I recently bought and devoured a book called The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun. But you won’t get me admitting that in public.
我最近买了一本书，名叫《幸福工程：我为何花上一年时间尝试清早歌唱、清洁衣橱、正确地吵架、阅读亚里士多德，并总体上收获更多乐趣？》(The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun)。然后我如饥似渴地读完了它。不过我可不会当众承认。
There is something just too risible about a grown woman seeking the path to nirvana on Amazon.com. How much more risible when governments set out to measure the national nirvana rating – and even pay government officials based on the bliss factor.
对于一位成年女性而言，到亚马逊(Amazon)上寻找通往极乐之路显得特别可笑。但如果政府开始着手衡量国民幸福感，甚至把幸福感作为政府官员的一项薪资指标，岂不是要闹更大的笑话？
Happiness has been official government policy in China for a while. Having done the gross domestic product thing, Beijing is now trying to hit emotional highs to match the economic ones. Numerous cities have set up a “happiness index” based on everything from the number of pollution particles in the air to subjective factors for measuring municipal ecstasy. Sometimes government officials are even denied promotions if the citizenry is not gleeful enough.
在中国，幸福感进入正式政府政策已有一段时间了。在国内生产总值(GDP)上取得成功之后，中国政府如今又开始努力追寻新的目标——把国民幸福感提高到与经济表现相媲美的高度。很多城市都提出了各自的“幸福指数”，该指数的衡量要素从空气中污染颗粒的数量，到用于评价市民喜乐程度的主观因素，应有尽有。有些时候，如果市民幸福感不够高，政府官员甚至没有提升机会。