The Earth with which we are here concerned, because of its particular orientation in the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash, was hit by a neutrino that other Earths were not.

我们现在所关注的那个地球，由于在全体各色总杂烩里的方位特殊，结果就被一粒其他地球都没碰上的中微子给击中了。

A neutrino is not a big thing to be hit by.

中微子也算不上什么神兵利器。

In fact it's hard to think of anything much smaller by which one could reasonably hope to be hit. And it's not as if being hit by neutrinos was in itself a particularly unusual event for something the size of the Earth. Far from it. It would be an unusual nanosecond in which the Earth was not hit by several billion passing neutrinos.

事实上，如果你在设想自己会被什么玩意儿击中的话，基本上你很难想出几个比它还小的东西。再说对于地球这样大体积的物体，让个把中微子打到，这事儿本身也实在算不上稀罕。正好相反，假如哪十亿分之一秒里它没被几十亿路过的中微子击中，那才真叫怪呢。

It all depends on what you mean by 'hit', of course, seeing as matter consists almost entirely of nothing at all. The chances of a neutrino actually hitting something as it travels through all this howling emptiness are roughly comparable to that of dropping a ball bearing at random from a cruising 747 and hitting, say, an egg sandwich.

当然了，这其实完全取决于你对“击中”定义的理解，因为我们不是已经说过，充满了世界的基本是空气。试想，一粒中微子在那么一大片挺凄凉的虚无里头飞啊飞啊，它当真击中什么东西的几率能有多大？那几率，大概就跟你坐在一架波音747上，随便往底下扔个球，然后砸中，比方说，一块鸡蛋三明治差不多吧。

Anyway, this neutrino hit something. Nothing terribly important in the scale of things, you might say. But the problem with saying something like that is that you would be talking cross-eyed badger spit. Once something actually happens somewhere in something as wildly complicated as the Universe, Kevin knows where it will all end up – where 'Kevin' is any random entity that doesn't know nothin' about nothin'.

无论如何，这粒中微子击中了什么东西。你可能会说，从全局的角度看这恐怕没什么太要紧的。可讲这种话的问题在于，你嘴里吐的全是斜眼野猪的唾沫。在宇宙那么复杂到恐怖的地方，一旦有什么事真的发生了，凯文才知道它最后会闹成什么样——这里的“凯文”是指任意一个对啥都啥也不知道的个体。

This neutrino struck an atom.

这个中微子击中了一个原子。

The atom was part of a molecule. The molecule was part of a nucleic acid. The nucleic acid was part of a gene. The gene was part of a genetic recipe for growing… and so on. The upshot was that a plant ended up growing an extra leaf. In Essex. Or what would, after a lot of palaver and local difficulties of a geological nature, become Essex.

这个原子是一个分子的一部分。这个分子是一个核酸的一部分。这个核酸是一条基因的一部分。这条基因又是一份遗传配方的一部分，它会成长为……结果就是，一株植物最后多长出片叶子。地点是埃塞克斯郡。或者说，是那个在经过了没完没了的废话以及当地许多地理学性质的困难之后将会变成埃塞克斯郡的地方。

The plant was a clover. It threw its weight, or rather its seed, around extremely effectively and rapidly became the world's dominant type of clover. The precise causal connection between this tiny biological happenstance, and a few other minor variations that exist in that slice of the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash – such as Tricia McMillan failing to leave with Zaphod Beeblebrox, abnormally low sales of pecan-flavoured ice-cream and the fact that the Earth on which all this occurred did not get demolished by the Vogons to make way for a new hyperspace bypass – is currently sitting at number 4,763,984,132 on the research project priority list at what was once the History Department of the University of MaxiMegalon, and no one currently at the prayer meeting by the poolside appears to feel any sense of urgency about the problem.

那植物是株三叶草。它及其高效地抛开了自己的负担，或者换个说法，自己的种子，结果很快就变成了世上占统治地位的三叶草品种。这一微不足道的生物事件与存在于那片全体各色总杂烩中的其他几件小事——例如崔茜卡.麦克米伦没能随同赞福德.毕博布鲁克斯离开地球，美洲山核桃口味冰淇淋奇低的销量以及这一切的发生地，地球，并没有为了修建新的超空间通道的缘故给毁掉——这几件事情之间存在着一种精确的因果关系，它们眼下正端坐在曾经马克希姆佳伦大学历史系的研究清单上，位列第4号，第763号，第984号和第132号；而游泳池旁大家正在参加祈祷会，对这一问题的紧迫性似乎都没有多大感受。