Meet Kathleen the mouse and Mark the elephant. Kathleen is very brave and likes adventure, but Mark is very shy and scared of many things. But friends stay together, so Mark follows Kathleen wherever she goes. Sometimes they get into some very sticky situation.
見見老鼠凱薩琳和大象馬克。凱薩琳非常勇敢又喜歡冒險，但馬克的個性十分害羞，對許多事情都感到害怕。不過，朋友都喜歡黏在一塊兒，所以凱薩琳走到哪兒，馬克就會跟到哪兒。有時候，牠們也會碰上非常棘手的情況...
One bright, sunny day, Kathleen decided she wanted to go on a picnic. "Let's go to the park," she said. "It's a beautiful day. We could eat outside, climb trees and fly a kite." But Mark didn't like that idea at all. "Oh no," he said. "The park is too scary. There are bees that can sting you, dogs that can bark at you and ants that can get into the food." But Kathleen was already packing a basket full of yummy foods to eat, like apples, sandwiches and cookies. When he saw the cookies, Mark thought maybe a picnic could be nice after all, and off they went to the park.
After they ate their food, Kathleen took out a frisbee. "Catch!" she yelled, as she threw it across the park. Mark ran after it, and as he ran, the ground began to shake. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, it went. But Mark wasn't fast enough. A dog jumped up and caught the frisbee. It was a small dog, but Mark was scared. He reached his trunk out to take the frisbee from the dog, but the dog growled at him. "Help!" he yelled, and Kathleen ran over to him.
She ran right up to the dog and jumped up to grab the frisbee. "Give that back!" she said, holding onto the frisbee and hanging in the air. "It's not yours!" Just then, someone called to the dog and it barked and ran away. Kathleen dropped to the ground. "Ouch!" she said.
在一個晴朗無雲的日子裡，凱薩琳決定要去郊遊野餐。她說：「我們去公園吧！今天天氣很好，我們可以到外面野餐、爬樹和放風箏。」不過馬克一點都不喜歡這個點子，他說：「才不要呢！公園好可怕，那裡除了有會螫你的蜜蜂、對著你狂吠猛叫的小狗，還有會爬進食物的螞蟻。」可是，凱薩琳已經裝好一整籃美味的食物像是蘋果、三明治和餅乾，準備好好享用。馬克一看到餅乾，心想或許野餐也蠻不錯的。
吃完東西後，凱薩琳拿出一個飛盤。她把飛盤丟向公園的另一頭，並大喊：「接住！」馬克追著飛盤跑，他一邊跑，地面也開始震動，還發出了「隆、隆、隆」的聲音。可惜馬克跑得不夠快，一隻狗跳起來接住了飛盤。雖然那只是隻小狗，但馬克已經開始害怕。他伸出長鼻，想從小狗那兒搶下飛盤，沒想到小狗竟然開始對他咆叫。嚇得馬克大喊「救命啊！」，凱薩琳一聽便趕緊跑了過來。
她跑向小狗，奮力一跳抓住飛盤。緊抓飛盤的她吊在半空中說：「還給我！那不是你的！」這時候，有人呼叫那隻小狗，小狗吠了幾聲便一溜煙跑走。凱薩琳摔到地面上，痛得大叫「哎喲！」
Undersea cables are conductors wrapped in insulating materials and laid on the seabed. Their main functions are telecommunications or power transmission. The core of the undersea cables used for Internet signals is optical fiber, using light to transmit Internet signals. Taiwan’s communications are currently handled by 10 domestic undersea cables and 14 international undersea cables. About 99 percent of Taiwan’s Internet bandwidth relies on undersea cables, making them Taiwan’s “digital lifeline.” The demands on the cables’ bandwidth are only set to increase with the development of artificial intelligence (AI), which relies on the data fed into it. Today, data is
Street lights are often taken for granted until a power outage plunges the world into darkness. When that happens, the value of these lighting installations becomes evident as the world turns into a more dangerous place for pedestrians and motorists alike. The Chinese could claim to be the first to have constructed a crude type of street light. Around 500 BC, residents of Beijing employed a type of street lamp that used hollow bamboo pipes and natural gas vents to create burning torches. Later, ancient Romans adopted lamps fueled by vegetable oil, which relied on slaves to light and
Recent events in Taiwan have highlighted the contentious nature of “priority seating” on public transportation. Incidents, such as passengers experiencing emotional distress after being compelled to give up their seats and elderly individuals attacking others after being refused a seat, have prompted a national reassessment of this policy. Some voices in Taiwan now advocate for abolishing priority seats to prevent such conflicts. This issue is not unique to Taiwan. In South Korea, where respect for the elderly is deeply ingrained, priority seating has led to similar confrontations. Younger passengers often face accusations of disrespect if they do not yield seats. In
Spoiler alert and shift blame 破梗&甩鍋 在新冠疫情期間，無論是因為封城 (lockdown) 還是居家隔離 (self-isolation at home)，人們關在家中使用網路的時間大增。這也讓一些原本只存在於網路論壇的用語廣為普及。我們來談一下破梗 (spoiler alert) 與甩鍋 (shift blame) 這兩個用語。 有位古典文學教授 Joel Christensen 針對領導統御與疫情控制寫了一篇以古喻今、相當深入的文章：“Plagues follow bad leadership in ancient Greek tales”，文中出現一些講法，可用來翻譯上述的流行語： In the 5th century B.C., the playwright Sophocles begins Oedipus Tyrannos with the title character struggling to identify the cause of a plague striking his city, Thebes. (Spoiler alert: It’s his own bad leadership.) (Joel Christensen, “Plagues follow bad leadership in ancient Greek tales,” The Conversation, March 12, 2020) 作者提到 Oedipus（伊底帕斯）想找出瘟疫何以降臨他的城邦的緣由，加了一句：Spoiler alert: It’s his own bad leadership.（破梗：領導無方）。Spoiler alert 就是「破梗」，如果用在有人洩漏電影劇情的情境中，也可以翻作「小心爆雷」或「劇透警告」。疫情之下，在家看影集、電影成了很多人的娛樂，但要小心劇透 (spoilers)，很多 YouTube 上的影評在開頭也都會說 Spoiler alert!，警告還沒看過電影的觀眾小心爆雷、劇透。 至於「甩鍋」，源自大陸網民用語，通常意指某人犯了錯之後想推卸責任、轉移焦點、甚至讓別人背黑鍋的做法。疫情爆發後，相關網路資訊量爆增，許多中國網民也想找人為這場疫情負責，紛紛呼籲地方政府首長、地方黨書記不要「甩鍋」。 其實，在古代文學《奧德賽》中，就有「將自己的責任怪罪眾神」的說法，試用時下流行的「甩鍋」來重新翻譯： Humans are always blaming the gods for their suffering, but they experience
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