文胸致癌与机器人取代人类成微信敏感话题大纲

To the list of things that should not be uttered in modern China, add these: Padded bras cause cancer. The earth is on the brink of falling into a period of darkness for six days. Robots will soon conquer entire industries and eliminate the need for human labor.

在今天的中国，不可公开讨论之事的清单上又多了几样：带衬垫的文胸致癌。地球即将进入六日黑暗期。机器人很快就要在所有产业大行其道，取代所有人类劳动力。

These were among the seemingly trivial posts on WeChat, a popular messaging app, that have been censored, according to a study by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

多伦多大学(University of Toronto)“公民实验室”(Citizen Lab)的研究显示，包括上述内容在内，一些看起来颇为琐碎的微信帖子已经受到审查。微信是一款广受欢迎的聊天应用。

Censorship in China is a well-known phenomenon, with bureaucrats working assiduously to augment the stature of leaders and restrict discussion of topics deemed controversial, such as Tibet and Taiwan. But the Toronto researchers found that these faithful guardians of the Communist Party line have turned their attention to more mundane matters, devoting time and server strength to preventing rumors, fabricated news reports and superstitious premonitions from going viral.

审查在中国是人尽皆知的现象，官僚们兢兢业业地从事相关工作，以便提升领导人的形象，并压制对西藏、台湾问题等当局眼中敏感话题的讨论。但多伦多大学的研究人员发现，共产党的官方意见的这群忠诚卫士，已经把注意力转移到更为世俗的事情上，会花大量时间和服务器的力量，来防范谣言、虚假新闻报道以及带有迷信色彩的预言的广泛传播。

“Online rumors can be viewed as a kind of social protest by citizens skeptical of official news,” explained Jason Q. Ng, one of the Toronto researchers.

“可以把网络谣言看作对官方新闻持怀疑态度的公民发起的一种社会抗议，”多伦多大学的研究人员之一杰森·Q·吴(Jason Q. Ng)解释道。

WeChat is a mobile chat application with 762 million monthly users, that allows public postings, similar to Facebook. One recent study showed that Chinese people spend an average of 40 minutes per day using WeChat.

微信这款月活跃用户数为7.62亿的移动聊天应用，像Facebook一样允许公开发帖。最近的一项研究显示，中国人平均每天花40分钟刷微信。

The University of Toronto study examined 36,000 posts that had been shared publicly on third-party websites over nine months between 2014- and 2015. The posts were not selected at random; the researchers made a point of monitoring several dozen users who had a history of sharing what the Chinese deemed sensitive content.

多伦多大学的研究对2014至2015年间的9个月里被公开分享到第三方网站上的3.6万个帖子进行了追踪。这些帖子不是随机挑选出来的；研究人员专门监控数十名分享过中国人眼中的敏感信息的微信用户。

About four percent of those studied were censored, including musings on the safety of drinking water in China; speculation that several celebrities were on the verge of death; and supposition that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, was undergoing secret medical treatment in China.

研究人员追踪的这些帖子，约有4%受到了审查，其中包括关于中国饮用水安全的讨论、对几个名人处于死亡边缘的揣测，以及对朝鲜领导人金正恩(Kim Jong-un)正在中国接受秘密治疗的猜想。

Zhao Yulian, 36, a technology entrepreneur, was thwarted when she recently tried to share an article about tips to avoid getting cancer. “At some point,” she said, “you have to ask, why is this sensitive information?”

不久前， 36岁的科技创业者赵玉莲（音）试图分享一篇关于如何避免患上癌症的文章，却没能成功。“在某个时刻，”她说，“你禁不住要问，这为什么是敏感信息？”