英文自修97：“数字足迹”删得掉吗？
本系列内容英文原文取自BBC Thought for the Day节目网站，朋友们也可以下载节目录音收听。
译者：王宥轩
审读：武太白
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Thought for the Day 20140604 - Vicky Beeching
From beneath his dreadlocks长发绺, the Jamaican reggae 雷鬼音乐 singer Bob Marley sang “In this bright future you can’t forget your past”. Remembering the past can be meaningful, yet most of us carry some memories we’d rather erase. The digital age has made this increasingly complex. Many of us create a daily trail of photos, videos and status updates, where our actions live on in a very tangible way.
一头长发绺的雷鬼歌手鲍勃•马利曾经这样唱道，“在美好的未来中，你无法忘记过去”。记住过去是有意义的，然而大部分的人都想抹去一些记忆。在数字时代的今天，抹去记忆变得愈发复杂。很多人都会上传点照片、视频和状态更新等，记录日常生活，这样我们的活动就非常真实可感，长存不灭。
Recently the European Court of Justice 欧洲法院 ruled that people should have ‘the right to be forgotten’ online. Specifically, the right to ask Google to remove search results about themselves that are irrelevant or outdated. Within 24 hours of the ruling, over 12,000 people had submitted requests. The Court’s decision may sound more grandiose than it is; the offensive material about you is not deleted, just the search engine’s ability to pull up the link. Plus, it only affects Google searches within the EU. Yet for some individuals, it could make a huge difference.
最近，欧洲法院规定在网上，人们应当享有“被忘记的权利”。具体来说，就是有权利要求谷歌删掉与他们不相关或过时的搜索结果。该法律规定生效后24小时内，超过12000人提交了请求。法院的决定可能比听起来的还要华而不实；对你不利的资料并未被删除，只是搜索引擎不能显示其链接而已。此外，该条规定仅适用于在欧洲范围内的谷歌搜索。对一些人而言，这仍是有巨大作用的。
Living with a so-called "digital footprint” is something that previous generations have not had to navigate. A positive side effect might be the heightened sense of accountability; it may make us think twice before we act. But some of us will make serious mistakes online – especially those too young to understand the ramifications. Teenagers rarely comprehend that someday a future employer will Google their name and see ‘that’ photo of them at a party. At least for the sake of kids and teens, some right to delete digital mistakes is required.
如今生活中的所谓“数字足迹”，是以前的人们从未经历过的。好的方面在于，它提醒我们要有责任感；它可能会使我们三思而后行。但有些人在网上会犯严重错误——尤其是那些年轻人，他们往往没有考虑到后果。青少年很少想到，将来有一天，他们的雇主会用谷歌搜索他们的名字，看到他们在派对上的“那张”照片。至少对孩子和青少年而言，删掉网上错误的权利是必要的。
In the Christian tradition there is much about getting a fresh start and a clean slate. “Behold, I make all things new,” God says in the New Testament book of Revelation. Yet alongside this there’s also plenty about him using the past, good and bad. In the book of Jeremiah 耶利米，《圣经》故事人物, God says his people are like clay in the hands of a potter. In the process of being shaped on a potter’s wheel, a pot may completely fall apart. But he takes that misshapen clay, starts again and reforms a better pot on the wheel. It's a well-worn analogy, but in our perfectionistic, performance-driven culture, it's a reminder that both our highs and our lows can be used to form and re-shape us.
基督教传统鼓励重新开始和改过自新。“看，我将一切都更新了”上帝在新约《启示录》中说。同时，《启示录》中还有很多关于他如何利用过去，既有好的，也有坏的。在《耶利米书》中，上帝称他的子民就像是陶工手中的陶土。泥人在陶工的轮子里被塑成形时，很可能会完全成不了形。但陶工会捡起变形的泥人，重新开始，用轮子塑造出更好的形状。这个比方已经老生常谈了，但在完美至上、追求绩效的文化中，这也提醒我们，顺境和逆境都能塑造、改造我们。
So it might seem ideal to erase every Google search result about us that we dislike. But it's also important to embrace our imperfections and our mistakes as part of the journey. The past can't truly be erased from the Internet, or from our memories, but it doesn’t need to define our future. We can choose to rise above it and take this moment, this day to start writing a better story. The words of Mother Teresa remind us that this possibility is ours for the taking. As she put it: "Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. So let us begin".
因此，似乎较为理想的是，我们能够删除所有不喜欢的关于自己的谷歌搜索结果。但同样重要的是，我们要去拥抱自己的缺点和错误，这些也是人生旅程的一部分。过去在网上、在记忆中，都不可能完全被删除，但这未必会决定我们的未来。我们可以超越过去，抓住当下，抓住今天，写下更好的篇章。修女特蕾莎的话提醒我们，机会就在那里，我们要抓住它。她曾说过，“昨日已逝，明日未到。我们仅有今天。何不重新开始？”