韦氏词典年度词汇：authentic 真实

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2023 is authentic—the term for something we’re thinking about, writing about, aspiring to, and judging more than ever.
梅里亚姆-韦伯斯特2023年的年度词汇是“真实”——这个词汇是我们思考、写作、追求以及评判的对象,现在比以往任何时候都更多。

A high-volume lookup most years, authentic saw a substantial increase in 2023, driven by stories and conversations about AI, celebrity culture, identity, and social media.
“真实”这个词在大多数年份中都是高频查找词汇,在2023年因为关于人工智能、名人文化、身份认同和社交媒体的故事和讨论而大幅增加。

Authentic has a number of meanings including “not false or imitation,” a synonym of real and actual; and also “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character.” Although clearly a desirable quality, authentic is hard to define and subject to debate—two reasons it sends many people to the dictionary.
“真实”有多种含义,包括“非虚假或仿造的”,是“真实”和“实际”的同义词;也表示“忠于自己的个性、精神或性格”。尽管显然是一种令人向往的品质,“真实”很难定义,也是一个有争议的话题——这两个原因促使许多人查阅字典。

Authentic is often connected to identity, whether national or personal: words frequently modified by authentic include cuisine and dish, but also self and voice. Celebrities like singers Lainey Wilson, Sam Smith, and especially Taylor Swift all made headlines in 2023 with statements about seeking their “authentic voice” and “authentic self.” Headlines like Three Ways To Tap Into Taylor Swift’s Authenticity And Build An Eras-Like Workplace associate this quality with pop-culture superpower.
“真实性”常与身份联系在一起,无论是国家身份还是个人身份:经常与“真实”一词搭配的词汇包括“菜肴”和“菜品”,但也包括“自我”和“声音”。像莱尼·威尔逊、山姆·史密斯,尤其是泰勒·斯威夫特这样的名人在2023年都因为寻求他们的“真实声音”和“真实自我”的声明而成为头条新闻。像《三种方法挖掘泰勒·斯威夫特的真实性并建立一个类似时代的工作场所》这样的标题将这种品质与流行文化超能力联系起来。

And with the rise of artificial intelligence—and its impact on deepfake videos, actors’ contracts, academic honesty, and a vast number of other topics—the line between “real” and “fake” has become increasingly blurred.
随着人工智能的兴起——以及它对深度伪造视频、演员合同、学术诚信以及其他许多话题的影响——“真实”与“假冒”的界限变得越来越模糊。

Authentic is what brands, social media influencers, and celebrities aspire to be. Elon Musk made headlines when he said that people should be more “authentic” on social media. Apps and platforms like BeReal make recording “authentic” experiences their main purpose. No matter how much artifice and calculation goes into the production of these videos, as Rebecca Jennings of Vox puts it, “wherever people are supposedly being ‘authentic’ on the internet, the money will follow.” Ironically, with “authentic content creators” now recognized as the gold standard for building trust, “authenticity” has become a performance.
品牌、社交媒体影响者和名人都渴望成为“真实”的。埃隆·马斯克在说到人们应该在社交媒体上更“真实”时成为了头条新闻。像BeReal这样的应用和平台将记录“真实”体验作为其主要目的。正如Vox的丽贝卡·詹宁斯所说,无论这些视频的制作过程中投入了多少人为设计和计算,“无论人们在互联网上所谓的‘真实’地方,金钱都会随之而来。”具有讽刺意味的是,现在“真实内容创作者”被认为是建立信任的黄金标准,“真实性”已经变成了一种表演。

Other words also stood out in the dictionary’s 2023 data, including:
字典2023年的数据中还有其他词汇脱颖而出,包括:

Photo: Agent 00 Gaming CC-BY-3.0
照片:Agent 00 Gaming CC-BY-3.0

Rizz里兹

Rizz, an example of internet-driven slang, shot to the top of lookups when it was added to the dictionary in September.
里兹,一个由互联网推动的俚语,在九月被添加到字典时迅速成为搜索热词。

As a noun, rizz means “romantic appeal or charm” (as in “a bro who has rizz”); as a verb (typically used with up, as in “rizz up that cutie”) it means “to charm or seduce.” It’s frequently considered a play on charisma, but YouTuber Kai Cenat (shown above), widely credited with coining the word, says nah, that’s not what it’s from. No other lexical inspiration has been identified though.
作为名词,里兹意味着“浪漫的吸引力或魅力”(如“一个有里兹的哥们”);作为动词(通常与up一起使用,如“给那个可爱的人增加里兹”)它意味着“魅惑或诱惑”。它经常被认为是charisma(魅力)的一个变体,但是被广泛认为是这个词的创造者的YouTuber Kai Cenat(上图所示)说不,它不是来自这个。尽管如此,没有其他词汇灵感被确认。

The quest for authenticity partly results from technologies like the deepfake: “an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said.”
对真实性的追求部分源于像深度伪造这样的技术:“一种图像或录音,已经被令人信服地改变和操纵,以误表示某人做了或说了实际上未曾做过或说过的事情。”

In late April and early May, we saw a surge of interest in deepfake when lawyers for Elon Musk argued that he shouldn’t have to give legal testimony about public statements he made, since, as a famous person, some of his statements might be deepfakes. (This argument was rejected by the judge.)
在四月下旬和五月初,我们看到对深度伪造技术的兴趣激增,当时埃隆·马斯克的律师辩称,他不应该因为他所发表的公开声明而必须提供法律证词,因为作为一个著名人物,他的一些声明可能是深度伪造的。(这一论点被法官驳回。)

Another spike for deepfake followed in May, when a fan-made ad for Tesla featured a likeness of Ryan Reynolds, and again in June, when online ads for Ron DeSantis used apparently fake images of Donald Trump.
五月份,当一位粉丝制作的特斯拉广告中出现了瑞安·雷诺兹的肖像时,对深度伪造技术的兴趣再次激增,六月份,当网上为罗恩·德桑蒂斯的广告使用了看似伪造的唐纳德·特朗普的图片时,兴趣又一次上升。