托德:迈克,我在想,你来自加拿大,而且你在美国生活过,现在我们一起工作,在我们公司除了你都是美国人,你觉得加拿大人和美国人有什么不同呢?
Mike: Well, first of all, I'll just, to be honest, just to start, I'll say that Canadians and Americans I think share a lot more similar qualities than they do differences, I mean, I think Canadians have a lot more in common with Americans than they do with even with English people who are like from Britain who were the original sort of Canadians, I suppose, a few hundred years ago, so in that way I think that like again, just to preempt it by saying we're very similar, however, there's definitely some differences I think between Americans and Canadians. First of all, I think Canadians in general are maybe a little bit more humble. Not to put this in a negative way, but they just, they're not as willing to engage in an argument, or to argue over a point, I think, as you know, as most, at least, most of my American friends, who’ll want to debate and get to the bottom of a topic. Canadians would rather just sort of back off and say, you know, "That's, you're right. That's fine. Great" but again, and I can't speak for all Canadians because it depends on your personality too, but just to generalize, that's one difference. Also, I would say that Americans in general tend to be a lot more businesslike and maybe even a little more conservative in, just in the way they, in the way that they, I guess, view, relations, or view discussions with people, but Canadians tend to be a little bit more liberal, a little bit more free and easy-going, again, I'll preempt that by saying all of the Americans that I work with I think are quite liberal and not conservative thinking at all, but if you want to generalize, yeah, culturally, then I think those are probably a couple of differences between the two cultures, or people in the cultures.
迈克:嗯,首先,说实话,相比于不同点,我觉得加拿大人和美国人有很多相似的特质,我的意思是我认为加拿大人和美国人有很多共同点,我想大概是几百年前,英国人原来是加拿大人的一部分,所以首先我们非常相似,不过美国人和加拿大人之间当然有一些不同点。首先,总的来说,加拿大人可能要更谦卑一些。不要用消极的方式来理解,加拿大人不太愿意牵涉进争论中,或者是不愿意就某一观点进行争论。我想,正如你知道的那样,至少我的大部分美国朋友想参与到争论中,他们想弄清论题的真相。加拿大更愿意避让,他们会说“嗯,你是对的。那很好。很棒。”不过,我不能代表所有加拿大人,因为这也要取决于你的个性,不过总的来说,这是一个不同点。而且,我认为美男人一般来说效率更高,而且他们和别人的关系以及在和别人进行讨论方面要更保守,而加拿大人则更开放,更自由,更随和,而和我一起工作的美国人,我认为他们的想法很开放,一点也不保守,不过如果从总体来说,从文化上来说,我想两种文化或者说受这些文化影响的人们有一些不同点。
Todd: Yeah, anything else, any other differences?
托德:没错,那有吗,还有其他不同点吗?
Mike: Well, I think, one thing that Americans tend to point to with Canadians, and it is true to some extent, other than our love of hockey, is sense of humor. I think Canadians in general tend to have a, I wouldn't say unique, but they just tend to look at I guess, look at things with a little bit more of, a bit of humor, too it, and I think the main reason for that is cause it's so bloody cold in Canada.
迈克:我想,美国人和加拿大人其中一个需要指出的不同点是,除了我们对冰球的喜爱,从某种程度上来说应该是不同的幽默感。我认为总体来说,我不认为他们的幽默感很独特,不过加拿大人以更幽默的方式来看待事物,我想主要原因是加拿大太冷了。
Todd: Fair enough. Thanks Mike.
托德:有道理。谢谢你,迈克。