原文
The melting pot has been around for quite a while as a way to describe a certain American ideal. More recently, this ideal has been called into question. A cultural-sensitivity scholar sums up a new attitude thus: “Today the trend is toward multiculturalism, not assimilation. The old ‘melting pot’ metaphor is giving way to new metaphors such as ‘salad bowl’ and ‘mosaic’, mixtures of various ingredients that keep their individual characteristics. Immigrant populations within the United States are not being blended together in one ‘pot’, but rather they are transforming American society into a truly multicultural mosaic.”
Soupmaking may be a good source of metaphors for different approaches to assimilation or multiculturalism. Some soups are homogenized through a blender. In other soups, the constituent elements remain distinct. But a melting pot is not a soup kettle. However, a melting pot is not a soup kettle. One of the definitions I found for “melting pot” reads: “a vessel made of material that does not melt easily; used for high temperature chemical reactions.” Here the “not melting” aspect seems as important as the “melting”. There’s a metaphor there for a vessel that can take the heat.
This may give us a way to think about the difference between the essential framework and the ever-changing content held within that framework, e.g. the new peoples and new cultures that come to a country. And that metaphor may be a way to think about assimilation and multiculturalism. If we pay attention to literal meaning, even a metaphor long since morphed into cliché may still have lessons for us.
译文
“大熔炉”在相当长的一段时间里一直作为对某个美国式理想的一种描述。近来，这个理念却受到了质疑。一位研究文化敏感的学者如是概括一种新的态度：“当今的趋势是多元文化，而不是同化。旧的‘大熔炉’的隐喻正在让位给新的隐喻比如‘色拉碗’、‘马赛克’等，许多不同的原料混合在一起，但保持各自的特性。今天在美国，来自各地的移民不是被‘熔于一炉’，而可以说他们正在把美国社会变成一幅真正多元文化的马赛克图案。”
在同化和多元文化的众多隐喻中，煲汤也许是这些概念的重要来源。有些汤是用搅拌机把原料搅合成一体的。有些汤则是各自配料在煮好后仍保持原样。但是，熔炉不是汤锅。我找到“熔炉”一词有这样一个释义：“用不易熔化的材料制成的一个器皿，用于高温的化学反应。”这里的“不熔化”似乎跟“熔化”一样重要。由此产生了熔炉这个耐高温器皿的比喻。
这也许给了我们一个新思路，去考虑基本框架与这个框架内不断变化的内容（例如来到某一国家的新移民和新文化）之间的差异。而这个比喻也许是我们考虑同化和多元文化的一个新思路。假如我们多关注词的字面意义，那么即使一个早已变为陈词滥调的隐喻还是会给我们不少教益。