我是Simon，本公众号在每周一都会推送一段外文期刊的精读文章。学英语，懂文化，每周推送的内容够你一周内慢慢消化，在周三会重复推送一次提醒你温习。摈弃浮躁，回归本心，踏踏实实学习。
以政治经济评论为主体的《经济学人》在2月11日的杂志上很罕见地刊登了一位来自中国的娱乐明星——金星。标题是《China’s Transgender Oprah》，直译为「中国的变性版奥普拉」。奥普拉是美国非常有名的脱口秀女主持人，他主持的《奥普拉脱口秀》每周平均拥有3300万命观众，连续16年排在同类节目的第一位，虽然与2011年9月9日结束录制，但是奥普拉依然是美国极具影响力的人物。因此，将金星比为奥普拉，确实是一个非常高的评价。那么这篇文章以金星为人物是要表达什么呢？通读下来，作者其实想通过金星来讽刺一下人权状况。可惜，纵观全文，你能明显的感觉到作者绞尽脑汁也没能找到一个金星因为transgender的身份而受到歧视的具体例子，因此，未免有些缺乏说服力，为了黑而黑的感觉。不过，我们依然可以取其精华，提升英语。
难度指数
★ ★
先将以下精选内容进行通读，本文行文非常简单，阅读的时候可以关注一下粗体部分。
CHINA’S favourite chat-show host has had an extraordinary career. Jin Xing was the country’s most successful dancer before becoming a colonel in an
army entertainment troupe
. He
won fame
in America, where the
New York Times
called him “a Chinese genius”. He trained dancers in Brussels and Rome, before returning to China for
a sex-change operation
. As a woman, she
resumed her career
as a
ballerina
, set up the country’s first private ballet company, ran a bar in Beijing and married a German businessman.
In a
conservative society where even homosexuality is frowned upon
,
let alone sex-reassignment
, her life
would seem to place Ms Jin well outside the stodgy mainstream of Chinese broadcasting
. Yet Ms Jin, who is 49, is the country’s most popular television judge. She began with a local version of “So You Think You Can Dance” and
hit the jackpot
with “The Jin Xing Show”, a variety and chat programme with an audience of around 100m. She has appeared with her husband on the Chinese version of “The Amazing Race”, in which couples race each other around the world. Her latest
venture,
“Chinese Dating”, is in its first season.
CHINA’S favourite
chat-show
host has had an extraordinary career. Jin Xing was the country’s most successful dancer before becoming a colonel in an
army entertainment troupe
. He
won fame
in America, where the
New York Times
called him “a Chinese genius”. He trained dancers in Brussels and Rome, before returning to China fo
r a sex-change operation
. As a woman, she
resumed her career
as a ballerina, set up the country’s first private ballet company, ran a bar in Beijing and married a German businessman.
开篇盛赞金星。作者在两个地方给予了金星极高的评价，并用三个句子分别概括了金星的成名，转折，事业等情况。
精选词
chat-show；entertainment troupe
看第一句话：
CHINA’S favourite
chat-show
host has had an extraordinary career. Jin Xing was the country’s most successful dancer before becoming a colonel in an
army entertainment troupe.
第一句话说她是中国
最受欢迎
的（
favourite
）脱口秀主持人；第二句话又盛赞她曾今是中国最成功的舞者。这两句话连「之一」的意思都没有，谦虚都没有一下，简直是人生赢家啊，作者极高的评价有没有。
chat-show
即为脱口秀，也叫
talk-show
，类似《鲁豫有约》那种。但并非所有说话类的节目都叫做 talk-show，例如最近流行的《吐槽大会》就叫做
r
o
ast
，算是comedy的一种形式。
注意背景上的roast
来看roast的解释：
A
roast
is an event in which a specific individual, a guest of honor,
is subjected t
o good-natured jokes
at their expense intended to amuse the event's
wider audience.
be subjected to good-natured jokes
遭受善意的玩笑
to subjected to
是一个非常常见的短语，是
遭受
的意思，往往是指自己无力控制的事情。
People seeking care should not be subjected to abuse。
寻求护理的人不应该遭受虐待。
good-natured
是
善意
的，反义词当然是bad-natured。其实，
恶意的
还有一个词
malicious
，malicious jokes是指恶毒的笑话。
wider audience
广大的观众群。这里需要提醒一下，audience是一个
collective noun
，是指观众群，不能用来指某一个观众，所以这里没有用复数形式。类似的有飞机上的crew，是对飞机上所有机务的统称，所以不能用crew来特指某个空姐，如要特指可以说crew member。
army entertainment troupe
是
军队文工团
，文工团是很有中国特有的一个组织，所以不妨将army去掉，将entertainment troupe记为文工团。
精选词
won fame；sex-change；resume；ballerina
He
won fame
in America, where the
New York Times
called him “a Chinese genius”. He trained dancers in Brussels and Rome, before returning to China for
a sex-change operation
. As a woman, she
resumed
her career as a ballerina, set up the country’s first private ballet company, ran a bar in Beijing and married a German businessman.
won fame
是指获得了
成功
，也就是
成名
。有个短语叫做 claim to fame，即成名的原因，比如金星靠跳舞成名，那么dancing就是她的claim to fame，也就是支撑她成功的那个最重要的才华。这里不妨想一下，你自己的claim to fame是什么呢？：）
sex-change operation
即
变性手术
。sex-change是一个偏口语的说法，如果更加学术一点的话，叫做sex reassignment surgery（SRS）。一个人经过SRS之后，就成为了一个transgender，即变性人。
ballerina
是
芭蕾舞女演员
。
resume her career
里的
resume
隐含有之前中断了的意思，暗示金星之前为了手术，中断了跳舞。
这段话里最容易忽视的就是作者对于代词的变化。仔细看，在sex-change operation之前，作者指代金星的时候用的都是 He，之后就变成了 She。这里引出一个知识点，即gender和sex有什么区别？两者一般都被我们粗暴的翻译为「性别」，但是其实它们是有区别的。Gender是指一个人的自我认同性别，sex指生理性别。对于变性前的金星，他的sex是He，但是她的idenfitifed gender确是女性。也就是说，gender和sex可以不同。
