“OK”將迎來175歲生日 全球最流行詞語！

The word is “OK,” the most frequently spoken all-purpose expression on the planet — and it’s turning 175 years old on March 23.
“OK”是全球使用頻率最高的、最通用的詞語，今年3月23日，它就要175歲了。

The term was born during a 19th-century abbreviation craze and went on to international renown, with its own hand gesture, even.
“OK”誕生於19世紀的縮寫潮中，後來跟它的手勢一起紅遍了全球。

And one New Yorker is carrying the linguistic torch. Henry Nass, a 64-year-old retired English tutor from the Upper West Side, has spent the last few weeks handing out cards championing “Global OK Day” in advance of the coming anniversary.
一個紐約人正在舉着這個語言學上的耀眼火炬奔走宣傳。在175週年紀念日來臨之前，美國紐約市上西區64歲的退休英語教師亨利·納斯已經連續幾周在街頭派發倡導 “國際OK日”的卡片。

“No matter where people are from they use the word ‘OK,’ but they don’t know where it comes from,” says Nass. “The problem is because it’s just, you know, OK.”
納斯說：“世界各地的人都會說OK，但他們並不知道這個詞語的來源，原因可能是這個詞真的太普及了。”

The word is OK, perhaps, but its history is definitely better than average. Late etymologist Allen Walker Read traced the two-letter word to 1839, when editors at the Boston Morning Post signed off on articles as “all correct” with a winking “OK” or “oll korrect.”
“OK”這個詞可能很普及，但是它的歷史絕對不夠普及。已故詞源學家艾倫·沃克·裏德曾認爲OK的歷史始於1839年。當時，《波士頓早報》的編輯們在簽署文章時用簡明的“OK”或“oll korrect”來表示“完全正確”(all correct)。

The word made it into print on March 23 of that year, during a weird inside-baseball tirade against a rival editor in Providence who had alleged, wrongly, that a band of Bostonians headed to New York would pass through the Rhode Island capital.
同一年的3月23日，OK第一次登上報紙，《波士頓早報》在一篇攻擊普羅維頓斯的一個編輯對手的文章裏使用了這個詞語。這個編輯錯誤地斷言一羣前往紐約的波士頓人將會途經美國羅得島州的首府（即普羅維頓斯）。

“We said not a word about our deputation passing ‘through the city’ of Providence,” the Morning Post reported. “O.K. — all correct.”
《波士頓早報》報道：“我們從來沒說過我們代表團將會‘途經普羅維頓斯’O.K. ——完全正確。”The humor of the Providence-Boston joke has been lost to history — but the word OK took off from there, soon connoting agreement, acceptance, mediocrity, endorsement, quality or likability.
這個關於普羅維登斯和波士頓的笑話已經是過去的歷史了，但是OK這個詞從此風靡，很快就包含了同意、接受、普通、支持、棒極了和可愛的意思。

By 1840, it served as a slogan for President Martin Van Buren’s unsuccessful reelection campaign. “Old Kinderhook is OK,” posters proclaimed, a reference to the eighth president’s birthplace and his partisans’ belief in his generally satisfactory performance.
在1840年，OK成爲美國總統馬丁·範布倫競選連任的宣傳標語，雖然範布倫最後失敗了。海報上寫着“金德胡克很OK”，金德胡克指的是這位第八任美國總統的出生地。這句口號顯示了跟隨馬丁·範布倫的黨派對他的政治表現總體上還是比較滿意的。

OK was picked up by telegraph operators as an easy abbreviation to say they received transmission, and in 1969, Buzz Aldrin’s first words spoken on the moon were “OK. Engine stop,” says Allan Metcalf, author of “OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word.”
OK早先被電報員們廣泛使用，是表達他們接收成功的簡易縮寫。《OK：美國最偉大詞語不可思議的故事》一書作者艾倫·梅特卡夫說：“在1969年，宇航員巴茲·奧爾德林在月球上說的第一句話就是 ‘OK，發動機停止’。”

After all, to activate Google Glass, you don’t say, “OMG, Glass,” you say, “OK, Glass.”
而且，谷歌眼鏡的語音啓動是“OK, Glass”而不是“OMG, Glass”。

“We happen to know the exact date and place of the very first ‘OK’ and that’s not very usual for many words so why not celebrate that day?” says Metcalf, whose book built on Read’s earlier research.
梅特卡夫說：“我們知道了OK誕生的時間和地點，這對於許多詞語來說並不常見，所以我們爲什麼不慶祝這一天呢？”他的書《OK：美國最偉大詞語不可思議的故事》是在那位已故詞源學家裏德早期的研究基礎上編撰的。

In a sense, the United Nations — where six languages are instantaneously converted by experts — celebrates the word every day. In fact, translators don’t even bother to render “OK” in each diplomat’s chosen tongue because everyone on the planet understands it already.
從某種意義上來說，有專業譯者同時翻譯6種語言的聯合國每天都在讚美OK這個詞。事實上，翻譯員們不用將OK翻譯成外交官的母語，因爲每個人都懂得它的意思。

“It’s a word that tends not to be translated, but transported,” says Peter Connor, the director of the Center for Translation studies at Barnard College.
巴納德學院翻譯研究中心主任皮特·康納表示：“這是個不用翻譯，僅需傳遞的詞。”