Work, Labor, and Play 工作、劳作和娱乐

By Wystan Hugh Auden

So far as I know, Miss Hannah Arendt was the first person to define the essential difference between work and labor. To be happy, a man must feel, firstly, free and, secondly, important. He cannot be really happy if he is compelled by society to do what he does not enjoy doing, or if what he enjoys doing is ignored by society as of no value or importance. In a society where slavery in the strict sense has been abolished, the sign that what a man does is of social value is that he is paid money to do it, but a laborer¹ today can rightly be called a wage slave. A man is a laborer if the job society offers him is of no interest to himself but he is compelled to take it by the necessity of earning a living and supporting his family.

据我所知，汉纳•阿伦特小姐是第一个给予工作和劳作之间本质区别的人。一个人要高兴，首先要感到自由，其次是感到重要。如果他被社会强迫做他不愿做的事，或者他喜欢做的事被社会忽视，被认为无价值和不重要，他就不会真正高兴。在一个从严格意义上来说奴隶制已被废除的社会里，一个人所做的事情具有社会价值的樗是他的工作得到了报酬。但今天的劳动者可以恰当地称为薪金的奴隶。如果他对社会提供给他的工作不感兴趣，但出于谋生和养家而被迫接受，这个人就称为劳作者。

The antithesis² to labor is play. When we play a game, we enjoy what we are doing, otherwise we should not play it, but it is a purely³ private activity; society could not care less whether we play it or not.

与劳作相对的是玩，当玩耍时我们在享受，否则是不会去玩的，不过这纯粹是私人活动，社会对你玩或不玩是极不关心的。

Between labor and play stands work. A man is a worker if he is personally interested in the job which society pays him to do; what from the point of view of society is necessary labor is from his own point of view voluntary play. Whether a job is to be classified as labor or work depends, not on the job itself, but on the tastes of the individual who undertakes it. The difference does not,for example, coincide with the difference between a manual and a mental job; a gardener or a cobbler may be a worker, a bank clerk a laborer. Which a man is can be seen from his attitude toward leisure. To a worker, leisure means simply the hours he needs to relax and rest in order to work efficiently⁴. He is therefore more likely to take too little leisure than too much; workers die of coronaries and forget their wives' birthdays. To the laborer, on the other hand, leisure means freedom from compulsion, so that it is natural for him to imagine that the fewer hours he has to spend laboring⁵, and the more hours he is free to play, the better.

处于劳作和玩之间的是工作。如果一个人对社会付酬给他的工作感兴趣的话，他就是工作者;从社会的观点看，工作是必要的劳作也是个人心目中自愿的玩。例如：这个区别不同于体力劳动和脑力劳动之间的区别;一个园艺工人或一个补鞋匠可能是工作者，一个银行职员可能是劳作者。一个人属于哪一种可以从他对休闲的态度看出来。对于工作者来说，休闲只是他为了有效地工作而放松和休息的时间，所以他可能少休息而不是多休闲。工作者可能致于冠状动脉血栓症，忘记妻子的生日。反之，对于劳作者来说，休闲意味着从强迫中的摆脱，因此他们会很自然地想花在工作上的时间越少，自由自在玩的时间越多就越好。