As this summer's PRISM revelations shattered tightly held delusions of privacy in much of the English-speaking world, sales for George Orwell's 1949 dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four skyrocketed 7000 per cent.
当棱镜计划泄密事件【1】在今夏粉碎了讲英语国家民众对他们极为珍视的隐私的幻觉之际，乔治•奥威尔1949年反乌托邦杰作《1984》的销量直线上升了七千个百分点。
Riding Orwell's revived coattails, politicos and pundits across the spectrum moved quickly to fuse PRISM buzzwords with 1984's edifying lexicon. The Five Eyes became Big Brother, the NSA was twisted into the Thought Police, a whistleblower turned into an unperson and Edward Snowden was dubbed Winston Smith incarnate.
借着奥威尔回潮的势头，各派政客和学者都迅速行动起来，把棱镜计划的关键词和《1984》里富有启发性的用语结合起来。“五只眼睛”【2】被说成“老大哥” 【3】，美国国家安全局被拧成“思想警察”【4】，揭发者变成了无人【5】，而爱德华•斯诺顿被认为是温斯顿?史密斯【6】的真人版。
Then came a saturation of editorials. From USA Today and The New Yorker to Al Jazeera and The Guardian -- dozens of articles sloppily hijacking clever-sounding Orwellian dialect in an attempt to make the fashionable argument that our freedoms are being callously stomped out in order to pave the way for some vaguely-defined autocracy.
然后是各个编辑部言论的大合唱。从《今日美国》、《纽约客》、半岛电视台到英国卫报，十多篇文章拖泥带水地模仿聪明的奥威尔式对话，企图紧跟时尚地得出结论说：我们的自由被无情地践踏，好为某种定义模糊的专制铺平道路。
And yes, some of our freedoms really are being eroded -- our government is at war with critical thought, the "NSA-North" is in full swing, and terrorism is being used as a mechanism for power consolidation. But it's highly presumptuous to lump it all together as "Orwellian." Especially considering Orwell himself would have been hesitant to equate any modern political structure -- even 20th century fascism, with something as penetratingly tyrannical as Big Brother.
我同意，我们的某些自由被侵蚀了：我们的政府和批判性思维有仇;“北方国安局”【7】正在全盛时期;恐怖主义成为权力整合的机制。不过，把这些拼凑在一起，称之为“奥威尔主义”却有点自以为是了。特别是考虑到奥威尔自己很可能会踌躇要不要把任何现代政治结构，即便是20世纪的法西斯主义，等同于他笔下“老大哥”那样无孔不入的专制制度。
"There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. Always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- forever."
“在那里不存在好奇心，不存在对生命过程的享受。一切竞争的乐趣都必须被摧毁。权力之毒总是存在且不断增长、伪装得日益巧妙。在任何时刻，总是有胜利的喜悦，那种把无助的敌人踩在脚下的感觉。如果你要想象未来，只要想象一只靴子永远地踩在一张人脸上的情形就对了。”
The above is Orwellian. A future devoid of all emotion -- indulgence, desolation, love, tragedy -- where even the deepest thoughts of our greatest minds are enslaved, where people are so unaware of their agency, individualism, and mortality that they exist as lifeless servants to a perpetually omnipresent and ruthlessly repressive governing body.
以上是奥威尔主义。一个没有任何情绪，没有放纵、凄凉、爱、悲剧，即便是最伟大的心灵中最深刻的思考都被控制住了，人们对于自己的力量、独特性和必死性一无所知;他们存在的唯一目的是作为无生命的奴仆来服侍一个无孔不入、无所不在、冷酷无情的专制统治机构。
To be Orwellian is to be inhuman. And to throw such a solemn ideology around when referring to the practices of our current government is a disservice to the absolute and unimaginable repression that Nineteen Eighty-Four illustrates. Degenerate, devious, deceitful -- democracy is all these and more. But the fact this essay can be written without fear of serious retribution hints at the fact that we've a ways to go before the boot-to-face forever.
奥威尔主义意味着人成为非人。谈到我国政府的做法时，随口说出奥威尔主义这么严肃的意识形态，对于《1984》书中描绘的没有限制的、不可想象的压迫状态而言，是一种诋毁。堕落的、鬼鬼祟祟的、欺骗的行为，在民主制度里都能见到，且只多不少。然而，我写这篇文章而不用担心严肃的惩戒这个事实说明了：我们离那靴子永久性地踩在脸上的世界还有一段距离。
What's more, in Politics and the English Language, Orwell crusades relentlessly against truisms and murky political buzzwords such as, well, "Orwellian, " and is at pains to point out the ways in which writers and orators tend to exploit terms that sound elusively intellectual -- using their veneer of credibility to prop up otherwise unintelligible ideas.
还有，在《政治与英语》一文中，奥威尔坚持不懈地反对老生常谈和像“奥威尔主义”这样模糊的政治流行语;他煞费苦心地指出了几种情况下作者和演讲者利用听上去高深莫测的说法，用那些说法表面的可信度来支持他们自己不如此就表达不清的看法。
"Words of this kind [i.e. clichés] are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different."
“这类词语[即陈词滥调]往往被使用者有意地、不诚实地加以使用。也就是说，使用这类词语的人心里有独特的定义，但是却让他的听众以为他说的是一个和他想的大不相同的意思。”
For Orwell, vapid political language is the root of sensationalism. And as gaudy engagement with Nineteen Eighty-Four's vocabulary is a hackneyed debasing of our current political realities, it's time for society to move beyond that "Orwellian" crutch as an embodiment of everything from socialized medicine to fast food restaurants.
在奥威尔看来，索然无味的政治语汇是煽情主义的根源。而华而不实的使用《1984》中的词汇是对我们今天的政治现实的一种老套的诋毁。是时候我们的社会抛弃“奥威尔主义”的拐杖了。是时候我们不再把“奥威尔主义”用来统称从公费医疗到快餐店的一切事物了。
After all, in the same period of time that Nineteen Eighty-Four's sales jumped up by 7000 per cent, For What It's Worth -- a book of "business wisdom" by "Celebrity Pawnbroker" Les Gold of reality television's Hardcore Pawn fame, shot up a meteoric 66, 659 per cent.
归根到底，在《1984》销量跃升7000个百分点的同期，电视真人秀节目《铁杆典当行》的“典当名人”莱斯?古德关于自己“商业智慧”的书――《不论真伪》的销量急如流星地跃升了66659个百分点。
On the margins of those staunchly worded editorials decrying our governments for implementing those "Orwellian democracy-crushing measures, " there were advertisements for all-inclusive Las Vegas getaways, "must-have" designer tote bags, celebrity gossip updates, the latest mobile applications and harlequin romance novels.
在那些措辞严肃、指责我们的政府实行了“奥威尔式压制民主的手段”的社论边上，是赌城拉斯维加斯全包假期、“必备”设计师手提包、最新名人八卦、最新移动应用软件和丑角爱情小说的广告。
To increase readership publications shack hard-hitting current-affairs reporting up with cabalistic royal pregnancies, explicit Hollywood beauty countdowns, reviews of the latest mindless superhero blockbusters and trivial exposés of overly entitled superstar athletes.
为了吸引读者，出版物把重大时事的报道与王室怀孕秘事、直露的好莱坞美女排名、没大脑的最新超级英雄大片的评论，以及毫无价值的关于自以为是的运动员巨星的报道摆在了一起。
As Neil Postman emphasizes in in his seminal text on media ecology, Amusing Ourselves To Death, it seems that in our frantic efforts to circumvent that abysmal Orwellian dystopia, our society has appropriated an even more chilling and increasingly realised future, that of Aldous Huxley's 1932 opus Brave New World.
正如尼尔•波茨曼在他关于媒体生态学影响深远的《娱乐至死》【8】中强调指出的，在我们规避奥威尔式反乌托邦深渊的疯狂尝试中，我们的社会已经走向一个更加毛骨悚然和日益显山露水的未来，奥尔德斯?赫胥黎( Aldous Huxley)1932年的巨著《美丽新世界》【9】里的那种。
"Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think."
“奥威尔警告说，我们会被外部的、强加的压迫征服。但是在赫胥黎的想象中，要剥夺人们的自决权、成熟和历史根本无需老大哥。在他看来，人们会逐渐爱上压迫、崇拜那毁掉了他们思考能力的技术。”
In short, cries of Big Brother are but another amusement inherent within a Brave New World.
一句话，关于老大哥的哭喊不过是美丽新世界的另一个固有的娱乐项目。
Overzealous pundits lashing out against the rise of something as inconceivable as a Nineteen Eighty-Four-esque authoritarianism are, perhaps consciously, usurping Orwell to divert from the fact it isn't just deceitful democracies that are undermining centuries of struggle for freedom and agency -- it is our mindless culture of empty consumerism and celebrity hero worship.
过度热心的学者们痛批极不可能的《1984》式专制主义崛起的行为，或许是在有意篡改奥威尔，好不让大众认清以下事实：从根本上损害人类数百年来争取自由与力量的斗争的，不只是欺骗性的民主制度，还有我们没大脑的文化中空虚的消费主义和名流崇拜。
While we have dubious government practices like personal data mining and tar sand extracting, we also have access to more knowledge than any other time in human history, almost daily we realize advances in physics, medicine, psychology -- yet we are so engrossed in our petty worlds of frivolous false consciousness that we opt to watch reality television as opposed to engage with reality itself.
虽然我们政府存在可疑的做法，如个人数据挖掘和焦油沙提取法等，但是我们也能够接触到比人类历史上的任何一个时期都要多得多的知识;几乎每天我们都在物理、医药、心理学领域取得进步。然而，我们如此全神贯注于自己琐屑的虚假意识小世界，以至于我们不选择深入现实，而选择了观看电视真人秀节目。
If Orwell were around, he might argue the reason we've coopted his words in order to make sense of what is happening in the world today is because we are unwilling to face the reality that the mindless media monster after which we so deeply lust is tremendously complicit in the decay of our cultural capacity for freedom and critical thought.
如果奥威尔还活着，他也许会说：我们之所以把他的话用来理解今天的世界，是因为我们不愿意面对现实：我们如此深深渴求的那个没大脑的媒体怪物是在人类自由和批判性思维的文化能力衰落中起巨大作用的同谋。
So instead we defraud Orwell's ideas, because it's easier to latch blame for reductions in our freedoms onto something we all agree is bad -- Orwellian surveillance via sinister governments, than it is to confront the terrifying realisation that something we love -- Huxleyan overstimulation via mindless consumerism, is the much larger problem.
因此，我们反而去扭曲奥威尔的概念。因为把自由的式微归罪于大家一致同意的不好的事物(通过恶意的政府进行的奥威尔式监视计划)上面，比承认下面这点要容易得多：我们热爱的那些事物(通过没大脑的消费主义进行的赫胥黎式过度刺激)造成的恐怖现实是更严重的问题。
For as Nineteen Eighty-Four is at pains to point out, when given the choice between a challenging freedom and a vegetated "happiness, " the bulk of us always will opt for the happiness.
正如《1984》煞费苦心地指出的那样，当面对富有挑战的自由与植物般的“幸福”的选择时，我们中的绝大部分人会选择那种幸福。
