“OK”将迎来175岁生日 全球最流行词语！

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.
这个关于普罗维登斯和波士顿的笑话已经是过去的历史了，但是OK这个词从此风靡，很快就包含了同意、接受、普通、支持、棒极了和可爱的意思。

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成为美国总统马丁·范布伦竞选连任的宣传标语，虽然范布伦最后失败了。海报上写着“金德胡克很OK”，金德胡克指的是这位第八任美国总统的出生地。这句口号显示了跟随马丁·范布伦的党派对他的政治表现总体上还是比较满意的。

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早先被电报员们广泛使用，是表达他们接收成功的简易缩写。《OK：美国最伟大词语不可思议的故事》一书作者艾伦·梅特卡夫说：“在1969年，宇航员巴兹·奥尔德林在月球上说的第一句话就是 ‘OK，发动机停止’。”

After all, to activate Google Glass, you don’t say, “OMG, Glass,” you say, “OK, Glass.”
而且，谷歌眼镜的语音启动是“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.
梅特卡夫说：“我们知道了OK诞生的时间和地点，这对于许多词语来说并不常见，所以我们为什么不庆祝这一天呢？”他的书《OK：美国最伟大词语不可思议的故事》是在那位已故词源学家里德早期的研究基础上编撰的。

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.
从某种意义上来说，有专业译者同时翻译6种语言的联合国每天都在赞美OK这个词。事实上，翻译员们不用将OK翻译成外交官的母语，因为每个人都懂得它的意思。

“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.
巴纳德学院翻译研究中心主任皮特·康纳表示：“这是个不用翻译，仅需传递的词。”