雅思口语学习| Part3: Social media and shaming 社交媒体和网络暴力

　　a place of radical de-shaming 全新的供洗耻的地方

　　In the early days of Twitter, it was like a place of radical de-shaming.

　　Twitter刚出不久时，像是个全新的的供洗耻的地方。

　　admit shameful secrets about themselves 直讳一些羞于启齿的秘密

　　be exactly the same 一模一样

　　People would admit shameful secrets about themselves, and other people would say, "Oh my God, I'm exactly the same."人们会直讳一些羞于启齿的秘密，其他人就会搭腔说，“天啊，我跟你一模一样。”

　　have a voice 有话语权

　　be powerful and eloquent 声势浩大、振振有词

　　Voiceless people realized that they had a voice, and it was powerful and eloquent. 欲言无处诉的人意识到自己有话语权了，而且还能声势浩大、振振有词。

　　run some racist or homophobic column 有种族歧视和反对同性恋的专栏

　　If a newspaper ran some racist or homophobic column, we realized wecould do something about it. 遇到哪份报张发表了种族歧视或反同性恋的言论时，我们就知道可以采取行动了。

　　withdraw their advertising 撤回广告

　　Advertisers would withdraw their advertising.广告商就会撤回广告。

　　misuse their privilege 滥用特权

　　When powerful people misused their privilege, we were going to get them.遇到有权有势之士滥用特权的时候，我们就可以把他们给揪出来。

　　democratization of justice 司法的民主化

　　This was like the democratization of justice.简直就像司法的民主化。

　　

　　hierarchies /'haɪərɑːkɪz/ 阶层差异

　　be leveled out 被推平了

　　Hierarchies were being leveled out. We were going to do things better.

　　阶层差异被推平了。很多事情我们都可以做得更好了。

　　be caught plagiarizing /ˈpleɪdʒəraɪzɪŋ/and faking quotes被发现 抄袭和捏造引据

　　be drenched in shame and regret 深陷羞辱和悔恨

　　Soon after that, a disgraced pop science writer called Jonah Lehrer . He'd been caught plagiarizing and faking quotes, and he was drenched in shame and regret, he told me. 那之后不久，一位名叫乔纳·雷尔的知名科学作家，做了件丢人的事，抄袭和捏造引据，并因之深陷羞辱和悔恨，他对我说。

　　publicly apologize 公开道歉

　　And he had the opportunity to publicly apologize at a foundation lunch. 他得到一个机会可以在一次基金午餐会上公开道歉。

　　win him some salvation /sælˈveɪʃn/ 为他挽回一点颜面

　　Maybe it would win him some salvation.可能会为他挽回一点颜面。

　　be live-streaming sth. 将要流媒体直播某事

　　erect a giant screen 竖起巨大的荧屏

　　He knew before he arrived that the foundation was going to be live-streaming his event, but what he didn't know until he turned up, was that they'd erected a giant screen Twitter feed right next to his head. 出席之前他知道，该基金会将要流媒体直播他的讲话，但他没有料到的是，到了会场之后才发现现场竖起了一个巨大的推特荧屏，就挨他的头旁边。

　　become hanging judges 变成爱判死刑的法官

　　You know, when we watch courtroom dramas, we tend to identify with the kindhearted defense attorney, but give us the power, and we become， like， hanging judges. 对吧，一般我们看法律剧的时候，总倾向于那个心地善良的辩方大律师，而一旦拥有了权力，我们就变成爱判死刑的法官了。

　　be on the floor 倒下了

　　be kicking 上去补两脚

　　be congratulating ourselves for punching up 还以为自己英雄了得，沾沾自喜

　　Power shifts fast. We were getting Jonah because he was perceived to have misused his privilege, but Jonah was on the floor then, and we were still kicking, and congratulating ourselves for punching up. 势头如风，瞬息万变。之前，我们把乔纳给揪出来，因为他滥用自己的特权，但当乔纳已经倒下了，我们还上去补两脚，还以为自己英雄了得，沾沾自喜。

　　feel weird and empty感到寂寞空虚冷

　　And it began to feel weird and empty when there wasn't a powerful person who had misused their privilege that we could get. 而当找不到一个滥用职权的人可供攻击时，甚至会感到寂寞空虚冷。

　　feel like a day picking fingernails and treading water 觉得人生无望，惶惶不可终日

　　A day without a shaming began to feel like a day picking fingernails and treading water.哪天无人可辱，就觉得人生无望，惶惶不可终日了。

　　Tweet little acerbic jokes to sb. 发些尖酸刻薄的笑话

　　chuckle to oneself 对自己笑了笑

　　press send 按发送键

　　get no replies 没得到任何回应

　　Let me tell you a story. It's about a woman called Justine Sacco. She was a PR woman from New York with 170 Twitter followers, and she'd Tweet little acerbic jokes to them, like this one on a plane from New York to London: So Justine chuckled to herself, and pressed send, and got no replies, and felt that sad feeling that we all feel when the Internet doesn't congratulate us for being funny.这里给各位说个故事。一位名叫贾丝婷·萨科的女士的故事。她住纽约，从事公关工作，有170 位推特粉丝，不时会发些尖酸刻薄的笑话，比如这个，是她从纽约去伦敦途中在飞机上发的：之后贾丝婷对自己笑了笑，按了发送键，没得到任何回应，顿感一阵悲哀，我们也一样，在网上说了个笑话，没人搭理，我们也悲哀。

　　doesn't talk back 无人回应

　　Black silence when the Internet doesn't talk back. 网上无人回应，简直是人间悲剧。

　　

　　have a little time to spare有点空闲时间要打发

　　think up another funny little acerbic joke 虚构了一尖酸小段子

　　And then she got to Heathrow, and she had a little time to spare before her final leg, so she thought up another funny little acerbic joke. 抵达希思罗机场后，她还有点空闲时间要打发，离下班飞机起飞还有段时间，她又编了一尖酸小段子。

　　turn on the phone while the plane is taxiing on the runway飞机还在跑道上滑行时打开手机

　　And she chuckled to herself, pressed send, got on the plane, got no replies, turned off her phone, fell asleep, woke up 11 hours later, turned on her phone while the plane was taxiing on the runway, and straightaway there was a message from somebody that she hadn't spoken to since high school, that said, "I am so sorry to see what's happening to you."

　　她又自己笑了笑，按了发送键，上了飞机，也没得到回应，关上手机，睡觉去了，11个小时后醒来，打开手机，飞机还在跑道上滑行，旋即，她收到一条短信，来自一个她中学毕业后就没见过的人的，短信说：“对于你经历的这一切，我真替你难过。”

　　the worldwide number one trending topic on Twitter 推特全球第一的热门话题

　　And then another message from a best friend, "You need to call me right now. You are the worldwide number one trending topic on Twitter."

　　还有一个短信来自她最要好的朋友：“马上给我打电话。你成了推特全球第一的热门话题。”

　　retweet it to sb. 转发给某人

　　What had happened is that one of her 170 followers had sent the Tweet to a Gawker journalist, and he retweeted it to his 15,000 followers. 发生了啥事呢，就是她的那170个粉丝当中有一人将这条推文转发给了Gawker网的一个记者，后者又转发给自己的15000名粉丝.

　　be like a bolt of lightning一发不可收拾;像一道闪电

　　And then it was like a bolt of lightning.接下来就一发不可收拾了。

　　take control of one's life 掌控某人的生活

　　dismantle it piece by piece 让其分崩离析

　　While she slept, Twitter took control of her life and dismantled it piece by piece. 在她睡着的时候，推特掌控了她的生活，并让其分崩离析。

　　

　　overwhelm one's Twitter feed 某人的推特被某事刷屏

　　Did Justine's joke overwhelm your Twitter feed the way it did mine?

　　你们的推特也像我的那样被贾丝婷的段子刷屏了吗?

　　sit up in my bed在床上坐起来

　　put the pillow behind my head 抓起枕头搁脑袋后面

　　be entirely sure 完全确定

　　And I sat up in my bed, and I put the pillow behind my head, and then I thought, I'm not entirely sure that joke was intended to be racist. 然后我在床上坐起来，抓起枕头搁脑袋后面，然后琢磨，我真不确定这段子真的有种族主义倾向。

　　gleefully flaunt one's privilege洋洋得意地显摆自己的特权

　　mock the gleeful flaunting of privilege嘲讽这种特权显摆

　　Maybe instead of gleefully flaunting her privilege, she was mocking the gleeful flaunting of privilege. 也许她并不是在洋洋得意地显摆自己，只是在嘲讽这种显摆而已。

　　be crushed 完全崩溃

　　In fact, when I met Justine a couple of weeks later in a bar, she was justcrushed。事实呢，两周后我和贾丝婷在一酒吧碰了头，她人已完全崩溃。

　　one's life got torn apart生活被瓦解了

　　And so to her shame, she wrote, she shut up and watched as Justine's life got torn apart. 就这样，她写到，碍于羞愧，她就闭了嘴，静观贾丝婷的生活被瓦解了。

　　get darker愈发糟糕

　　It started to get darker: Then came the calls for her to be fired.事情愈发糟糕：接着就有人开始说该把她炒了。

　　

　　get sb. fired 炒某人鱿鱼

　　Thousands of people around the world decided it was their duty to get her fired.全球成千上万的人将把贾丝婷炒鱿鱼视为己任。

　　be making good money 在赚大钱

　　sell their products on the back of one's annihilation /əˌnaɪəˈleɪʃn/ 趁某人的毁灭兜售产品

　　Corporations got involved, hoping to sell their products on the back of Justine's annihilation: A lot of companies were making good money that night. 商家也跑来凑热闹，希望能趁机兜售产品，都是顺着贾丝婷之途来的：不少公司在那天晚上赚了一大笔。

　　destroy sb.毁灭某人

　　We were all so excited about destroying Justine, and our shaming brains are so simple-minded, that we couldn't also handle destroying somebody who was inappropriately destroying Justine. 我们人人都为了要毁灭贾丝婷而忙得不可开交。我们的众辱心态是如此的一心一意，竟无法同时毁灭那些正在无理毁灭贾丝婷的人。

　　

　　judicial /dʒuˈdɪʃl/ 公正的

　　Can you think of anything less judicial than this? 还有比这个更不公正的事情吗?

　　inability 无力

　　Justine was asleep on a plane and unable to explain herself, and her inability was a huge part of the hilarity. 贾丝婷当时在飞机上睡着，没机会为自己解释，而这恰恰是这场闹剧的一大原因。

　　a mutual approval machine互相恭维的工具

　　but I think for other people, it's because Twitter is basically a mutual approval machine. 但更多的人是因为推特本是个互相恭维的工具。

　　approve each other互相恭维

　　surround ourselves with people who feel the same way we do 只允许志同道合的人在周围出现

　　We surround ourselves with people who feel the same way we do, and we approve each other, and that's a really good feeling. 我们只允许志同道合的人在周围出现，我们互相恭维，感觉好极了。

　　screen them out 轰走他们

　　And if somebody gets in the way, we screen them out.遇到意见不一的，我们就轰走他们。

　　

　　be mangled 深受伤害

　　And we want to think they're fine, but they're not fine. The people I met were mangled. 我们都倾向于相信他们没事，但事实并非如此。每一个人都深受伤害。

　　suicidal thoughts 想过自杀

　　They talked to me about depression, and anxiety and insomnia and suicidal thoughts. 他们说自己感到抑郁，焦虑、失眠，甚至想过自杀。

　　land badly悲剧收场

　　One woman I talked to, who also told a joke that landed badly, she stayed home for a year and a half. 其中一位女士，也是因为开了个玩笑，最后悲剧收场，她把自己关在家里足足一年半。

　　be losing oneself逐渐迷失了自己

　　But it was worse than that. She was losing herself. 但更糟的是，她逐渐迷失了自己。

　　wake up in the middle of the night 半夜醒来

　　She was waking up in the middle of the night, forgetting who she was.有时她半夜醒来，竟然不记得自己是谁。

　　have children out of wedlock 未婚先孕

　　She was got because she was perceived to have misused her privilege. And of course, that's a much better thing to get people for than the things we used to get people for, like having children out of wedlock.人们把她揪出来，是因为她肆无忌惮秀优越。这比起其他的原因大概好很多吧。从前我们把人揪出来是因为未婚先孕。

　　tear apart pretty much anybody we choose to打压任何一个我们想打压的人

　　But the phrase "misuse of privilege" is becoming a free pass to tear apart pretty much anybody we choose to. 但“秀优越”一词已经成了一张通用票，用来打压任何一个我们想打压的人。

　　make us lose our capacity for empathy 让我们失去同情的能力

　　distinguish between serious and unserious transgressions区分严重过错和无心之失

　　It's becoming a devalued term, and it's making us lose our capacity for empathy and for distinguishing between serious and unserious transgressions. 这词已变得毫无价值，让我们失去同情的能力，失去区分严重过错和无心之失的能力。

　　

　　be fictionalized 编个故事

　　Justine had 170 Twitter followers, and so to make it work, she had to be fictionalized. 贾丝婷的推特粉丝只有170名，因此，想让大家点赞，她得编个精彩的故事。

　　Word got around that ...有传言说...

　　the daughter of the mining billionaire 矿业大亨的女儿

　　Word got around that she was the daughter of the mining billionaire Desmond Sacco. 有传言说她是矿业大亨德斯蒙德·萨科的女儿。

　　the hunt is on sth. 在抓某事

　　And I think back on the early days of Twitter, when people would admit shameful secrets about themselves, and other people would say, "Oh my God, I'm exactly the same." These days, the hunt is on for people's shameful secrets. 我回想起推特刚上线的时候，那时人们还会随意爆一些自己的丑事，其他人就会说，“天啊，我跟你一样。”现在呢，人人都在抓别人的丑事。

　　lead a good, ethical life 生活无忧无虑

　　bad phraseology in a Tweet 在推文中说错了只言片语

　　overwhelm it all 一切就都完了

　　You can lead a good, ethical life, but some bad phraseology in a Tweet can overwhelm it all, become a clue to your secret inner evil.

　　你本来生活无忧无虑，但若在推文中说错了只言片语，一切就都完了，人们恨不得将你打入十八层地狱。

　　a magnificent hero 威猛英雄

　　a sickening villain 猥琐坏人

　　They're creating a stage for constant artificial high dramas where everybody's either a magnificent hero or a sickening villain, even though we know that's not true about our fellow humans. 这些人正在搭建一个舞台，不停上演一出大戏，戏里的人不是威猛英雄，就是猥琐坏人，即使大家都明白其实人不是这样的。

　　

　　are clever and stupid既聪明又愚蠢

　　be grey areas 处于灰色地带

　　What's true is that we are clever and stupid; what's true is that we're grey areas. 真实的现实是我们既聪明又愚蠢;真实的现实是我们都处于灰色地带。

　　give a voice to voiceless people 为无处发声的人提供一个发言的平台

　　create a surveillance society 搞出了个间谍社会

　　be voiceless噤若寒蝉

　　The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people, but we're now creating a surveillance society, where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless.

　　社交媒体的好处是它能为无处发声的人提供一个发言的平台，而现在呢，我们搞出了个间谍社会，要想生存就得噤若寒蝉。

　　

　　is profoundly traumatizing 让人寒心的

　　You know, I think the very best thing we can do, if you see a kind of unfair or an ambiguous shaming, is to speak up, because I think the worst thing that happened to Justine was that nobodysupported her like, everyone was against her, and that is profoundly traumatizing, to be told by tens of thousands of people that you need to get out.我认为，我们现在能做的，就是一旦发现有人在信口开河地乱喷，就应该大声指出来，因为我认为对贾丝婷来说最不幸的是没有人为她说话，似乎每个人都跟她对着干，这是最让人寒心的，成千上万的人让你滚出去。

　　there's a babble of voices有不同的声音在表达不同的观点

　　a shaming happens 语言攻击发生时

　　But if a shaming happens and there's a babble of voices, like in a democracy, where people are discussing it, I think that's much less damaging. 如果语言攻击发生时，有不同的声音在表达不同的观点，就像民主似的，人人都能发言讨论，这样的话，杀伤力会小很多。

　　stand up for somebody 站出来为某人说话

　　So I think that's the way forward, but it's hard, because if you do stand up for somebody, it's incredibly unpleasant. 我们应该往这个方向努力，当然这很难，因为你一旦站出来为某人说话，下场可能会非常惨。

　　puts the spotlight on shamers 将聚光灯打在了那些喷子身上

　　You stood up because the book actually puts the spotlight on shamers.为什么说你挺身而出，因为你将聚光灯打在了那些喷子身上。

　　didn't only have friendly reactions 没少挨骂

　　And I assume you didn't only have friendly reactions on Twitter. 我觉得你在推特上没少挨骂吧。

　　everybody applauds me人人都鼓掌叫好

　　But yeah, for 30 years I've been writing stories about abuses of power, and when I say the powerful people over there in the military, or in thepharmaceutical industry, everybody applauds me.过去30年来我一直在写关于滥用职权的报道，当我曝光军队里位高权重之人，或者医药行业里只手遮天之人，人人都鼓掌叫好。

　　abuse our power 滥用权力

　　As soon as I say, "We are the powerful people abusing our power now," I get people saying, "Well you must be a racist too."直到我说：“你我也是有权之人，我们也在滥用权力”时，有人就说：“你肯定也是个种族主义者。”

　　a nice, constructive discussion 讨论气氛良好、很有建设性

　　So the other night -- yesterday -- we were at dinner, and there were two discussions going on. On one side you were talking with people around thetable -- and that was a nice, constructive discussion.昨晚我们一起吃饭时，有两个讨论在同时进行。一个发生在你和同桌其他人之间--这个讨论气氛良好、很有建设性。

　　a deluge/ˈdeljuːdʒ/ of insults 到处是污言秽语

　　On the other, every time you turned to your phone, there is this deluge of insults. Yeah. 另一个讨论发生在你的手机里，满眼污言秽语。没错。

　　a white supremacist /waɪt suːˈpreməsɪst/ 白人至上者

　　Somebody said, "You are a white supremacist."有人说：“你是个白人至上者。”

　　

　　start screaming at each other and shooting each other 声嘶力竭地开始对骂，掏出枪来开始对射

　　flee to somewhere safer 逃去一个更安全的地方

　　My friend Adam Curtis says that maybe the Internet is like a John Carpenter movie from the1980s, when eventually everyone will start screaming at each other and shooting each other,and then eventually everybody would flee to somewhere safer, and I'm starting to think of that as a really nice option. 我朋友亚当·柯蒂斯说也许网络就像80年代约翰·卡彭特的电影，最终人人都声嘶力竭地开始对骂，掏出枪来开始对射，直到最后人人都逃去一个更安全的地方，我在想那的确是一个不错的选择。