天哪!美國12歲女孩因發刀槍表情惹官司!

The smiley face, heart, praying hands and other "emoji" have become the way millions of Internet users playfully punctuate their texts, posts and messages, but for one middle schooler the icons brought the police to her door.

笑臉、愛心、祈禱以及一些其他emoji表情已成爲成千上萬的網友們發短信、郵件以及聊天信息中開玩笑的必備了。但是一箇中學生卻因爲發表情，被警察找上了門。

A 12-year-old girl from Virginia, US, has been charged with threatening her school after police said she posted a message on Instagram in December laden with gun, bomb and knife emojis. It read in part: Killing, meet me in the library Tuesday."

美國弗吉尼亞州一名12歲女孩被指控威脅學校，警方稱她去年12月在Instagram上發佈了一條包含槍、炸彈和刀的表情符號的信息。這條信息的部分內容爲：殺呀，週二圖書館見。

As emoji and their relative the emoticon have rocketed from web slang to the unofficial language of the Internet age, the case is one of a growing number where authorities contend the cartoonish symbols have been used to stalk, harass, threaten or defame people. And that has left the police and courts wrestling with how to treat a newly popular idiom many still dimly grasp.

Emoji以及其他相關的一些表情符號正迅速被網絡廣泛傳播，慢慢轉變成了互聯網時代的非官方語言。據政府部門的數據顯示，目前已經有越來越多的表情符號被用於跟蹤、騷擾、威脅或詆譭他人，該案正是其中之一。這種含義尚未完全明確的新流行習語也給警察和法院帶來了很大的困擾和挑戰。

Is a winkie face emoji ironic, flirtatious or menacing? What exactly do the popular dancing girl or grinning pile of poo emoji actually mean — if anything — when appended to a message? Emoji have no set definition and their use can vary from user-to-user and context-to-context.

那麼眨眼的表情，是表示輕浮呢還是威脅呢？一個流行的跳舞女孩表情，或者是一個露齒大笑的表情如果被加到信息中，那又到底是什麼意思呢？Emoji沒有給出明確定義，表情的使用也因用戶的不同、情境的不同而含義也大不同。

"You understand words in a particular way," said, assistant director of the Cyber Law clinic at Harvard Law School. "It's challenging with symbols and images to unravel that."

"你可以根據語境去了解文字所代表的含義，"哈佛法學院的網絡法律研究所副主任Dalia Topelson Ritvo說，"解讀符號和圖片所代表的意義，這將很具挑戰性。"

The girl admitted to authorities she posted the message on Instagram and did it under the name of another student. She was charged with threatening the school and computer harassment. The girl was scheduled to make her first appearance in juvenile court on the charges at the end of the month, but it is unclear whether the case has been resolved since the hearings are not open to the public.

女孩已向有關部門承認，該信息由她本人利用另一名學生的賬號在Instagram發佈。她被指控威脅學校和電腦騷擾。女孩月底會首次出現在青少年法庭，因爲聽證會不公開，目前尚不清楚該案是否已得到解決。

Authorities have not released a motive in the case, but the girl's mother said the girl posted the messages in response to being bullied at school.

官方並沒有公佈此次事件的作案動機，但是女孩的母親表示：她曾經說過，在學校經常被欺負。

"She's a good kid. She's never been in trouble before," the woman said. "I don't think it's a case where there should have been charges."

"她是個好孩子。之前從來沒有做過什麼壞事，"女孩母親說，"我認爲學校不應該控告她。"