How the Libyan Rebels Came to Be Called 'Rebels,' Against Their Will
反对派不理解：为何英语中我们成了“反叛者”
英文网址：
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/07/how-libyan-rebels-came-be-called-rebels-against-their-will/39738/
来源：《大西洋月刊》在线专栏“大西洋连线”（The Atlantic Wire）
作者：Uri Friedman
完成时间：2011-07-08
翻译：@skipper79
Al Jazeera's Sue Turton had an interesting exchange recently with a Libyan tradesman named Mohammed near the front in Misurata. As they waited by a makeshift hospital, Mohammed asked Turton why she called the men (and women) battling Muammar Qaddafi's security forces "rebels." "They are not fighting men," he stated. "You need to tell the world that these men are normal people. Gaddafi has forced them to take up arms."
在米苏拉塔，一位叫Mohammed的利比亚商人与半岛记者Sue Turton进行了一次有趣的谈话。当时他们在一所临时医院，Mohammed问记者Turton，为什么她把那些与卡扎菲安全部队战斗的男男女女称为“反叛者”。这位商人说：“这些人不是战士，他们只是普通人，你要把这些告诉世人，他们拿起武器都是卡扎菲逼的。”
Mohammed's not alone in his thinking. In March, opposition fighters told Time's Abigail Hauslohner that they wanted to be called "revolutionaries" or "mujahideen," not "rebels"--a sentiment that other fighters echoed in interviews with Clare Morgana Gillis at [url=http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9HiibanXtdwJ:www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... roffensive/236873/+]The Atlantic[/url] in April. Earlier this week, Marc Herman explained why the rebels don't like being called rebels. They consider it "Qaddafi's term," he noted at The Atlantic, and prefer Ronald Reagan's phrase for groups like the Mujahideen in Afghanistan or the Contras in Nicaragua: "freedom fighters." Herman added, however, that the distinction only mattered for public relations reasons, since the "anti-Qaddafi militias don't speak English, but rather Arabic and Amazir--the Berber language--and call themselves thwar, which roughly means revolutionaries" (Al Jazeera Arabic, interestingly enough, seems to go with that word as well: thuwar in formal Arabic, or ثوار, which can be translated as rebels but comes from a root meaning "to agitate," having a noun form meaning "revolution"). The English-language website for the opposition's Transitional National Council, meanwhile, makes no mention of "rebels," referring instead to the "revolutionary people of Libya."
商人Mohammed不是唯一一个有这种想法的人。三月份，反对派战士对《时代》杂志记者Abigail Hauslohner说，他们希望被称为“革命者”或“穆斯林游击队”，而不是“反叛者”。在四月份，其它反对派战士在接受《大西洋月刊》记者Clare Morgana Gillis采访的时候，也表达了同样的想法。本周初，Marc Herman解答了为什么反对派不愿被称为反叛者的原因。他在《大西洋月刊》撰文称，反对派战士认为“反叛者”这个词是“卡扎菲说的”，他们更喜欢罗纳德·里根取的那些名字，比如：阿富汗穆斯林游击队或是尼加拉瓜反政府人员自称的“自由战士”。不过Herman还称，出现这一分歧仅仅是因为公众交流的问题，因为“反卡扎菲战士不说英语，他们一般用阿拉伯语和Amazir语（即柏柏尔语）称自己为thwar，thwar的大致意思就是革命者。”如果谁有兴趣看半岛电视台阿拉伯频道的话，就会发现那里好像也用thuwar这个词（阿拉伯语写作：ثوار），这个词可以被翻译作反叛者，不过它语源的意思为“去撼动”，其名词性的含义为“革命”。同时，反对派过渡国家委员会的英文网站上从不写“反叛者”，他们写的是“利比亚革命群众。”
So how did this whole "rebel" thing get started? A Lexis Nexis search of English-language news sources suggests that the term was first used on February 21, less than a week after peaceful protests first erupted in Libya, by the wire service AFP, which referred precisely once to a statement from "rebel diplomats" at the U.N. Adoption grew on February 24 as the conflict grew increasingly violent and opposition forces advanced toward Tripoli, with headlines like "Rebels Hope for Qaddafi's Fall but Remain Fearful" and "Libya Rebels Isolate Qaddafi" cropping up. By early March Brooke Gladstone of NPR's On the Media had noticed that news outlets were calling the Libyan opposition "rebels" rather than protesters, and addressed the change on her show. Foreign Policy's Blake Hounshell told Gladstone that he thought the word "rebel" was rather romantic, not pejorative as some had suggested, and added that the term made sense once the peaceful uprising turned into an armed struggle. "You can't really call someone with an RPG a protestor anymore. At that point they really then become a rebel."
那么“反叛者”一词究竟是何时开始出现的呢？通过搜索英文新闻数据库Lexis Nexis，这个词最早出现在2月21日，当时距利比亚和平游行最初开始出现还不到一周时间，写出该词的通讯社是法新社，它在新闻稿中曾经明确地提到过一位在联合国“反叛大使”的发言。到了2月24日，随着冲突的升级，反对派向的黎波里的开进，这个词变得更加常见，其新闻标题就有如：《反叛者希望卡扎菲下台，不过忧虑依在》、《反叛者孤立卡扎菲》。到三月初，美国国家公共电台的Brooke Gladstone发现新闻媒体不再称利比亚反对派为抗议者，而是改称为“反叛者”，她在自己的节目中也说到了这一变化。《外交政策》杂志总编Blake Hounshell对她说，他认为“反叛者”一词更具传奇色彩，而不是某些人所暗示的贬损含义，他还称，一旦和平起义变成了武装抗争，使用这个词就合情合理了。Blake Hounshell总编说：“一旦有人拿着RPG，你就不能再称他为抗议者了。在这一点上，他们的确成为了反叛者。”
The backlash against the word "rebel," moreover, may soon spread elsewhere in the Arab world. In recent days news outlets have been tossing around a new term: the "Syrian rebels."
此外，针对“反叛者”一词的抗议之声也许不久就要出现在阿拉伯世界的其它地方了。最近，新闻媒体反反复复又出现了一个新名词：“叙利亚叛乱者”。
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