定义2020年的20个短语
The 20 Phrases That Defined 2020
TIM HERRERA
2020年12月22日
Happy Blursday! Now quit doomscrolling, grab a quarantini and please keep social distancing.
Happy Blursday!（不管今天周几都要快乐哦！）别再doomscrolling（末日刷新）了，来一杯quarantini（隔离马天尼），敬请保持社交距离(social distancing)。
Imagine explaining that sentence to yourself in December 2019.
想象一下如何向2019年的12月的自己解释上面这句话。
This year has given us scores of new words, phrases, expressions and metaphors. Some are new to the popular vernacular, like quarantine pod, while others are just newly relevant after long histories as specialized terms, like contact tracing. Some are technical, like super-spreader event and aerosol droplets; some are packed with cultural meaning, like systemic racism and panic shopping; and others still, like maskne and walktails, are just goofy little turns of phrase that let us find a drop of joy in this disastrous year. But all of them serve a purpose in these most uncertain times.
这一年给了我们许多新词、短语、表达方式和隐喻。有些是流行语中的新词，例如quarantine pod（隔离荚）；另一些是由来已久的专门术语，直到最近才被人熟知——如contact tracing（密接追踪）。有一些词是技术性的，例如super-spreader event（超级传播者事件）和aerosl droplets（气溶胶）；有些充满文化意义，例如systemic racism（系统性种族主义）和panic shopping（恐慌采购）；而其他词，例如maskne（口罩痘痘）和walktails（街尾酒），则是在灾难重重的一年里博人一笑的搞怪短语。但所有这些词语在当今最不确定的时期都产生了某种作用。
“What’s fascinating about this year is that so many of these words have gone from being words that we had maybe heard of and we might have used very occasionally, but they’ve now gone to basically inform almost every single conversation that we have,” said Fiona McPherson, a new words editor at the Oxford English Dictionary. In her more than 20 years with the O.E.D., she said, “I can’t think of anything that has been similar.”
“今年非常有意思的是，这些词中有很多已经不再是我们可能听说、偶尔一用的词了，它们几乎已经充斥在我们所有的对话里，”在《牛津英语词典》(Oxford English Dictionary)任职超过20年的新词编辑菲奥娜·麦克弗森(Fiona McPherson)说。她说，“我想不出任何类似的情况。”
The sheer breadth of words that were popularized this year — everything from medical jargon to social media-friendly shorthand — was particularly unusual, Ms. McPherson said. And for the first time since 2004, when Oxford Languages, the publisher of the O.E.D., started choosing a Word of the Year, it declined to pick just one.
麦克弗森说，今年流行词汇的范围之广尤其不寻常——从医学术语到社交媒体适用的简写。牛津语言(Oxford Languages)——《牛津英语词典》的出版者——自2004年开始每年选择年度单词，而今年它拒绝只选一个。
We couldn’t pick one, either. But here are the 20 words and phrases we think capture what it felt like to be alive in this unprecedented year of our quar, 2020.
我们也选不出来。但我们认为以下20个单词捕捉到了在史无前例的2020年里活着的感觉。
Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter：黑人的命也是命
We asked Patrisse Cullors, co-founder and executive director of Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, to share her experience with the movement in 2020.
我们邀请黑人的命也是命全球网络基金会(Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation)联合创始人兼执行董事帕特里塞·卡勒斯(Patrisse Cullors)分享她在2020年开展这项运动的经验。
Every new year brings curiosity and excitement. There is often a collective commitment from people to shed the toxic habits we developed the year before, while pushing to unlock the door of possibilities for the year to come. But not a single human being in the entire world would have predicted what came in 2020. The year where Black communities were ravaged by the twin pandemics: state violence and Covid-19. A year in which Black people and our allies rallied around the globe to reckon with 400 years of racial terror.
每个新年的到来，都会带来好奇与兴奋。人们往往会异口同声地承诺，要改掉我们在前一年养成的恶习，同时努力为来年打开通往各种可能性的大门。但全世界没有一个人会预测到2020年会是这个样子。这一年，黑人群体遭受了双重大流行的摧残：国家暴力和新冠病毒。在这一年里，黑人和我们的盟友在世界各地举行集会，共同应对400年来的种族恐怖。
These three words, Black Lives Matter, resurrected yet again to help remind the world that our fight for racial justice must happen through mass protests, electoral justice and the fight to defund and ultimately abolish the state of policing, and imprisonment as we know it. 2020 was not a year we all could have prepared for but it was a year that pushed us to become stronger, demand more from our elected officials and fight for the lives of Black people like we have never done before.
再次提出“黑人的命也是命”这几个字，是为了提醒世人，争取种族正义的斗争必须通过大规模抗议、选举正义，以及拦截资金并最终废除我们所知道的那种警察和囚禁制度。2020年让我们许多人措手不及，但这一年也让我们变得更加强大，对我们选出来的官员提出了更多要求，并以前所未见之势为黑人的生命而战。
Blursday
Blursday：日子过得稀里糊涂，不知道今天是周几
The passage of time itself became seemingly unreliable this year, as some days felt like a week while some months flew by in an instant. This quickly became a go-to Twitter meme as the combination of a relentless news cycle mixed with the droll, repetitive reality of life in lockdown, giving existence in 2020 a Groundhog Day-esque quality. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York made this a recurring bit in his daily coronavirus briefings, and our friends at The Washington Post even launched a newsletter called “What Day Is It?”
今年，时间的流逝似乎变得不可靠了，有些日子感觉像一个星期那么长，而有些月份又在一瞬间过去。这个词很快就在Twitter上爆红，它将无穷尽的新闻周期和隔离状态下滑稽、重复的生活现实混合在一起，给2020年的存在带来一种土拨鼠日一般的质感。纽约州州长安德鲁·M·库默(Andrew M.Cuomo)在他的每日例行新冠病毒吹风会上反复提到这一点，我们在《华盛顿邮报》的朋友甚至推出了一份时事通讯，名为《What Day Is It?》（今天周几来着？）。
Circuit breaker
Circuit breaker：熔断机制
“Markets Spiral as Globe Shudders Over Virus.” So declared a blaring headline atop page A1 of The New York Times on March 10, the day following a drop in the stock market so steep that a so-called “circuit breaker” — an automatic halt in trading after a major decline — kicked in. It was the first since 1997, and over the next nine days it would happen three more times. Some $5 trillion in stock market wealth disappeared by March 10.
《随着全球陷入病毒恐慌，股市出现螺旋式下跌》——这是3月10日，《纽约时报》头版上的醒目标题。此前一天，股市暴跌，触动所谓的熔断机制，也就是在大幅下跌后自动停止交易。这是1997年以来的首次，在接下来的9天时间里，它又发生了三次。截至3月10日，股市蒸发了约5万亿美元。
For wealthier Americans, the crisis was short-lived: The markets began to bounce back as early as May following the reopening of businesses across the country. That recovery steadily continued through the summer, and, after a few major drops in the fall, the markets hit all-time highs in November.
对于那些不差钱的美国人来说，这场危机是短暂的：随着全国各地的企业重新开放，股市在5月就开始出现反弹。整个夏季，这种复苏都在稳步延续，秋季经历了几次大幅下跌之后，市场在11月创下新高。
But that’s just half the story — or, more precisely, about 10 percent of it, which is the percentage of households that own more than 87 percent of all stock as of earlier this year.
但这只是故事的一半，或者更准确地说，是大约10%，即截至今年早些时候，在全部股票市场持有87%以上份额的美国家庭比例。
For everyone else, the economic picture is much more grim: There are still some 10 million fewer jobs than there were in February; employers last month added far fewer jobs than would be needed for a speedy recovery; some jobs may just never come back; and officials have warned that the pandemic may make the already-crippling inequality in the U.S. even worse.
对于其他人来说，经济形势就严峻多了：与2月相比，工作岗位仍然少了1000万个；上个月新增就业岗位远低于经济快速复苏所需的数量；有些岗位可能永远不会再有了；官员们警告，这场大流行可能会使美国本已严重恶化的不平等现象雪上加霜。
Related word: K-shaped recovery
相关词汇：K-shaped recovery（K型复苏）
Contact tracing
Contact tracing：密接追踪
Whom did you see and when did you see them? That’s the essence of this term, long familiar to anyone in public health but new to the public consciousness. In the early days of the pandemic, South Korea gained attention for its aggressive — and highly successful — contact tracing program, while the United States continues to shrug at the concept.
你见过谁？是什么时候见到他们的？这就是这个术语的本质，公共卫生工作者早已熟悉这个术语，但对大众来说还是个新词。在疫情初期，韩国因其积极且非常成功的密接追踪程序而受到关注，但美国继续对这个概念不屑一顾。
Doomscrolling
Doomscrolling：末日刷新
The catchall, platform-agnostic term for consuming bad news or information you know is detrimental to your mental health and wellness yet being unable to stop. “I think the doomscrolling thing validated a lot of people’s experiences,” said the journalist Karen Ho, a.k.a. “Doomscrolling Reminder Lady,” who helped popularize the term with her eight-months-running nightly Twitter reminders to put the phone away and get to sleep. “It’s easy to feel like, ‘Am I overreacting to everything going on?’” she said. “At night people would scroll and be like, ‘Oh, things are really bad, and if they’re not bad for me they’re bad for other people’ and feel really helpless.”
这是个笼统的、与平台无关的术语，指的是你明知道阅读大量糟糕的新闻或信息对心理健康有害，但却无法停止。“我认为刷手机上的末日新闻是许多人的经历，”又被称为“末日刷新提醒女士”的凯伦·何（音）是一名记者，她帮助推广了这个词，8个月来，她每晚都在Twitter上提醒大家把手机收起来睡觉去。“人们很容易产生这样的想法，‘我对发生的一切反应过度了吗？’”她说。“人们在晚上滚动浏览，然后觉得，‘哦，情况真的很糟糕，就算对我来说不算糟糕，对其他人来说也很糟糕’，他们就会感到非常无助。”
Related word: Joyscrolling
相关词汇：joyscrolling（快乐刷新）
Essential workers
Essential workers：必要行业工作者
By early April, much of the country was under stay-at-home orders, marooned inside and safely out of the virus’s reach … unless, of course, you happened to work at a grocery store, a gas station, an airport, a hotel, a food processing plant, a restaurant, a convenience store, the U.S.P.S., a child-care center, a farm, a funeral home, a bike repair shop, an auto body shop, for a delivery app or any of the dozens of other types of businesses that were given permission to remain open during lockdowns.
到4月初，这个国家的大多数人都在指挥之下待在家中，被困在室内，安全地远离病毒侵袭……当然，除非你刚好在杂货店、加油站、机场、酒店、食品加工厂、餐厅、便利店、美国邮政服务(USPS)、儿童保育中心、农场、殡仪馆、自行车修理店、汽车车身车间、送货应用或是其他任何在封锁期间被允许继续营业的数十类企业工作。
“We are not essential. We are sacrificial,” Sujatha Gidla, an M.T.A. conductor in New York, wrote in an essay in May.
“我们不是必要的。我们是可牺牲的。”纽约大都会运输署(MTAS)的乘务员苏亚塔·吉德拉(Sujatha Gidla)今年5月在一篇文章中写道。
Flatten the curve
Flatten the curve：压平曲线
It was back to middle-school math: To prevent hospitals from getting overwhelmed with Covid-19 patients, the country needed to reduce the overall number of virus cases and stop the exponential increase in infections.
这又回到了初中数学问题：为了防止医院因新冠患者过多而不堪重负，全国需要减少确诊总数，并阻止感染的指数级增长。
After nationwide lockdowns, we were generally successful at flattening the curve of the first surge: Confirmed cases peaked at around 33,000 in one day in mid-April and slowly declined until mid-June. Then the summer surge hit, causing that previously flat line to shoot upward for a month until reaching a second, higher peak in mid-July of about 75,000 cases in a day. After a seasonal low of about 25,000 cases on one day in early September, cases have been on the rise ever since, reaching a recent high of about 230,000 in one day earlier this month.
在全国封锁之后，我们基本成功压平了第一波高峰曲线：确诊病例在4月中旬达到单日约3.3万例的峰值，6月中旬之前一直缓慢下降。然后，夏季感染高峰到来，导致此前被压平的曲线连续一个月上升，直到7月中旬达到第二个高峰，单日约7.5万例。在9月初单日约2.5万例的季节性低点之后，确诊数一直在上升，本月初达到了单日约23万的近期峰值。
Related words: Disinfect; “Wear a mask”; 6 feet; ventilator
相关词汇：disinfect（消毒）、“wear a mask”（“佩戴口罩”）、6 feet（6英尺）、ventilator（呼吸机）
Frontline workers
Frontline workers：一线工作者
Danielle Ofri is a primary care doctor at Bellevue Hospital in New York and the author of “When We Do Harm: A Doctor Confronts Medical Error.” Dr. Ofri gave me my coronavirius test when I became the first Times employee to test positive, and I turned out to be her first positive case. I’ve invited her to share her experience as a frontline worker during the pandemic.
丹妮尔·欧弗里(Danielle Ofri)是纽约贝尔维尤医院(Bellevue Hospital)的初级保健医生，著有《当我们造成伤害——一名面对医疗失误的医生》(When We Do Harm: a doctor confronting ts Medical Error)一书。欧弗里为我做了新冠检测，当时我成了时报第一个阳性员工，结果也成了她的第一个阳性病例。我邀请她分享了在疫情期间作为一线工作者的经历。
New York City’s Covid-19 surge in the spring made our hospital feel like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces were frantically re-scrambled each day to accommodate yet another set of unprecedented circumstances. On the other hand, it also felt oddly ordinary: In health care, you go to work every day, and your mandate is whatever your patients bring that day. Which is why the “hero” appellation felt so awkward to most of us. Nurses, doctors, technicians, aides and housekeepers surely have put in heroic hours during the pandemic, placing themselves and their families at risk. But we do it every day as patients grapple with the vulnerability that illness engenders. We do it every day when they need to unload their worries and their grief.
春季，纽约市的新冠病例激增，感觉把我们的医院变成了一份拼图，每天都在被疯狂地重新拼装，以适应另一套前所未有的情况。另一方面，这也有一种奇异的平凡之感：在医疗卫生领域，你每天都要工作，你的任务就是病人当天给你带来的问题。所以我们当中大多数人对英雄的称号感到非常尴尬。疫情期间，护士、医生、技师、助理和家政人员无疑都付出了巨大努力，自己和家人也处于危险之中。但我们每天都在做这些工作，与此同时，病人也在每天面对疾病带来的脆弱。我们每天都在做这些工作，当他们需要释放焦虑和悲伤的时候。
Health care is always frontline work. While Covid-19 was indeed unprecedented, the dominant sense was more of a utilitarian, “Well, this is what the cards have dealt today; let’s get to it.” Don’t get me wrong — the 7 p.m. cheer was the highlight of our days, both listening and participating. It was inspiring to witness our colleagues in action, to be part of this monumental effort. It was equally inspiring to feel the public’s appreciation. But even after Covid-19 is tamed by the forthcoming vaccines, health care workers will still be frontline workers. Because you never know what will show up tomorrow.
医疗卫生永远是一线工作。虽然新冠确实前所未见，但主导性的想法更倾向于实用主义，“好吧，今天的情况就是这样；让我们开始处理吧。”别误会我的意思——晚上7点的欢呼是我们一天中最高光的时刻，既能倾听又能参与。看到我们的同事们在行动，成为这巨大努力的一部分，是鼓舞人心的。感受到公众的感激同样如此。但是哪怕即将到来的疫苗控制住了新冠，医务人员仍将是一线工作者。因为你永远不知道明天会发生什么。
Hydroxychloroquine
Hydroxychloroquine：羟氯喹
As early as March, President Donald Trump was touting the malaria drug, saying it could be “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.” And by May, he said he was taking it as a preventive measure against the coronavirus. Its sudden prominence showed not only Mr. Trump’s power to turn conversation to any topic he desires, but the world’s desperate search for anything to help in the fight against the virus. As for the drug itself: The F.D.A. issued, then revoked, emergency use authorization for use in treating Covid-19, and an analysis from the National Institutes of Health published last month said “researchers concluded that the medication hydroxychloroquine provides no benefit to adults hospitalized with Covid-19.”
早在3月，唐纳德·特朗普总统就在大力宣传这种抗疟疾药物，称其可能是“医药史上最大的规则改变者之一”。到了5月，他说自己将服用它作为一种新冠预防措施。它的突然走红不仅说明特朗普有能力将讨论转变为任何他想要的话题，也说明全世界都在拼命寻找一切有助于抗击病毒的东西。至于这一药物本身：食品药监局(FDA)在发布将其用于治疗新冠的紧急使用许可后，又将许可撤销，国家卫生研究院(National Institutes of Health)上个月发布的分析报告称，“研究人员得出的结论是，羟氯喹对因新冠住院的成人患者没有好处。”
Mail-in ballot
Mail-in ballot：邮寄选票
A safe, secure and convenient way to vote, or the primary source of voter fraud in this year’s presidential election. In 2020, you got to decide!
一种安全、稳妥和便捷的投票方式，或今年总统大选中选民欺诈的主要来源。在2020年，你必须做出选择！
Pod
Pod：荚（小团体、小组）
As Americans decided “no thanks” to a genuine, strict and enforced quarantine, we settled for limiting in-person socializing to only a small group of friends and family. Deciding who’s in and who’s out, and trusting those in your pod, wasn’t without drama, but as one health policy researcher told The Times in June: “The ideal thing is that we just stay home forever and never see anybody — but that’s just not sustainable.”
由于美国人决定对真正的、严格的、强制的隔离措施说“不了谢谢”，于是我们选择将面对面的社交活动局限于一小部分朋友和家人。选择谁在你的“荚”里，谁在“荚”外，你会信任“荚”里的谁，这可能都颇具戏剧性，但正如一位卫生政策研究员在6月告诉时报的那样：理想情况是我们永远待在家里，永远不见任何人——但那是不可持续的。”
Related words: bubble, quaranteam
相关词汇：bubble（泡泡）、quaranteam（隔离小队）
P.P.E.
PPE：个人防护装备
Severe shortages of personal protective equipment for health care workers dominated headlines in the first few months of the pandemic, and now things aren’t much better: The Strategic National Stockpile is nearly 185 million N95 masks short of where it hoped to be by winter.
在疫情头几个月，医务工作者个人防护装备的严重短缺成了新闻头条，而如今情况并未好转多少：战略国家储备中心(Strategic National Stockpile)的N95口罩数量比冬季预期储备量少了近1.85亿个。
Masks became yet another flash point in the American culture war: Mr. Trump refused to wear one in public until July, even mocking President-elect Joe Biden for doing so during the first presidential debate. Even now, some Republican leaders at the state level are still declining to make masks mandatory.
口罩成为美国文化战争的又一条导火索：7月之前，特朗普都拒绝在公共场合戴口罩，甚至在首场总统辩论中嘲笑候任总统乔·拜登(Joe Biden)这么做。即使是现在，一些共和党领导人仍然拒绝在州内强制戴口罩。
Related words: Masks, N95, shortage, trash bag
相关词汇：masks（口罩）、N95、shortage（短缺）、trash bag（垃圾袋）
Remote learning
Remote learning：远程学习
Farah Miller, an editor who covers parenting for The Times, shares her family’s experience with remote learning this year.
时报育儿版面编辑法拉·米勒(Farah Miller)分享了她家孩子的远程学习经验。
Or are they even remotely learning? That was the question I, along with parents across the U.S., found myself asking in the spring. Schools shuttered without a plan for how to teach homebound kids. My preschooler was given five worksheets and a list of activities she couldn’t possibly do on her own (“Go for a nature walk and draw what you see!”). Her sister, then in fourth grade, had to watch a litany of instructional videos each day. By noon, the big kid was bleary-eyed; the little one was feral. I was able to get some work done only because my husband was furloughed and became the primary parent.
他们真的有在远程学习吗？这是今年春天我和美国各地父母的疑问。学校关门了，却没有给出如何对困在家的孩子进行教育的计划。我家学龄前的孩子得到五张工作表和一个活动清单，上面的活动她根本无法自己完成（“在大自然中漫步并画下你的所见！”）。她四年级的姐姐每天不得不观看没完没了的教学视频。到了中午，大的眼神呆滞，小的像个野人。我之所以能够完成一些工作，仅仅是因为丈夫被迫休假，因此成了主要负责的家长。
We finished the school year from home, and thought they’d go back in the fall. By September, there were seemingly impossible decisions to make though: Will you do hybrid? Join a pod? My family didn’t end up having a choice. Our schools didn’t open. My younger daughter started kindergarten from our dining room.
我们在家完成了这一学年，以为他们会在秋天回到学校。然而到了9月却要做出似乎无法做出的抉择：你愿意接受线上线下混合教学吗？要不要加入一个学习小组？我的家庭最终没有选择的余地。我们的学校没有开门。我的小女儿在我们的餐厅开始了幼儿园生活。
It is better than it was. Sometimes the house feels alive. I can hear 5-year-old voices on the first floor and fifth graders laughing on the second. All of it is a window into their lives I never would have had. We really are the lucky ones.
这比以前要好。有时候，房子里很热闹。我能听到五岁孩子在一楼说话，五年级的孩子们在二楼大笑。所有这些都是通向她们生活的窗口，而我原本不可能拥有。我们真的很幸运。
But there is always a kid calling for me. They drag their laptops around, to the couch or bed or just sit on the stairs, trying to get comfortable in a situation they are not made for. The corners of every room have been overrun by academic detritus. Screen time is all the time. These kids may be learning now, but they are so far from where they are meant to be.
但是总有某个孩子需要我。她们拖着笔记本电脑，坐到沙发上或床上，或者就直接坐在楼梯上，在一个她们不习惯的情景中试图找到舒适的位置。每个房间的角落都被作业纸占据。她们总在盯着屏幕。这些孩子现在可能是在学习，但是他们和他们本应该有的样子相距甚远。
Social distancing
Social distancing：保持社交距离
The pandemic forced us to re-evaluate our relationship with physical space and the way in which we occupy it. As experts learned more about the spread of the virus, “6 feet” became the golden number: The distance we should stay away from others to prevent the spread of Covid-19, yes, but also a shorthand for how to navigate socialization in the new world.
大流行迫使我们重新评估我们与物理空间的关系以及我们对空间的使用方式。随着专家对病毒传播的了解越来越多，“6英尺”成了黄金数字：是的，为了防止新冠病毒的传播，这是我们应该与他人所保持的距离，但它也成了如何在新世界进行社交的简写。
Related words: 6 feet away; bubble; quar
相关词汇：6 feet away（6英尺以外）、bubble（泡泡）、quar（隔离）
Super-spreader
Super-spreader：超级传播者
The first time most of us became aware of the term was this spring, when one person who attended a March choir practice in Washington spread the virus to 52 others. According to Google Trends data, search interest in the term has stayed low for most of the year — that is, until the beginning of October. Interest spiked after the infamous Rose Garden “super-spreader” event at the White House, which is thought to have accelerated the spread of the virus among Mr. Trump’s inner circle and beyond.
我们大多数人第一次意识到这个词是在今年春天，3月在华盛顿州，一名参加唱诗班排练的人将病毒传播给了52个人。根据Google趋势数据，在今年的大部分时间——即在10月初以前——该词的搜索量一直很低。在臭名昭著的白宫玫瑰园“超级传播者”事件之后，该词的搜索量激增，人们认为这件事加速了该病毒在特朗普的内部圈子以及其他地方的传播。
Unprecedented
Unprecedented：史无前例
In early weeks genuinely descriptive, this quickly became a hollow buzzword co-opted by advertisements. Look no further than this supercut of TV commercials from mid-April to be reminded how unavoidable “unprecedented” and its ilk were this spring.
它在最早的几周只有纯粹的描述意味，但是很快成被广告利用，成了一个空洞的热门词。只需观看这个从4月中旬开始的电视广告的大型混剪，重温今年春天“unprecedented”以及类似的词有多么铺天盖地。
The word’s popularity waned, but in nearly unparalleled fashion, it rose to prominence yet again as Mr. Trump and his Republican allies launched a never-before-seen campaign to overturn the results of the presidential election. A new set of unheard-of circumstances earned the descriptor, and we were yet again confronted with the unimaginable.
虽然这个词的流行度有所下降，但是当特朗普和他的共和党盟友发起一场前所未有的宣传运动来推翻总统选举结果时，它以空前的方式又重新受到了关注。一组新的闻所未闻的情况占据了这个词，我们再次直面了不可想象之事。
Even Oxford Languages subtly tipped its hand when it titled its report on the language that defined the year, “2020: Words of an Unprecedented Year.”
甚至连牛津语言( Oxford Languages)在给今年年度词汇的报告起标题时也巧妙地使用了它，“2020：史无前例的一年的年度词汇”。
Related words: The new normal; uncertain times; trying times; before times
相关词汇：the new normal（新常态）、uncertain times（不确定的时代）、trying times（艰难时刻）、before times（疫情前时代）
Virtual happy hour
Virtual happy hour：虚拟欢乐时光
The early weeks of lockdown, like the virus itself, were novel. As people searched for new ways to stay entertained and hold onto some semblance of normalcy from home, the question of how to socialize was paramount. And so virtual happy hours became the event du jour. The wine — and quarantinis — flowed as heavily as the Zoom event invites, and we all … well, we just got kind of drunk in front of our computers a whole bunch.
与新型病毒一样，封锁的前几周也是新奇的体验。当人们寻找新的方法让自己有事可做，并试图在家中保持某种常态时，如何社交成了重要的问题。因此，虚拟欢乐时光就成了一天里最重要的事情。酒以及quarantinis（隔离马天尼）下肚的速度就像Zoom活动邀请来的一样快，然后我们都……好吧，我们所有人就在电脑前喝醉了。
Voter fraud
Voter fraud：选举舞弊
It doesn’t exist on any appreciable scale, but the president and his allies have continued to insist that widespread fraudulent voting cost him the election.
选举舞弊在任何可察觉的范围内都不存在，但总统和他的盟友们继续坚持认为是大规模的投票作假导致他落选。
That the claim is pure fantasy is almost beside the point: The president’s disinformation campaign around the results of the election is the culmination of a yearslong effort to sew doubt about the democratic process itself. If the voting system is corrupt, any loss Mr. Trump may suffer is simply the result of a rigged election, the thinking goes. This false narrative has become so deeply embedded in the minds of Mr. Trump’s supporters that surveys have found that between 70 percent and 80 percent of Republicans doubt the legitimacy of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
这种说法是不是纯粹的幻想几乎不重要：总统围绕选举结果进行的虚假信息宣传活动，标志着一年来对民主进程本身的怀疑达到了高潮。这种想法认为，如果投票系统是腐化堕落的，那么特朗普遭受的任何失败都是大选被操纵的结果。这种虚假的叙述深植于特朗普支持者的头脑中，调查发现，有70%到80%的共和党怀疑候任总统拜登胜利的合法性。
Related words: Stop the steal; mail-in ballots; democratic erosion
相关词汇：stop the steal（停止偷窃）、mail-in ballots（邮寄选票）、democratic erosion（民主侵蚀）
Wildfires
Wildfires：大火
While the coronavirus raged across the world, the West Coast burned. 2020 was the worst year for wildfires in recorded California history, as some 4.3 million acres in the state went up in flames. In Oregon, more than a million acres burned (and, in a terribly 2020 twist, there were false rumors that antifa had intentionally started fires there). And in Washington, the devastation reached more than 700,000 acres. More than 40 people died in the fires. The economic toll in California is thought to be at least $10 billion. And, as The Times wrote in the midst of last year’s wildfire season, this level of destruction is probably just a normal we’ll have to learn to live with.
当新冠病毒肆虐全球时，西海岸在燃烧。2020年是加州有记录以来森林大火最严重的一年，该州约有1.7万平方公里土地被大火吞噬。在俄勒冈州，超过4000平方公里土地被烧毁（而且，在2020年一个可怕的歪曲说法中，有谣言称是反法组织[antifa]在那里故意放火）。华盛顿州的受破坏面积超过2800平方公里。超过40人在大火中丧生。加州的经济损失据信至少为100亿美元。而且，正如时报在去年的火灾季节报道中所写的那样，这种破坏程度可能只是我们必须学习适应的一种常态。
Zoom
Zoom
Up until around March of this year, Zoom was enterprise software meant to help businesses communicate. Then the home became the office for millions of Americans, and our social lives moved entirely online. Almost overnight Zoom emerged as the go-to platform for private citizens, religious services and universities. “We Live in Zoom Now,” The Times declared. — so much so that the term became practically synonymous with videoconferencing, as Scotch is for cellophane tape.
直到今年3月以前，Zoom只是一个旨在帮助企业进行沟通的企业级软件。然后，家成了数百万美国人的办公室，我们的社交生活也全部搬到了网上。几乎在一夜之间，Zoom成为了公民个体、宗教服务和大学的首选平台。“我们生活在Zoom上，”时报宣布。Zoom成了视频会议的同义词，就像用Scotch代表透明胶带一样。
But all of that Zooming came at a price. Privacy concerns arose and Zoombombing became a thing as malicious trolls hijacked meetings. The company rushed to address the issues, and in surprisingly candid remarks, its C.E.O. conceded that the company wasn’t prepared for the sudden crush of use.
但所有这些Zoom活动都是有代价的。对隐私的担忧引起了关注，恶意挑衅者劫持会议，于是有了Zoombombing（Zoom轰炸）的说法。该公司奋力解决这些问题，其CEO以令人惊讶的坦率态度承认该公司没有为这种激增的需求做好准备。
Still, Zoom ends 2020 as one of a handful of pandemic “winners”: Its stock price skyrocketed nearly 500 percent from January to December, and Yahoo Finance named it the 2020 Company of the Year. Its shareholders are surely raising a glass to that — via video.
尽管如此，Zoom最终是2020年少有的疫情“赢家”之一：其股价从1月到12月暴涨了近500%，雅虎金融将其评为“2020年度公司”。其股东肯定要举杯庆祝——通过视频会议。
Related words: Zoombombing, Zoom University, Zoom Dating, Zoom Birthday, Zumping, Zoom Shirt, Zoom Mom, Zoom Town, Zoom Fatigue
相关词汇：Zoombombing（Zoom轰炸）、Zoom University（Zoom大学）、Zoom Dating（Zoom约会）、Zoom Birthday（Zoom生日会）、 Zumping（Zoom分手）、Zoom Shirt（Zoom专用衬衫）、Zoom Mom（Zoom妈妈）、 Zoom Town（Zoom镇）、 Zoom Fatigue（Zoom疲劳）
