Ukraine’s Chernobyl might be on track to become 2019′s surprise tourism destination, after a widely discussed HBO miniseries resulted in a surge in bookings for trips to the site and the nearby town that were abandoned after a major nuclear accident in 1986.
乌克兰的切尔诺贝利即将成为2019年意外成名的网红景点,之前一部备受关注的HBO迷你剧使事故发生地和附近的切尔诺贝利镇的旅游预订量激增,1986年一场特大核事故之后那里就被废弃了。

Trip bookings for May 2019 were 30 percent higher than May 2018, and were up over the next three months, as well, said Sergii Ivanchuk, director of SoloEast Travel, which organizes trips to the nuclear power plant and its surrounding areas.
SoloEast Travel旅游公司经理Sergii Ivanchuk透露 2019年五月的预定量比2018年五月高出30%,接下来的三个月也在持续上涨。该旅游公司组织去切尔诺贝利核电站和周围地区的旅游。

图片来源:Chernobyl

On their tours, visitors usually head to the abandoned town of Pripyat, next to the power plant, which was evacuated within hours, and other sites, including the former power plant itself. Radiation levels during the trips are considered to be safe, but the area around the power plant remains largely uninhabited.
游客旅行都是去紧挨着核电站的废弃的普里皮亚季,事故发生后几小时内人员都撤离了,游客还会去废弃核电站等其他景点。旅行期间的辐射水平是安全的,但核电站附近地区基本无人居住。

HBO’s “Chernobyl” — a mix of real events and fictional accounts — hit a nerve when it was released this spring.
HBO的《切尔诺贝利》中既有真实事件,也有虚构情节,今年春天一开播就刺激了大众的神经。

The silence at the time from Soviet officials who were unwilling to acknowledge that the catastrophe had happened reminded some of the wavering trust they have in their own politicians to tell them the truth.
当时苏联官员不愿承认灾难已经发生而选择沉默,使一些人对本国政客是否对民众诚实产生了怀疑。

Interest in the series itself echoes some of the big political debates of our time: truth vs. lies, Russia vs. the West, and the realization that disasters can easily transcend borders.
观众对这部剧的兴趣也反应了我们这一时代的一些重大政治讨论:诚实vs.谎言、俄罗斯vs.西方,以及灾难可以轻易跨越国界的意识。

The flocking of tourists to Chernobyl is likely to feed into another debate: How should we commemorate a human-made disaster of the scale of Chernobyl without turning the site — which exposed hundreds of thousands to radiation — into an adventure theme park?
游客涌入切尔诺贝利可能又会引发新的讨论:我们应该怎样在纪念切尔诺贝利事故这样重大人祸的同时,又不会把将成千上万人暴露在辐射之下的遗址变成冒险主题公园?

 

翻译:菲菲