外刊如何评论走红中国的剧本杀？

近年来，剧本杀成为年轻人可选的一个休闲娱乐项目。除了大吉大利今晚吃鸡英语外，就是剧本杀了。美团根据2020-2021年平台数据及市场调研估算，2021年中国实体剧本杀市场规模将达154.2亿元，消费者规模有望达941万。本期内容比较多，就不在前面放上原文了，文章也比较简单，大家跟着思路读就行了！原文以及译文均来自《纽约时报》中文网。

China’s Latest Craze: Scripted Murders, With Real Tears and Piracy

剧本杀在中国爆红：虚构的谋杀案，真金白银的生意

The murders are scripted. The money is real.

谋杀是虚构的。这门生意却是真金白银。

craze作为名词可以直接表示一时的狂热，风行，相当于hit。每次谈到某个电影/书/电视剧/事情爆火，流行就少不了他们。比如：Walking is the latest fitness craze.散步是最近非常流行的健身方式。上次那篇《鱿鱼游戏》也有这个词，回顾一下：The global craze has prompted bemusement in South Korea.韩国人对这突如其来的全球爆火表示迷惑。

scripted表示照稿子念的，照本宣科的。也就是事先就准备好的，对应的也就是剧本杀中的“剧本”。看个经济学人的例句：Chinese war games were once highly scripted affairs. Now officers are assessed on the realism of their training, says Meia Nouwens of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. 军事演习以前都是提前排练过的。伦敦国际战略研究所(International Institute for Strategic Studies)的梅亚•努文斯(Meia Nouwens)表示，现在军官们要根据训练的现实情况来评估。

In cities throughout China, young people are flocking to clubs to play a game that can be translated as “scripted homicide,” where they become different characters and spend hours solving fake murders.

在中国各地的城市，年轻人涌入俱乐部玩一个叫做“剧本杀”的游戏，他们扮演不同的角色，花上几个小时解决虚构的谋杀案。

flock作名词时表示(羊或鸟)群，(尤指同类人的)一大群，例如：A flock of customers were waiting for the store to open. 一群顾客在等候着商店开门。那么作动词就相应表示“成群结队地走向…，蜂拥而至”。类似的表达还有flood into, swarm into, flock into, throng into等等，都可以表示“涌入，蜂拥而至”之意。看一个经济学人例句：To little effect. The happy combination of bright weather and a three-day weekend has sent many flocking to the parks anyway.但这一敦促收效甚微。晴朗的天气加上三天的周末时光，许多人因此涌向了公园。后文还会出现pour，大家可以注意。

[剧本杀游戏介绍] It is a game that can be translated as “scripted homicide,” where young people become different characters and spend hours solving fake murders.

This macabre entertainment is expected to generate more than $2 billion in revenue this year, by one count. The growing popularity has sparked some concerns from Chinese government officials about their sometimes gothic or gory content. It has also led to a proliferation of clubs and competition for new and compelling scripts that players and owners alike say has become, well, cutthroat.

根据一项统计，这种恐怖娱乐预计今年将产生超过154亿人民币的收入。它越来越受欢迎，时而哥特式或血腥的内容引发了中国政府官员的担忧。其流行也导致了相关俱乐部的激增，以及对优秀新剧本的争夺，玩家和俱乐部老板都表示，这种竞争已到了你死我活的程度。

macabre这个形容词很少见，因为它太暗黑，意思是unpleasant and strange because connected with death and frightening things可怕的，恐怖的(尤指与死亡等相联系的)。例如：a macabre tale / joke / ritual 令人毛骨悚然的故事/笑话/仪式。例句：Police have made a macabre discovery.警方有一个令人毛骨悚然的发现。来看个经济学人中的句子：Today, as Douglas Boin of Saint Louis University points out in his superb book, the word “Gothic” has become synonymous with all that is “dark, gloomy and macabre”. 如今，正如圣路易斯大学的道格拉斯•布因在其著作中所指出的那样，“哥特式”一词已成为所有“黑暗、阴郁和恐怖”的代名词。

这里的by one count可以理解为据统计…；还有个相似的是at the last count表示根据最新统计数字，以后写作中想列举数据，就可以先抛出这个短语。例句：At the last count, 400 people had agreed to join. 最新数据显示已经有400人同意加入。

gothic就表示哥特式的，比如巴黎圣母院失火，经济学人相关新闻就用的是这个词来形容大教堂：The devastating fire that broke out on April 15th, and destroyed much of the gothic cathedral’s wood-timbered roof and spire. 这场毁灭性火灾爆发于4月15日，摧毁了这座哥特式大教堂的大部分木质屋顶和塔尖。

gory和前面的macabre赶脚差不多，意思是血淋淋的；令人毛骨悚然的；骇人听闻的；Gory situations involve people being injured or dying in a horrible way. the gory death scenes.令人不寒而栗的死亡现场。那些不言而喻的残酷细节/血腥/不堪细节我们都可以说是gory details:

外刊如何评论走红中国的剧本杀？

cutthroat 形容竞争激烈的，残酷无情的。我们来回顾一个之前《路透社》写“双减”政策的句子：The changes being drafted by the Ministry of Education and other authorities target the cutthroat tutoring market for school students from kindergarten through to the 12th grade, or K-12 pupils, an industry that has grown rapidly in recent years.

[句型提取] 1）The growing popularity has sparked some concerns about X. 某事物的流行会引发对X的担忧。

2）A has led to a proliferation of B. A导致大量B的出现/A导致B的激增。[a proliferation of可以很好的表示出某事物的大量出现，动词用腻了也不妨试试名词短语。]

“There’s a huge demand for good scripts that’s just not met,” said Zhang Yi, 28, a Shanghai resident who played more than 90 games in just over a year. “The script is the foundation to everything in this game.”

28岁的上海居民张旖说：“好的剧本完全供不应求，”她在一年多的时间里玩了90多个剧本。“而好的剧本又是整个游戏的根本。”

Scripted homicides, known as jubensha in Chinese, require players to gather in a group to discuss a fake murder or other crime. Each player is assigned a character from a script, including one who plays the murderer. Then they engage in an elaborate role-playing game, asking questions of the host and each other, until they determine which one of them did the deed.

“剧本杀”要求玩家聚在一起，讨论一个虚构的谋杀或其他类型犯罪。每个玩家都被分配了一个剧本中的角色，包括凶手。然后在精心设计的角色扮演游戏中，他们向主持人提问并相互提问，直到确定哪一个是真凶。

homicide就是凶杀，杀人，和murder一样。例句：The jury returned a verdict of justifiable homicide. 陪审团作出了正当杀人的裁决。

deed表示做的事情，行为，功绩，事迹，比如我们说的好事坏事就是good/evil deeds.

[素材积累] 这段整个就是剧本杀Scripted homicides的简介。背就对啦！

In one club in Beijing, for example, players descend into a fantastical martial arts school where they don robes and assume roles like a peach fairy or a dragon. The script offers character backgrounds, relationships and potential storylines. The plot develops as the players go around the table, talking in character, taking hooks from the script and the host. In the end, they vote on who they think the murderer might be. (In that particular game, it was the kung fu student who practiced on a mountaintop.)

例如，在北京的一家剧本杀俱乐部，玩家们来到一个奇幻的武林门派，他们穿上长袍，扮演桃仙或龙的角色。剧本提供了人物背景、关系和潜在的故事情节。围成一桌的玩家从剧本和主持人那里得到提示，以角色的身份说话，推动情节的发展。最后，他们投票决定凶手是谁。（在这个游戏里，凶手是在山顶练功的武术学徒。）

[素材积累] 这段紧跟上上段，举了一个栗子。我们也可以加几句跟上段相结合一起背：The script offers character backgrounds, relationships and potential storylines. The plot develops as the players go around the table, talking in character, taking hooks from the script and the host. In the end, they vote on who they think the murderer might be.

注意一个词：assume这里不是“假设”的意思，而是表现出[某种表情]; 装出，做出某种样子；If you assume a particular expression or way of behaving, you start to look or behave in this way. 看个例句：He contented himself by assuming an air of superiority.他表现出一副高高在上的样子以获得自我满足。assume roles也就是扮演自己的角色，和role-playing，talking in character相呼应。

A successful, dramatic scripted homicide offers laughs, tension and maybe even tears. “They will cry,” said Poker Zhang, who owns a script-writing business in the city of Chengdu. “Players cry a lot.”

一个成功的、戏剧性的剧本杀游戏会带来欢笑、紧张甚至眼泪。“他们会流泪的，”在成都拥有一家剧本创作公司的张扑克说。“玩家哭的有很多。”

The whodunits may be imaginary, but they provide a real-world alternative for young Chinese people who spend increasing amounts of time on their screens.

虽然谋杀案是虚构的，但它们为在电子产品上花费越来越多时间的中国年轻人提供了一个现实世界的选择。

看个有趣的词：whodunit 它表示凶杀悬疑小说或电影、戏剧；A whodunnit is a novel, film, or play which is about a murder and which does not tell you who the murderer is until the end. 为啥呢？因为一般悬疑小说就是为了找出凶手，到底是who done it？这个whodunit读音就是who done it，不过要连在一起读：whodoneit→whodunit。

外刊如何评论走红中国的剧本杀？

[素材积累] 剧本杀的意义：They provide a real-world alternative for young Chinese people who spend increasing amounts of time on their screens.

The country’s one billion internet users spend much of their time on their phones, spurring worries from the public and the government alike about excessive screen time. The government’s concerns over children in particular has led it to restrict video game time for minors.

该国10亿互联网用户将大部分时间花在手机上，这引发了公众和政府对过度使用电子产品的担忧。政府尤其担忧它对儿童的影响，因此对未成年人的电子游戏时间施加了限制。

[句型提取] X has spurred worries from the public and the government alike about Y. X使公众和政府都开始担忧Y。

The games also provide free-flowing opportunities for young people to mingle, something that can be rare in China, according to Kecheng Fang, an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

香港中文大学新闻与传播学院助理教授方可成表示，这些游戏还为年轻人提供了畅所欲言的交流机会，这在中国可能是很少见的。

The games provide “a participatory experience and a way of socializing, which is missing from the life of many Chinese young people,” Dr. Fang said. “They lack participation in civic affairs, community engagement and meaningful socialization.”

这些游戏提供了“一种参与式的体验和一种社交方式，这是现在中国的年轻人非常缺乏的，”方可成说。“他们缺乏公共参与，缺乏社区生活，缺乏有意义的社交。”

free-flowing除了字面意思表示自由的，顺畅的，还可以表示大量可用的easily available in large amounts. 相当于plenty and abundant。例句：There was free-flowing champagne at the party.派对上香槟可以无限畅饮。

[素材积累] 剧本杀的意义：The games provide free-flowing opportunities for young people to mingle / a participatory experience and a way of socializing.

The pandemic briefly threatened the industry, say its adherents. But scripted homicides came back stronger than ever when travel restrictions stranded young people in their hometowns and left them looking for distractions.

剧本杀爱好者说，疫情曾短暂地威胁到该行业。但是，年轻人因出行限制被困在老家，导致他们寻找消遣时，剧本杀比以往任何时候都更受欢迎。

adherent追随者；拥护者；信徒；An adherent is someone who holds a particular belief or supports a particular person or group.在这里相当于剧本杀粉丝/爱好者了。看个经济学人例句：Adherents of the more radical call themselves “neo-Brandeisians” after Louis Brandeis, an early-20th-century American Supreme Court justice who thought the overarching purpose of government antitrust action should be to prevent any one firm from exerting too much power over the economy. 其中较激进的思路的拥护者自称“新布兰代斯主义者”。路易斯·布兰代斯（Louis Brandeis）是20世纪初美国最高法院的大法官，他认为政府反垄断措施的总体目标应是防止任何一家公司对经济有过大的影响力。

strand作动词表示因为一些负面的东西而滞留，使搁浅；If you are stranded, you are prevented from leaving a place, for example because of bad weather. 比如：The airport had to be closed, stranding tourists.机场被迫关闭，造成游客滞留。再来个经济学人例句：A mainland tech entrepreneur stranded in America by covid-19 says his American partners remain keen to do business, but his lawyers warn of two to three years of tension. 一位因疫情被困在美国的中国大陆科技企业家表示，他的美国合作伙伴仍然渴望合作，但他的律师警告说未来两三年的局势都会比较紧张。

“I couldn’t leave Beijing for two months,” said Gong Jin, 20, a veterinary medicine student. “I felt bored, so I often played script murder.”

“有两个月的时间不能离开北京，”学兽医专业的20岁学生宫瑾说。“我觉得无聊，就经常去玩剧本杀。”

Now, Ms. Gong works at a club part-time. “I shed tears every time I play,” she said. Much of the pleasure, she said, comes from matching players with a part in the script that “will touch you and resonate with you.”

现在，宫瑾在一家俱乐部兼职。她说：“每次我玩的时候都会流泪。”她说，剧本杀的乐趣大部分来自于剧本中让每个玩家“共鸣”的部分。

Last year, the number of scripted murder enterprises registered in China totaled about 6,500, a more than 60 percent increase from the prior year, according to state-run media, amping up competition.

据官方媒体报道，去年，中国注册的剧本杀企业总数约为6500家，比前一年增加了60%以上，这加剧了竞争。

amp up这个用法很不正式，意思其实就是increase增加，看一下来自剑桥的英文释义：to make something stronger, more extreme, or more exciting。所以amp up competition也就回到了最初提到过得cutthroat competition。再看个例句：They are amping up the pressure on their opponents. 他们正在加大对对手的压力。

外刊如何评论走红中国的剧本杀？

The decoration of the rooms and quality of the hosts can distinguish one club from another. But each club really lives and dies by the quality of their scripts. Bai Lu, a club owner in Beijing, said, “Investment into props and offline features is not as high as our investment in scripts.”

房间的装修和主持人的素质将俱乐部之间拉开差距。但所有俱乐部的生死都取决于剧本的质量。北京一家俱乐部的老板白露表示：“我们线下的、道具的投入没有在本子上的投入高。”

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