There is a particularly poignant way to be a social disaster: through over-friendliness, a pattern of behaviour driven by the very best of motives which ends up feeling as irritating as outright rudeness.
有一種特別的方法可以把一個人變成社交悲劇，那就是過分友好，這種行為源自於最善良的動機，卻最終讓人感覺粗暴無禮令人惱火。
We meet the over-friendly at the office, laughing at the jokes of the senior management; behind the desk at the hotel, wishing Sir or Madam a highly enjoyable stay and across the table on a first date, lavishly endorsing their would-be partner's every opinion about recent books and films.
我們會在工作中遇到過分友好的人，他們應和著上司說話，在酒店也能遇到，他們站在服務後臺後面祝願著每一個客人能住的開心，在飯店也能看到，有些人第一次約會就無條件的奉承潛在對象的看法。
The over-friendly are guilty of three large errors:
過分友好的人犯了三個大的錯誤：
Firstly, they believe they must agree on everything. If the other says the world is going to the dogs, they immediately nod in consent. If a second later, there is a prediction of a utopian technological future, they will agree just as much.
首先他們認為他們必須同意每件事，如果別人說這個世界糟透了，他們會立馬點頭同意。如果一秒鐘後有一個預言預測未來是烏託邦，他們也會欣然表示贊同。
When we say something clever, they are thrilled. When we say something equally daft, they like it no less. Their ritual approval may seem attentive. In truth, it’s a version of not listening at all.
當我們說一些有趣的話，當我們說一些愚蠢的事，他們同樣也喜歡禮節性的贊同，看起來非常貼心，事實上他們完全沒有聽你在說什麼。
Secondly, their praise is ill-targeted. Plenty of nice things are being said, but they are not the ones we happen to value. They claim to love our umbrella, our credit card is from their favourite bank, our chairs are deeply beautiful,
其次，他們的讚美沒有意義，有很多話聽起來在誇你，但卻都不是你在意的方面。他們會說你的傘真漂亮，你的信用卡是從我最喜歡的銀行辦的，你的椅子真好看，
we apparently have a nice way of holding our fork… but none of this counts for us if it isn’t connected up with our own sense of meaning and achievement. Everyone loves being praised, but to be praised inaccurately is its own kind of insult.
你刀叉使得真好，但這一切對我們都不重要，因為它與我們自己的意義和成就感沒有聯繫，每個人都喜歡被稱讚，但被錯誤的稱讚本身就是一種侮辱。
Thirdly, their friendliness is remorselessly upbeat. They point out how well we look, how impressive our job sounds, how perfect our family life seems. They want to make us feel good, but they dangerously raise the cost of revealing any of the lonelier, darker, more melancholic aspects of our characters.
第三，他們對友誼盲目樂觀，他們說你看起來很精神，你的工作聽起來很給力，你的家庭真完美，他們想讓我們感覺良好，但他們很危險地提高了門檻，使你沒法說出你並沒那麼好，其實很孤獨，很喪。
By contrast, the less ardently friendly and therefore properly pleasing person will keep three things closely in mind:
相比之下，不過分友好反而更討人喜歡，謹記以下三點：
Firstly, that disagreement isn't necessarily or always terrible, that it may be exhilarating to be contradicted when we don’t feel that our dignity is at stake and that we are learning something valuable at the hands of a combative interlocutor.
首先意見存在分歧不一定是可怕的，當我們不覺得尊嚴受到威脅時，你甚至可以愉快的進行反駁，我們可以從持不同意見的對手那裡學到有價值的東西。
Secondly, that people only want to be complimented on things they are actively proud of. The value of the currency of praise depends entirely on it not being spent too freely – and so the truly pleasing person knows they must pass over many things in discreet silence, so that when they eventually do bestow a blessing, their words can have a proper resonance.
其次人們只想別人來稱讚那些他們為之驕傲的東西，讚美不講求數量，但講求質量。真正討人喜歡的人知道什麼時候該說話什麼時候不該說話，所以，當他們最終表達讚美時，他們的話可以產生恰當的共鳴。
Thirdly, that we are cheered up not so much by people who say cheery things, as by people who appear to understand us, which usually means, sympathise with our sorrows and show a willingness to travel with us to the anxious, hesitant or confused parts of our psyches.
第三，讓我們高興的不是那些說好聽話的人，而是懂得理解我們的人。這通常意味著能感受我們的悲傷，並表示願意陪我們去解開我們心裡的焦慮、猶豫和困惑的部分。
What enables the pleasing person to please is their capacity to hold on in social encounters, even with rather intimidating and alien-seeming people, to an intimate knowledge of what satisfies them. They instinctively use their own experience as a base for thinking about the needs of others.
討人喜歡的人被喜歡，是因為他們在社交場合中能hold住場面，即使與讓我們感到畏懼的人相處也知道怎麼讓對方滿意。他們會本能地用自己的經驗作為思考他人需求的基礎。
By contrast, the over-friendly person allows themselves to forget their own likes and dislikes, under the pressure of an excessive humility which suggests to them that anyone impressive could not possibly share in the principles that drive their own psychology.
相比之下，過分友好的人，讓自己忘記自己的喜惡，在過度謙卑的壓力下，使他們中任何人都不可能分享他們心裡真實的想法。
At the core of the pleasing person’s charm is a metaphysical insight: that other people cannot, deep down, ever be very 『other』 and therefore that, in core ways, what one knows about oneself will be the master-key to understanding and getting along with strangers – not in every case, but enough of the time to make the difference.Over-friendliness isn't just a feature of one-to-one encounters. It’s an entrenched flaw within modern consumer society more generally.
討人喜歡的人的核心魅力是一種形而上的獨到見解，每個人都不可能真正成為別人。因此，核心是，一個人先了解他自己，將是他理解與陌生人相處的關鍵，雖然不是全然適用，但也足以產生不同。過分友好，不僅是發生在一對一的情況，它實際在現代消費社會非常普遍。
This explains why the airline exuberantly wishes us a perfect day upon landing in a new city, why the waiter hopes we』ll have a truly wonderful time around the first course and why the attendant in a clothes shop pulls such a large smile along with their suggestion that we try on a new pair of trousers.
這解釋了為何航空公司熱忱的祝願我們抵達目的地並愉快地開始一天，或者為何希望我們能在用餐時，享受到真正美好的時光，以及為何帶著誇張的笑容推薦我們試穿新的褲子。
Here too, the cause of an asphyxiating friendliness is a sudden modesty and loss of confidence around using oneself as a guide to the temperament and needs of a stranger.
在這些情況下，他們極度友好的原因是突然的謙遜和失去自信，用自己當嚮導來滿足陌生人的性格和需要。
Companies become over-impressed by the apparent『otherness』of their clients and thereby overlook how many aspects of their own selves are being trampled upon in a service context.
公司對客戶表面上的「差異性」過於重視，從而忽略了自身的各個方面，反而在服務中對客戶內心造成了踐踏。
They sidestep the knowledge that just after landing back home after a trip abroad, we may feel horrified at the thought of our responsibilities in the family; or that moods of introversion and sadness can accompany us even inside a clothes boutiques. They behave as if they were cheerful Martians encountering broken, complex humans for the very first time. The fault of the excessively over-friendly person can, in the end, be traced back to a touching modesty.
他們迴避從國外旅行回家會遇到的問題，我們可能會在想到我們的家庭責任時壓力很大，或在逛服裝精品店時，我們懷著內向和憂傷的情緒，他們卻表現得就像是快樂的火星人第一次遭遇到玩壞了的人類。過分友好的人的問題，最後可以歸結到他們令人同情的謙遜上。
They are guilty of nothing more than a loss of confidence in the validity of their own experiences as a guide to the pleasure of others.
他們只不過是喪失信心而已，他們想在自己的經驗的有效指導下，讓他人感覺愉快。
The failure of the over-friendly types teaches us that in order to succeed at pleasing anyone, we must first accept the risk that we might well displease them through a candid expression of our being. Successful charm relies on an initial secure sense that we could survive social failure.
過分友好的失敗告訴我們想要成功取悅他人，我們必須首先承擔風險，我們很可能會因為我們坦誠的表達而得罪他們。成功的魅力依賴於一種初級的安全感，認為我們可以承受社交失敗。
Rehearsing how it would in the end be OK to make a hash of seducing someone is perhaps the best way to seduce them properly and confidently. We must reconcile ourselves to the risk of not making friends to stand any chance of actually making any.
預想最後沒巴結到那個人是不是也沒問題，也許是最好的方法，也是恰當和自信的吸引別人的方法，我們必須說服自己要冒交不到朋友的風險，才有機會真正交到朋友。