since the mid-20th century. In Asia, it is much more fluid and unstable than it might appear. What look like fundamental cultural differences between West and East are often just differences of timing and degree. Marriage is being transformed almost everywhere and in many of the same ways. But different countries are at different stages of the journey.
从西方的伦敦到中国的乡村到印度的贫民窟。三个巨大的变化正在发生。第一是婚姻曾经被父母与亲戚干预而扭曲现在则是由年轻人自己决定。这一变化最清楚的型号即使普遍提高的平均结婚年龄。平均结婚年龄在挪威与孟加拉共和国之间任由很大的差异，前者平均结婚年龄为32岁，后者为19岁。但是在孟加拉共和国，平均结婚年龄在1974年为16岁，与现在的19岁任然有这重要的差异。
From west London to Chinese villages to Indian slums, three great changes are afoot. The first is that marriage decisions are being wrenched out of the hands of parents and relatives and made by the young people themselves. The clearest sign of this is the almost universal rise in the average age of marriage (see chart below). There is still a large gap between Norway, where women marry at an average age of 32, and Bangladesh, where they wedat19. But there is also a crucial difference between marrying at19and at16, which was the average in Bangladesh in 1974.
第二个变化是强调爱情。在西方大部分的历史中，浪漫的爱情或者是熟悉感对一个好的婚姻来说是不必要的，甚至是起反作用的。william gouge，一个有影响力的清教徒作家在17世纪的英国，抨击那些叫妇女称其丈夫为“亲爱的，小心肝，小宝贝”，这些昵称侵害了对夫妻联合至关重要的妻子对丈夫的尊敬。很多英国的夫妻无视gouge继续甜言蜜语的说着些什么。这也是为什么他能搜集到这么多昵称的原因。但是他的这种观点在当时绝对是主流。
The second change is the emphasis on conjugal love. For much of Western history romantic love, or “familiarity”, was held not only to be unnecessary for a strong marriage but antithetical to it. William Gouge, an influential Puritan writer in 17thcentury England, lambasted women who called their husbands “sweet, sweating, heart, sweet-heart, love, joy, dear…duck, chick, pigsnie &c”, terms that struck him as undermining the wifely deference essential for a successful union. Many English couples probably ignored Gouge and went on murmuring sweet nothings, which is why he was able to collect many of them. But his view was perfectly orthodox at the time.
现如今，爱情是值得赞扬的。在国家级婚礼展览上的商人毫无例外的报告说，每一对新人都坚持让他们的婚礼浪漫且独特。“现如今，你不必非要结婚”，Anna Muckart一个婚礼请帖设计师解释道。因为婚姻不再是义务，所以婚姻应当与众不同。婚姻已经从一个见证成熟的仪式转变为庆祝爱情与承诺的仪式——标志这两个人已经生活在一起并且将相互信守承诺。亚洲的新娘和新娘通常是庄重的，认为双方应当在头脑清醒时步入婚姻的殿堂，婚姻不仅仅是两个人的结合，更是两个家庭的结合。但是即使是他们，现在也强调他们所谓的“和睦相处”。
Today love is triumphant. The merchants at the National Wedding Show invariably report that every couple insists on their wedding being romantic and special. “You don’t have to get married these days,” explains Anna Muckart, who makes charming wedding invitations. And because weddings are no longer obligatory, they must be extraordinary. Marriage has changed from being a rite of passage to a celebration of love andcommitment—a sign that two people who already live together are ready to commit themselves further. Asian brides and grooms often demur, arguing that marriage should be entered with a cool head and that weddings join families, not just couples.But even they now stress what they call “compatibility”.
当爱情成为婚姻的基础，接着能得到的结论就是没有爱情的婚姻应当被分解。第三个巨大的全球变化是对离婚更容易接受。现在，离婚再很多的国家都更加的常见，特别是那些告诉现代化的国家。那些国家的妇女如今变得更加的经济独立。最近中国和韩国的离婚率高于欧洲和经济合作组织成员国的平均水平。
When love is the basis for marriage, it follows that a marriage without love should be put asunder. The third great global change is the growing acceptance of divorce. It is now more common in many countries, especially fast-modernizing ones where women are becoming economically self-sufficient. These days China and South Korea have divorce rates above the European and OECD averages.
在那些分手很难的地方
Where breaking up is hard to do
教堂与政府总是想要尽力去阻止这些变化。通常他们都会被羞辱。在美国，即使是那些政府资助的研究得出的结论都显示联邦政府在于加强婚姻关系方面的项目没有任何效果。试图通过是离婚更加的困难来维持联合，只会导致更少的结婚。在智利，2004前离婚几乎是不可能的，而且现在仍然不容易。也许不是巧合，智利有着在35个经济合作组织成员国中最高的婚外出生率。
Churches and governments have often tried to resist these changes. Usually, they have been humiliated. In America, even government-funded studies conclude that federal programmes aimed at strengthening marriage have almost no effect. Attempting to preserve unions by making divorce more difficult might just lead to fewer marriages. In Chile divorce was almost impossible until 2004 and is still not easy. Probably not coincidentally, Chile has the highest proportion of births outside marriage among the 35 members of the OECD.
几乎在所有地方婚姻都变得更加随意，更轻松，更没有责任。但是它没有失去任何吸引力或是它联结私人的能力。最近一个正对英国年轻人的调查显示93%的人渴望结婚。即便是在那些离婚被社会接受的国家，人们任然相信婚姻是一个特殊的纽带，不是轻易形成或者打破的。相比于统计学家，它的影响被小说家表述得更加准确。单身的生活就像骑摩托自行车，你能感受到路上的每一次颠簸。一对结了婚的，特别是一对带了孩子夫妇，更想是一个18轮的货车在路上辇过。一个在“the age of grief”中的演员解释到。“the age of grief”这部剧是美国的一个作家jane Smiley写的一个故事。
Almost everywhere marriage is becoming less obligatory, less coercive and less dutiful. It has not, however, lost any of its appeal or its private binding power. A recent survey of young Britons found that 93% aspire to marry. Even in countries, wheredivorce is socially acceptable, people still believe that marriage is a special bond, not to be made or broken lightly. Its effects are expressed more accurately by novelists than by statisticians. The single life is rather like riding a moped, explains a character in“The Age of Grief”, a story by the American writer Jane Smiley: you feel every bump in the road. A marriage, particularly a marriage with children, is like an 18-wheel lorry barrelling along.
研究证明结婚的人更健康，更富有，更快乐。相比于未结婚的人，他们更不可能与伙伴决裂。很难分辨出婚姻带来的效果有多好，因为他们结婚了与他们的境况有选择效应。更快乐的人，更健康的人，处在更紧密的联系中的人更有可能先结婚。但是学者们尽量控制这些因素任然发现了婚姻效应。结婚的状态似乎增加了人们的幸福感，即便是考虑到很多婚姻破碎。
Study after study testifies that married people are healthier, wealthier and happier than unmarried ones, and less likely to split from their partners. It is hard to tell how much of this is because they are married and how much is a selection effect—happy, healthy people in strong relationships being more likely to get married in the first place. But academics who have tried to control for those things still tend to find a marriage effect. Wedlock seems to increase human happiness even allowing for the fact that many marriages fall apart.
在发达国家，婚姻的传统给与了富足的人更多的优势。富有的、受过高等教育的男性和女性在仔细考虑之后才会较晚的结婚。他们的婚姻高度的成功。平均而言，他们是世界上最快乐最满足的。在这些有优先特权的群体中，离婚是