《中英對照讀新聞》Slugs and snails? Not today's boys 懶散? 不是今天的男孩子

◎鄭寺音

If you are not sitting down already, you might like to ask that nice boy on the train to give up his seat for you before reading on, because researchers have come up with some shocking findings： teenage boys today are better behaved than those of a generation ago.

如果你現在還沒坐下，在你讀下去之前，可能會想請火車上的那個好男孩讓座位給你，因為研究人員提出一些令人驚訝的發現：今天的青少年行為比前一個世代的良好。

A survey of 14 to 15-year-olds suggests that today's adolescent males are, in general, less likely to steal, fight, play truant, vandalise, smoke and take drugs than their parents' generation. More uplifting is the researchers' conclusion that better teaching and a more engaging school atmosphere are largely responsible for this transformation.

一份針對14到15歲年輕人的調查顯示，今天的青春期男性，一般來說，比他們父母那一代較少偷竊、打架、曠課、破壞公物、抽菸與吸毒；更令人振奮的是，研究人員的結論是，較好的教學與更吸引人的學校氣氛，是這項轉變的一大原因。

But the picture is far less rosy for teenage girls. Not only do they fight, play truant, take drugs and drink more than girls of their age did 20 years ago, they have also overtaken boys in some problem behaviour.

但青少女的情況就差多了，她們在打架、曠課、吸毒與喝酒問題比20年前的同齡女孩嚴重，在一些問題行為上也超過男孩子。

"The girls are not behaving worse than the boys did 20 years ago generally, but current adolescent girls are more likely than boys to be binge drinkers — 29 per cent to 11 per cent — and more often sexually active than boys — 23 per cent to 11 per cent,” said Colin Pritchard, a Professor of Psychiatric Social Work at the Institute of Health and Community Studies at Bournemouth University.

伯恩茅斯大學健康與社區研究院的精神社工教授普里特察說：「一般來說，今日女孩的行為不會比20年前的男孩子差，但現在的青少女比男孩子更可能是牛飲者—29％對11％，性行為比男孩子活躍─23％對11％。」

新聞辭典

play truant：逃學，曠課。

vandalise：蓄意破壞公共財物等。例句：Those teenagers vandalized all the phone boxes in the neighborhood. 那些青少年把這附近的電話亭都弄壞了。

binge：動詞／名詞，指「狂飲、狂吃；狂鬧；狂熱」。例句：I tend to binge on chocolate when I'm watching TV. 我看電視時常狂吃巧克力。