Last week saw the release of the eleventh edition of the mammoth Xinhua Dictionary, China's official compendium of the Mandarin language. Available in hardcover and softcover, with an e-version in the works, the 711-page tome is the world's best-selling reference book, with over 400 million copies printed since it launched in 1953.
上星期，中国官方的普通话权威——《新华字典》发布了第十一版。它有精装和平装两种，还附有电子版。这本厚达711页的字典是世界上最畅销的参考书，自从1953年面世以来已经印出了超过四亿册。
This edition includes slang and online terminology for the first time -- remarkable for an official Chinese publication for which informal language has long been prohibited. Indeed, the Xinhua Dictionary has always been a guide to what's new and modern in China, but a few steps behind, aimed more at the masses less aware of the cutting edge. In the early days, it was like the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Oxford English Dictionary rolled into one, teaching a mostly illiterate country about everything from umbrellas to fertilizer to how to write the word "pigeon." A 1971 edition, published at the height of the Cultural Revolution, contained 46 of Mao's proclamations, which many readers already knew by heart. Today, competing publishers release numerous alternative dictionaries, but the Xinhua edition remains a staple of most schools.
这一版收录了俗语，并首次收入网络语言。往常，中国官方出版物都是禁止这些不正式用语的，因而这是一个重大事件。其实，《新华字典》一直是中国的摩登新事物的引导者，但它总是比最新潮流慢几拍，不过大众也很难注意到最潮的流行趋势。早些时候，《新华字典》有点像《大英百科全书（Encyclopedia Britannica）》和《牛津英语字典（Oxford English Dictionary）》的合体，从“雨伞”到“肥料”再到怎么写“鸽子”，它教育一个充满文盲的国家几乎所有的东西。1971年版《新华字典》在“文化大革命”的最高潮时出版，它包括了46条众多读者烂熟于胸的毛主席语录。如今，许多相互竞争的出版社出版了不计其数的字典，但《新华字典》依然是大多数学校的基本参考书。
In many languages, there are disagreements about whether dictionaries should standardize how language should be used, or reflect how language is used. The Xinhua Dictionary contains far more words that actually reflect how language is used than in previous editions, yet it still omits sensitive entries. There is unsurprisingly no entry for the Tiananmen Massacre , but it also leaves out shengnv("Leftover Ladies" a common term which refers to ageing, unmarried women) and the reappropriation of the word "comrade" to mean gay. "We abandoned these words because it's kind of rude to label this group, " Jiang Lansheng, a linguistics expert from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who was responsible for the revisions, told Chinese Central Television.
在很多语言中，字典是应该 定义 如何使用语言还是要 反映 怎样使用语言还存有争议。这一版《新华字典》中包括了比之前的版本中反映怎样使用汉语多得多的词汇，但它还是避开了许多敏感话题。它不出意料地没有收录“**之夜（TAM massacre）”这个词，但它就连“剩女” 和“（男）同志”这样的词也没有收。负责此次修订的中国社会科学院的语言学专家江蓝生告诉中国中央电视台记者说：“我们没有收录这些词，因为给一些群体贴上这样的标签是一件很无礼的事。”
So what does the new edition, compiled over seven years and featuring more than 3, 000 new words and expressions, include? Many of the new entries are deeply vernacular, originating from Internet memes, tabloid scandals, and other informal sources. Some, like boke (blog), and tuangou (onlinegroup shopping, along the lines of Groupon) reflect today's new, digital world. Others, like fenqing(nationalists, literally "angry youth") and xiangjiao ren (banana person, which usually refers to Chinese-Americans -- yellow on the outside, white on the inside -- though unlike in the United States this is not pejorative), are names for new social categories and subcultures that have emerged. The seven words below offer insights into the movements and preoccupations of today's China.
那这个编了七年多，添加三千多个新词汇和用法的新版到底包括了什么东西呢？这些新条目中有许多方言词，来自网络语言、小报上的丑闻以及其它非正式渠道。一些像“博客”、“团购”这样的词反映了如今这个电子时代。其它的，“愤青”、“香蕉人”（通常指外表中国，内心美式的美籍华人），是反映新的社会群体和亚文化的名词。 下面这七个词给我们提供了观察今天中国社会运动和关注的视角。
"House slaves" (fangnu)
“房奴（house slaves）”
People "enslaved" to their high mortgage payments are now referred to as "house slaves, " a coinage that now joins "car slaves" and "credit card slaves" in the dictionary . Buying a home, often seen as a pre-requisite for Chinese males to get married, has grown increasingly difficult over the last decade as housing prices have skyrocketed in Beijing, Shanghai, and other major cities. In 2009, authorities banned a television drama called "Snail House, " which depicted a couple's struggles to buy and own a home in a Shanghai-like city. The show was popular because the high price of property is a flashpoint in China for anger and resentment over the widening gap between rich and poor -- always a recipe for social unrest. In March of last year, the National Development and Reform Commission announced an aggressive new "social housing" plan, which aims to build 36 million apartments by the end of 2015. Indeed, liangxian fang ("two-limit homes") a housing program referring to apartments limited in both size and price for the urban poor, is another new term included in this year's Xinhua Dictionary.
因为高昂的房屋按揭贷款而受到奴役的人称为“房奴”，这个人造词现在和“车奴”、“卡奴”一样进入了字典。买房经常被视为中国男人结婚的必备条件，因为在过去十年中北京、上海和其它大城市的房价飞速上升，买房变得尤为困难。2009年，有关方面禁播一部名为《蜗居》的电视剧，该剧反映了一对男女在上海这样的大城市中挣扎着买房的情景。住房价格过高是中国国民对日益扩大的贫富差距不满和愤怒的导火索，该剧因为反映了这样的现实而大热。去年三月，国家发展和改革委员会宣布了雄心勃勃的“保障房”计划，该计划的目标是到2015年底坚称三千六百万套住房。实际上，“两限房”——为城区贫民建造大小和价格都受限的住宅是今年的新华字典收录的另一个新词。
Yes, the three letters "N"-"B"-"A", as in the National Basketball Association, are now officially a Chinese word. The NBA is by far the most popular sports league in China, domestic or foreign. The inclusion of this term reflects not just China's rabid passion for all things "Kebi" (Kobe Bryant), "Aifosen" (Allen Iverson), and "Lin Shuhao" (Jeremy Lin), but also the inevitable impact of the United States on China -- and vice versa. Just as English has many loanwords derived from Chinese and various dialects -- including brainwash, yen (as in craving), silk, and even ketchup -- Chinese has absorbed many words from English, like sandwich, sofa, bye-bye, bus, and chocolate. English letters are especially prevalent in online slang because English is much easier to type than Chinese. "3Q, " for example, is phonetic slang for "thank you" because the number three pronounced in Chinese (san) combined with Q sounds like "thank you."
这三个字母是美国篮球协会的缩写，它现在已经成了中国的官方文字。NBA可能是中国播放的国内外体育赛事中最受欢迎的一个。这个词的收录不仅反映了中国对有关“科比”、“艾佛森”和“林书豪”的狂热，也反映了美国对中国的不可抵挡的影响力——反之亦然。正如英语从汉语和其它语言中借用了许多词汇——包括“洗脑（brainwash）”、“渴望（yen）”、“丝绸（silk）”，甚至还有“番茄酱（ketchup）”。汉语也从英语中吸收了很多词汇，例如“三明治”，“沙发”，“拜拜”，“巴士”和“巧克力”。因为比汉字易于输入，英文字母常在网络语言中代替汉字。比如用“3Q”来代替“谢谢”，因为它的发音和英语“谢谢（thank you）”相近。
"Awesome" (geili)
给力（awesome）
Literally "give strength, " geili means empower, but it's used as slang akin to "awesome" or "sweet." A version of the term first appeared in a Chinese animation of the classic novel Journey to the Westand took off fast. Just a few months later, in November 2010, it was used in an Intel commercial, and, most significantly, in a headline that month in the otherwise staid Communist Party newspaper People's Daily. The headline used the original and not the slang connotation, but was set in quote marks. While it's impossible to say what the People's Daily editors were thinking, netizens were thrilled. It was a big moment: a lumbering, line-toeing, propaganda-spouting mouthpiece of the Communist Party acknowledged and legitimized a cynical, questioning, envelope-pushing, and sometimes renegade online youth culture. This prompted an even bigger frenzy among Chinese Internet users, but an attempt at an English version (geilivable, also meaning "awesome"), was banned for publishing, along with other "Chinglish buzzwords" in what administrators of the media watchdog the General Administration of Press and Publication described as an attempt to "purify"the Chinese language. A December 2010 article in the state newspaper China Daily said, with a healthy sense of irony, that "Chinese netizens who like to create and use cyber words such as ‘geilivable' might find a new regulation very ‘ungeilivable.'"
“给力”从字面上说应该是输入力量的意思，不过它在俚语中用来表示“帅呆了”的意思。这个词曾在中国动画片《西游记》中出现过，然后就迅速流行起来。几个月后，在2010年11月，因特尔的一条广告中出现了这个词，最重要的一次是那个月在中国共产党严肃的《人民日报》的头条上出现。这个头条用的是它的愿意而不是俚语意思，但它上面加了引号。没人能说《人民日报》编辑当时想的是什么，网民们反正激动起来了。这是个大事件，文风质朴、循规蹈矩的宣传大腕承认了戏谑的、有问题的越线的年青网络文化。这引起中国网民更大的疯狂，不过企图使用它的英文版“geilivable”以及其它中式英语的努力遭到出版禁令，出版总署称这是为了保持汉语言的纯洁性。2010年12月《中国日报》一篇文章称，有幽默感的“爱好创造和使用像‘geilivable（给力的）’这样的词汇的中国网民会发现那条规定非常‘ungeilivable （不给力的）’。”
Over the last seven years, Chinese have become more aware of the devastating effects of air pollution. PM stands for damaging air pollutants called "particulate matter, " and 2.5 refers to their size in microns (a unit of measurement that is a millionth of a meter). Exposure to high levels of PM 2.5 can irritate the respiratory tract, worsen asthma and bronchitis, and eventually lead to increased mortality from lung cancer and heart disease.
在过去七年中，中国人越来越发现空气污染的破坏性后果。PM代表称为“微小颗粒”的空气污染的有害成分，2.5指的是用微米为（百万分之一米）单位的直径。暴露在高PM2．5水平的空气中可能引发呼吸道不适，恶化哮喘和支气管炎，最终导致肺癌和心脏病等致命健康问题。
The word entered the Chinese lexicon with the help of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, which runs apopular Twitter feed that posts hourly readings of Beijing's notoriously high levels of PM 2.5. Previously, the Beijing city government only reported PM of 10 microns or higher. Bowing to foreign and domestic pressure, in January, Beijing switched to reporting PM 2.5 as well, and in June, China's vice minister of environmental protection, Wu Xiaoqing, suggested the U.S. Embassy stop tweeting. The Embassy refused, diplomatically. "The monitor is an unofficial resource for the health of the consulate community, " said Richard Buangan, its spokesman in Beijing.
这个词是在美国驻华大使馆的帮助下进入中国字典的。美国大使馆受人欢迎的微博每小时公布一次北京非常之高的PM2．5数据。之前，北京政府只公布10微米以上的PM数值。在国内外压力之下，1月，北京也转而公布PM2．5数据，六月，中国环保部副部长吴晓青要求美国大使馆停止发微博公布北京PM2．5数据。美国大使馆使用外交辞令拒绝了，它在北京的发言人理查德·布安根称：“美国大使馆的观测提供的是非官方结果，观测是为了使馆人员的健康。”
"Shocking" (leiren)
雷人（shocking）
Another wildly popular slang term that took off online over the last few years, leiren literally means "thunder person" and is used to express amazement, like "whoa" or "shocking" or "that's crazy."
这个在过去几年风靡互联网的词汇的字面意思是“雷打的人”，它通常用来表示诧异。给力已经进入了国家媒体，但这并不意味着官方不警惕网络文化和它所代表的东西。2010年3月，在有关两会的报道中使用“雷人”被禁止。
That may not necessarily be significant -- one could view the directive as analogous to a professor not letting students use informal words like "cool" in an essay. But terms like leiren are used to comment on online memes, often politically loaded ones like the Chinese version of the U.S. "Pepper Spraying Cop": In early July, protests against a planned metals plant in the southwest city of Shifang turned violent. A cop was photographed beating protestors, which spawned a series of mocking, Photoshopped images. Netizens inserted the cop into various well-known images, such as charging at the famous Chinese Olympic hurdler Liu Xiang, chasing down Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, and pointing his baton at the figure in Edvard Munch's The Scream. Similar to Americans who wanted to restrict rap music in the 1990s because they feared its culture would spread violence or antisocial activity, some Party officials view terms like leiren as words of a destabilizing subculture.
禁令可想而知不会有很大的作用，你可以像导师不让学生在论文中使用那样禁用这个词，但也仅此而已。“雷人”这样的词通常是在网上的评论中用到，经常是拿中国的东西和美国的作对比时作这样的评价。“喷胡椒水的警察”：七月上旬，shifang对建金属厂的抗议转变为暴力事件。有人拍到警察击打抗议者，这张照片后来经过Photoshop处理有了很多版本。网民把这名警察PS到许多著名照片中，让他攻击著名的飞入刘翔，追赶《碟中谍》中的汤姆·克鲁斯，把警棍指向爱德华·蒙克名画《惊叫》中的人物。和美国上世纪因为一些人担心这种文化会传播暴力和反社会行动企图限制饶舌音乐，党的一些官员认为“雷人”这样的词反映了不稳定的亚文化。
Otaku or "Internet freak" (zhainan/nv)
宅男／女（Otaku，internet freak）
Zhainan is the Chinese translation of the Japanese term otaku, which in Japan means someone obsessed to the point of being homebound by their fixation. Chinese zhainan (females are calledzhainv) are gamers, Internet addicts, and other people who spend enormous amounts of time glued to the computer. Young Chinese Internet freaks proclaim themselves zhainan and zhainv in the same half-self-deprecating, half-proud way that Americans teens might call themselves "geeks."
宅男是翻译过来的日文词（おたく / オタク ，otaku），它的原意是迷恋一些东西一直待在家里的人。宅男／女沉迷于游戏，网络，或粘在电脑面前进行其他活动。年轻的中国网虫半自豪、半自嘲地称自己宅男／女，可能和美国少年称自己“极客（geek）”的心态差不多。
For Chinese officials and millions of parents, however, they are a real concern. China, which boasts the world's largest population of Internet users, became the first country to officially recognize Internet addiction as a disorder in 2008, and there are addiction treatment centersoperating throughout the country.
不过，他们对中国官员和数以百万计的家长来说是很大的问题。中国号称有世界上最大的网民人数，它在2008年成了世界上第一个认为网络成瘾是一种病的国家，在全国都有网瘾戒断中心。
Internet of Things (wulianwang)
物联网（internet of things）
A direct translation from the English, Internet of Things (IoT) is a new technological idea that uses cloud computing, radio-frequency identification, and other sensor technologies to create a universal network of trackable objects. This allows logistics, warehousing, inventory, and other systems to communicate with each other and operate without human input. For example, your refrigerator would know what's inside, how long it's been there, and order items for you when they run out or near their expiration date.
物联网是一种新概念，它使用云计算，无线电频率识别，以及其它感应技术来创造一个可跟踪的通用网络。这让物流、仓储、库存和其它系统彼此沟通，在没有人类干预的情况下进行工作。比如，你的冰箱可能知道里面有什么，放了多久，并在快到保质期的时候重新订货。
IoT became a buzzword last year when it was named in China's 12th 5-year plan as one of seven "Strategic Emerging Industries" of key importance for economic development; IoT alone willreportedly receive $785 million in government funding. China could have a significant advantage in this emerging field over the United States, where IoT technology is held back by concerns about abuse of information and invasion of privacy -- things that aren't an issue for an authoritarian government.
物联网成了去年的一个流行词汇，它是中国十二五计划中对经济发展至观重要的七个“战略新兴产业”之一。据报道，物联网得到了七点八五亿美元的政府资助。中国可能在这个新领域获得对美国的优势。在美国，由于有人担心信息的滥用以及侵犯隐私，物联网技术面临着重重阻碍。在中国，所有那些问题都不存在。
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