黑匣子電將耗盡 搜索工作爭分奪秒

The hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 continued at full speed Tuesday, with 10 planes and nine ships Joining the multinational search as the time left to find the plane's 'black-box' flight recorder runs critically low.

尋找馬航370航班的工作週二仍在全速推進，有10架飛機和9艘船隻投入這場多國搜救。目前留給人們尋找黑匣子的時間已所剩不多。

Now in its fourth week, the search has yielded little except satellite images and aerial photographs of objects that haven't been linked to the missing plane. Numerous ships engaged in the hunt for the airliner-which vanished from civilian radar on March 8-have hauled in only unrelated scraps of junk.

搜尋工作已進入第四周，除了一些衛星影像和航拍圖片顯示的與飛機沒有關聯的物體外，搜尋並未取得實質性進展。參與尋找客機的多艘船隻只找到與飛機無關的碎片。3月8日，從吉隆坡起飛的馬航370航班在飛往北京的途中從民用雷達上消失。

A new search and coordination body, led by the former chief of Australia's defense force, said Tuesday that weather in the search area was expected to be poor, with areas of low visibility. Military aircraft from seven nations will scour a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean comprising about 46,000 square miles on Tuesday, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre said in a statement.

由澳大利亞前國防部長率領的新搜尋和協調機構週二說，搜尋區域的天氣條件預計較差，能見度較低。聯合機構協調中心(Joint Agency Coordination Centre, 簡稱JACC)在一份聲明中稱，週二將有來自七個國家的軍用飛機在遙遠的南印度洋約119,139平方公里(46,000平方英里)的海域進行搜索。

Australian maritime authorities leading the operation abruptly shifted the search zone some 700 miles (1,100 kilometers) to the northeast last week, to about 1,150 miles (1,850 kilometers) west of Perth. The zone was moved again fractionally to the west on Monday, based on a reassessment of ocean drift taking into account a more circular counterclockwise current and eddies than in the earlier search zone to the south.

牽頭多國搜索工作的澳大利亞海事局上週突然將搜索區域向東北方向移動了1,100公里(700英里)，新搜索區域位於珀斯以西約1,850公里(1,150英里)。本週一，搜索區域再次小幅西移，這是考慮到修改後的搜索區域比原先偏南的搜索區域有更強的呈逆時針方向的洋流和渦流。

The new zone has more hospitable weather and ocean conditions than the one to the south, but also a lot more unrelated debris for searchers to investigate.

相比南邊的搜索區域，新搜索區域的天氣比較宜人，海洋狀況更好，但同時也有更多不相關的碎片需要搜索人員進行調查。

'The intensity of our search and magnitude of our operations is increasing, not decreasing,' Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told reporters in Perth on Monday. The operation remains 'well short' of the point at which it could be called off.

澳大利亞總理阿博特(Tony Abbott)週一在珀斯對記者說，澳方的搜尋強度和規模都在加大，而不是在減小。他還說，搜索行動距離結束還相差很遠。

'If this mystery is solvable, we'll solve it,' said Mr. Abbott, praising the search teams, which come from the U.S., China, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and New Zealand as well as Australia. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak plans to visit an air force base in Perth Wednesday in a show of support.

阿博特說，假如這個謎團是可以解開的，澳方就會努力解開它。他讚揚了搜索團隊。搜索團隊的成員來自美國、中國、日本、韓國、馬來西亞、新西蘭和澳大利亞。馬來西亞總理納吉布(Najib Razak)計劃週三參觀珀斯的一個空軍基地以示支持。

Authorities calculate they may have as little as five days left before the plane's black-box flight recorders stop emitting signals that could help searchers locate them deep underwater. After that point, they say, finding the recorders will become much more difficult and could mark a turning point in the search effort. Investigators for the Air FranceAirbus A330 that plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 took almost two years to retrieve the plane's data recorder.

有關部門推測，還有五天失聯客機的黑匣子飛行記錄儀就會停止發出信號，而這些信號可以幫助搜索人員在深海中確定它們的位置。他們說，過了這個時間點，將更難以找到飛行記錄儀，屆時可能是搜索行動的一個轉折點。2009年，法國航空公司(Air France)一架空中客車(Airbus) A330客機墜入大西洋，調查人員花了近兩年時間才找到黑匣子。

An Australian vessel carrying a U.S. Navy black-box locator that can detect flight-recorder signals left for the search area on Monday night from Perth after completing trials. Ocean Shield, a vessel built to operate in Antarctic weather, is expected to arrive in the search area by April 5-leaving teams as little as two days to locate the recorders in depths of some 6,500 feet to 13,000 feet (2,000 meters to 4,000 meters).

在完成試航後，澳大利亞“海盾號”艦船(Ocean Shield)攜帶美國海軍的黑匣子信號探測器週一晚間從珀斯起航，前往搜索區域。“海盾號”可在極地氣候下工作，預計將在4月5日前到達搜索區域，這意味着搜救隊只剩下兩天時間在水深6,500英尺至13,000英尺（約合2,000米至4,000米）的海域定位黑匣子。

Experts say the pinger locator has to be towed at a speed of just three knots-three nautical miles an hour-to work effectively. That limits its search area to about 150 square miles (400 square kilometers) a day.

專家們表示，聲波定位儀只有在每小時三海里（約每小時5.6公里）的速度被拖曳時纔能有效工作，因此每天的搜索範圍被限制在150平方英里（約合400平方公里）左右。

Malaysian Defense Minister Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Monday he would ask the U.S. and other nations about getting more equipment to search deep below the surface. He plans to put the request to Association of Southeast Asian Nations defense ministers, who are meeting in Hawaii starting Tuesday.

馬來西亞國防部長希山慕丁(Hishammuddin Hussein)週一表示，他將請求美國和其他國家動用更多設備在海平面以下展開搜索。他計劃向週二開始在夏威夷召開會議的東南亞國家聯盟(Association of Southeast Asian Nations)的國防部長們提出這一請求。

Denise Hardesty, a research scientist at Australia's national science agency, which is advising the search teams, said it is likely the area being searched is one where currents frequently bring floating garbage together.

澳大利亞國家科學機構的研究科學家丹尼斯•哈德斯蒂(Denise Hardesty)說，洋流經常會使海面上漂浮的垃圾聚集在一起，目前的搜尋區域可能就屬於這樣一塊區域。澳大利亞國家科學機構爲搜救團隊提供顧問服務。

'We estimate there are tens of thousands of objects in any given square kilometer of the ocean,' she said, adding that while most are quite small it isn't uncommon for containers and other large objects to fall into the water from commercial and fishing vessels. The large number of objects already spotted by search teams suggests this is an area of 'convergence,' Ms. Hardesty said.

她說，我們估計在任何給定的平方公里海域都會有成千上萬個漂浮物；雖然漂浮物中大部分是很小的物體，但集裝箱等大型物體從商用船隻或漁船上掉入海里的情況也並不罕見。她說，搜救隊已經發現大量漂浮物，說明這一地帶是漂浮物的密集區。

Chinese, Australian and New Zealand aircraft have each spotted objects in recent days, raising hopes the authorities had made the right call in shifting the search area-a decision based on new calculations of radar data provided by Malaysians investigators. But items fished out of the water so far have turned out to be unrelated to the missing plane.

最近幾天，來自中國、澳大利亞和新西蘭的飛機都發現了漂浮物，這使人們覺得當局轉變搜尋區域的決定是正確的。這一決定的依據是對馬來西亞調查人員提供的雷達數據進行的新的推算。然而到目前爲止，被打撈上來的漂浮物都被證明與失蹤飛機無關。