The Real Surprise Contained in a Kinder Surprise Egg健達奇趣蛋里的真奇趣

馬克·福賽思

Keith Kahn-Harriss charming conceit is that the warning message within is a skeleton key1 to the languages of the world. 基思·卡恩-哈里斯可愛的奇思妙想：健達奇趣蛋里的安全警示可以成為開啟多語言世界的“萬能鑰匙”。

Tucked inside with the cheap plastic toy Kinder Surprise Egg is a tiny sheet of paper that says： ‘WARNING， read and keep： Toy not suitable for children under three years. Small parts might be swallowed or inhaled. But the piece of paper does not just say it in English; it repeats the same message in 34 different languages and scripts.

廉價的塑料玩具健達奇趣蛋里塞著一張小紙片，上面寫著：“警告！請閱讀并保存。玩具內含小零件，存在誤食吞咽或吸入風險，不適合三歲以下兒童使用。”紙片上并非只用英文寫了這段話，還以另外34種語言和文本傳遞同樣的信息。

Of course， any right-thinking chap will just crumple up this useless bit of paper and throw it in the bin. It is an amusing paradox of modern life that when youre unpacking a new purchase， you know， with terrible certainty， that the slip of paper that says something like ‘IMPORTANT！ PLEASE READ！ CONTAINS VITAL SAFETY INFORMATION！ is the one that you absolutely dont need to bother with. It will just tell you that the product should not be used to stab yourself in the eye， or be set alight and left in a petrol station. Every sensible fellow knows that. Fortunately， Keith Kahn-Harris， the author of The Babel Message， is not a sensible fellow.

當然，任何思維正常的人都會把這張沒用的紙片揉成一團，扔進垃圾桶。現代生活中有一個有趣的悖論：當你打開新買物品的包裝，你十分確信自己完全不用理會那張帶有“重要提示！請閱讀！含有重要安全信息！”字樣的紙條。它無非是告訴你，不要用該產品戳眼睛，或者把它點燃了遺留在加油站內。明白人都懂的。幸運的是，《巴別塔的信息》一書的作者基思·卡恩-哈里斯并不是一個明白人。

He collects these Kinder warning sheets. He obsesses over them. He tracks down versions new and old. And he has now written a 300-page book about them. Except， of course， that the book is not really about the warning message; it is about languages in general， the whole glorious worldwide mess of them.

他收集這些健達奇趣蛋的警示語小紙條，沉迷其中，研究各種新老版本，還專門寫了一本300頁的書。當然，這本書寫的其實并不是警示語本身，而是人類各種語言一總構成的瑰麗世界。

The Kinder Surprise warning message is a conceit upon which to build a book. Its a very neat and charming one. There is a delicious humour implicit in every page， as Kahn-Harris shows what the warning would look like in hieroglyphics or ancient cuneiform. But it is also， strangely， a very clever and methodical conceit.

從健達奇趣蛋的警示語切入，策劃一本書，這樣的構思簡單質樸而又令人著迷。全書字里行間盡顯風趣幽默，作者還給出了象形文字或古代楔形文字版本的奇趣蛋警示語。不可思議的是，這種巧妙的構思中倒也不乏機智與條理。

Too many books on language begin with the sublime. They tell you that you will never truly appreciate the wonders of Greek drama or Balinese poetry until you have spent a decade mastering every subtle detail and nuance of the language. This is both dispiriting for the general reader and unprovable. However， the Kinder Surprise warning message functions as a great leveller2. Languages can be compared in their ability to impart this simple bit of information. The results are truly odd. For example， I had no idea that Old Norse doesnt appear to have had a word for ‘year. Instead， a Viking would have been warned that the toy was not suitable for children with less than three winters.

有太多關于語言的書一開篇便說得無比玄妙。那些書里寫道，要想真正品讀希臘戲劇和巴厘語詩歌的美妙，你就要先花費10年時間來掌握相應語言的種種微妙之處和細微差異。……