Are British people actually polite?

　　英国人真的很有礼貌吗?

　　获得53.8k好评的回答@Jack Fraser：

　　Well, asking a Brit this is going to get a somewhat biased answer — but I'll do my best.

　　嗯，问英国人这个问题，得到的答案会有失偏颇，但我会尽量给出最好的答案。

　　Like any large group (65 million of us), we are not monolithic — some of us are right arseholes. Some of us are lovely. However, we do seem to have an instinctive politeness drilled into us at a basic level.

　　像任何大型群体一样(我们有6500万人口)，我们也不尽相同，有些人很蠢，有些人很可爱。然而，我们被灌输的基本礼貌已经成为了一种本能。

　　There is a popular myth that British people are so polite, they will apologise to you if you bump into them whilst walking on the street. So a researcher tested this — she travelled all over the world…just deliberately walking into people!

　　关于英国人的礼貌有一种很流行的说法：如果你在街上走的时候无意中撞到了英国人，他们还会向你道歉。所以一个研究人员检测了这件事的真假——她环游世界，故意去撞别人!

　　The results of this (hilarious) experiment was indeed that 80% of people in Britain will apologise to you if you walk into them. The only nation who came close was Japan, with something like 60% apologies — though she did note that the Japanese were much better at stepping out of the way and avoiding the collision! So the statistics do seem to indicate that we have a reflexive need to say “oops I'm sorry”, even when we know full well it was your fault!

　　这个(滑稽的)实验发现在英国如果你撞了别人，的确有80%的人会向你道歉。唯一研究结果接近的国家是日本，接近60%的人会道歉——同时她也确实发现日本人更擅长让路来避免撞上!所以这一数据确实表明我们会条件反射一样地说：“哎呀，对不起，”甚至当我们很明白错不在自己时也会如此。

　　For what it's worth, I would like to tell you a story, which I think might shed some more light on the matter…

　　不管怎样，我想分享一个故事，我觉得可能能解释得更明白一点…

　　Just over a year ago, I was walking out of Trinity College, Oxford — where I lived at the time. I was making my way to the supermarket to buy some milk. It was about 4 in the afternoon. About 100m from my goal, a very drunk man stumbled into me — basically knocking me over. I of course apologised to him (despite him staggering into me, whilst I was minding my own business!)

　　一年多以前我住在牛津，我从三一学院出来去超市买牛奶。当时大约是下午4点，离超市还有约100米的时候一个醉醺醺的人踉踉跄跄地撞到我，差点把我撞倒。我当然向他道歉了(虽然是他撞到我的，但当时我只在想自己的事)。

　　The Britishness complete, I turned to be on my way — at which point this blindingly drunk man, assumed I was starting a fight, so punched me in the face. So what did I do? I said “I'm sorry” again.

　　展现了英国人的风格之后，我继续走——当时那个醉的不成样子的人以为我要跟他打架，所以一拳打在我脸上。我是什么反应?我又说了一遍“对不起”。

　　Yep. I apologised to a man, after he punched me in the face.

　　是，在一个人打我脸之后我却向他道歉。

　　Now, this is mostly because my brain was about 3 seconds behind, and hadn't quite caught up with recent events — and so defaulted to “standard Brit”. But the point stands as an interesting view into how deeply the words “I'm sorry” are drilled into our national psyche!

　　这主要是因为我的大脑延迟了3秒，还没弄明白刚发生的事——“标准的英国人”模式。但从这件事能看出一个有趣的事实，“对不起”深深地烙印在我们民族的心里。