Hello Kitty不是貓的消息震驚了世界

Last week, The Los Angeles Times broke the news of the century. Or so it would seem by the shockwaves it sent through the Internet.

上星期，《洛杉磯時報》(The Los Angeles)發佈了這條世紀新聞。至少從互聯網上激起的衝擊波來看，堪稱世紀新聞。

From TMZ to The Wall Street Journal, media outlets of all kinds picked up the story, celebrities tweeted their disbelief, children’s reactions to the news went viral.

從TMZ網站到《華爾街日報》(The Wall Street Journal)，各種媒體競相報道這件事，名人們紛紛發表推特表示難以置信，孩子們對這個消息的各種反應更是瘋狂轉發。

The ubiquitous, blank-faced and, as the world assumed, feline cartoon character Hello Kitty is not in fact a cat, announced The Los Angeles Times. It’s a little girl named Kitty White.

凱蒂貓(Hello Kitty)茫然的臉蛋無所不在，全世界都以爲它是一隻貓，但《洛杉磯時報》卻宣佈她不是貓，而是一個名叫凱蒂·懷特(Kitty White)的小女孩。

Kitty, also shockingly, has an entire backstory: She is British, lives in London with her parents, has a twin, and is a perpetual third-grader.

同樣驚人的是，凱蒂還有一整套的身世：她是英國人，和爸爸媽媽住在倫敦，有雙胞胎姊妹，永遠都在上三年級。

The Times quotes Christine R. Yano, an anthropologist from the University of Hawaii, who was preparing the written text for a retrospective of Hello Kitty art at the Japanese American National Museum. When fact-checking with Sanrio, the character’s mother company, she was “very firmly” corrected about Kitty’s identity.

夏威夷大學人類學家克里斯汀·R·矢野(Christine R. Yano)正在爲全美日裔國立博物館的凱蒂貓藝術回顧展撰寫文字說明，《洛杉磯時報》引述了她的考證。經過與凱蒂貓的母公司三麗鷗公司做事實覈查，她“非常確定”地糾正了凱蒂貓的身份。

“That’s one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. Hello Kitty is not a cat. She’s a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat. She’s never depicted on all fours,” Ms. Yano tells The Times. “She walks and sits like a two-legged creature. She does have a pet cat of her own, however, and it’s called Charmmy Kitty.”

“這是三麗鷗爲我給展覽寫的草稿做的糾正。凱蒂貓不是貓。她是個卡通形象，是個小女孩，是個好朋友，但她不是貓。她從來沒被畫成用四條腿走路，”矢野在接受《洛杉磯時報》採訪時說。“她走路和坐着的時候都是一個兩條腿的生物。不過她有自己的寵物貓，名叫‘俏咪’(Charmmy Kitty)。”

Carolina A. Miranda, who wrote the Times story, added: “I grew up with Hello Kitty everything and all I have to say is, MIND BLOWN.”

《洛杉磯時報》該報道的作者卡洛琳娜·A·米蘭達(Carolina A. Miranda)補充：“我和凱蒂貓的各種產品一起長大，我得說，這太震驚了。”

The world shared her shock.

整個世界和她一樣震驚。

“Cat-astrophic revelation purr-turbs Hello Kitty fans,” reads a CNN headline.

CNN報道題爲“凱蒂貓粉絲罹遭貓界末日天啓”。

“The revelation blew up my Twitter and Facebook feeds, which had about 10 times more posts about Kittygate than about the fact that, at that very moment, Russia was invading the Ukraine,” writes Euny Hong at Quartz.

“我的Twitter和Facebook被這個消息刷屏了，同一時刻俄羅斯入侵烏克蘭，關於凱蒂貓的帖子是關於入侵事件的十倍還多，” 洪又妮在Quartz網站上寫道。

Dude. Hello Kitty is not a cat, nor has she ever been a cat. Help. Nothing makes sense anymore. — Gabe Bondoc (@gabebondoc) August 29, 2014

夥計們。凱蒂貓不是貓，她根本就不是貓。救命啊。人生失去意義了。——蓋比·邦多克(Gabe Bondoc, @gabebondoc)，2014年8月29日

I just found out Hello Kitty isn’t a cat. She does appear to have whiskers. I’m not judging. I’m just piecing this all together for myself. — Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) August 29, 2014

我剛發現凱蒂貓不是貓。可她確實有鬍子。我不想評判什麼。我只是爲了自己而指出這些事實。——艾倫·德傑尼勒斯(Ellen DeGeneres, @TheEllenShow)，2014年8月29日

The singer Katy Perry rushed to reassure her fans of the feline identity of her cat and/or her mascot, Kitty Purry.

歌手凱蒂·佩裏(Katy Perry)緊急向粉絲確認，她的寵物貓兼吉祥物“凱蒂·噗裏”(Kitty Purry)確實是貓。

IT’S OKAY HELLO KITTY FANS, KITTY PURRY IS A CAT. — KATY PERRY (@katyperry) August 28, 2014

好啦凱蒂貓的粉絲們，凱蒂·噗裏是貓。——凱蒂·佩裏(@katyperry)，2014年8月28日。

Because nothing seemed to be real anymore, people started questioning the species of other cartoon characters. What about the doglike character Goofy and his pet dog Pluto? Sponge Bob?

現在好像沒什麼可信的事了。人們紛紛開始懷疑其他卡通形象屬於什麼物種。古菲狗和它的寵物狗普魯託是狗嗎？海綿寶寶是海綿嗎？

If Hello Kitty isn’t a cat then is Mickey Mouse not a mouse

如果凱蒂貓都不是貓，那米老鼠還能是老鼠嗎？——acee(@sica_forehead)，2014年8月28日

Colin Stokes at The New Yorker jokingly suggested that Mickey Mouse, Scooby-Doo and the entire Winnie-the-Pooh crew were, in fact, human. Winnie, Eeyore, Piglet and Tigger are just part of a “role play” created for Christopher Robin’s sake.

《紐約客》(The New Yorker)的科林·斯托克斯(Colin Stokes)開玩笑稱，米老鼠、大丹狗史酷比(Scooby-Doo)以及整個維尼熊(Winnie-the-Pooh)家族都是人。維尼熊、屹耳(Eeyore)、小豬皮傑(Piglet)和跳跳虎(Tigger)都是爲了克里斯托弗·羅賓(Christopher Robin)而做的角色扮演。

“Why exactly these four men choose to wear these costumes for Christopher is unclear, but it has been speculated that they may owe him money from gambling debts,” Mr. Stokes writes.

“這四個人爲什麼要爲了克里斯托弗穿上戲服，目前尚不明確，但有人猜測他們可能是在賭博中欠了他的錢，”斯托克斯寫道。

Alas, the information about Hello Kitty’s identity proved to be not entirely precise. Brian Ashcraft of gaming blog Kotaku contacted Sanrio to clarify. A representative told him: “Hello Kitty was done in the motif of a cat. It’s going too far to say that Hello Kitty is not a cat. Hello Kitty is a personification of a cat.” The representative used the Japanese word “gijinka,” which means “anthropomorphization” or “personification.”

等一下，關於凱蒂貓身份的信息並不完全準確。遊戲博客Kotaku的作者布萊恩·阿什克拉夫特(Brian Ashcraft)聯繫三麗鷗覈實信息。一位代表告訴他：“凱蒂貓是以貓爲主題而創作的，如果說凱蒂貓不是貓就太過分了。凱蒂貓是一隻貓的人格化。”這位代表使用了日語“gijinka”，就是“擬人化”或“人格化”的意思。

In the end, Sanrio says that Kitty is a character, so doesn’t fall in the categories we would use for, say, live human beings. But why is her identity so important — even if mockingly important — to so many people who have long abandoned their Hello Kitty backpacks and pencil cases?

最後，三麗鷗聲稱，凱蒂貓是一個卡通角色，所以不能用我們在生活中給人分類的方法去分類。但是她的身份爲什麼這樣重要呢——開玩笑的重要也是重要——很多人明明早就不用凱蒂貓的揹包和鉛筆盒了。

“I’m glad Sanrio is showing us that we can indeed see cartoon characters however we want, and that we don’t need to put human or non-human labels on them,” Kitty Tan, a 36-year-old marketing manager, tells the Straits Times of Singapore. She said the clarification made more sense, because as a human Kitty made no logical sense. “These characters are meant to make us happy; they should not confuse us.”

“我很高興三麗鷗告訴我們，我們可以按照自己希望的方式去看待卡通形象，而不必給它們貼上‘人類’或‘非人類’的標籤，”36歲的市場經理凱蒂·譚(Kitty Tan)對新加坡的《海峽時報》(Straits Times)說。她說，三麗鷗後來的澄清更有意義，因爲人類凱蒂貓根本不合邏輯。“這些卡通形象是用來讓我們開心的，而不是讓我們感到困惑。”

Hello Kitty used to be two things — a blank, expressionless canvass for the viewer’s imagination, and a bit of an enigma. She is simple, she is alien, she is “delightfully inexplicable,” the comic author Scott McCloud tells Think Progress.

凱蒂貓曾經意味着兩件事——一張茫然的、沒有表情的面孔，可以讓觀者盡情想象，此外還有種神祕色彩。她很簡單，她很陌生，她有種“令人愉悅的說不清道不明”，漫畫創作者斯科特·麥克克勞德(Scott McCloud)對Think Progress網站如此說道。

“In contrast to expressive American characters such as Mickey Mouse and Garfield, Hello Kitty doesn’t show emotions, and the simplicity has attracted fans from children to street fashion devotees,” writes Mari Yamaguchi for The Associated Press.

“和米老鼠以及加菲貓這些表情豐富的美國卡通形象相比，凱蒂貓沒什麼表情，這種簡單能吸引從孩子到街頭時尚愛好者在內的大量粉絲，”山口真理爲美聯社撰文寫道。

Asked about the clarification from Sanrio, Ms. Yano, the anthropologist who dropped the bombshell in the first place, said the character’s identity should be irrelevant: “Is she a cat, is she a girl, in Japanese terms, I really feel, it doesn’t matter. What I think is that Hello Kitty becomes a prompt for the imagination.”

被問及三麗鷗的澄清時，最早引發了這場大爆炸的人類學家矢野說，這個形象的身份其實無關緊要：“她是貓也好，是小女孩也好，我覺得從日語的角度而言真的並不重要。我覺得凱蒂貓是令人天馬行空的激勵物。”

Mr. McCloud says that there is more to bringing a character to life than just executing the actual drawing. “It’s a collaborative process of conjuring.” He suggests that there is something valuable about questioning our classifications and asking whether she is a cat. “Is she anything, other than this weird, astral projection of our idea of other consciousness?”

麥克克勞德說，爲卡通形象賦予生命不只是把這個形象畫出來這麼簡單。“這是一種魔術般的綜合過程。”他說，質疑我們對卡通形象的分類，去思考她究竟是不是一隻貓，這其實是有價值的。“除了我們的下意識所創造出的奇異的靈體投射，她是否還有更多涵義呢？”

This veil of mystery has been lifted, the character has been defined. And it sent the world reeling.

神祕的帷幕已被掀起，角色已被定義。整個世界都爲之搖晃。