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The National Transportation Safety Board, the US agency responsible for investigation plane crashes, is headquartered in a squat, seventies-ear office building on the banks of Potomac River in Washington, DC.
美國國家交通安全委員會簡稱（NTSB），一家低矮的主要負責(zé)調(diào)查飛機失事原因的機構(gòu)，其總部設(shè)在華盛頓特區(qū)的波托馬克河岸，擁有70多間辦公室。
Off the agency's long hallways are laboratories filled with airplane wreckage:
從該機構(gòu)長長的走廊里，可以看到實驗室里到處都是飛機的殘骸:
a mangled piece of engine turbine, a problematic piece of helicopter rotor.
一塊破損的引擎渦輪，一塊從直升機上掉下來的轉(zhuǎn)輪。
On a shelf in one of the laboratories is the cockpit voice and data recorder-the so-called black box-from the devastating ValueJet crash in Florida in 1996, where 110 people were killed.
在一個實驗室的架子上放置了一個駕駛艙聲音和數(shù)據(jù)錄音裝置——它被稱為“黑匣子”——里面記錄了1996年瓦盧杰航空公司發(fā)生在佛羅里達的墜機事故，該事故傷亡慘重，在這場事故中有110人遇難身亡。
The recorder is encased in a shoe box-size housing made out of thick, hardened steel, and on one end of the box,
黑匣子有如一個鞋盒大小，由厚重的鋼鐵制成，
there is a jagged hole, as if someone- or, rather,something- has driven a stake into it with tremendous force.
其中一端有一個齒形圓洞，好像有人或有硬物以很大的外力扎入。
Some of the NTSB investigators are engineers, who reconstruct crashed from the material evidence.Others are pilots.
可依據(jù)物證來還原事故現(xiàn)場的工程師、飛行員
A surprising number of them, though, are psychologists, whose job it is to listen to the cockpit recorder and reconstruct what was said and done by the flight crew in the final minutes before a crash.
以及讓人意想不到的參與者——心理學(xué)家構(gòu)成了NTSB的調(diào)查小組，他們的主要工作就是聆聽黑匣子，還原飛行員在事故發(fā)生前幾分鐘的所作所為。
One of the NTSB's leading black-box specialist is a gangly fiftyish PhD psychologist named Malcolm Brenner,and Brenner was one of the investigators on the Korean Air crash in Guam.
NTSB負責(zé)調(diào)查黑匣子的專家組成員之一，是一位名叫麥肯·博瑞納的心理學(xué)博士，他50多歲，身材瘦長，博瑞納也是曾親臨關(guān)島事故現(xiàn)場的調(diào)查人員之一。
"Normally that approach into Guam is not difficult," Brenner began.
“正常情況下，通過那條線路進入關(guān)島并不難。”博瑞納說。
Guam airport had what is called a glide scope, which is like a giant beam of light stretching up into the sky from the airport, and the pilot simply follows the beam all the way down to the runway.
關(guān)島機場有跑道射燈，那就好比從機場射出一道巨型的光束照亮整個天空，飛行員可以很清楚地跟隨光束進入跑道。
But on this particular night, the glide scope was down."It was out of service," Brenner said. "It had been sent to another island to be repaired.
“但是在那天晚上，跑道射燈壞了，”博瑞鈉說，“跑道射燈被送到其他島上進行維修。
So there was a notice to airman the glide scope was not operating."
因此機場人員向飛行員提示‘跑道射燈’無法正常運作。”
In the grand scheme of things, this should not have been a problem.
在眾多程序中，這不是個大問題。
