休·斯科菲尔德撰文指出，法国历届领导人都谨守一条经验之谈：街头青年意味着麻烦。
By Hugh Schofield It is a piece of wisdom that all French leaders take care to heed: young people on the street equals trouble.
自1968年5月的学生抗议运动以来——时任总统戴高乐曾将其形容为“chienlit”（字面意为“床上排便”，实指混乱不堪）——每一届政府都对愤怒的法国青年深感畏惧。
Since the student protests of May 1968 – memorably described by President De Gaulle as chienlit (bed defecation, in other words chaos) – every government has run scared of angry French youth.
原因何在？因为青年运动往往难以预测且缺乏明确形态，通常没有清晰的结构可供谈判。此外，当青年群体发起抗议时，其他团体往往会加入其中。
Why? Because youth movements are unpredictable and shapeless, often with no clear structure to negotiate with. Because when they protest, other groups join in.
还有：由于他们年轻，公众往往倾向于同情他们。而且，如果警方处置不当，造成人员受伤甚至更严重的后果，其影响将难以估量。况且，总统大选仅剩数月之遥。
Also: because as they're young, the public tends to sympathise. And because if the police mess up and cause injury or worse, then the consequences are incalculable. And presidential elections are only months away.
基于上述所有原因，当“愤怒的青年”筑起路障时，政府行事极为谨慎。
For all these reasons, when la jeunesse en colère (angry youth) is at the barricades governments tread very carefully indeed.
目前，法国青少年正身处路障之后。尽管他们表面上并未表现出明显的愤怒（现场气氛更多是兴奋），但他们无疑让埃马纽埃尔·马克龙总统的政府陷入了《世界报》周五所称的“冷汗直流”的境地。
Right now, French teenagers are at the barricades and if they are not visibly angry (the mood is more excitement), they certainly have the government of President Emmanuel Macron in what Le Monde called on Friday "the cold sweats". A movement that started nearly two weeks ago in the low-income Seine-Saint-Denis area of northern Paris has in the last few days spread across the country.
这场运动始于近两周前巴黎北部低收入地区塞纳-圣但尼省，并在过去几天内蔓延至全国。
On Thursday – the high point so far – hundreds of lycées (where 15-18 year-olds finish their schooling) were being blockaded.
周四——迄今为止的高潮——数百所高中（15至18岁学生完成学业的学校）遭到封锁。周五，局势有所缓和，但仍有约400所高中为保护教职员工和学生而关闭。大学也开始加入其中。
On Friday, the situation had improved but around 400 lycées were closed in order to protect staff and students. Universities are beginning to join in. Violence has erupted.
暴力事件已经爆发。周四，南特一所高中的主礼堂被大火烧毁。全国各地学校入口处还发生了多起小型火灾，数量之多难以一一列举。造成的经济损失达数百万欧元。
On Thursday the main hall of a lycée in Nantes was destroyed by fire. Smaller fires too numerable to mention were lit at school entrance gates around the country. The cost of the damage is millions of euros. According to Education Minister Édouard Geffray, 65 teaching staff including 40 school heads have been injured.
据教育部长埃杜瓦尔·热弗雷表示，包括40名校长在内的65名教职员工受伤。他说：“大多数受伤的教职员工表示，他们面对的人……并不是他们的学生。”
"Most of the staff who were hurt said that the people they were facing… were not their own pupils," he said. In addition, the government says that around 300 police and firefighters have been treated for injuries, and some 2,000 people – mainly minors – taken into custody.
此外，政府表示约有300名警察和消防员因受伤接受了治疗，约2000人（主要是未成年人）被拘留。学生团体则称，他们掌握着许多因警察暴力行为而受伤的人的名单；其中两名青少年伤势严重（尤其是眼睛受伤），还有一名青少年失去了多颗牙齿。
For their part, student groups say they have a long list of people injured by police. Two teenagers have serious eye injuries and one has lost many of his teeth.
如果问题仅仅在于满足抗议者的要求，或许还算简单。但实际情况更为复杂——其中还涉及政治和社会层面的因素，这使得这次学生抗议活动比以往任何时候都更加危险。
The problem would be hard enough if it was just a question of meeting the protesters' demands. But there is another dimension – a political and social one – which makes this student crisis far more dangerous than in the past.
抗议者的要求确实存在，尽管这些要求还不够具体明确。他们的诉求主要涉及资金短缺、教师短缺、班级规模过大以及学校设施落后等问题。
The demands do exist, even if they remain vague. They are about money – the lack of it – and the need for more teachers, smaller classes and better buildings.
在这些问题上，许多法国人会支持学生的立场。事实上，通过抗议向政府索要资金早已成为一种普遍现象，甚至政府也承认这种行为是合法的。当然，法国的教育体系确实正在恶化——因为资金极度紧张。
On such matters, many in France would agree with the teenagers. Certainly using protest to demand money from government is such a national habit that even governments agree it's legitimate. And of course, things are indeed getting worse in the education system – because money is so tight.
本周，塞巴斯蒂安·莱科努（Sébastien Lecornu）总理公布了明年的预算草案，其核心理念是“进一步削减开支”——并且他表示“这次我们是认真的！”不过，他是否真的能够如承诺那样削减540亿欧元（约合460亿英镑）的政府支出，仍存在疑问。
This week Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu published his draft for next year's budget. The motif is "More cuts – and this time we're serious!"
显然，法国政府以往那种通过慷慨拨款来平息社会动荡的做法已经走到尽头。学生们要求增加学校护士的数量或改善食堂的保温设施，很可能会失望而归。
Whether or not he manages to remove €54bn (£46bn) from state spending, as he promises, remains open to question. But it is surely obvious that the era of public largesse to defuse social unrest in France is now in its twilight.
不过，这还不是最令人担忧的问题。更令人担忧的是，这些学生抗议活动可能被极左翼势力所操纵；而最近发生的暴力事件，或许只是预示着在即将到来的选举年份里，这个日益两极分化的社会将会面临更多危险。
Students demanding an extra school nurse or insulation in the dining-block are likely to be disappointed. But that is the lesser of the worries.
对于右翼和中立派来说，毫无疑问，这些学生抗议活动的背后隐藏着“法国不屈党”（France Unbowed, LFI）及其受欢迎的总统候选人让-吕克·梅朗雄（Jean-Luc Mélenchon）的阴谋。
The far greater fear is that these student protests are being manipulated by the hard left – and that the violence of recent days is a foretaste of what awaits a dangerously polarised society in the year of elections that is coming.
“左翼前进”（LFI）的领导人经常出现在学生抗议活动的现场，尤其是在巴黎的圣但尼（Saint-Denis）郊区。该郊区的市长巴利·巴加约科（Bally Bagayoko）曾因表示“暴力在某些情况下可能是正当的”而受到批评。
For the right and centre, there is no doubt that behind the student trouble lies the cunning hand of the France Unbowed party (LFI) and its popular presidential candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. LFI leaders have regularly appeared next to the students – notably in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis whose mayor Bally Bagayoko was criticised for saying that "violence can sometimes be legitimate."
一份为巴黎警察部门准备的内部报告被泄露给媒体，该报告分析了这场抗议运动在塞纳-圣但尼（Seine-Saint-Denis）地区的起源。报告指出，学生抗议活动实际上受到了学生工会中的极左翼势力以及“左翼前进”等政治组织的煽动；报告认为这些紧张局势可能是“一种煽动性策略的一部分”，目的是在总统大选前强行推行他们的政治主张。
An internal report prepared for the Paris police department which was leaked to the media analysed the opening of the movement in Seine-Saint-Denis. It concluded that students were being "egged on by far-left elements from students unions… and political groups such as… LFI."
为了支持这一结论，报告作者列举了以下证据：一些抗议者并非高中生；抗议者的诉求非常模糊；抗议活动中出现了巴勒斯坦和阿尔及利亚的国旗；此外，抗议者还采用了激进左翼常用的策略（例如呼吁在警察局附近举行额外抗议活动）。
It said the tensions "could be part of a flame-kindling strategy… aimed at imposing their ideas ahead of the national elections".
“左翼前进”坚决否认自己采取了任何不当行为，仅表示他们自然地支持这场他们认为合法的抗议运动。周四，梅朗雄（Mélenchon）呼吁学生避免使用暴力，称“暴力只会符合敌人的利益”。
In support of its conclusion, the report's writers cited the presence of protesters who are not themselves lycéens, the vagueness of the demands, the flying of Palestinian and Algerian flags, and the use of tactics – like calling for supplementary protests at police-stations - that come from the radical-left playbook. The LFI strongly denies doing anything more than lending its natural support to a movement it regards as legitimate.
然而，他的反对者认为这位75岁的政治家非常清楚自己在做什么——他很有机会进入5月的总统大选第二轮，并可能与极右翼候选人玛丽娜·勒庞（Marine Le Pen）竞争。民意调查显示，他在法国18至24岁年轻人中拥有高达40%的支持率，尤其是在人口密集、移民众多的郊区；在这些地区，他提出的“新法国”理念以及“文化融合”（以反映法国语言和人口结构的变化）等主张深受年轻人欢迎。
On Thursday Mélenchon called on students to avoid violence "which only serves our enemies' interests". But his opponents believe that the 75-year-old veteran – who stands a good chance of making it to the second round of the presidential elections in May, probably against the hard-right's Marine Le Pen – knows exactly what he is doing.
不过，年轻人也是法国选举中投票率最低的群体。因此，随着选举的临近，该政党的策略将是不断向这部分选民表明：他们（“左翼前进”）站在他们这边，他们的选票确实具有重要意义。
Polls show he has massive support – some 40% -- among 18-24 year-olds in France, and that this is concentrated in the populous, high-immigration city suburbs where his talk of a "new France" and "creolisation", to reflect France's changing language and population, are highly appreciated. But young people are also the biggest abstainers in French elections, so the strategy – as the elections approach – will be to give constant reminders to this part of the population that the LFI is at their side, and that their vote can count.
这是否足以确保梅朗雄的胜利，还有待观察。他必须认真对待所有的民意调查结果；这些调查都显示，他在与勒庞的决选中会以惨败告终。
Whether this will be enough to ensure victory for Mélenchon is another matter. He must surely take seriously the polls which all show him losing massively in a run-off against Le Pen.
如果真的发生了这种情况，法国将会陷入极度不稳定的境地——而最近年轻人的抗议活动，确实已经预示了这种局势的来临。
If that happens, France will be in very unstable territory - for which the young people's protests of recent days will indeed have been a harbinger.