Eleven years ago, a shiny silver Boeing 727 airliner took off from Luanda, Angola, and became one of the few commercial jetliners to vanish and never be found.
11年前，一架亮银色波音(Boeing) 727客机从安哥拉首都罗安达起飞后失踪，之后始终没有被找到，这使其成为了史上为数不多的几架失踪商用喷气式飞机之一。
Massive jet airplanes disappear more often in fiction than in real life, but it does happen. In 1979, a Boeing 707 with six people aboard was lost in the Pacific Ocean after leaving Tokyo. And dozens of smaller planes have gone missing and never been located.
现实中，大型喷气式客机的失踪事件并非小说里那样多见，但也确有发生。1979年一架载有6人的波音707飞机从东京起飞后消失在太平洋上空。还有数十架小型飞机在失踪后杳无踪迹。
The so-far fruitless search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared early Saturday with 239 people aboard, is unprecedented because of the plane's size and because the widebody Boeing 777 had been in radio and satellite contact with multiple locations on the ground. It was also flying when it lost contact over the sea in one of the world's most densely populated regions, Southeast Asia, not over remote jungle or open ocean.
上周六早上，搭载有239人的马来西亚航空公司(Malaysia Airlines) MH370客机在起飞后失踪。而令人没有料到的是其搜寻工作迄今仍毫无进展。之所以这么说，是因为出事的波音777宽体客机体积庞大，在失踪之前与地面多个空管站保持着无线电和卫星联络；且失联时，客机正处于人口密集的东南亚的海域上空，而非某片偏远的热带雨林或大海上。
Planes have fallen, never to be seen again, from the earliest days of aviation. Others have been found only after lengthy searches or by chance decades later. Radar, satellites and other technology have become powerful aids in such situations.
在航空产业的发展初期就有过飞机失事后再未找到的案例。一些失事飞机在数十年后或因偶然、或经漫长的搜寻最终被找到，雷达、卫星等技术在其中起到了极大的帮助。
But as Flight 370's disappearance shows, technology still has limited reach in some swaths of the planet.
然而此次马航客机失踪事件凸显出这些技术在世界一些地区仍不完备。
'The fact is that, in many parts of the world . . . radar coverage is not complete,' said David McMillan, Chairman of the Flight Safety Foundation and former head of Eurocontrol, Europe's air-traffic coordinator. 'It's clearly an area for further improvement.'
欧洲航空安全组织(Eurocontrol)前主管、飞行安全基金会(Flight Safety Foundation)主席麦克米伦(David McMillan)说，实际上全球许多地区……的雷达覆盖都不完整，而该地区显然有待改善。
In the same region in 2007, it took crews 10 days to find the first pieces of an Indonesian Boeing 737 that crashed in the sea near Sulawesi. Searchers needed 36 hours to locate the first wreckage of Air France Flight 447, which crashed over the Atlantic five years ago with 228 people aboard.
2007年在这片地区，搜寻人员用了10天的时间才在苏拉威西(Sulawesi)附近海域找到了印尼波音737失事客机的首批残骸。五年前，载有228人的法国航空公司(Air France) 447航班在大西洋坠毁，搜寻队伍用了36个小时才首次找到客机残骸的位置。
'If a plane goes down in the ocean, it's very difficult to find it,' said Richard B. Stone, a former president of the International Society of Air Safety Investigators.
国际航空安全调查员协会(International Society of Air Safety Investigators)前主席斯通(Richard B. Stone)说，如果飞机坠入海洋，则其搜寻工作将十分困难。
The Aviation Safety Network, a database tracking accidents, lists 80 planes as 'missing' since 1948. No trace of the planes or their occupants was ever found, according to ASN President Harro Ranter. The aircraft range from tiny one-seat propeller planes to jetliners and a U.S. Coast Guard Lockheed C-130 Hercules -- a four-engine turboprop transport -- that crashed off the California coast in 2009.
追踪航空事故的数据库公司航空安全网络(Aviation Safety Network, ASN)列出了1948年以来的80架“失踪”飞机。据公司总裁Harro Ranter称，这些飞机的踪迹及机上人员都未曾被找到过。这其中既包括只有一个座位的螺旋桨飞机，也有2009年在加利福尼亚海岸附近坠毁的美国海岸警卫队(U.S. Coast Guard) C-130运输机。
The 727 that vanished over Angola is believed to have had only two people aboard. At dusk on May 25, 2003, an American mechanic for Aerospace Sales & Leasing Co., the Florida-based lessor that owned the 18-year-old plane, boarded the jetliner in Luanda, according to press reports at the time. He was accompanied by a Congolese assistant. Neither was certified to pilot the plane, which normally required a crew of three.
据信在安哥拉上空失踪的727飞机只载有两人。当时媒体报道称，2003年5月25日傍晚，佛罗里达租赁公司Aerospace Sales & Leasing Co.的一位美国机械师在罗安达登上了这架喷气式客机。该公司是这架机龄18年的飞机的所有者。伴他一起登机的还有一位刚果助理。这两人均无驾驶该飞机的资格，而该飞机执行飞行任务时一般要求须有三名机组人员。
Without authorization or communication, the plane began taxiing, according to press reports. Its lights and transponder remained off as it took off and started to fly over the Atlantic.
媒体报道称，在无授权也无通讯联络的情况下，这架飞机开始滑翔。在该飞机起飞并开始飞越大西洋时，其航行灯和雷达收发机仍处于关闭状态。
The unauthorized departure, less than two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, sparked an international search. U.S. diplomats and African authorities visited airfields across the continent, seeking hints the plane had landed. U.S. national-security authorities including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency scoured satellite images. The plane was never seen again.
这次未授权的飞机离港事件距2001年9月11日的袭击还不到两年时间，国际社会对该飞机展开了搜索。美国外交人员和非洲国家政府部门查看了这块大陆上的机场，希望能找到727飞机落地的迹象。包括联邦调查局(Federal Bureau of Investigation，简称FBI)和中央情报局(Central Intelligence Agency，简称CIA)在内的美国国家安全部门还查找了卫星图像。但没有人再看见过这架飞机。
'I have no idea' about what happened to the 727, it is 'one of those things we've never understood,' said Maury Joseph, president of Aerospace Sales & Leasing. 'It's unheard of for something that large, and nothing to this day has ever shown up.'
Aerospace Sales & Leasing总裁约瑟夫(Maury Joseph)说，他对这架727发生了什么一无所知，这是他们一直没搞明白的事件之一。他说，这么大的一个物体凭空消失，至今再未露面，这真是前所未闻。
The FBI and CIA didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
FBI和CIA未立即回应置评请求。
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is one of the first jet planes since then to disappear for this long.
此事发生后，马航370航班是失踪了如此长时间的首批喷气式客机之一。
'The fact that it's so rare is the reason everyone is paying attention to it,' said Bob van der Linden, chairman of the aeronautics department at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
史密森尼国家航空航天博物馆(Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum)航空部门主席范德林登(Bob van der Linden)说，这样的事太罕见了，所以大家都十分关注。
Disappearances used to be more common. Amelia Earhart was notable as one of the first female aviators to set distance records in the 1930s. But she remains in the public conscience today more because she disappeared in her Lockheed Electra near New Guinea while attempting to circumnavigate the globe.
失踪事件以前更为常见。埃尔哈特(Amelia Earhart)是在上世纪30年代创造飞行距离纪录的首批女飞行员之一，并且因此扬名。但她现在还为人们所记起的一个更大的原因是，她驾驶着洛克希德-伊莱克特拉(Lockheed Electra)飞机进行环球飞行时，在新几内亚附近失踪。
Today, radar can generally track aircraft large and small. But even in an age of global satellite navigation and the perception of world-wide surveillance, significant areas of Earth are untouched by radar or regular observation.
时至今日，无论飞行器大小，雷达通常都可对其进行追踪。但即使到了全球卫星导航和人们以为的监控遍布世界各地的时代，地球上仍有大片区域是雷达或常规观测无法监测到的。
Empty spots are shrinking. In the 1970s, the 'Bermuda Triangle' loomed in the American imagination after several military planes disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean region between Florida, Puerto Rico and Bermuda, and other planes and ships were said to have vanished there. Supernatural explanations were eventually debunked.
不过其实，人类未触及的空白区域正在不断缩小。上世纪70年代，几架军用飞机在佛罗里达、波多黎各和百慕大之间位于大西洋的那个地区失踪后，“百慕大三角区”便引起了美国人的丰富联想。据说其它飞机和船只也曾消失于这个三角区。种种超自然的解释最终被揭穿。
'The accident rate in the Bermuda Triangle is no better or worse than anywhere else, but it sounds really intriguing,' said the Smithsonian's Mr. van der Linden.
范德林登表示，百慕大三角区的事故率和其他地方基本相当，只不过相关事件听上去很神秘罢了。
Rational explanations haven't limited people's imaginations. The hugely successful TV series 'Lost' focused on passengers of a jetliner that crashed on a mysterious island not found on maps.
合理的解释并未遏制人们的想像力。大获成功的美国电视连续剧《迷失》(Lost)就讲述了一架飞机在一个地图上没有的神秘小岛坠毁后，机上乘客的相关故事。
Disappearances are often simply accidents in remote locations, based on an analysis of planes that eventually showed up. Air France Flight 447 vanished for more than a day before searchers found floating pieces of the Airbus A330.
从对一些类似事件的分析来看，飞机消失往往是在偏远地区失事。法航447航班在消失了一天多以后，搜救人员才发现了这架空客A330客机的漂浮碎片。
Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett disappeared in September 2007 while flying a single-engine propeller plane near Yosemite National Park in California. It took more than a year to find the wreckage.
2007年9月冒险家史蒂夫•福赛特(Steve Fossett)在加利福尼亚州约塞米蒂国家公园(Yosemite National Park)附近驾驶一架单引擎螺旋桨飞机失踪，一年多以后人们才找到了飞机残骸。
Other accidents are often too difficult to investigate, or the small number of people killed is deemed too low to merit a costly search. 'It is very expensive to do,' said Mr. Stone, the accident investigator.
其他一些事故往往难以调查，或者说由于遇难人数较少，兴师动众地去搜索被认为有点不值得。斯通表示，那样做成本太高。
The Boeing 707 that crashed off Japan in 1979 had six people aboard. A Boeing 727 that sent distress messages and vanished after taking off from Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1990 had 18 people aboard. Neither was ever found.
1979年一架载有6人的波音707飞机在从日本起飞后失踪。1990年一架从冰岛雷克雅维克起飞的波音727飞机发出遇险信息并消失，机上载有18人。这两架飞机均未找到。
On rare occasions, disappearances are solved by passengers. On Oct. 13, 1972, a Fairchild FH-227D with 45 people aboard, including a Uruguayan rugby team, crashed in the Andes while flying from Argentina to Chile -- an incident later dramatized in the 1993 film 'Alive.' Twelve passengers died immediately or were missing and the others waited in the freezing heights for rescue, some eventually resorting to cannibalism to survive.
也有极少数情况下乘客自救生还。1972年10月13日，一架载有45人（包括一支乌拉圭橄榄球队）的Fairchild FH-227D飞机在从阿根廷飞往智利的途中在安第斯山脉失事，此事后来被改编为1993年的电影《天劫余生》(Alive)。当时当场死亡和失踪的乘客有12名，剩下的乘客则在冰峰上等待救援，一些人不得不通过食人肉求生。
When no help arrived, three of the 16 survivors in December set off for help. After one turned back to ration food, the remaining two men walked for seven days before they spotted a sign of civilization: an empty soup can and a horseshoe. Two more days passed before they found men on horseback who sent for help. Helicopters were dispatched to retrieve the remaining survivors.
由于没有等来外界救援，同年12月16名幸存者中有3名开始动身寻找救援。当其中一人返回找食物时，另外两人继续行走了七日，最终发现了人迹：一个空的汤罐和一个马蹄铁。又过了两天，他们发现了骑马的人，这些骑马的人为他们找到了帮助。于是直升飞机开过来救走了这些劫后余生的人。
Modern technology increases the chance the Malaysia Airlines flight will be found, the Air France crash suggests. While floating wreckage of that Airbus plane was found in less than two days, weeks of deep-sea searches turned up no sign of the fuselage or pings from beacons on its recorders.
从法航那次事件来看，现代化的技术会使马航航班被找到的几率提高。虽然搜救人员在不到两天的时间内就找到了法航空客飞机的漂浮残骸，但在之后数周的深海搜索中都没有见到飞机机身，也没有收到记录仪所发出的信号。
Two subsequent searches were conducted using progressively more-sophisticated remote undersea vehicles, advanced sonar equipment and computer modeling of tidal patterns. Within days of launching the third search, almost two years after the crash, the wreckage was discovered.
之后的两次搜索动用了越来越复杂的水下遥控工具、先进的声纳设备以及计算机模拟洋流。在第三次搜索启动几天，也就是失事约两年后，法航的失事飞机残骸终于被找到。
'There's going to be a trace somewhere, it will be found,' the Smithsonian's Mr. van der Linden said of the Malaysian plane. 'It may be a surprise about where it's found, but we don't know what happened on the airplane.'
范德林登在谈到马航失联客机时表示，一些地方势必会留有踪迹，会找到的；最后发现它的地点或许会出人意料，但我们不知道飞机上究竟发生了什么。