By Liesl Schillinger

W hat do Monica Lewinsky, Thomas Eric Duncan, and Elvis Costello have in common?1. Monica Lewinsky: 莫妮卡·萊溫斯基，前美國白宮見習(xí)生，由于在白宮工作時(shí)和當(dāng)時(shí)的美國總統(tǒng)比爾·克林頓發(fā)生性丑聞，從而引起公眾的注意；Thomas Eric Duncan: 托馬斯·埃里克·鄧肯，美國本土確診的首例埃博拉病毒感染者；Elvis Costello: 埃爾維斯·科斯特洛，從朋克和新浪潮音樂中涌現(xiàn)出來的英國著名搖滾樂天才。Zero.

Months ago in Philadelphia, at the Forbes Under 30 Summit for young business leaders, Monica Lewinsky received a standing ovation for a public address in which she denounced cyber-bullying and deplored the “empathy crisis” that has arisen since her name went viral, almost 20 years ago.2. standing ovation: 長時(shí)間起立鼓掌；denounce: 公然抨擊；bully: 欺辱；deplore: 譴責(zé)；empathy: 移情，即設(shè)身處地地站在別人的位置上，從別人的角度去體驗(yàn)別人的感受；go viral: 像病毒一樣傳播開來?！癐 was Patient Zero,” she said; “the first person to have their reputation completely destroyed worldwide via the internet.” Portraying herself as the Typhoid Mary of online incivility, she told the audience, “I was the most humiliated woman in the world.3. 她視自己為網(wǎng)絡(luò)暴力下的“傷寒瑪麗”，她告訴聽眾，“我?guī)缀跏鞘澜缟献顏G臉的女人?！眕ortray: 描繪；Typhoid Mary: 傷寒瑪麗, 本名瑪麗·梅倫，愛爾蘭人，1883年獨(dú)自移民美國，是美國第一位被發(fā)現(xiàn)的傷寒健康帶原者。據(jù)統(tǒng)計(jì)，瑪麗一生直接傳播了52例傷寒，間接被傳染者不計(jì)其數(shù)，該詞后指有害事物的傳播者或禍根；incivility: 不文明行為。What I want to do now is to help other victims of the shame game survive too.” And then she joined Twitter.

Her timing was excellent. Things like “gamergate” and the iCloud photo hack of celebrity nude selfies, building on a growing list of suicides provoked by vicious texts and posts on cell phones and social media, have fanned public outrage at web-spread harassment.4. 類似“玩家門”和“好萊塢艷照門”事件，手機(jī)和社交媒體上的惡意信息和帖子不斷導(dǎo)致自殺事件的發(fā)生，激起了民眾對于網(wǎng)絡(luò)傳播騷擾的憤怒。gamergate:玩家門，2014年9月一場席卷歐美游戲圈的女性游戲制作人的性丑聞；后面的“好萊塢艷照門”指2014年9月1日有外國黑客疑利用蘋果公司的iCloud云盤系統(tǒng)的漏洞，非法盜取眾多好萊塢當(dāng)紅女星的裸照并在網(wǎng)絡(luò)發(fā)布的事件；vicious: 惡意的；fan: 煽動，刺激；outrage: 憤怒；harassment: 騷擾。Still, online reaction to Lewinksy’s speech was mixed and often snarky, prompting the website Upworthy to reprove flamers: “There’s a lot we can learn from her.”5. snarky: 尖銳的；Upworthy: 成立于2012年，是一個(gè)致力于快速傳播有意義的信息和圖片的資訊網(wǎng)站；reprove:責(zé)罵；flamer:（在網(wǎng)絡(luò)中）抨擊別人的人。But was Lewinksy correct to call herself Patient Zero?

提到“零”這個(gè)數(shù)字，你首先想到的是什么——沒有？無？空？或是其他類似的意思？然而，你可知道，在當(dāng)今互聯(lián)網(wǎng)傳播的作用下，“零”已不再代表這些意思，反而被賦予了“價(jià)值”等含義。另外，“Patient Zero”又是什么意思？后來又怎么出現(xiàn)在非醫(yī)學(xué)的領(lǐng)域中了呢？

“Patient Zero” is a phrase that was invented by American doctors and epidemiologists in the 1980s, early in the global AIDS crisis,to supplant the less catchy term “index case.”6. epidemiologist: 流行病學(xué)家；supplant:代替；catchy: 引人注意的；index case: 索引病例，指示病例。The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as: “The first identified case in a group of related cases of a particular communicable or heritable disease.”7. communicable: 會傳染的；heritable:可遺傳的。As thousands of people began falling sick in North America with a mysterious,incurable illness, a panicked public wanted to know who had brought the contagion to our shores.8Experts responded with the user-friendly explanation that the culprit was “Patient Zero”—in other words, the original carrier of the disease, who passes it along to others, who passes it along in turn, and so on and so on and so on.9. 專家們用“零號患者”，一個(gè)不帶有偏見的詞語解釋事因——也就是說，疾病的最初攜帶者將其傳染給別人，別人又依次傳染下去，就這樣傳染給越來越多的人。culprit: 罪魁禍?zhǔn)?。Figuring out who that was, though, was tricky10. tricky: 棘手的。.

Before Patient Zero was a number, he was a letter: he was “Patient O,” an anonymous11. anonymous: 匿名的?！皀on-Californian” bearer of the virus, whose case was discussed in an American Journal of Medicine study about AIDS,in March 1984. As news of the study circulated, “Patient O” morphed into “Patient Zero,”12. circulate: 傳播開來；morph: 變成。and was declared to be Gatan Dugas—a gay Canadian flight attendant who infected many partners with HIV13. HIV: 全稱人類免疫缺陷病毒，該病毒破壞人體的免疫能力，從而導(dǎo)致各種疾病及癌癥得以在人體內(nèi)生存，發(fā)展到最后，導(dǎo)致艾滋病。before he knew he was sick. Dugas died of AIDS-related kidney failure14. kidney failure: 腎衰竭。the same month the article appeared. Later, though, a prior Patient Zero emerged, a Missouri teenager named Robert Rayford, who died of AIDS in 1969, before anyone knew what it was. In recent decades, as science has made HIV-AIDS more manageable for those who can afford the medication, the words “Patient Zero” have escaped their medical quarantine and invaded the culture, attaching themselves to novels,songs, video games, computer virus outbreaks, and now, the blight of cyber-bullying.15. 近幾十年來，隨著科技的發(fā)展，那些有能力進(jìn)行藥物治療的艾滋病患者的病情已得到較好的控制，“零號患者”的字眼不再只限于醫(yī)學(xué)范圍，而是走進(jìn)文化領(lǐng)域，用于小說、歌曲、視頻游戲和計(jì)算機(jī)病毒的爆發(fā)，現(xiàn)在則用來指導(dǎo)致網(wǎng)絡(luò)暴力的禍患。medication: 藥物治療；quarantine: 隔離；blight: 禍患。But in the last few months, the advent of another epidemic, the Ebola virus, has brought back the phrase’s original potency.16. 但最近幾個(gè)月里，另一傳染病——埃博拉病毒的傳播，卻喚起了該詞語的最原始的用法。advent: 到來；epidemic: 傳染??；Ebola virus: 埃博拉病毒； potency: 效能。In Africa, Patient Zero is thought to be a two-year-old baby named Emile Ouamouno, from Guinea, near the Sierra Leone and Liberia borders,17. Guinea: 幾內(nèi)亞，西非國家；Sierra Leone: 塞拉利昂，西非國家；Liberia: 利比里亞，西非國家。who died in December, 2013. His relatives caught the disease from him and passed it on. In North America,Patient Zero for Ebola was Thomas Eric Duncan, who died earlier last October.

AIDS has killed 36 million people since its emergence in 1981,and about the same number is living with HIV-AIDS today. The 2014 Ebola outbreak has killed nearly five thousand people, thus far. Can cyber-bullying, as reprehensible and destructive as it is,be compared to a plague?18. reprehensible: 應(yīng)斥責(zé)的；plague: 瘟疫。Perhaps, metaphorically, it can; it’s a reasonable imaginative leap, even if it’s in questionable taste(which is an affliction that has no cure).19. metaphorically: 用比喻來說；imaginative: 虛構(gòu)的；affliction: 折磨。But if so, strictly speaking,Patient Zero would not be Lewinsky, who “caught” the plague,but Matt Drudge, who originated the infection on the Drudge Report in January of 1998, when he exposed Lewinsky’s affair with President Clinton, and ushered in the age of aggressive, salacious online gossip-mongering.20. 但如果這樣的話，嚴(yán)格來說，零號患者并非萊溫斯基，而是馬特·德拉吉，他于1998年1月在“德拉吉報(bào)道”上揭露萊溫斯基與克林頓總統(tǒng)的丑聞后，帶有攻擊性的下流的八卦便開始在網(wǎng)絡(luò)上傳播開來。Drudge Report: 德拉吉報(bào)道，一家美國新聞網(wǎng)站，以挖掘內(nèi)幕消息而聞名；salacious: 淫蕩的；mongering: 散布。Still, all’s fair in love, war, and public shaming; and if Lewinsky wants to claim the title, she might as well.Speaking still more strictly, however, Patient Zero might be better understood as “Patient One.” Why is that? To paraphrase President Clinton, it depends upon what the meaning of the word “zero” is.The nature of “zero,” a non-number, the hold-all for “nothing,” has bedeviled philosophers for millennia.21. hold-all: 手提箱，文中指“……的概括”；bedevil: 使痛苦；millennia: 千年。Zeno of Elea, wrestling with the concept in the fifth Century B.C., mused that “if it were added to another thing, it would not make it larger.”22. Zeno of Elea: 埃利亞的芝諾，希臘哲學(xué)家；wrestle with: 設(shè)法解決；muse: 沉思。The notion of a Patient Zero implies not only addition, but multiplication, which,paradoxically, hints that the “zero” it bespeaks is something, not nothing.23. addition: 加法；multiplication: 乘法；paradoxically: 自相矛盾地；bespeak: 預(yù)示。

One may still be the loneliest number; but these days, zero not only has company, it has fans; and, if you visit Twitter, you will see that cyber-bullying’s newly minted24. mint: 創(chuàng)造。Patient Zero already has 78,000 followers. Parmenides25. Parmenides: 巴門尼德，公元5世紀(jì)的古希臘哲學(xué)家。may have argued that nothing comes from nothing; Parmenides didn’t know about the internet.