當我們花了錢買份報紙回家，或上網瀏覽新聞網站，或打開電視收看新聞，希望方便地透過這些媒介獲取資訊、拓展見聞，甚至是和世界取得連繫時，我們事實上已多少將我們的信賴賦予了新聞媒體和它的從業者。我們相信媒體從業者不會大膽欺騙、造假，相信透過媒體從業人員的安排，我們能夠多少掌握到重點，多少捕捉到事件始末的大綱、原委，或某些人物面貌的速寫。但事實不然，我們經常得面對媒體從業者有意或無意的斷章取義，如果我們的相關外語能力並不具備，便往往不得不因此被迫只能擷取片面或失焦的二手訊息，形成莫名其妙的奇怪印象。這兒，就有一則例子。

2002.02.05中國時報藝文新聞刊出了一則譯自紐約時報(The New York Times)的「報導」〈恐怖攻擊前後 取材自網路〉。我不清楚問題是出在撰寫者洪嘉麗個人的譯稿本來就不全，或是中時藝文版編輯為了撙節版面刻意逕行刪削或斷章取義。總之，這篇翻譯的「報導」不僅並未充分反映2002.02.04《網路版紐約時報》「ARTS ONLINE」專欄原文〈Today's Publishing: Better by the Book or by the Web?〉(作者：Matthew Mirapaul)的內容，也讓原文試圖深入討論網路作為書寫媒介的特點，以及它和實體書間的種種比較的這一要旨大大失焦，甚至片面作出了「網路的立即性、生動性、互動性和背景，都勝過實本書籍」的結論。

藝文新聞雖不像政治、社會新聞經常充滿爭議，但潛移默化的誤導，影響可能更為深遠。現在，我先將《紐約時報》該篇原文貼在下頭，以供朋友們參校，並請有興趣的朋友們日後多留意此類「報導」的可議之處。如有必要，我也願意另日稍稍花點時間將原文悉數譯出、比對，讓大夥見識見識中國時報藝文版在處理類似「報導」時的粗糙手法。

The New York Times on the Web
February 4, 2002
ARTS ONLINE
Today's Publishing: Better by the Book or by the Web?
By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL

New York City has twice as many stories now. Everyone has a tale to tell, but since Sept. 11 everyone here can also describe the personal impact of that day's epochal events.

Thomas Beller, a New York novelist and editor, presents nearly 200 of these real-life accounts on his Web site, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood. The 18-month-old project is an online anthology of essays, memoirs and vignettes, most of them written before the World Trade Center attacks by authors in Mr. Beller's literary circle or by the site's visitors.

Next week Mr. Beller is also moving offline with the official release of "Before and After: Stories From New York," a self-published paperback containing 60 articles from the Web site. It is being distributed by W. W. Norton. Like the Web site the book relates colorful pre-Sept. 11 encounters with cops, coffee vendors and taxicab drivers as well as wrenching post-Sept. 11 accounts like a meditation (by Anne Kovach) on the death of the artist Michael Richards in 1 World Trade Center.

The appearance of the bound volume does not mean that Mr. Beller, 36, is abandoning the commercially iffy sphere of cyberspace for the iffy conventional publishing world. Instead he intends to expand the Web site and remains as committed to the Internet as a medium as he is to the book.

"Thinking about writing and the Internet is like thinking about writing and the paper-mill industry," Mr. Beller said. "They do have a tangential relationship, but this scenario ?the work we publish in the Neighborhood and now the book ?suggests that the medium isn't the message. The words are." Are they? By presenting the same material on the screen as on the printed page, Mr. Beller provides an opportunity for readers to compare the two experiences.

Given a choice between reading a story onscreen and reading it on the page, most people will prefer the traditional format. A book is tangible, portable, familiar and reliable. The type is crisp. Sunlight does not prevent you from seeing it. As the electronic book industry flounders, it is evident that readers can resist a digital version of a real-world text.

But Mr. Beller's site, www.mrbellersneighborhood.com, offers more than pure text. It is built around a simple yet compelling device: a detailed satellite map of Manhattan. Each article is linked to the location where its action is set. Click on a red dot at Fifth Avenue and 49th Street, and a window pops up to display Jeanette Winterson's passion for Saks's socks. Click on the World Trade Center, and two dozen accounts of the attacks and their aftermath become accessible.

Steven E. Jones, an English professor at Loyola University of Chicago with an interest in digital texts, said that the close visual relationship between the online stories and their geographic locations imbued them with a palpable sense of place and personal experience.

"As you zoom in, you get this feeling that you know exactly where you are," Mr. Jones said. "He's hit on that thing that people feel about a city: every street corner could tell stories. It immediately makes you start thinking of your own."

On the site is a link, "Tell Mr. Beller a Story," that encourages visitors to contribute their own tales. Whether it is used or not, Mr. Jones said, the feature implies that the reader is part of the site's community and not alone with the texts.

Mr. Jones cited another simple touch on the site, a real-time clock, which, he said, conveyed a sense that the site is alive and its material can be updated at any moment. By contrast, he said, once the text is between covers, "that chunk of it is separated and becomes static."

Paula Geyh, co-editor of the Norton Anthology of Postmodern Fiction (1997), likened Mr. Beller's site to those 1940's mysteries with maps of a crime scene and its surroundings on their back covers. Because the Web site is interactive ?visitors can read downtown to uptown or, if they know the route, follow a subway line ?it seems more immediate and grounded in reality than the vintage books.

Ms. Geyh said: "This site creates a much more dynamic and kinetic experience. It is akin to a virtual stroll around the neighborhood in which one pauses to chat with acquaintances and overhears fragments of conversations along the way."

Presenting the stories in such a desultory fashion is not an option with a book, where Page 2 always comes after Page 1. In choosing the order of the stories, Mr. Beller said, "I was approaching it like a concert. You start off all loud and up, then bring it down a bit, then go back up."

Scott Rettberg, founder of the Electronic Literature Organization, said the linear progression of a printed collection reflects its editor's artistic decisions. But online, he said: "Readers expect they will be able to make navigational decisions and form their own compositions from the available material. The music of print is more classical than the improvisational jazz of electronic writing."

Mr. Beller declined to favor one medium over another. He argued that the writer's eye more than the reader's imagination benefited from situating the stories in a physical location. He said the order in which the stories are read does not affect their individual integrity. If anything, he said, "seeing the pieces aligned in the more linear fashion and on something you can spill tomato soup on is very gratifying."

As for the Web site's evolving contents ?three to five stories are added each week ?Mr. Beller compared the site to serial novels: "It's like this giant, unfolding Dickens narrative that you pick up and read for a couple hundred pages. It's not in any way resolved."

In producing the printed edition, Mr. Beller used what might be considered a couple of multimedia tricks. Each story is accompanied by a small abstract map, although it does no more than vaguely indicate the tale's location.

But another idea is more effective. The book actually has two front covers, one for the "before" stories and one for the "after." Readers who finish one section reach upside-down pages. Mr. Beller said that approach was intended to depict how the city was upended on Sept. 11.

There is also a flip side to the Web site. It may seem more immediate, more alive, more interactive and more grounded than the book. But without the interactive map, readers of the printed version are forced to project themselves more deeply into the verbal world that the authors have constructed.

Mr. Beller said he did not expect one medium to vanquish the other. "To say which one is better is like saying one is going to win," he said.

So which version is better, the Web site or the book?