学术英语(社科)7单元A翻译

Understanding the impact of new media on journalism

了解新媒体对新闻事业的影响

1.

Journalism is undergoing a fundamental transformation, perhaps the most fundamental since the rise of the penny press of the mid-19th century. In the twilight of the 20th century and the dawn of the 21st, there is emerging a new form of journalism whose distinguishing qualities include ubiquitous news, global information access, instantaneous reporting, interactivity, multimedia content, and extreme content customization. In many ways this represents a potentially better form of journalism because it can reengage an increasingly distrusting and alienated audience. At the same time, it presents many threats to the most cherished values and standards of journalism. Authenticity of content, source verification, accuracy, and truth are all suspect in a medium where anyone with a computer and a modem can become a global publisher.

新闻正在发生根本性的转变，也许最根本的自19世纪中期的便士报的兴起。在20世纪末,21世纪初,出现了一种新兴的新闻报道形式.它的显著特点包括：无处不在的新闻消息，全球信息的获得，实时报道，互动性，多媒体的内容和专门的内容定制。在许多方面，这是一个潜在的更好的形式，因为它可以重新将越来越不信任和疏远观众接入到新闻中。同时，它对新闻界最珍视的价值观和标准提出了许多威胁。只要拥有电脑和调制解调器，任何人都可成为全球化的新闻发布者。这样的传媒，其内容的权威性，信息来源的可鉴定性、准确性以及真实性均会受到质疑。

2.

Although the easy answer is to point to the Internet, the reasons for the transformation of journalism are neither simple nor one-dimensional. Rather, a set of economic, regulatory, and cultural forces, driven by technological change, are converging to bring about a massive shift in the nature of journalism at the millennium.

虽然简单的答案是指向互联网，新闻业转型的原因既不是简单的，也不是一维的。相反，在当代，一组被技术变革所推动的经济，监管和文化力量，正在汇聚，导致大量的接入到新闻中。

3.

The growth of a global economic system, made up of regional economies, all interrelated (witness the volatility in the word’s financial markets in August 1998, when drops in Asian and Russian markets triggered drops in European and U.S. markets) and increasingly controlled by multinational corporate behemoths, has rewritten the financial basis for journalism and the media in general. Deregulation, as outlined in the U.S.

所有区域经济相互联系（目睹了１９９８年世界金融市场的动荡，当时亚洲和俄罗斯市场的下滑引发了欧洲和美国市场也有下滑），不断由跨国企业巨头控制，他们一起构成的全球经济体系不断发展，重写了新闻业和媒体的金融基础。

4.

Telecommunications Act of 1996 and played out in like fashion in many other parts of the world (where privatization of telecommunications has been a driving force), has spawned increasingly powerful competitive forces in journalism and communications. The end of the

Cold War has unleashed a variety of pent-up cultural and political forces that have yet to stabilize.

正如在世界许多其他地方（电信私有化已成为推动力量），1996年解除管制在美国的通讯法案有所体现, 世界许多其他地区也跟着效仿, 电信的私有化已经成为一股驱动力量.解除管制的规定在新闻业和通讯业产生了不断强大的竞争力量.

5.

Together, these forces have created an environment of uncertainty for journalism as it enters this new age in which the alignment of superpowers has been fundamentally altered, shareholders are the most important stakeholders, and competition is more likely to come from a software company based in Redmond, Washington, than from the cross-town newspaper or broadcaster.

随着新闻业进入新时代,这些力量一起为其创造了不确定的环境。在这样的时代中，大国的调整发生了根本的变化，股东是最大的利益相关者，竞争更可能来自于坐落于华盛顿州雷德蒙市的一家软件公司，而非隔壁小镇的报纸或广播公司。

Fueling this changing environment has been the emergence of the first and perhaps most powerful medium of global interactive communications. As James Carey writes, ”The Internet should be understood as the first instance of a global communication system. That system, in turn, is displacing a national system of communications which came into existence at the end of the 19th century as a result of the railroad and telegraph, and was

‘perfected’ in subsequent innovations through television in the network era.”

助长这种不断变化的环境已经出现了第一个也许也是全球最强大的互动传播媒体。正如卡蕾杰姆斯写道：这个系统（全球交流系统）依次地取代了国家通讯系统。在19

世纪末，随着铁路和电报的发展，出现了国家通讯系统，并在网络时代，继电视的发明后而得到完善。

6.

But in many ways the Internet is merely a product, or symptom, of a more fundamental technological change that has been under way for the past half-century and only now is beginning to crystallize: the convergence of telecommunications, computing, and traditional media. Together, this new media system embraces all forms of human communication in a digital format where the rules and constraints of the analog world no longer apply. Some would question whether this convergence is actually occurring. They would point to the fact that most people around the world in 2000 still do not have a computer in the home and that in most homes that do have a computer, the TV set and the computer are still separate devices. They would note that even in the United States in 2000 most TV sets do not connect to a telephone line or any other medium of “upstream” communication capability (i.e., the ability for the audience member to send informations as well as receive it).

但是在许多方面，网络知识更加基础的技术革新的一个产物和表现。这样的技术革新孕育在过去的半个世纪里，现在逐渐开始成形：它是电信，计算和传统媒体的融合。同时，这个新的媒体系统包含了所有形式的人类通信的数字格式。这样的数字格式，依靠规则和约束的模拟世界不再适用。有些人会质疑这个收敛是否实际发生。嘿，事实上，在2000年，世界上大多数人仍然没有一台电脑在家里。在有电脑大多数家庭中，电视机和电脑仍然是单独的设备。他们会注意到，即使在美国，在2000