高级笔译训练：科幻小说中的五大鸡肋发明（二）

3.Holodecks
第三名：全息甲板
As seen in:
Most people would know the holodeck as being an invention out of the Star Trek series, but they probably took the idea from a Ray Bradbury short story called The Veldt where a family has a holodeck that simulates an African veldt, and then are (predictably) eaten by virtual lions.
曾经出现在：
大多数人对全息甲板的了解，可能以为它是来自《星际迷航系列》的一个发明。但是，他们很可能是从Ray Bradbury写的一个叫《大草原》的短篇小说里得到这个想法的。在这部小说里，一家人有一个全息甲板，能模拟非洲的大草原，然后他们（很可能）被虚拟的狮子给吃掉了。

Why we thought we wanted it:
The holodeck is just big room, that can simulate any number of environments and/or experiences for the user, and can trick all five senses into believing that it's real. You don't have to hook anything up to your brain, you can walk in and out of it like any room. A room that happens to be full of ninjas and naked women and everything else you don't have in your real life.
我们想要它的原因：
全息甲板只是一个能模拟任意数量环境的大屋子，也能模拟进去的人的感觉，从而欺骗人的五感，让人以为是处在真实的世界。你不用在你的大脑上连接什么东西，你也可以像进出任何屋子一样进出全息甲板，在里面你可以看到在现实生活中你所没有的东西：满屋的忍者、裸女以及其它的一切。

Why we were wrong:
Of course, we here at Cracked were too busy practicing Jujitsu and working on our dragsters to watch something as geeky as Star Trek, but we do know that the dangers of a holodeck were demonstrated in Episode 234 ("A Fistful of Datas", aired November 9, 1992, Stardate 46271.5). This episode proved that if you get shot by a cowboy in the holodeck world, you really die.
我们是笨笨：
当然，就像我们疯也似的忙着练柔道和改装汽车一样，我们疯狂地看着像《星际迷航》这样令人生厌的东西。但我们知道，全息甲板的危险性出现在第234集里（《大量的数据》，1992年11月9号——星际日期46271.5——播出的）。这集告诉我们：如果你在全息甲板的世界里被一个牛仔射杀了，那你也就真的死了。

Now, assuming the creators of the real holodeck are not completely retarded and they install something that makes it so the simulation cowboys do not shoot real bullets and that the veldt lions don't really eat you (both of these would seem to be first-day considerations in the design phase), there is another problem.
现在，假设创造全息甲板这玩意儿的人的脑子没有进水，而且他们也确实造出来一个类似的东西的话，那么牛仔不会发射真的子弹，大草原上的狮子也不会真的吃了你（这两种情况似乎是在设计之初就应该考虑到的）。肯定还有别的问题。

Imagine how you'll react if you're in your holodeck and somebody interrupts you. Say, you're halfway through your chess game with Darth Vader, when suddenly he disappears, Scarlett Johansson is no longer sitting in your lap, and pizza costs money again. You'd find the guy who turned off the machine and snap his damned neck. Dilbert creator Scott Adams jokingly points out in his book The Dilbert Future that the holodeck, "will be society's last invention." It's no joke; once we had it, there'd be no reason to have anything else.
想像一下，如果你在你的全息甲板里，然后某人打断了你，你会怎么办。比如，你正跟Darth Vader下棋呢，他突然出现了，Scarlett Johansson也不再坐在你的大腿上了，你吃的披萨也不是免费的了。你会看见是那个家伙关掉了机器，然后你会拧断他的脖子。呆伯特之父Scott Adams在他的书《呆伯特的未来》里开玩笑似的指出，全息甲板“将会是这个社会的最后一项发明”。他绝不是在说笑，一旦我们拥有了它，别的东西就再也没有存在的理由了。

It's not just that it would be addictive; it's that it would literally fill every possible human emotional need and utterly eliminate all motivation to ever do anything ever. Everyone's only goal would be to do just enough work to keep food and electricity coming into the holodeck, to keep those interruptions by reality to a minimum.
不只是因为它有诱惑力，它还会满足每一个人的几乎所有欲望，让人永远失去做任何事情的任何动力。所有人的唯一目标，就是不停地工作，保证食物和供给全息甲板的电力，把那些现实中的干扰降到最低。

People would stop reproducing, your virtual Scarlett Johansson could have perfect virtual kids who'll never wind up in jail or steal money from you to buy crack. If you get tired of them, tell the holodeck to blink them out of existence. If you're saying that you're a high-minded person who pursues spiritual goals and would never be sucked in by anything as crude as a simulation, hey, they've got a holodeck for you, too. You can sit down to dinner with Plato and Abe Lincoln and Gandhi and Jesus. If somebody yanked you out of that to go work at the post office all day, you'd barricade yourself in with a shotgun.
人们会停止生小孩，你的虚幻的Scarlett Johansson能生出来完美的虚幻小孩，他们永远不会进监狱或者偷你的钱去买零食。如果你厌烦了他们，就告诉全息甲板，让他们在一眨眼的工夫里消失。如果说你是一个有着高尚情操的人，追求的是精神满足，永远不会沉浸在虚幻制造出来的东西里。别急，全息甲板也能满足你。你可以和柏拉图、林肯、甘地、耶稣坐在一起吃饭。要是某人叫你离开，去邮局上一天班，你自己就会拿把鸟枪拦住你自己。
If aliens showed up to Earth 1,000 years later, they'd find an abandoned planet with ten billion mummified corpses laying on the floor of ten billion dusty holodecks, with huge smiles on their faces.
倘若一千年以后，外星人出现在地球，他们会看到一个被抛弃的星球，上面是几百亿个木乃伊般的僵尸躺在几百亿个灰扑扑的全息甲板上，脸上都是夸张的笑容。