2015考研英语阅读数字式家谱

　　Digital family trees

　　数字式家谱

　　TRACING family trees is a popular British pastime.Television programmes show celebrities rummagingthrough old census documents. Websites help amateur sleuths track down distantrelatives. A new project launched on August 26th provides another twist to the obsession.

　　追踪家谱是大不列颠一项流行的消遣方式。电视节目总是播放着名人们为寻亲而不断查找老旧的人口普查资料的信息。网站帮助业余侦探寻找人们的远房亲戚。一个在8月26号新建的项目则带来了一股扭曲的热潮。

　　KindredBritain is a website launched by Nicholas Jenkins, an English professoratStanfordUniversityinCalifornia. The project grew out of Professor Jenkinss research intoboth his own background and that of W.H. Auden, a 20th-century poet. The website nowholds entries on nearly 30,000 Britons. Visitors to the website trace relations betweendifferent people using clear infographics and interactive tools. Admirals, bankers, poets,painters, lawyers and politicians are all in the mix. Unlike traditional family trees, theseinclude bigamists, same-sex couples and illegitimate children.

　　同族的英国人是由尼古拉斯詹金斯创办的，他是位于加州斯坦福大学的教授。创建这个网站的灵感来源于詹金斯教授对自己身世的追溯和对20世纪诗人奥登本经的调查研究。现在这个网站在英国已有近3万访问量。进入网站的访客使用清晰的信息图表和交互工具来追踪人们之间的关系。船队队长、银行家、诗人、画家、律师以及政治家都包括在其中。有别于以往的家谱，这项项目包括重婚者、同性恋以及私生子。

　　The project is an intriguing example of the digital humanities. Scholars are starting tointeract with coders and website designers to make their research more accessible and datapublicly available.

　　这个项目是数字人文的一个有趣的例子。学者们开始和编码员以及网站设计师就同族英国人项目进行交流来使寻亲搜索更加可靠，寻亲信息更加公开化。

　　Certain affinities appear in the data. Poets are often related to each other whereas noveliststend to be linked by marriage. T.S. Eliot, a 20th-century American-born poet, is a distantcousin of the British bards Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley . In contrast links between Jane Austen and Charles Dickens,perhaps the two most famous 19th-century novelists, are through several generations ofmarriages. As characters in novels are more meritocratic, so too are novelists.

　　在数据中，一些亲缘关系出现了。诗人往往是相互关联的，而小说家一般是通过婚姻来挂钩。20世纪出生在美国的诗人艾略特是英国吟游诗人阿尔佛雷德、坦尼森、拜伦、波比雪莱等的远亲表弟，。与之形成对比的是，可称之为19世纪最著名的两位小说家简奥斯汀和狄更斯之间的关系是通过好几代婚姻来建立的。因为小说中的人物更加精英化，所以他们自己也是小说家。

　　Other connections are more unexpected. Gwyneth Paltrow , an American actress,is linked by marriage to A.C. Swinburne, a Victorian poet who dabbled in sadomasochisticverses. David Cameron, the prime minister, is distantly connected to Harold Pinter, adramatist who once said that voting for Margaret Thatcher in 1979 was the most shamefulact of my life. Kevin Bacon, a famously well-connected American actor, is related to the16th-century philosopher Francis Bacon.

　　还有一些关系是没有想到的。美国女演员格温妮丝帕特洛，通过婚姻与涉足于虐恋诗的维多利亚时期的斯温伯恩建立关系。首相卡梅隆与戏剧家哈罗德品特是远方亲戚，哈罗德品特曾表示1979年投票选举玛格丽特撒切尔是他一生中感觉最羞耻的行为。出生名门的凯文贝肯与16世纪的哲学家弗兰西斯培根有亲戚关系。

　　And yet despite its novelty, Kindred Britain touches on an older notion. Even within thesprawl of data, a handful of families are shown to have shaped British culture and history. Thenumber of prime ministers related to each other may not be surprising. But the linksbetween different walks of life are illuminating, for both literary critics andcelebrity-spotters alike.

　　尽管同族的英国人这个项目很新奇，但是它却涉及一个古老的概念。即使身处于这些杂乱无章的数据里面，一些家庭还是看到了自己已经影响了大不列颠的文化和历史。不论对于文学评论家还是名人评论家来说，首相之间的关系或许不足以让人吃惊，但是不同阶级之间的关系确是很有深意的。