Bundespraesidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung. It has a ring to it, doesn’t it? Try it out for yourself: Bundespraesidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung. To an English speaker, it may seem like a meaningless, even endless assortment of letters, but it turns out that it’s an award-winning German word. As the Associated Press reports, a survey of 10,000 Austrians has chosen the lengthy noun as its word of the year.
Bundespraesidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung,聽上去像是什么有趣的東西,不是嗎?你可以試著自己念一遍:Bundes/praesidenten/stichwahl/wiederholungs/verschiebung。對(duì)于說英語(或是其他語言)的人來說,它似乎是段毫無意義無窮無盡的字母組合,但事實(shí)證明它卻是個(gè)獲獎(jiǎng)的重要德語詞。美聯(lián)社報(bào)道,一項(xiàng)有上萬奧地利人參與的調(diào)查將這個(gè)超長(zhǎng)的名詞選作了年度熱詞。

Roughly translated, the word means “postponement of the repeat runoff of the presidential election.” The super-long word was coined this year in response to a similarly drawn-out presidential election in Austria.
大致翻譯過來,這個(gè)詞的意思是“聯(lián)邦總統(tǒng)選舉再選的推遲?!边@個(gè)詞在今年被生造出來以描述奧地利遭遇的與美國(guó)類似的膠著選舉。

In May, Austrians elected Alexander Van der Bellen to the presidency in May. But Van der Bellen’s victory was a narrow one, and the Freedom Party of Austria (FP?), the country’s far-right party, contested the results and claimed that voting irregularities warranted a new election. The repeat runoff was due to go ahead on October 2, but then something sticky happened. As The Guardian’s Kate Connolly reports, the government requested a postponement of the repeat runoff when issues with the glue used to seal mail-in ballots were discovered. The election was postponed and a new term was born.
在五月份,奧地利人將Alexander Van der Bellen選為下一屆總統(tǒng)。但Van der Bellen僅是險(xiǎn)勝,而奧地利自由黨,奧地利的極右翼政黨對(duì)這個(gè)結(jié)果提出抗議,并聲稱由于投票過程中的不規(guī)范行為,重新選舉具有了正當(dāng)理由。這次重選理應(yīng)在十月二日進(jìn)行,但又有些棘手的事情發(fā)生了。正如《衛(wèi)報(bào)》的Kate Connolly報(bào)道中所說,政府又要求推遲這次重選,因?yàn)樗麄儼l(fā)現(xiàn)拿來密封郵寄選票的膠水出了問題。隨著選舉的推遲,又一個(gè)政治術(shù)語誕生了。

The election finally went forward with higher turnout. This time, the far-right party was rejected by Austrian voters by an even wider margin. The events were watched with amusement and exhaustion by Austrians. As the jury of experts who judged the contest told the Austrian paper Der Standard (in German), it is “both an expressive and ironic commentary [on] the political events of the year.”
這場(chǎng)選舉最終獲得了更高的投票率。這次,極右政黨以更大的差距被奧地利選民拒之門外。奧地利人最終以娛樂卻又疲憊的心情見證了這次事件。正如對(duì)這次抗議做出審判的專家陪審團(tuán)告訴奧地利媒體《標(biāo)準(zhǔn)報(bào)》(Der Standard),這個(gè)詞是對(duì)這場(chǎng)年度政治事件不僅生動(dòng)而且極具諷刺意味的評(píng)論。

If you wanted to save a letter, you could spell Bundespraesidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung with an umlaut instead, making Bundespr?sidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung. Those little symbols, which add an e to a vowel, are another example of how the German language lets speakers combine more than one thing. Or you could just marvel at how much longer it is than the longest word in the English language—pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
如果你想少打一個(gè)字母,你也可以把它拼成Bundespr?sidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung,用加了變音符的?代替ae。這兩個(gè)小點(diǎn)不僅可以給元音變音,也是德語可以由使用者自由組合的又一例證?;蛘吣阋部梢栽囍逅绕鹱铋L(zhǎng)的英語詞匯——pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis,要長(zhǎng)多少。

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