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The BBC
英國廣播公司（BBC）
The sound of the apocalypse would be soothing.
世界末日時的聲音會讓人感到安慰。
Whereas prophets and novelists tend to imagine Armageddon as noisy - earthquakes, looting and whatnot - for the BBC, it would sound like Peter Donaldson.
盡管預言家和小說家傾向于將世界末日想象成一片嘈雜的景象——地震、劫掠等等——但對BBC來說，世界末日聽起來就是彼得·唐納森的聲音。
As documents declassified a few years ago revealed, he was the newsreader chosen to usher in the end of the world.
幾年前解密的文件顯示，彼得·唐納森是被選中迎接世界末日的新聞播音員。
"This country has been attacked with nuclear weapons," he says, with velvet voice and perfect diction.
“這個國家遭到了核武器的攻擊，”他用天鵝絨般的聲音和完美的措辭說。
"Do not, in any circumstances, go outside the house."
“無論發生什么，都不要到屋外去?！?/p>
The broadcast adds a few more details.
廣播還提到了其它細節。
Food must be conserved.
必須節約食物。
Water must be rationed ("It must not be used for flushing lavatories").
水必須限量使用(“一定不能用來沖盥洗室”)。
Even in the end times, the BBC would not countenance the word "toilet".
即使在世界的最后時刻，BBC也不會說出“廁所”這個詞。
For many, this felt less unnerving than apposite.
對許多人來說，這不會讓人感到不安，反而是來得恰如其分。
The organisation, which turns 100 this month, had announced the start of the second world war and its end.
本月，BBC這個宣布了第二次世界大戰的開始和結束的組織，將迎來它的100歲生日。
It had covered the liberation of Belsen and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the Suez crisis and the Falklands war.
它報道了貝爾森集中營的解放和伊麗莎白二世女王的加冕，蘇伊士運河危機和?？颂m群島海戰。
For 100 years, the BBC has parcelled up disaster and defeat, then distributed them, after the pips and before the weather forecast, to the British.
100年來，英國廣播公司把災難和失敗包裝起來，然后在電臺報時之后，天氣預報之前播報給英國人。
If Armageddon was to come, it felt right the BBC would announce it, probably after "The Archers", certainly in an rp accent.
如果世界末日真的到來，BBC應該會宣布這一消息，可能是在《阿徹家族》廣播劇結束之后，當然是用英國英語的標準發音。
It was not, in the beginning, obvious that this would be so.
一開始，情況并不是這樣的。
The BBC was founded a century ago from pragmatism rather than idealism, the result of a lacklustre compromise to satisfy new radio companies (which thought they would flog more sets if people had programmes to listen to on them) and the General Post Office (which wanted to stop anyone from gaining a monopoly over the airwaves, but couldn't be bothered to oversee programmes itself).
一個世紀前BBC的創立基于實用主義，而非理想主義，它是為了滿足新的廣播公司(它們認為，如果人們有節目可聽，它們就能出售更多無線電接收器)和郵政總局(它想要防止電視廣播領域出現壟斷，但不愿費心監督節目內容)的要求而做出的平淡妥協。
So it was that on October 18th 1922, to the interest of almost no one, the British Broadcasting Company was born.
因此，1922年10月18日，在幾乎沒人感興趣的情況下，英國廣播公司誕生了。
"Company" became "Corporation" in 1927.
1927年，BBC將其名稱中的“Company”改為了“Corporation”。
Today the BBC tends to offer news as its main mission, spending ￡314m ($346m) a year on it.
如今，BBC將提供新聞作為其主要任務，每年在新聞上的花費能達到3.14億英鎊(即3.46億美元)。
But as David Hendy, a historian, explains in a new book, it was at first far less interested.
但正如歷史學家大衛·亨迪在他的新書中解釋的那樣，一開始，人們對此并不感興趣。
As one early BBC boss put it: "I didn't really care what was happening in Abyssinia."
正如BBC早期的一位老板所說：“我根本不在乎阿比西尼亞發生了什么?！?/p>
By agreement with the newspapers, the BBC broadcast no bulletins before 7pm, to avoid competition.
根據與報紙行業達成的協議，BBC在晚上7點之前不播放廣播，以避免行業競爭。
But the BBC - which in its early days employed no journalists—hardly tried anyway.
但早期沒有雇傭記者的BBC在當時幾乎沒有努力過。
"There is no news," ran one crisply conclusive bulletin in 1930, before returning to a broadcast of Wagner's "Parsifal".
1930年，在切回到瓦格納的《帕西法爾》歌劇之前，BBC干凈利落地總結道：“沒有新聞?！?/p>
Wagner wasn't mere filler.
瓦格納不是僅僅用來湊數的。
Cultural betterment, not bulletins, was seen as the BBC's main mission.
相比于新聞簡報，文化進步在當時被視為BBC的主要使命。
William Haley, an early BBC chief, envisaged radio as a pyramid with popular programmes at its base and high culture at its apex.
BBC早期的首席執行官威廉·黑利將廣播想象為一座金字塔，底層是流行節目，頂端是高雅文化。
The common man would be drawn in low and then, in a sort of audio purgatory, be purified by BBC programming until he achieved the blessed state of voluntarily enjoying Buxtehude.
普通人會被底層節目吸引，然后在這種音頻煉獄中，通過BBC的節目得到凈化，直到他達到自愿欣賞布克斯特胡德的幸福狀態。
Presenters in dinner jackets, their speech a lesson in itself, carefully followed strict pronunciation guides: "quad-rille" was to be pronounced with the accent on its last syllable; "phil-istine" on its first.
那些身穿晚禮服的演講者的演講本身就是一堂課，他們嚴格遵循發音指南：“quad-rille”一詞的重音在最后一個音節，“phil-istine”的重音在第一個音節。
