I am a writer. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language - the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth. Language is the tool of my trade. And I use them all - all the Englishes I grew up with.
我是一名作家。我花了大量时间思考语言的力量——唤起情感、视觉形象、复杂想法或简单真理的方式。语言是我这一行业的工具，我用的就是我从小使用的英语。

Born into a Chinese family that had recently arrived in California, I’ve been giving more thought to the kind of English my mother speaks. Like others, I have described it to people as “broken” English. But I feel embarrassed to say that. It has always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than“broken”, as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed, as if it lacked a certain wholeness. I’ve heard other terms used, “limited English,” for example. But they seem just as bad, as if everything is limited, including people’s perceptions of the limited English speaker.
我出生在一个刚刚来到加利福尼亚的中国家庭，我一直在考虑我妈妈会说什么样的英语。像其他人一样，我把它描述为“残缺”英语。但我觉得很不好意思这么说。一直困扰着我的是，除了“残缺”一词，我想不出任何方式来描述，就好像损坏了，需要修复，好像缺乏某种整体性一样。例如，我听说过其他名词，“有限英语”。但似乎不太好，似乎一切是有限的，包括有限英语使用者的认识。

I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother’s “limited” English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were imperfect. And I had plenty of evidence to support me: the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her.
我知道这是事实，因为在我成长的过程中，我母亲的“有限”英语限制了我对她的理解。我为她的英语感到羞愧。我相信她的英语反映了她说话的质量。也就是说，因为她表达得不完美，她的思想是不完美的。我有很多证据支持我：商店、银行和餐馆的人都不把她当回事，没有给她提供良好的服务，假装不理解她，甚至表现得好像没有听到她的声音。

I started writing fiction in 1985. And for reasons I won’t get into today, I began to write stories using all the Englishes I grew up with: the English she used with me, which for lack of a better term might be described as “broken” ; and what I imagine to be her translation of her Chinese, her internal language, and for that I sought to preserve the essence, but neither an English nor a Chinese structure. I wanted to catch what language ability tests can never show: her intention, her feelings, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts.
我从1985年开始写小说。由于一些我今天不想讲述的原因，我开始用我成长过程中的所有英语来写故事：她和我一起使用的英语，没有更好的术语，可以称之为“残缺”；我想象的她将其翻译成中文，她的内在语言，为此我尝试保留精华，既不是英语也不是中文结构。我想捕获语言能力测试所永远无法展示的：她的意图、她的感受、她的讲话节奏和她的思想本质。