《譯言》精選:在年發一封電報是怎樣一番體驗
I've never received a telegram. This realization, when it occurred to me recently, made me feel inexplicably nostalgic.
我從來沒有收到過一封電報，一想到這兒，我心裏就涌上一股說不清道不明的懷舊愁緒。
There are, after all, plenty of technological rituals in which I've never participated. I haven't taken a daguerreotype, or asked a switchboard operator to connect me to a phone number with letters in it, or fired up a Victrola for some sweet tunes on the ole phonograph.
畢竟我錯過了很多科技界的大事件，比如我沒有感受過銀版照相技術，也沒有通過接線員給別人打過電話，更不曾隨着手搖留聲機裏甜美的歌聲心緒起伏。
I grew up in an era when cassette tapes, fax machines, and long-distance telephone calls gave way to CDs, emails, and cellphones—only to be supplanted by MP3s, chat platforms, and smartphones. I still write letters. I will neither confirm nor deny having gone through a vinyl phase.
我所在的是一個盒式錄音帶讓位給CD，傳真機讓位給電郵，長途電話讓位給大哥大的時代——然而好景不長，他們後來又被MP3，聊天平臺以及智能手機取代了。我依然堅持手寫書信，對於黑膠時代已經結束的說法也也不置可否。
But telegrams! I could have sent one. And I didn't seek them out until it was too late. Western Union closed its telegraphy service a decade ago. (“The last 10 telegrams included birthday wishes, condolences on the death of a loved one, notification of an emergency, and several people trying to be the last to send a telegram,” the Associated Press reported of the closure in 2006.) These days, it's nearly impossible—it may actually be impossible—to send one in the United States, even if you try.
但說到電報！我本來能用上它的。只是直到一切都不來及的時候我纔想到要發一封電報。西部聯盟電報公司十年前關閉了所有電報服務。（“最後傳出去的十封電報包括生日祝福、對過世愛人的悼念、緊急情況的通告，還有幾封電報是爲了成爲最後一個發送者而發出的”，美聯社在2006年報道西部聯盟電報公司關閉服務的新聞裏這樣說道）。如今，在美國發一封電報幾乎是一件不可能—或許我們可以說絕對不可能的事情，即使你很想這樣做。
I tried.
我就這樣試過。
Sending a telegram in 2016 is not what it was in the 1850s, or even 1950s for that matter.
2016年發電報與19世紀50年代發電報可不是一回事，甚至它與20世紀50年代也大相徑庭。
What it was, in the beginning, was astonishing. The telegraph meant that human communication could, for the first time ever, travel faster than humans could carry a message from one place to the next. A wire was faster than a pony or a boat. It was, for all practical purposes, instantaneous. “There is nothing now left for invention to achieve but to discover news before it takes place,” one New-York Herald reporter declared of the telegraph's achievement in 1844.
起初，電報是一件令人十分驚奇的事情。用電報發消息的速度比千里捎書快，電線傳輸比馬不停蹄快。其實它就是一種即時通信。“眼下已經沒有什麼可發明的了，除非在新聞事件發生前我們就能預料到它”,1884年《紐約先驅報》這樣評論電報業的成就。
As in the grand history of technological curmudgeonry, not everyone was dazzled. The New York Times, in 1858, called the telegraph “trivial and paltry,” also “superficial, sudden, unsifted, too fast for the truth.” The writer and cultural critic Matthew Arnold referred to the transatlantic telegraph in 1903 as, “that great rope, with a Philistine at each end of it talking in-utilities!”
縱觀科技史，各種科技發明燦如繁星，並不是所有人都買電報的帳。1858年，紐約時報稱電報爲“微不足道的”，“膚淺的，突如其來的，未經篩選的，發展過快的”。1903年，身爲作家以及文化評論家的馬修•阿諾德在談到聯通大西洋兩岸的電報工程時這樣說：“一條大繩子，一頭站着個平庸之輩，說些沒用的話”！
By then, the telegraph was both well-established and taken for granted. The earliest electric telegraph systems involved numbered needles on a board that, when a transmission came in, pointed to corresponding letters of the alphabet. One such device, along Britain's Great Western Railway, became the first commercial telegraph in the world in 1838.
那時候，發電報已經成了家常便飯。最早的電報系統配備有鍵盤鑿孔機，當有新的電報發來時，收方根據電碼表就能確定信息的內容。1838年，這樣的一個裝備，隨着英國西部大鐵路漂洋過海，成了世界上最早的商用電報。
The telegraph that set the standard in the United States was an electric device that Samuel Morse was developing around the same time; a system that transmitted electric signals that were then interpreted and handwritten by a human receiver. By the 1850s, a system that automatically printed telegrams was introduced, but humans were still required to help send the message in the first place. In the 1930s, that part of the process became automated, too.
同年，以薩繆爾•莫爾斯發明的電報裝置爲起點，電報在美國開始了標準化；電報通信業建立起了一套電信號傳送、收錄員破譯、手寫記錄的系統。雖然19世紀中期開始引進了自動印刷的電報機，但仍然離不開人工發送這一步，最終在20世紀30年代，這一環節也實現了自動化。
Today, you go online if you want to send one, which, sure, is where you go for basically anything you want to do in 2016.
今天，想發電報你就得上網，當然了，這可是2016年，不論想幹什麼你都離不開網絡。
First I tried iTelegram. It cost $18.95 and was supposed to take three to five business days to deliver a message to my editor, Ross, in The Atlantic's newsroom in Washington, D.C. The company says on its website that it operates some of the old networks, like Western Union's, that used to be major players in the telegram game. It plays up the novelty aspect, suggesting a telegram as a good keepsake on someone's wedding day, for instance. It also leans on the nostalgia factor. “The smart way to send an important message since 1844.” Worldwide delivery guaranteed!
首先，我嘗試了iTelegram。這封花了我18.95美元的電報，需要三到五個工作日傳到我的編輯羅絲的手中，而羅絲在位於華盛頓大西洋月刊的新聞編輯部中工作。iTelegram宣稱在他們公司的服務器上運營着一些過去的網絡，比如西部電信聯盟這樣的業界老大。他們把電報包裝成了新鮮玩意兒，比如可以在婚禮上把電報作爲一種獨特的紀念，也可以用來表達一種懷舊情懷。“1844年後，用電報發送重要消息成了一種巧妙的方法”。盡情享受你的全球交付保證吧！
Three weeks passed, and my telegram still had not arrived. My Slack messages (the modern equivalent of a telegram, I suppose) to Ross had gone from: “Keep your eyes peeled for a telegram!” to “Did you ever get my telegram?” to “still no sign of the telegram!?” to “telegrams, not that impressive, actually.”
然而三週過去了，我的電報遲遲沒有送到。我的整合集成消息（在我看來是電報的一種現代等效物）從“睜大你的眼睛看呀，這可是電報！”到“你收到我的電報了嗎？”到“我的電報還沒到！？”最好變成了“好吧，這東西也沒什麼大不了的”。
“Telegram Stop relies on the services of Standard International Postal Networks for delivery,” the email I received read. “For unforeseen reasons the delivery via the USPS has been delayed.”
“Telegram Stop依賴於國際標準郵政網絡進行投遞。”我收到的電子郵件說。“美國郵政管理局的投遞工作由於一些未知的原因而延遲了。”
Which is funny, really, because it turns out—and I should have appreciated this sooner, I know—I wasn't sending a telegram at all. I was, apparently, sending a letter that looked like a telegram, first over the Internet and then by the postal service. Which, because I had already received a digital preview of the telegram when I ordered it, I could have just emailed—or texted, or Facebook messaged, or, you know, published to the Internet in an article for The Atlantic.
這還真是好笑，因爲其實我根本就沒有發出一封真正的電報——我知道，應該早點兒意識到這一點的。明顯我只是先通過互聯網然後通過郵局寄了一封看起來像電報的信而已。因爲我在發送電報的時候就已經拿到了一個電子版的預覽，我完全可以直接給電報的收件人發email或者短信，或者facebook私信，要麼乾脆給大西洋月刊投個稿，把想說的話寫成文章直接發佈在網上。
Sorry you never received this telegram, Ross. (Adrienne LaFrance)
羅絲，很抱歉你一直都沒收到電報。（艾德麗安•法朗仕）
My message, naturally, features some old telegram humor. (The salutation is actually a telephone joke.) “What hath god wrought,” is what Morse transmitted over an experimental line from Washington to Baltimore in 1844, and what's widely celebrated as the first telegraphic message in the U.S. These words were, according to numerous 19th-century accounts, suggested to Morse by Annie Ellsworth, the young daughter of the federal Patents commissioner. Annie got the idea from her mother. (The line originally comes from the Old Testament's Book of Numbers.)
我在信息的內容上耍了一些古老的電報小把戲。（其實是貨真價實的電話玩笑）。1844年，一條莫爾斯電報通過華盛頓的實驗線路傳到了數英里外的巴爾的摩：“上帝創造了什麼”，後來人們廣泛認爲這是美國曆通信史上的第一條電報。根據19世紀相關資料，這句話是聯邦專利局長官的小女兒安妮•埃爾斯沃斯向莫爾斯提出的建議，而這個想法又是安妮從她媽媽那裏得來的（原句出自《舊約聖經•民數記》）。
Here is, according to a Morse-code translation website, what the original message would have looked like in Morse code:
根據摩爾斯電碼譯碼網站，這條信息還原成莫爾斯電碼以後長這樣：
.-- .... .- - / .... .- - .... / --. --- -.. / .-- .-. --- ..- --. .... -
.-- .... .- - / .... .- - .... / --. --- -.. / .-- .-. --- ..- --. .... -
And here's the original paper transmission—with the the message transcribed by hand, though difficult to read—kept by the Library of Congress:
下面是原始的傳送稿——上面的信息都是來自手寫，很難辨認——現保留在美國國會圖書館。
Here's a close-up:
給個特寫：
One curious footnote: There are scattered accounts that argue there were earlier telegraphic messages sent by Morse. A 1923 New York Times article quotes a man who says, citing an anonymous source, that the real first message was sent near Washington Square Park, over a wire from one New York University classroom to another, and that it said, “Attention: The universe. by republics and kingdoms right wheel.”
插個好玩兒的題外話：一些零散的記錄顯示着有一封比這還早的莫爾斯電報。1923年紐約時報的一篇文章引用了一句來源未知的話，說真正的第一條電報消息是從華盛頓廣場公園附近發出來的，這條消息通過電線從紐約大學的一間教室傳給另一間，它說：“全世界注意——來自共和國國王的右翼”。
Most of this, I must admit, seems foreign to me. (And not just because I have no idea what that alleged missive refers to, other than the fact that it appears in an 1823 edition of the Niles Register, a popular 19th-century news magazine, as part of an equally perplexing manuscript.) I'm realizing that the more I think about telegrams, the more I learn of them, the stranger they are to me.
我不得不承認，那些東西對我來說太陌生。這不僅因爲我搞不懂那些所謂的第一條電報到底說了些什麼，還因爲我不理解他們爲什麼會以同樣令人費解的面貌出現在1823年的Niles Register（一本風靡19世紀的新聞雜誌）雜誌上。但我知道我越是想了解更多，越是探究更多，電報這種東西對我來說就越陌生。
I don't know what a telegram sounded like when it arrived, or what the paper felt like in someone's hands. My mind reels to imagine what it was like for journalists who filed their stories by telegraph. I can't read Morse code without the help of an online translator. These are details you can read about, but never truly know without having experienced them—the way I can still hear the shriek of a dial-up modem in my mind when I stop to think about it, or the singsong of Nokia's classic ringtone.
我不知道電報到了是什麼聲音，也想不出來把它拿在手裏是個什麼感覺。我滿腦子想的都是記者們用它存檔稿子時的樣子。沒有在線翻譯我和這些電碼完全不來電。這些東西你能從這裏讀到，但沒有經歷過的人不會真的懂——即使不去想它，撥號調製調節器滴滴的聲音也會在我的腦子裏單曲循環，這還沒完，有時諾基亞的那隻經典的手機鈴聲也會插播進來（譯者注：諾基亞的這個鈴聲就是莫爾斯電碼中MSM，即短信服務的代號）。
All of which is another way of saying: It doesn't really matter whether I sent zero or one telegrams in my life. The tools that characterize a person's time and place in technological history are the ones that a person actually uses, the technologies relied upon so heavily that they can feel like an extension of oneself. This is part of how technology can define a culture, and why sometimes you forget the thing you're using is technology at all. Until, eventually, inevitably, the technology is all but forgotten.
這話還可以換個說法：其實我從小到大有沒有發過電報並不重要，因爲那些代表了某個時代特徵，在浩瀚的科技史上佔有一席之地的發明創造，一定是人們切切實實用過的。人們離不開它們，把它們看成自己身體延伸出去的一部分。科技是如何定義文化的，一部分就體現在這裏，而你身處其中，有時竟會忘記你一天到晚用着的東西就是科技本身。科技終將被我們遺忘，可在那之前，它無處不在。
