儒琴英语咀嚼阿兰·德波顿的《旅行的艺术》(The Art of Travel) 英语用词。阿兰·德波顿(Alain de Botton)是一位出生于瑞士的英国哲学家和作家。他写的散文式的书被称为“日常生活哲学”。他的作品涉及爱情、旅行、建筑和文学，包括小说《爱情笔记》（1993）、《爱上浪漫》（1994）、《亲吻与诉说》（1995）及散文作品《拥抱逝水年华》（1997 ）、《哲学的慰藉》（2000）、《旅行的艺术》（2002）、《写给无神论者》（2012）。他的书在30个国家畅销。
Motives : III On the Exotic 1
动机：第3章: 异国情调 第1节
第1节
On disembarking at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, only a few steps inside the terminal, I am struck by a sign hanging from the ceiling that announces the ways to the arrivals hall, the exit and the transfer desks . It is a bright yellow sign, one metre high and two across, simple in design, a plastic fascia in an illuminated aluminum box suspended on steel struts from the ceiling webbed with cables and air-conditioning ducts. Despite its simplicity, even mundanity, the design delights me, a delight for which the adjective “exotic”, though unusual, seem apt. The exoticism is located in particular areas: in the double a of Aamkomst, in the neighbourliness of a u and an i in Uitgang, in the use of English subtitles, in the word for desks, balies, and in the choice of practical modernist fonts, Frutiger or Univers.
If the sign provokes such pleasure, it is in part because it offers the first conclusive evidence of having arrived elsewhere. It is a symbol of abroad. Though it may not seem distinctive to the casual eye, such a sign would never exist in precisely this form in my own country. There it would be less yellow, the typeface would be softer and more nostalgic, there would-out of greater indifference to the confusion of foreigners – probably be no subtitles and the language would contain no double as – a repetition in which I sensed, confusedly, the presence of another history and mindset.
A plug socket, bathroom tap, a jam jar or an airport sign may tell us more than its designers intended, it may speak of the nation that made it. And the nation that had made the sign at Schiphol Airport seemed very far from my own. A bold archaeologist of national character might have traced the influence of the lettering back to the De Stijl movement of the early twentieth century, the prominence of the English subtitles to the Dutch openness towards foreign influences and the foundation of the East India Company in 1602 and the overall simplicity of the sign to the Calvinist aesthetic that became a part of Holland’s identity during the war between the United Provinces and Spain in the sixteenth century.
That a sign could evolve do differently in two places was evidence of a simple but pleasing idea: that countries are diverse and practices variables across borders. Yet difference alone would not have been enough to elicit pleasure, nor not for long. Difference had to seem like an improvement on what my own country was capable of. If I called the Schiphol sign exotic, it was because it succeeded in suggesting, vaguely but intensely, that the country which had made it and which lay beyond the uitgang might in critical ways prove more congenial than my own to my temperament and concerns. The sign was a promise of happiness.
重点用词注解
Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport: 阿姆斯特丹史基浦机场
fascia: noun [ C ] /ˈfæʃ.ə/ a nameplate 招牌；导视牌
strut: noun [ C ]/strʌt/a strong rod, usually made from metal or wood, that helps to hold something 支柱，支杆；撑杆
mundanity: noun [ U ]mʌnˈdæn.ə.t̬i/ the fact of being very ordinary and therefore not interesting 平淡无奇，毫无新意
apt: adjective /æpt/ apt adjective (SUITABLE) suitable or right for a particular situation 适当的，恰当的；合适的
Aamkomst: 荷兰语：到达
Uitgang： 荷兰语：出口
Frutiger：阿德里安·弗鲁提格(Adrian Frutiger,1928-2015), 是一位出生于瑞士的字体设计师,其代表作品有OCR-B、Univers、Frutiger等字体。
modernist fonts： 现代主义字体
de stijl： 一般指风格派。 风格派作为艺术各种学派的一种，不仅关心美学，也努力更新生活与艺术的联系。
Calvinist aesthetic：加尔文主义的审美观
congenial: adjective /kənˈdʒiː.ni.əl/ friendly and pleasant 友善的；令人愉快的；宜人的