Angela Merkel's legacy: has she saved or destroyed Europe?

legacy n. 遗产；后果
安格拉·默克尔的遗产：她拯救了欧洲，还是毁掉了欧洲？

Angela Merkel’s approach to a problem, wrote one of her biographers, is “to sit it out”. Rather than entertain grand ideas of a “historic mission” or “strategic vision”, she aims to “solve today’s problems, in a way that ensures she stays in power”.

sit it out 静观其变；沉默到底
entertain v. 考虑
strategic vision 战略远景

默克尔的一位传记作者写道，安格拉·默克尔应对问题的方式是“静观其变”。她的目标是“解决眼下的问题，并且采取的手段要能保住她的权力”，而不是去考虑“历史使命”或者“战略愿景”这种宏大的观念。

The German chancellor, once described by Forbes as the world’s most powerful woman, managed that for 13 years. She has been measured, cautious, methodical, pragmatic, sometimes maddeningly noncommittal and seemingly always in control.

chancellor n. （德国或奥地利的）总理
measured adj. 慎重的；基于标准的；有规则的；量过的
methodical adj. 有条不紊的
pragmatic adj. 务实的
noncommittal adj. （态度、观点等）不明朗的；不表态的

这位德国总理，曾被《福布斯》杂志誉为全世界最有权势的女性，在过去 13 年里她都实现了上述目标。一直以来她都不急不忙，小心谨慎，有条不紊，脚踏实地，有时候深藏不露得令人恼火，并且看上去总是冷静自持。

But this week, weakened by plummeting polls, an unpopular and ineffective coalition, dire performances in recent state elections and increasingly acrimonious in-fighting among her centre-right alliance, she concededdefeat.

plummeting poll 直线下降的民意调查
coalition n. （尤指多个政治团体的）联盟
dire adj. 极其糟糕的
acrimonious 激烈的
alliance n. 联盟，联合；联姻
concede v. 勉强承认；认输

但这一周，骤然下跌的民调，一个不得民心、效率低下的联合政府，最近州选举中的糟糕表现，以及她的中右翼联盟愈演愈烈的内讧，都令她心力交瘁，于是她认输了。

She is, her defenders say, a fundamentally decent politician who fought for democratic values; whose civil, level-headed persona represents all that the posturing populists now challenging Europe’s unity in countries like Hungary and Italy—and the one in the White House—do not.

defender n.拥护者
politician n.政治家
democratic adj. 民主的；
level-headed adj. 冷静明智的
persona 形象
posturing n. 故作姿态；摆姿势；并非由衷的言行

她的拥护者说，她本质上是一个正派的政治家，为了民主价值而战。她彬彬有礼，头脑冷静的形象代表的一切，与匈牙利和意大利等国那些故作姿态，威胁着欧洲统一的民粹主义者们，以及坐在白宫的那一位，代表的东西完全不同。

Others, however, are not so sure. “Much of what we think we know about Merkel is either spin or speculation,” says Hans Kundnani, senior research fellow at Chatham House. “The extraordinary thing is, after 13 years in the chancellery we still don’t really know who she is.”

spin n. 偏袒性报道
speculation n. 投机；推测；思索；

但是其他人则没那么肯定。“我们以为自己了解的关于默克尔的事情，有很大一部分要么是偏袒，要么是推测。”查塔姆研究所的高级研究员汉斯·昆德纳尼说道。“不寻常的事情是，她在总理的位置上待了 13 年，我们仍然无法真正了解她的为人。”

Merkel’s hard line on enforcing austerity was popular in Germany but almost certainly helped fuel support for populist movements in southern Europe, while her 2015 open borders policy—based, Kundnani believes, as much on a misreading of German opinion as on compassion—boosted the German anti-immigration party.

hard line 强硬路线
austerity n. （经济的）紧缩
compassion n.同情；怜悯

默克尔选择强硬路线，强制执行经济紧缩政策，在国内虽然顺应了民意，但几乎必然为欧洲南部的民粹主义运动煽风点火了，同时她在 2015 年实行的开放边境政策，昆德纳尼认为其落脚点既有恻隐之心，又有对德国民意的误读，这一政策推动了德国反移民政党的崛起。

“We don’t yet know,” says Kundnani, “whether Merkel will go down in history as the woman who destroyed Europe, or saved it.”

“我们尚不清楚，”昆德纳尼说道，“默克尔究竟会以何种身份被载入史册，是毁掉了欧洲，还是拯救了欧洲的女子。”

文章来源 卫报/流利阅读