Suddenly, as you may have noticed, millennials are everywhere. Not that this group of people born after 1980 and before 2000 — a giant cohort now estimated to number at least 80 million Americans, more than the baby boom generation — was ever invisible. What's changed is their status. Coddled and helicoptered, catered to by 24-hour TV cable networks, fussed over by marketers and college recruiters, dissected by psychologists, demographers and trend-spotters, the millennial generation has come fully into its own. The word "millennial," whether as noun or adjective, has monopolized the nonstop cultural conversation, invariably freighted with zeitgeisty import.
你可能已经注意到了，突然之间到处都是千禧一代，也就是出生在1980年之后、2000年之前的人。在美国，这个庞大的群体估计至少有8000万人，比婴儿潮时代的人还多。你之前并不是没有注意到他们，只是他们的地位发生了变化。他们被娇惯，享受24小时有线电视网，被市场营销人员和大学招生人员过分关心，被心理学家、人口学家和时尚达人剖析，如今他们终于形成了气候。“千禧”这个词不管是用作名词还是形容词，已经垄断了无休无止的文化交流，总是盛载着时代思潮。
This newspaper is no exception. A recent search of The New York Times database turned up no fewer than 122 mentions of "millennial" so far in 2014, on topics ranging from TV and pop music to travel and literature.
《纽约时报》也不例外。最近在本报的数据库里进行搜索，发现2014年到目前为止“千禧”一词至少被提到122次，主题涉及电视、流行音乐、旅行和文学。

A random sampling:
我随便选了几段：
1. "Fusion was created in October as both a cable network and a digital network aimed at a younger, so-called millennial audience and is committed to telling and delivering the news in ways that a young audience expects."
1. “10月份创立的Fusion是针对更年轻的千禧一代的有线电视网和数字网络，致力于用年轻观众期待的方式讲述和传递新闻。”
2. "Lana Del Rey, the pouty, retro torch singer for the millennial generation. ..."
2. 复古伤感歌手“拉娜·德雷(Lana Del Rey)有着撅起的嘴唇，深受千禧一代喜爱……”
3. "On the heels of hotels like Yotel and Aloft, a crop of new brands is designed for millennial travelers.
3.“继Yotel和Aloft等旅馆之后，出现了一大堆为千禧一代旅行者设计的新品牌……”
4. "Elyria is disengaged and depleted in a manner that put me in mind of the characters in the novels of Tao Lin, that Zen summoner of millennial ennui."
4. “林韬堪称千禧年倦怠感的禅宗召唤者，伊利里亚(Elyria)的与世隔绝和精疲力竭让我想起了他小说中的人物。”
Why this microscopic attention paid to a generation whose oldest members are only now entering the prime of their adult lives? One answer is that millennials, the first people to come of age in the 21st century, with its dizzying rate of technological change, have been forced to invent new ways of navigating it.
千禧一代中年龄最大的现在也才刚步入成年的巅峰时期，可人们为什么对这一代人进行了如此细致的观察？其中一个原因是，他们是21世纪的第一批成年人，技术革新的飞速发展迫使他们想出新办法来驾驭它。
But first, what besides youth sets millennials apart from their elders — the wizened silent generation, the graying boomers, the midlife Gen-X'ers?
但是首先，除了年轻，还有什么能把千禧一代和老去的沉默一代、头发花白的婴儿潮一代和步入中年的X一代区分开来呢？
The usual answer seems to be "narcissism" — self-absorption indulged to comical extremes. We all can recite the evidence: the breathlessly updated Facebook profile, the cascade of selfies, the Kardashians.
最常见的答案似乎是“自恋”——他们的自恋已经到了可笑的地步。我们都能举出很多例子：不停更新的Facebook，数不清的自拍照，以及卡戴珊姐妹。
Millennials know this litany, too. "People have been calling me a narcissist since I was 3," says Hannah, the character Lena Dunham plays in "Girls," her comedy of millennial manners. It's a small joke on Hannah but a bigger one on the anxious, hovering adults who supplied the clucking soundtrack when she was growing up.
千禧一代也知道这些长篇大论。“从我三岁起，就有人说我自恋，”电视剧《都市女孩》(Girls)中莉娜·杜汉姆(Lena Dunham)扮演的汉娜(Hannah)说。杜汉姆创作的这部喜剧讲的是千禧一代的行为方式。对汉娜来说这是个小玩笑，但是对她成长过程中的那些焦虑彷徨，啧啧做声的成年人来说，这可不是小事。
But a very different picture of millennials emerges from what may be the most illuminating literary project of our era, the Pew Research Center's sequence of reports on millennials. The 2010 edition, subtitled "Confident. Connected. Open to Change," offered an X-ray of its first wave, the "roughly 50 million millennials who currently span the ages of 18 to 29."
皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)关于千禧一代的系列报告可能是我们这个时代最具启发性的人文项目，它展示出一个非常不同的千禧一代形象。该报告2010年版的副标题是《自信，互联，乐于变革》(Confident. Connected. Open to Change)，它剖析了第一批千禧一代，也就是“大约5000万18岁至29岁的千禧一代”。
What Pew found was not an entitled generation but a complex and introspective one — with a far higher proportion of nonwhites than its predecessors as well as a greater number of people raised by a single parent. Its members also have weathered many large public traumas: the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, costly (and unresolved) wars, the Great Recession. Add to those the flood of images of Iraq and Katrina (and, for older millennials, Oklahoma City and Columbine) — episodes lived and relived, played and replayed, on TV and computer screens.
皮尤研究中心发现，这一代人并不是只懂享受，他们复杂而自省——和前辈们相比，非白种人的比例高了很多，而且有很多人是在单亲家庭长大的。这一代人还经历了很多重大公共创伤：911恐怖袭击，代价惨重（且悬而未决）的战争，经济大衰退。另外，伊拉克和卡特里娜飓风的图像在电视和电脑屏幕上播了一遍又一遍——对于年长的千禧一代来说，还有俄克拉荷马市飓风和科伦拜恩校园枪击案。
For a generation digitally wired from childhood, and reared on apocalyptic videos and computer-generated movie epics, not to mention the exploits of hackers, these events showed the real world to be as tightly networked, and for that reason as easily disrupted as the virtual one, even as the grown-ups in charge, the guardians of order, seemed overwhelmed and overmatched, always a step behind.
这一代人从小就使用数码产品，观看灾难视频和充满电脑特效的电影大片，还遭受过黑客攻击，所以在他们看来，现实世界是密切相连的，因此也像虚拟世界一样易受攻击，而那些掌控大局的成年人和秩序维护者似乎不知所措，总是处于下风，晚了一步。
It is no surprise, as Pew reported, that the millennial generation is skeptical of institutions — political and religious — and prefers to improvise solutions to the challenges of the moment. It is one thing to own a smartphone, as so many of us do. It is quite another to have mastered its uses at age 10.
皮尤研究中心的报告指出，千禧一代对各种机构（政治机构和宗教组织）都持怀疑态度，更喜欢赶快想出解决当下问题的办法。这并不奇怪。有智能手机是一回事，我们中的很多人都有，但是从十岁就掌握它的各种用处是另一回事。
Thus, in a range of areas, millennials have not only caught up, but have jumped out in front.
所以，在许多领域里，千禧一代不只是赶上了我们，而且已经跳到了我们前面。
Consider the approach many take to the workplace. Thanks to the 2008 economic crash, millennials know how fleeting wealth can be. Their solution? For many, it is to acquire not more, but less.
想想他们中的很多人对待工作的态度吧。2008年的经济危机让千禧一代明白财富可能转瞬即逝。他们的解决办法是什么呢？对他们中的很多人来说，不是要去赚更多的钱，而是要少赚些钱。
"Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of millennials said they would rather make $40,000 a year at a job they love than $100,000 a year at a job they think is boring," the Brookings Institution recently noted in a report by Morley Winograd and Michael Hais titled "How Millennials Could Upend Wall Street and Corporate America."
布鲁金斯学院最近的一份报告指出，“将近三分之二(64%)的千禧一代说，他们宁愿做一份自己喜欢的、年薪四万美元的工作，也不去做他们觉得无聊的年薪十万美元的工作”。该报告的作者是莫利·威诺格拉德(Morley Winograd)和迈克尔·海斯(Michael Hais)，标题是《千禧一代将如何颠覆华尔街和美国的所有公司》(How Millennials Could Upend Wall Street and Corporate America)。
The generation that gave us Occupy Wall Street has embraced its own modes of entrepreneurship, found across the broad spectrum of "creatives," from stylists to techies, who reject the presumed security of the corporate job and riskily pursue their own ventures, even if it means working out of their parents' basement. At the same time, record numbers of new college graduates are applying for jobs in the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps or Teach for America.
进行“占领华尔街”运动的千禧一代有自己的企业家精神，他们出现在各个“创意”领域，从造型师到计算机专业人员，他们拒绝一般人认为有保障的公司工作，冒险去追求自己的创业梦，即使要在父母的地下室里玩命工作也没关系。与此同时，应聘美国和平队(Peace Corps)、美国国民服务队(AmeriCorps) 或“为美国教书”组织(Teach for America)的大学毕业生人数也创下了纪录。
Consider millennial shopping habits. Even in the realm of fashion, many are indifferent to prestige brands and lavish ad campaigns, preferring to buy online or get "disposable" clothing at H & M or Zara, which boasts that its organically farmed cottons are "completely free of pesticides, chemicals and bleach."
再来看看千禧一代的消费习惯。甚至连时尚界的很多千禧一代也不在乎大牌和奢华的广告营销，他们更喜欢网购或者在H&M或Zara购买“可以丢弃的”衣服，这些衣服号称用的是“完全不含杀虫剂、化学制剂和漂白剂”的有机棉花。
The do-goodish pitch is aimed squarely at millennials, who collectively favor companies that embrace the values of good citizenship. The Brookings report says millennials overwhelmingly "responded with increased trust (91 percent) and loyalty (89 percent), as well as a stronger likelihood to buy from those companies that supported solutions to specific social issues (89 percent)."
这种行善的营销方式针对的正是千禧一代，这一代人喜欢那些信奉良好公民理念的公司。布鲁金斯学院的报告称，千禧一代中的绝大多数人“都对那些为具体社会问题提供解决方案的公司有着更高的信任(91%)和忠诚度(89%)，而且更有可能购买它们的产品(89%)”。
And consider food. The new generation may have had health-consciousness drilled into them at home or in school. But they have raised it to a new level. "For millennials, food isn't just food. It's community," The Washington Post reported last year in an article on the Silver Diner chain, which has developed an up-to-the-minute locavore menu and "started actively catering to those on vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free diets."
再来看看饮食。千禧一代可能已经在家里或学校被灌输了健康理念。但他们把它提高到了一个新的层次。《华盛顿邮报》去年的一篇关于Silver Diner连锁餐馆的报道说，“对千禧一代来说，食物不只是食物，还是社群。”该连锁餐馆开发了一份最新的本土菜单，而且“开始积极迎合那些严格素食者、一般素食者和坚持无麸质饮食的人”。
It was a shrewd calculation. An estimated 12 percent of millennials say they are "faithful vegetarians," compared with 4 percent of Gen X'ers and 1 percent of baby boomers, according to one study.
这是个聪明的做法。一项研究表明，约有12%的千禧一代称自己是“忠实的素食者”，而只有 4%的X一代和1%的婴儿潮一代会这么说。
Taken together, these habits and tastes look less like narcissism than communalism. And its highest value isn't self-promotion, but its opposite, empathy — an open-minded and -hearted connection to others.
总而言之，这些习惯和口味不太像自恋，而更像社群主义。它的最高价值观不是自我推销，而是它的对立面——同情心：和别人真心交往的开放心态。
Exhibit A may be LeBron James, the N.B.A. superstar who in July announced that he would be going back to rust-belt Cleveland after four glamorous years in Miami, becoming, at age 29, one of America's wealthiest boomerang children.
第一个例子是NBA超级巨星勒布朗·詹姆斯(LeBron James)。他在迈阿密热火队度过辉煌的四年后，今年7月份宣布将回归没落的克利夫兰骑士队。29岁的他成为返回故乡的最富有的美国孩子之一。
"Miami, for me, has been almost like college for other kids," James explained in a statement on SI.com exuding millennial earnestness. "My relationship with Northeast Ohio is bigger than basketball. I didn't realize that four years ago. I do now."
“对我来说，迈阿密热火队有点像其他孩子眼里的大学，”詹姆斯在SI.com上发布的声明流露出千禧一代的诚恳，“我与俄亥俄州东北部的关系重于篮球。四年前我没意识到这一点，但现在我意识到了。”
Four years ago, he meant, when he seemed the picture of self-importance, proclaiming on a live ESPN spectacle that he would "take my talents to South Beach."
他指的是四年前有点自大的他在娱乐体育节目电视网(ESPN)的一次直播节目中宣称，他将“把我的才华带到南部海滩去”。
But James didn't develop his new vocabulary of civic obligation and social responsibility overnight. On the contrary, he was a model teammate in Miami, insistently deflecting praise to others. He also helped lead the campaign to hold the former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling accountable for racially charged blurtings when they became public last spring.
但詹姆斯没有在一夜之间想出公民义务和社会责任之类的新词。相反，在热火队他是个模范队友，总是把赞扬转给别人。去年春天，前洛杉矶快船队老板唐纳德·斯特林(Donald Sterling)的种族歧视言论曝光后，詹姆斯还帮助领导了要求他对此负责的抗议行动。
Tellingly, James reacted forcefully on Twitter. In common with other millennials, he has made social media, with its many opportunities for "oversharing" self-display, a means of communication that pushes outward, instead of turning inward.
詹姆斯在Twitter上进行了有力回应。虽然社交媒体很容易成为过度自我展示的平台，但是和其他千禧一代一样，他把它们变成了一种向外沟通而非只关注自我的工具。
And he is not alone. We all know about celebrity-stalking websites like Gawker and TMZ, and the harm they wantonly inflict. But the millennial Brandon Stanton, a 30-year-old former bond trader and self-taught camera portraitist, has created a counterexample in "Humans of New York," his popular photo blog.
而且这么做的不只他一个人。我们都知道Gawker和TMZ等跟踪明星的网站以及它们对明星的肆意伤害。但30岁的千禧一代布兰登·斯坦顿(Brandon Stanton)却树立了一个相反的例子。他曾做过证券交易员，后来自学成为肖像摄影师，创立了一个很受欢迎的照片博客——“纽约人物”(Humans of New York)。
Combing streets and parks, Mr. Stanton takes pictures of ordinary people and interviews them about their lives. The resulting images and excerpts give dignity to what might otherwise be forgotten faces in the urban crowd. Published in book form, "Humans of New York" became a No. 1 best seller last fall.
斯坦顿在街上和公园里为普通人拍照，并采访他们的生活。最后的照片和采访节选将尊严赋予都市人潮中可能被忽略的一张张面孔。去年秋天，结集出版的《纽约人物》荣登畅销书榜首。
A similar theme illuminates the writings of Leslie Jamison, a 31-year-old Yale graduate student who has emerged as an accomplished essayist in her acclaimed book "The Empathy Exams." On the surface, Ms. Jamison's confessional writings look like exhibitionism — including the title essay, which records her time as a "medical actor" enacting a script of symptoms for the benefit of medical students.
31岁的莱斯莉·贾米森(Leslie Jamison)的著作也阐明了同样的主题。她是耶鲁大学的研究生，凭借饱受赞扬的《同情心检查》(The Empathy Exams)一跃成为知名散文作家。表面上看，贾米森的自传体作品有点暴露癖——包括书中的同名散文，说的是她为医学院的学生们充当“医学演员”，按照脚本表演各种疾病症状。
Yet she has been deluged with mail from grateful readers, who have poured forth their own, often harrowing experiences. "I found myself becoming an unwitting confessor to countless strangers," Ms. Jamison wrote last month in The Guardian. "I started to feel like confession could be the opposite of solipsism."
不过她后来收到了大量充满感激之情的读者来信，他们通常是向她倾诉自己的痛苦经历。“我发现自己无意中对着无数陌生人忏悔了，”贾米森上个月在《卫报》上发表文章说，“我开始觉得忏悔可能是唯我论的反面。”
On book tour, Ms. Jamison clinched the bond. "Whenever someone asked me to sign her book, I would ask her to sign mine," she wrote. "It was a way to create, for a moment, the kind of symmetry that felt impossible in the letters I received."
在图书巡展上，贾米森紧紧抓住这个情感联系的机会。“不管什么时候有人请签名，我都会让她也给我签一个名，”她写道，“这能营造出一种短暂的对等，这是我在读者来信中不可能感受到的。”
Empathy was a theme sounded repeatedly by some of the millennials photographed for this article, and interviewed in an online slide show that accompanies it.
我们为本文拍摄了其中一些千禧一代的照片并采访了他们——在本文随附的幻灯中你能看到他们的照片和采访节选——从他们口中我们经常听到的一个主题是“同情心”。
One said he hoped to succeed because "the better you're doing, the more you can share with other people." Another pointed out that while he was nursed on the traditional American dream — "this idea that if you worked hard and got good grades and did all the right stuff you would succeed" — he has developed a more pragmatic version of it suited to the economic realities of the 21st century.
有个人说他希望成功是因为“你做得更好，就有更多的东西能和别人分享”。另一个人指出，虽然他从小接受传统美国梦的教育——“如果你努力工作，取得好成绩，做所有正确的事，你就会成功”——但他摸索出了一个更实用、更适应21世纪经济现状的美国梦。
"I know that as hard as I work — and I work very hard — I very well may fail. And it's liberating to know that." The key word is "liberating." In the age of the start-up, of fortunes gained and lost overnight, of flawed ideas in need of continual debugging and re-tweaking, failure is the default outcome and also, at times, the ground zero of eventual triumph.
“我知道就算我努力工作——而且我工作得非常努力——我也很有可能会失败。知道这一点会让你觉得释然。”这里的关键词是“释然”。在这个创业时代，在这个可能一夜暴富、一夜破产的时代，在这个需要对有缺陷的创意不断矫正和调整的时代，失败是默认结果，有时也是最终成功的起点。
No wonder, then, that "millennials are the nation's most dogged optimists," as Pew reported in a new study this spring. "They believe their own best days are ahead."
难怪皮尤研究中心在今年春季发布的新报告里说，“千禧一代是美国最顽固的乐观主义者”，“他们相信最好的时光就在前方”。
They, and we, can expect some less-than-best days, too. Cultural transformations are seldom cost-free. And they're not always permanent. A new generation, as yet unnamed, is growing up in the world the millennials have made and may already be working on its own revision of the nation's moral life.
他们，还有我们，也可以预测到一些不那么好的日子。文化转型很少是不用付出代价的。而且这种转型也并不是一成不变的。尚未命名的新一代正在千禧一代创造的世界里成长，而且可能已经在书写他们自己的美国精神生活新版本。