Last week, The Los Angeles Times broke the news of the century. Or so it would seem by the shockwaves it sent through the Internet.
上星期，《洛杉矶时报》(The Los Angeles)发布了这条世纪新闻。至少从互联网上激起的冲击波来看，堪称世纪新闻。
From TMZ to The Wall Street Journal, media outlets of all kinds picked up the story, celebrities tweeted their disbelief, children’s reactions to the news went viral.
从TMZ网站到《华尔街日报》(The Wall Street Journal)，各种媒体竞相报道这件事，名人们纷纷发表推特表示难以置信，孩子们对这个消息的各种反应更是疯狂转发。

The ubiquitous, blank-faced and, as the world assumed, feline cartoon character Hello Kitty is not in fact a cat, announced The Los Angeles Times. It’s a little girl named Kitty White.
凯蒂猫(Hello Kitty)茫然的脸蛋无所不在，全世界都以为它是一只猫，但《洛杉矶时报》却宣布她不是猫，而是一个名叫凯蒂·怀特(Kitty White)的小女孩。
Kitty, also shockingly, has an entire backstory: She is British, lives in London with her parents, has a twin, and is a perpetual third-grader.
同样惊人的是，凯蒂还有一整套的身世：她是英国人，和爸爸妈妈住在伦敦，有双胞胎姊妹，永远都在上三年级。
The Times quotes Christine R. Yano, an anthropologist from the University of Hawaii, who was preparing the written text for a retrospective of Hello Kitty art at the Japanese American National Museum. When fact-checking with Sanrio, the character’s mother company, she was “very firmly” corrected about Kitty’s identity.
夏威夷大学人类学家克里斯汀·R·矢野(Christine R. Yano)正在为全美日裔国立博物馆的凯蒂猫艺术回顾展撰写文字说明，《洛杉矶时报》引述了她的考证。经过与凯蒂猫的母公司三丽鸥公司做事实核查，她“非常确定”地纠正了凯蒂猫的身份。
“That’s one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. Hello Kitty is not a cat. She’s a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat. She’s never depicted on all fours,” Ms. Yano tells The Times. “She walks and sits like a two-legged creature. She does have a pet cat of her own, however, and it’s called Charmmy Kitty.”
“这是三丽鸥为我给展览写的草稿做的纠正。凯蒂猫不是猫。她是个卡通形象，是个小女孩，是个好朋友，但她不是猫。她从来没被画成用四条腿走路，”矢野在接受《洛杉矶时报》采访时说。“她走路和坐着的时候都是一个两条腿的生物。不过她有自己的宠物猫，名叫‘俏咪’(Charmmy Kitty)。”
Carolina A. Miranda, who wrote the Times story, added: “I grew up with Hello Kitty everything and all I have to say is, MIND BLOWN.”
《洛杉矶时报》该报道的作者卡洛琳娜·A·米兰达(Carolina A. Miranda)补充：“我和凯蒂猫的各种产品一起长大，我得说，这太震惊了。”
The world shared her shock.
整个世界和她一样震惊。
“Cat-astrophic revelation purr-turbs Hello Kitty fans,” reads a CNN headline.
CNN报道题为“凯蒂猫粉丝罹遭猫界末日天启”。
“The revelation blew up my Twitter and Facebook feeds, which had about 10 times more posts about Kittygate than about the fact that, at that very moment, Russia was invading the Ukraine,” writes Euny Hong at Quartz.
“我的Twitter和Facebook被这个消息刷屏了，同一时刻俄罗斯入侵乌克兰，关于凯蒂猫的帖子是关于入侵事件的十倍还多，” 洪又妮在Quartz网站上写道。
Dude. Hello Kitty is not a cat, nor has she ever been a cat. Help. Nothing makes sense anymore. — Gabe Bondoc (@gabebondoc) August 29, 2014
伙计们。凯蒂猫不是猫，她根本就不是猫。救命啊。人生失去意义了。——盖比·邦多克(Gabe Bondoc, @gabebondoc)，2014年8月29日
I just found out Hello Kitty isn’t a cat. She does appear to have whiskers. I’m not judging. I’m just piecing this all together for myself. — Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) August 29, 2014
我刚发现凯蒂猫不是猫。可她确实有胡子。我不想评判什么。我只是为了自己而指出这些事实。——艾伦·德杰尼勒斯(Ellen DeGeneres, @TheEllenShow)，2014年8月29日
The singer Katy Perry rushed to reassure her fans of the feline identity of her cat and/or her mascot, Kitty Purry.
歌手凯蒂·佩里(Katy Perry)紧急向粉丝确认，她的宠物猫兼吉祥物“凯蒂·噗里”(Kitty Purry)确实是猫。
IT’S OKAY HELLO KITTY FANS, KITTY PURRY IS A CAT. — KATY PERRY (@katyperry) August 28, 2014
好啦凯蒂猫的粉丝们，凯蒂·噗里是猫。——凯蒂·佩里(@katyperry)，2014年8月28日。
Because nothing seemed to be real anymore, people started questioning the species of other cartoon characters. What about the doglike character Goofy and his pet dog Pluto? Sponge Bob?
现在好像没什么可信的事了。人们纷纷开始怀疑其他卡通形象属于什么物种。古菲狗和它的宠物狗普鲁托是狗吗？海绵宝宝是海绵吗？
If Hello Kitty isn’t a cat then is Mickey Mouse not a mouse
如果凯蒂猫都不是猫，那米老鼠还能是老鼠吗？——acee(@sica_forehead)，2014年8月28日
Colin Stokes at The New Yorker jokingly suggested that Mickey Mouse, Scooby-Doo and the entire Winnie-the-Pooh crew were, in fact, human. Winnie, Eeyore, Piglet and Tigger are just part of a “role play” created for Christopher Robin’s sake.
《纽约客》(The New Yorker)的科林·斯托克斯(Colin Stokes)开玩笑称，米老鼠、大丹狗史酷比(Scooby-Doo)以及整个维尼熊(Winnie-the-Pooh)家族都是人。维尼熊、屹耳(Eeyore)、小猪皮杰(Piglet)和跳跳虎(Tigger)都是为了克里斯托弗·罗宾(Christopher Robin)而做的角色扮演。
“Why exactly these four men choose to wear these costumes for Christopher is unclear, but it has been speculated that they may owe him money from gambling debts,” Mr. Stokes writes.
“这四个人为什么要为了克里斯托弗穿上戏服，目前尚不明确，但有人猜测他们可能是在赌博中欠了他的钱，”斯托克斯写道。
Alas, the information about Hello Kitty’s identity proved to be not entirely precise. Brian Ashcraft of gaming blog Kotaku contacted Sanrio to clarify. A representative told him: “Hello Kitty was done in the motif of a cat. It’s going too far to say that Hello Kitty is not a cat. Hello Kitty is a personification of a cat.” The representative used the Japanese word “gijinka,” which means “anthropomorphization” or “personification.”
等一下，关于凯蒂猫身份的信息并不完全准确。游戏博客Kotaku的作者布莱恩·阿什克拉夫特(Brian Ashcraft)联系三丽鸥核实信息。一位代表告诉他：“凯蒂猫是以猫为主题而创作的，如果说凯蒂猫不是猫就太过分了。凯蒂猫是一只猫的人格化。”这位代表使用了日语“gijinka”，就是“拟人化”或“人格化”的意思。
In the end, Sanrio says that Kitty is a character, so doesn’t fall in the categories we would use for, say, live human beings. But why is her identity so important — even if mockingly important — to so many people who have long abandoned their Hello Kitty backpacks and pencil cases?
最后，三丽鸥声称，凯蒂猫是一个卡通角色，所以不能用我们在生活中给人分类的方法去分类。但是她的身份为什么这样重要呢——开玩笑的重要也是重要——很多人明明早就不用凯蒂猫的背包和铅笔盒了。
“I’m glad Sanrio is showing us that we can indeed see cartoon characters however we want, and that we don’t need to put human or non-human labels on them,” Kitty Tan, a 36-year-old marketing manager, tells the Straits Times of Singapore. She said the clarification made more sense, because as a human Kitty made no logical sense. “These characters are meant to make us happy; they should not confuse us.”
“我很高兴三丽鸥告诉我们，我们可以按照自己希望的方式去看待卡通形象，而不必给它们贴上‘人类’或‘非人类’的标签，”36岁的市场经理凯蒂·谭(Kitty Tan)对新加坡的《海峡时报》(Straits Times)说。她说，三丽鸥后来的澄清更有意义，因为人类凯蒂猫根本不合逻辑。“这些卡通形象是用来让我们开心的，而不是让我们感到困惑。”
Hello Kitty used to be two things — a blank, expressionless canvass for the viewer’s imagination, and a bit of an enigma. She is simple, she is alien, she is “delightfully inexplicable,” the comic author Scott McCloud tells Think Progress.
凯蒂猫曾经意味着两件事——一张茫然的、没有表情的面孔，可以让观者尽情想象，此外还有种神秘色彩。她很简单，她很陌生，她有种“令人愉悦的说不清道不明”，漫画创作者斯科特·麦克克劳德(Scott McCloud)对Think Progress网站如此说道。
“In contrast to expressive American characters such as Mickey Mouse and Garfield, Hello Kitty doesn’t show emotions, and the simplicity has attracted fans from children to street fashion devotees,” writes Mari Yamaguchi for The Associated Press.
“和米老鼠以及加菲猫这些表情丰富的美国卡通形象相比，凯蒂猫没什么表情，这种简单能吸引从孩子到街头时尚爱好者在内的大量粉丝，”山口真理为美联社撰文写道。
Asked about the clarification from Sanrio, Ms. Yano, the anthropologist who dropped the bombshell in the first place, said the character’s identity should be irrelevant: “Is she a cat, is she a girl, in Japanese terms, I really feel, it doesn’t matter. What I think is that Hello Kitty becomes a prompt for the imagination.”
被问及三丽鸥的澄清时，最早引发了这场大爆炸的人类学家矢野说，这个形象的身份其实无关紧要：“她是猫也好，是小女孩也好，我觉得从日语的角度而言真的并不重要。我觉得凯蒂猫是令人天马行空的激励物。”
Mr. McCloud says that there is more to bringing a character to life than just executing the actual drawing. “It’s a collaborative process of conjuring.” He suggests that there is something valuable about questioning our classifications and asking whether she is a cat. “Is she anything, other than this weird, astral projection of our idea of other consciousness?”
麦克克劳德说，为卡通形象赋予生命不只是把这个形象画出来这么简单。“这是一种魔术般的综合过程。”他说，质疑我们对卡通形象的分类，去思考她究竟是不是一只猫，这其实是有价值的。“除了我们的下意识所创造出的奇异的灵体投射，她是否还有更多涵义呢？”
This veil of mystery has been lifted, the character has been defined. And it sent the world reeling.
神秘的帷幕已被掀起，角色已被定义。整个世界都为之摇晃。