演讲MP3+双语文稿:如何向被历史忽略的人们致敬

听力课堂TED音频栏目主要包括TED演讲的音频MP3及中英双语文稿，供各位英语爱好者学习使用。本文主要内容为演讲MP3+双语文稿:如何向被历史忽略的人们致敬，希望你会喜欢！

【演讲人及介绍】Amy Padnani

艾米·帕德纳尼自2011年以来一直担任的编辑。在讣告台上，她推出了《无视》，这是一个屡获殊荣的系列，讲述了从未收到讣告的杰出人物的故事。

【演讲主题】如何向被历史忽略的人们致敬

【演讲文稿-中英文】

翻译者 Ivana Korom 校对 Krystian Aparta

00:12

My name is Amy Padnani, and I'm an editor on the obituaries desk at the "New York Times." Or, as some friends call me, the angel of death.

我是艾米·帕纳尼， 我是负责讣文的编辑， 有些朋友会称我为死亡天使。

00:21

（Laughter）

（笑声）

00:23

In fact, people will ask me, "Isn't it depressing, working on obituaries and thinking about death all the time?" But you know what I tell them? Obits aren't about death, they're about life, they're interesting, they're relatable. Often about something you never knew.

事实上，大家会问我： “做讣文的工作，时时刻刻想着死亡， 不会很让人沮丧吗？“ 猜猜我怎么回答他们？ 讣文的重点不是死，而是生， 讣文是有趣的，能让人产生共鸣， 通常会写一些你不知道的事。

00:39

Recently, for example, we had the obit for the inventor of the sock puppet.

比如，最近， 我们为袜子玩偶的发明者写了讣文。

00:44

（Laughter）

（笑声）

00:46

Everyone knows what a sock puppet is, but have you ever thought about who created it, or what their life was like? Obits are a signature form of journalism. An art form, if you will. It's an opportunity for a writer to weave the tale of a person's life into a beautiful narrative.

大家都知道袜子玩偶， 但你们曾经想过是谁发明的， 他们的生活是什么样子的吗？ 讣文是新闻的一种招牌形式。 也可说是种艺术形式。 它是个让作者将一个人的人生故事 编织成美丽描述的机会。

01:03

Since 1851, the "New York Times" has published thousands of obituaries. For heads of state, famous celebrities, even the person who came up with the name on the Slinky. There's just one problem. Only a small percentage of them chronicle the lives of women and people of color. That's the impetus behind a project I created called "Overlooked," which tells the stories of marginalized groups of people who never got an obit. It's a chance for the newspaper to revisit its 168-year existence and fill in the gaps for people who were, for whatever reason, left out. It's a chance to right the wrongs of the past, and to refocus society's lens on who is considered important.

从1851年起， 已经刊出了 数以千记的讣文。 对象包括州首长、知名的名人， 甚至那位将螺旋弹簧玩具 取名为Slinky的人。 只有一个问题。 只有一小部分的讣文 在记录女性和有色人种的人生。 出于这个动机，我创立了一个项目， 叫做“被忽略者”， 目的是帮被边缘化的族群说故事， 他们从来没有讣文。 这是个机会，能让报社 重温它168年的历史， 去填补那些不论 因为什么理由而被排除的人的鸿沟。 这是个可以修正过去错误的机会， 让社会把焦点重新调整 到思考谁是重要的。

01:52

I came up with the idea when I first joined Obituaries in 2017. The Black Lives Matter movement was at a rolling boil, and the conversation on gender inequality had just started bubbling up again. And at the same time, I wondered, as a journalist and as a woman of color, what could I do to help advance this conversation. People were coming out of the shadows to tell stories of injustices that they had faced, and I could feel their pain. So I noticed we would get these emails, sometimes, from readers, saying, "Hey, why don't you have more women and people of color in your obituaries?" And I thought, "Yeah, why don't we?"

我是在2017年刚加入讣文团队时 想出的这个点子。 当时“黑人的命也重要”的活动 正如火如荼开展， 关于性别不平等的对话 又开始冒出来。 同时，我很纳闷，身为记者 以及有色人种女性， 我要怎样做才能协助 促进这场对话？ 人们开始走出阴影， 说出他们遭遇到不公的故事， 我能感受到他们的痛苦。 我注意到，有时我们会 收到一些读者来信， 说：“嘿，为什么你们 不多刊载一些女性 和有色人种的讣告？“ 我心想：”是呀，为什么不？“

02:29

Since I was new to the team, I asked my colleagues, and they said, "Well, the people who are dying today are from a generation when women and people of color weren't invited to the table to make a difference. Perhaps in a generation or two, we'll start to see more women and people of color in our obituaries." That answer just wasn't satisfying at all.

因为我才刚进入团队， 我跑去问同事这件事， 而他们说：”现今过世的人， 在他们那个年代，女性和有色人种 没有被邀请去一起创造不同。 也许再过一、两个世代， 我们就会有更多女性 和有色人种的讣文。” 这答案一点也不让人满意。

02:49

（Laughter）

（笑声）

02:50

I wanted to know: Where are all the dead women?

我想要知道：逝去的 女性都到哪去了？

02:52

（Laughter）

（笑声）

02:55

So I started thinking about how we hear about people who have died, right? Number one way is through reader submissions. And so I thought, "Well, what if we were to look at international newspapers or scour social media?" It was around this time when ... Everything was swirling in my mind, and I came across a website about Mary Outerbridge. She was credited with introducing tennis to America in 1874. And I thought, wow, one of the biggest sports in America was introduced by a woman? Does anyone even know that? And did she get a New York Times obituary? Spoiler alert -- she did not.

于是，我开始思考如何得知人的死讯？ 第一的方式是由读者提交。 所以，我心想： “如果我们去看国际性的报纸 或搜寻社交媒体呢？” 大约在此时…… 我脑中好多想法在转， 我刚好看了一个关于 玛丽奥特布里奇的网站。 1874 年网球被引入美国是她的功劳。 我心想，哇，这个美国 最盛行的运动之一 竟是由女性引入的？ 有人知道这件事吗？ 有刊她的讣文吗？剧透警告——答案是没有。

03:33

（Laughter）

（笑声）

03:34

So then I wondered who else we missed. And it sent me on this deep dive through the archives. There were some surprises. The pioneering journalist Ida B. Wells, who started the campaign against lynching. The brilliant poet Sylvia Plath. Ada Lovelace, a mathematician now recognized as the first computer programmer.

接著，我开始纳闷 我们还漏了谁？ 为此，我埋首到档案资料库中。 我找到一些惊喜。 发起过对抗私刑的活动 的先驱记者艾达·威尔斯。 出色的诗人希薇亚·普拉斯。 数学家爱达·勒芙蕾丝， 如今被认可为第一位 电脑程序设计师。

03:57

So I went back to my team and I said, "What if we were to tell their stories now?" It took a while to get buy-in. There was this concern that, you know, the newspaper might look bad because it didn't get it right the first time. It was also a little weird to sort of look back at the past, rather than cover news stories of our day. But I said, "Guys, I really think this is worthwhile." And once my team saw the value in it, they were all in. And so, with the help of a dozen writers and editors, we launched on March 8, 2018, with the stories of 15 remarkable women.

于是对我的团队说： “如果我们现在来说 她们的故事呢？” 花了一点时间大家才买帐。 显然，大家都会担心 报社可能会难堪， 因为它在第一次时没有做对。 而且这样做有点怪，回看过去 而不是报导现今的新故事。 但我说：“各位， 我真的认为这很值得。” 一旦我的团队看到了它的价值， 他们全都加入了。 所以，在十多名 作家和编辑的协助下， 我们在 2018 年 3 月 8 日发表并推出了十五位杰出女性的故事。

04:34

And while I knew that the work my team was doing was powerful, I didn't expect the response to be equally powerful. I had hundreds of emails. They were from people who said, "Thank you for finally giving these women a voice." They were from readers who said, "I cried on my way to work, reading these stories, because I felt seen for the first time." And they were from colleagues of mine, who said, "I never thought a woman of color would be allowed to achieve something like this at the 'New York Times.'" I also got about 4,000 reader submissions suggesting who else we might have overlooked. And some of those are my favorite stories in the project.

虽然我知道我的团队 所做的事很强大， 但我并没料到反响也会同等强大。 我收到了数百封电子邮件。 来信的人写说道： “谢谢你们终于给了这些女性声音。” 来信的读者写说： “我在上班的路上边读这些故事边哭， 因为这是我第一次感到被看见了。” 我的同事来信写道： “我从没想过，有色人种女性 会被允许在 达成这样的成就。” 我还收到来自读者总共约四千个 我们可能忽略掉的人的建议。 其中有些是这个项目中 我很喜欢的故事。

05:15

My all-time favorite is Grandma Gatewood.

我最爱的是盖特伍德祖母。

05:18

（Laughter）

（笑声）

05:19

She survived 30 years of domestic violence at the hands of her husband. One day, he beat her so badly, beyond recognition, he even broke a broomstick over her head, and she threw flour in his face in response. But when the police arrived, they arrested her, not him. The mayor saw her in jail and took her into his own home until she could get back on her feet. Then, one day, she read this article in "National Geographic" about how no woman had ever hiked the Appalachian Trail in its entirety alone. And she said, "You know what? I'm going to do it." Reporters caught wind of the old grandma who is hiking through the woods. And at the finish, they asked her, "How did you survive so rough a place?" But they had no idea what she had survived before that.

她在被丈夫家暴 长达三十年后活了下来， 有一次，他把她打到不成人形， 甚至用帚柄打她的头， 直到帚柄断掉， 她的回应是朝他的脸丢面粉。 但警察抵达时，他们逮捕 的是她，而不是他。 市长到监狱去看她，把她带到自己家中， 直到她可以振作起来。 接著，有一天，她读到 《国家地理杂志》的一篇文章， 提到没有任何女性 曾独自走完阿帕拉契小径。 她说：“你知道吗？让我来吧！” 记者听到风声，得知有个 老奶奶在健行穿越树林。 在终点，他们问她： “你是怎么撑过这么困苦的地方的？” 他们并不知道她之前撑过怎样的情况。

06:06

So, "Overlooked" has become wildly successful. It's becoming a TV show now, on Netflix.

于是，“被忽略者”获得了广泛的成功。 它即将被改编成电视剧在网飞上播出。

06:12

（Laughter）

（笑声）

06:13

（Applause）

（掌声）

06:19

I cannot wait to see this thing come to life. Something like 25 different publishers have reached out to me with interest in turning "Overlooked" into a book. All of this clearly shows how timely and necessary this project is. It's also a reminder of how newspapers document what's happening in our world every single day, and we have to make sure not to leave out key people. That's why, even though it's been so meaningful to look back in the past, I'm plagued with the lingering question: "What about the future of obituaries -- how do I diversify those?" That was my original problem, right?

我等不及看到它推出了。 大概有25家出版商来找过我， 他们有兴趣以书的形式 出版“被忽略者”。 这一切都显示，这个计划推出 得多是时候，且多么必要。 它也有提醒作用， 报纸记录了我们的世界中 每天所发生的事， 我们得要确保重要人物不被遗漏。 这就是为什么虽然回顾过去 是很有意义的， 但我仍然不断想一个问题： “讣文的未来是什么—— 我要如何做到多样化？” 那是我最初的问题，对吧？

06:55

So to start answering this question, I wanted to gather some information. I went down to the sub-sub-basement level of the New York Times Building, to the archives. We call it the morgue.

所以，为了回答这个问题， 我想要收集一些信息。 我跑到纽约时报大楼的 深层地下室， 去档案库。 我们叫它停尸间。

07:06

（Laughter）

（笑声）

07:08

And I asked for some guidance from our archivist there. He pointed me to a book called "New York Times Obituaries Index." So we handed it to the New York Genealogical Society, and they digitized it for us. And then a programmer wrote up a program that scanned all those headlines for "Mr.," Mrs.," "Lady," "Sir," all the sort of gender-defining terms. And what we found was that from 1851 to 2017, only about 15 to 20 percent of our obits were on women. So next, I worked with a programmer to build this tool, called the diversity analysis tool. It's a very dry name, but bear with me, it's super helpful. It breaks down the percentage of our obits month to month, women to men. OK, if that doesn't sound like much to you, this is how I used to calculate it before.

我向那裡的档案管理员询求指引。 他介绍给我一本叫做 《纽约时报讣文索引》的书。 我们把书交给纽约家谱协会， 他们协助制作了电子书。 接著，一位程序设计师写了 一个程序来扫所有的标题， 找出和性别相关的词，例如 “先生”、“太太”、“女士”。 我们发现，从 1851 年到 2017 年， 只有 15%~20% 的讣文 是女性的讣文。 接著，我和一名程序设计师合作， 建造了一个多样性分析工具。 这名字很枯燥，但忍耐一下， 它非常有帮助。 它能将讣文细分成每个月， 从女性到男性，来计算百分比。 如果你觉得这听起来没什么， 我以前都是这么做的。

07:55

（Laughter）

（笑声）

07:57

So I asked this programmer to program in a goal, and that goal was 30 percent. From the year of "Overlooked's" launch, March of 2018, to March of 2019, I was hoping we could get to 30 percent of our obits on women. It was a number we hadn't achieved in a 168 years, and I'm happy to say we did it -- we got to 31 percent.

所以我请程序设计师 把目标值写进程序， 目标值是 30%。 从“被忽略者”推出的那一年， 2018 年 3 月， 到 2019 年 3 月， 我希望能达成 女性讣文占30%的目标。 这是 168 年来我们 都没有达到的数字， 我很高兴告诉各位， 我们做到了——达到 31%。

08:17

（Applause）

（掌声）

08:21

It's awesome, but it's not enough. Next we're hoping to get to 35 percent, and then 40 percent, until we achieve parity. And then I'm hoping to partner with this programmer again, to build a similar tool to measure people of color in our obits. That was something I wanted to do with "Overlooked" too, to include men of color, and I finally got to do it with a special section for Black History Month, where we told the stories of about a dozen black men and women. Again, it was a really powerful experience. Many of these people had been slaves or were a generation removed from slavery. A lot of them had to make up stories about their past just to get ahead in life. And there were these patterns of their struggles that came up again and again.

那很棒，但还不够。 接著，我们希望能达到 35%， 接著 40%，直到和男性平等。 接著，我希望能再和 这位程序设计师合作， 写一个类似的工具来测量 有多少是有色人种的讣文。 我也想在“被忽略者”计划裡纳入 有色人种男性， 而这也终于成真了， 我们有个特殊区块 “黑人历史月”。 在这裡我们会诉说数十位 黑人男性和女性的故事。 同样的，这也是很强大的体验。 这些人当中有许多曾经是奴隶， 或是到那个世代才脱离奴隶制度。 当中许多人需要捏造自己的过去 才能够在人生中前行。 他们的挣扎有着相同的模式， 一而再再而三地出现。

09:02

Elizabeth Jennings, for instance, had to fight for her right to ride on segregated street cars in New York City -- a hundred years before Rosa Parks did the exact same thing with buses. It was just a reminder of how far we've come, and how much more we still have left to do.

比如，伊莉莎白·詹宁斯 努力争取权力， 想要在纽约市乘坐 种族隔离的电车—— 一百年后，罗莎·帕克斯做了 同样的事，只是换成了公车。 这是在提醒我们 现在有了多少进步， 以及我们还有多少该去做的。

09:19

"Overlooked" is including other marginalized people as well. Recently, we had the obit for the computer programmer Alan Turing. Believe it or not, this brilliant man never got an obituary, even though his work decoding German messages during World War II helps end the war. Instead, he died a criminal for his sexual orientation, and he was forced to endure chemical castration.

“被忽略者”还要纳入 其他被边缘化的人。 最近，我们为程序设计师 艾伦·图灵写了讣文。 信不信由你，这位才子 从来没有过讣文， 即使他写的程序在二次世界大战中 破解了德国的加密讯息， 协助终结战争。 他反而因为性取向， 以罪犯的身分死去， 还被迫忍受化学阉割。

09:44

Great things, like this obits project, do not come easily. There were a lot of fits and starts as I worked hard to convince people it was worth getting it off the ground. There were moments when I faced great self-doubt. I wondered if I was crazy or if I was all alone, and if I should just give up. When I've seen the reaction to this project, I know I'm not at all alone. There's so many people who feel the way I do.

伟大的事，像这个讣文 计划，都很不容易。 当我努力试图说服大家 这个项目很值得推行时， 也遇到很多波折。 有些时候，我也会强烈怀疑自己。 我很纳闷我是否疯了 或是否孤立无援， 该不该放弃？ 当我看到公众对这个项目的反应， 我知道我并不孤单。 有很多人跟我有一样的感受。

10:08

And so yeah, not many people think about obituaries. But when you do, you realize they're a testament to a human life. They're the last chance to talk about somebody's contribution on the world. They were also an example of who society deemed important. A hundred years from now, somebody could be looking into the past to see what our time was like. I'm lucky, as a journalist, to have been able to have used this form of storytelling to help shift a narrative. I was also able to get an established institution to question its own status quo. Little by little, I'm hoping I can keep doing this work, and continue refocusing society's lens so that nobody else gets overlooked.

所以，是的，很少有人 会去思考讣文。 但如果你去试著思考讣文， 会发现它们是人生的证明。 它们是谈论一个人在世界上 做了什麽贡献的最后机会。 它们也是说明社会重视 什么人的一个例子。 一百年后， 会有人回顾过去， 看看我们的时代是怎样的。 我很幸运，身为记者， 我能够使用这种说故事的形式 来协助转变说故事的方式。 我也让一间有信誉的机构 能够去质疑它自己的现况。 我希望我能一点一点 继续进行这项工作， 继续改变社会的焦点， 不要让任何人被忽略。

10:53

Thank you.

谢谢。

10:55

（Applause）

（掌声）