VOA慢速英语:Consumers' Online Petitions Put Pressure on Businesses

The modern way to collect signatures on a petition requires no paper or pen or standing on a street for hours. All it requires is going online.
现今收集请愿书签名的方式不再需要纸和笔，也不需要在街上站几个小时，而所需的只是上网而已。

Change.org is a social action website where people around the world can start or sign online petitions. The top causes range from animal protection to criminal justice to women's rights.
Change.org是一个社会行为网站，世界各地的人们可以在该网站上启动或签署网上请愿书。最热门的事件范围从动物保护到针对妇女权利的刑事司法。

There are many different reasons why people start petitions at the site. Lauren Todd of New York told CBS television that she started a petition a few months ago after she saw a picture of a girls shirt on Facebook. The shirt read: "I'm too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me."
人们在该网站发起请愿的原因各不相同。来自纽约的Lauren Todd告诉CBS电视台称，几个月前，她在Facebook上看到一张女衬衫的图片后，发起了一次请愿。该衬衫上写着：“我太漂亮了，以至于不能做功课，因此我哥不得不帮我完成。”

LAUREN TODD: "It was outrageous enough to be posted on Facebook, but it was actually more outrageous than that, and I felt like I needed to do something about it."
LAUREN TODD：“把它发表在Facebook上已经够离谱的，但它实际上比这更为离谱。而我觉得我需要做点什么。”

Ms. Todd's petition urged shoppers to boycott J.C. Penney stores until they stopped selling shirts with what she called sexist messages.
Todd女士的请愿呼吁买家们抵制J.C. Penney商店，直到它们停止销售被她称为性别歧视的衬衫。

Five hours later, Shelby Knox started tweeting about the petition to her thousands of Twitter followers. Ms. Knox is the director of women's rights organizing for Change.org. Some of her followers also started tweeting about the shirt and signing the petition.
五个小时后， Shelby Knox把该请愿书转发到Tweet给她数千名粉丝。Knox女士是Change.org网站妇女权利组织主任。她的一些粉丝也开始转播关于衬衫的这件事，并签署了请愿书。

SHELBY KNOX: "From the time that Lauren started the petition on Change.org and J.C. Penney pulled the shirt, it was about ten hours, in which it got over two thousand signatures and at one point was generating over four hundred tweets a minute."
SHELBY KNOX：“从Lauren在Change.org网站发起请愿的时间到J.C. Penney商店下架衬衫，大约用了十个小时。这次请愿获得超过2千个签名，曾一度在一分钟之被转播超过400次。”

Ms. Knox said that with each new signature, an e-mail automatically went to J.C. Penney's public relations team. Another went to the company's chief. J.C. Penney, without comment, discontinued the shirts.
Knox女士说，每一个新签名都会自动发送一封电子邮件到J.C. Penney的公关小组。另一封发给公司负责人。J.C. Penney公司未作任何评论，但该衬衫却停产了。

Clothing designer John Noone has worked with a number of large stores. He says he has always used words like "pretty" or "princess" when he creates shirts for girls.
服装设计师John Noone曾与一些大型卖场合作。他说，他设计女衬衣时一直使用类似“漂亮”或“公主”之类的词汇。

JOHN NOONE: "Because it's easy to do, I guess it's just so ingrained in our culture that just it's an easy sale. It's going to be easier to sell a shirt that says, you know, 'My little princess' than, uh, 'My A student.'"
JOHN NOONE：“因为这很容易做到，我猜这样会好卖在我们的文化中已经根深蒂固。你知道，写着‘小公主’的衬衣会比写着‘学生’的衬衣更好卖一些。”

Mr. Noone says fashion designers find their ideas in many places. It could be a celebrity's tweet or something said on a TV show.
Noone先生说，时装设计师会从许多地方寻找创意。它可能是一位名人的微博，或一个电视节目上所说的话。

JOHN NOONE: "And if you think it's funny and the designer thinks it's funny and the buyer thinks it's funny, then it, you know, it makes it to the store."
JOHN NOONE：“而如果你觉得它很有趣，设计师和买家也觉得有趣，那么，你知道的，商店就会开始出售。”
 
But now, with the Internet, consumers who take offense can do more than just write an angry letter to the company.
但现在，有了互联网，生气的消费者不仅仅是给公司写封表示愤怒的信，还可以做更多。

Another clothing seller, Forever 21, got in trouble not long after J.C. Penney. Forever 21 was selling a girl's shirt that read "Allergic to Algebra." It stopped selling them the day after the story spread.
继J.C. Penney之后，另一家服装零售商，Forever 21在也惹上了麻烦。Forever 21过去销售过一件写着“对代数过敏”的女衬衫。在这件事传开之后，该公司就停止出售了。

Robin Sackin is a professor at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology. She thinks people should not get so angry. Children are influenced by their parents, she says, not the words on a shirt.
Robin Sackin是纽约时装技术学院一名教授。她认为人们不该如此生气，儿童是受父母的影响，她说，而不是印在衬衫上的话。
 
ROBIN SACKIN: "So if my child says to me 'Mommy, I want to get that,' I've said, 'OK, you can have it, but just remember something -- I don't care if you're pretty, you're doing your homework.'"
ROBIN SACKIN：“因此，如果我孩子对我说，‘妈妈，我想买那件，’我会说，‘好吧，你可以买这件衣服，但你要记住，我才不管你漂亮，你要自己做作业！’”