寄生上流後 美國人克服了字幕障礙？

Last month, when Bong Joon Ho, the South Korean director of the film “Parasite,” accepted the Golden Globe for best foreign language film, he teased American moviegoers that a whole world of wonderful cinema awaited them beyond Hollywood.

上個月，南韓《寄生上流》一片導演奉俊昊領取金球獎最佳外語片獎時，挑逗美國電影迷，好萊塢之外，有一整個世界的精彩電影在等著他們。

“Once you overcome the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films,” Bong said during his acceptance speech.

他得獎感言說：「一旦你克服一英寸高的字幕障礙，就會被引往許多很棒的電影。」

In the United States, foreign language films with subtitles rarely gain the traction that “Parasite” has. It won over both audiences and critics and raked in more than $35 million on its way to winning four Academy Awards , capping a glittering awards season with a best picture Oscar. It was the first film not in English to take home the top prize in the Academy’s 92-year history.

在美國，帶有字幕的外語電影很少像《寄生上流》那樣受到歡迎。它叫好又叫座，並在攻下4項奧斯卡金像獎的途中，賺進超過3500萬美元的收入，以奧斯卡最佳影片獎為它光輝的獲獎季畫下句點，是該學院92年歷史裡第一部拿下這最高獎項的非英語電影。

It was a seismic night for fans of foreign films in the United States, where moviegoers have historically preferred their popular films in English. And it left some wondering: Are those 1-inch-tall subtitles still a barrier?

對美國的外片迷來說，這是個震撼的夜晚。當地影迷向來較喜歡通俗的英語電影。這讓一些人納悶：「那一英寸高的字幕仍是一道障礙嗎？」

Even before “Parasite,” a thriller about the class divide in South Korea, took off, there were signs that things had begun to shift for subtitled entertainment in the United States. The film joined a small group of subtitled films that have broken through to mainstream success in Hollywood over the last two decades, like “Roma” (2018), “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006), “Amelie” (2001) and “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon” (2000), a Chinese drama that earned $128 million, making it the highest grossing foreign language film in the United States.

甚至在這部關於南韓階級分化的驚悚片《寄生上流》走紅前，即有跡象顯示對有字幕的娛樂節目來說，情況開始轉變了。這部電影加入了過去20年間取得突破，並在好萊塢打入主流獲得成功的少數字幕電影的行列，這些電影包括《羅馬》（2018年）、《羊男的迷宮》（2006年）、《艾蜜莉的異想世界》（2001年），以及華語電影《臥虎藏龍》（2000年），該片以1.28億美元拿下美國票房收入最高外語片榮銜。

Over the same period, as streaming services have replaced network and cable television, subtitles have also gained a stronger toehold on smaller screens, from cellphones to TV sets.

同一時期，隨著串流服務取代電視網和有線電視，字幕在手機、電視等小屏幕上腳步也站得更稳了。

Researchers credit the shift in part to two factors. The first is a 2016 rule from the Federal Communications Commission that made it mandatory for a TV show that has been captioned for broadcast to also be captioned when it is posted online or on a streaming service such at Netflix or Hulu. The second factor, they say, is Netflix itself. It is the most popular streaming platform in the United States, with more than 60 million paid subscribers, and much of its original content is in languages other than English.

研究員將這種轉變部分歸功於兩個因素。第一個是2016年聯邦通訊傳播委員會的一項規定，即為了播出而附上字幕的電視節目，在網路或串流平台如Netflix或Hulu上發佈時，亦須附上字幕。他們並說第二項原因是Netflix本身。它是美國最受歡迎的串流媒體平台，擁有超過6000萬付費用戶，許多原創內容語言均非英語。

More than 50% of the audiences for the Netflix shows “Dark,” which is in German, and “3%”, which is in Portuguese, are international.

Netflix德語節目《闇》以及葡萄牙語節目《3%》，外國觀眾超過一半。

A Netflix spokeswoman pointed to “Narcos,” a series about drug dealers in Mexico and Colombia. It has scenes in both Spanish and English, and uses subtitles for the Spanish dialogue, but that hasn’t kept the show from being popular, she said.

Netflix的女發言人談到《毒梟》這部關於墨西哥和哥倫比亞毒販的連續劇時指出，片中有西班牙語和英語兩種場景，西班牙語對話部分配有字幕，但並不會影響它受歡迎的程度。

美大選手機投票 引發安全爭議

For more than a decade, it has been an elusive dream for election officials: a smartphone app that would let swaths of voters cast their ballots from their living rooms. It has also been a nightmare for cyberexperts, who argue that no technology is secure enough to trust with the very basis of American democracy.

十多年來，對選務官員而言，一款能讓大批選民從自家客廳投票的智慧手機應用程式，一直是個難以實現的美夢。而對網路專家來說，這卻也是場噩夢，他們認為沒有任何科技稳妥到足以把美國民主的基礎託付給它。

The debate, long a sideshow at academic conferences and state election offices, is now taking on new urgency. A startup called Voatz says it has developed an app that would allow users to vote securely from anywhere in the world — the electoral version of a moonshot. Thousands are set to use the app in this year’s elections, a small but growing experiment that could pave the way for a wider acceptance of mobile voting.

這一長期為學術會議和州選務辦公室次要過場戲的爭論，如今又有了新的急迫性。一家名為Voatz的新創公司表示已開發一款應用程式，可讓用戶從世界任何地方安全地投票，這是選舉版的登月計畫。成千上萬的人將在今年選舉中使用這款應用程式，是一項小規模卻不斷擴大的實驗，能為手機投票更獲接受做好準備。

But where optimists see a more engaged electorate, critics are warning that the move is dangerously irresponsible. In a new report shared with The New York Times before its publication Thursday, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say the app is so riddled with security issues that no one should be using it.

In response to the report, the Department of Homeland Security organized a series of briefings in recent weeks for state and local officials who are planning to use Voatz’s technology.

樂觀者認為這會提高投票率，批評者卻警告說，此舉危險且不負責。在發表前先跟《紐約時報》分享的一份新報告中，麻省理工學院研究人員稱這個應用程式安全問題一籮筐，任何人都不該使用。針對這份報告，國土安全部近幾周舉辦了一系列會議，向打算使用Voatz技術的州與地方官員做了簡報。

“The choice here is not about turnout,” the report says, “but about an adversary controlling the election result and a loss of voter privacy.”

前述報告中說：「決定我們選擇的不該是投票率，而是不容敵人控制選舉結果、選民喪失隱私。」

With security already a dominant theme of the 2020 elections, the debacle at the Democratic caucuses in Iowa — an app used to report results failed to, well, report results — has raised new questions about the role technology should play in American elections and prompted calls for it to be scaled back.

安全原本已是2020年大選的一大主題，而愛阿華州民主黨黨團會議日前發生意外，一項用來回報選舉結果的應用程式無法進行回報，更使人們對科技在美國大選中所扮演角色產生新的質疑，並引發予以限縮的呼聲。

While a return to the analog days of punch cards and hanging chads is unlikely, there is growing unease about how far state and local governments should go in modernizing election infrastructure — from registration databases and electronic poll books to the voting machines themselves.

雖然已不太可能再回到打孔卡與吊著孔屑的電腦模擬時代，但在從登記資料庫到電子投票簿、再到投票機本身的選舉基礎設施現代化上，人們對於州和地方政府應走多遠憂慮日深。

An initial experiment with wide-scale online voting took place in Washington a decade ago. It was called off after researchers hacked into the system, electing HAL 9000 — the computer from “2001: A Space Odyssey” — as mayor and making the University of Michigan fight song play every time a ballot was cast.

十年前，華盛頓進行了一次大規模網路投票的初步實驗，它在研究人員駭入系統，讓系統選出HAL 9000型電腦（源自電影《2001：太空漫遊》）當市長，並且每有一票投下就播一次密西根大學的戰歌後叫停。

Since then, some states have allowed online voting through web portals, emails or digital faxes, despite the security risks. But they have restricted it to groups of people who cannot make it to the polls, mostly overseas military personnel.

自那時起，儘管存在安全風險，仍有些州允許透過入口網站、電子郵件或數位傳真進行網路投票，但僅限於無法去投票所投票的群體，主要是海外軍事人員。

※說文解字看新聞【張佑生】

本文討論手機投票的優缺點，正反論點並陳是此類文章的基本要求，所以有多組單字對比，像是dream/nightmare，security/privacy，analog/digital，以及optimist/critic。最後一項通常會用advocate或supporter來對應opponent，作者為求變化而換字。

作者用elusive形容難圓的美夢，這個字在本文意指很困難甚至不可能達到的：An agreement to end the fighting remains elusive.（停戰遙遙無期）。Moonshot原意是登月計畫，引申為充滿冒險企圖、目標遠大的計畫。這個字近幾年常和搜尋引擎巨擘「谷歌」連在一起，企業成立The Moonshot Factory，特點是很燒錢，每個計畫動輒從十億美金起跳，執行一些異想天開，恐怕難以達成的構想。

Riddled with與其說是充滿，不如說是「充斥」，因為專接負面字彙：The organization was riddled with spies.（完全被滲透的單位）或The report was riddled with errors.（通篇謬誤的報告）。