評論
打印
Digital family trees
數字式家譜
This little isle
大不列顛這個小島
A new website celebrates connections between Britons
一個新成立的網站對大不列顛關系網欣喜不已
TRACING family trees is a popular British pastime. Television programmes show celebrities rummaging through old census documents. Websites help amateur sleuths track down distant relatives. A new project launched on August 26th provides another twist to the obsession.
追蹤家譜是大不列顛一項流行的消遣方式。電視節目總是播放著名人們為尋親而不斷查找老舊的人口普查資料的信息。網站幫助業余偵探尋找人們的遠房親戚。一個在8月26號新建的項目則帶來了一股扭曲的熱潮。
“KindredBritain” is a website launched by Nicholas Jenkins, an English professor atStanfordUniversityinCalifornia. The project grew out of Professor Jenkins’s research into both his own background and that of W.H. Auden, a 20th-century poet. The website now holds entries on nearly 30,000 Britons. Visitors to the website trace relations between different people using clear infographics and interactive tools. Admirals, bankers, poets, painters, lawyers and politicians are all in the mix. Unlike traditional family trees, these include bigamists, same-sex couples and illegitimate children.
“同族的英國人”是由尼古拉斯·詹金斯創辦的，他是位于加州斯坦福大學的教授。創建這個網站的靈感來源于詹金斯教授對自己身世的追溯和對20世紀詩人奧登本經的調查研究。現在這個網站在英國已有近3萬訪問量。進入網站的訪客使用清晰的信息圖表和交互工具來追蹤人們之間的關系。船隊隊長、銀行家、詩人、畫家、律師以及政治家都包括在其中。有別于以往的家譜，這項項目包括重婚者、同性戀以及私生子。
The project is an intriguing example of the “digital humanities”. Scholars are starting to interact with coders and website designers to make their research more accessible and data publicly available.
這個項目是“數字人文”的一個有趣的例子。學者們開始和編碼員以及網站設計師就同族英國人項目進行交流來使尋親搜索更加可靠，尋親信息更加公開化。
Certain affinities appear in the data. Poets are often related to each other whereas novelists tend to be linked by marriage. T.S. Eliot, a 20th-century American-born poet, is a distant cousin of the British bards Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley (a link presumably unknown to Eliot). In contrast links between Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, perhaps the two most famous 19th-century novelists, are through several generations of marriages. As characters in novels are more meritocratic, so too are novelists.
在數據中，一些親緣關系出現了。詩人往往是相互關聯的，而小說家一般是通過婚姻來掛鉤。20世紀出生在美國的詩人艾略特是英國吟游詩人阿爾佛雷德、坦尼森、拜倫、波比·雪萊等的遠親表弟，（這層關系艾略特應該不知道）。與之形成對比的是，可稱之為19世紀最著名的兩位小說家簡奧斯汀和狄更斯之間的關系是通過好幾代婚姻來建立的。因為小說中的人物更加精英化，所以他們自己也是小說家。
Other connections are more unexpected. Gwyneth Paltrow (pictured), an American actress, is linked by marriage to A.C. Swinburne, a Victorian poet who dabbled in sadomasochistic verses. David Cameron, the prime minister, is distantly connected to Harold Pinter, a dramatist who once said that voting for Margaret Thatcher in 1979 was “the most shameful act of my life”. Kevin Bacon, a famously well-connected American actor, is related to the 16th-century philosopher Francis Bacon.
還有一些關系是沒有想到的。美國女演員格溫妮絲·帕特洛（上圖右），通過婚姻與涉足于虐戀詩的維多利亞時期的斯溫伯恩建立關系。首相卡梅隆與戲劇家哈羅德·品特是遠方親戚，哈羅德·品特曾表示1979年投票選舉瑪格麗特·撒切爾是他一生中感覺最羞恥的行為。出生名門的凱文·貝肯與16世紀的哲學家弗蘭西斯·培根有親戚關系。
And yet despite its novelty, “Kindred Britain” touches on an older notion. Even within the sprawl of data, a handful of families are shown to have shaped British culture and history. The number of prime ministers related to each other may not be surprising. But the links between different walks of life are illuminating, for both literary critics and celebrity-spotters alike.
盡管“同族的英國人”這個項目很新奇，但是它卻涉及一個古老的概念。即使身處于這些雜亂無章的數據里面，一些家庭還是看到了自己已經影響了大不列顛的文化和歷史。不論對于文學評論家還是名人評論家來說，首相之間的關系或許不足以讓人吃驚，但是不同階級之間的關系確是很有深意的。
