懸崖邊的瘋狂：駭人的新潮流
A face peers over the edge several hundred feet above me. It is a grown man gripped by a morbid elation as he looks down on a sheer drop to the rocks, the beach — where I am standing — and the sea.
一個成年男子站在幾百英尺高的懸崖邊緣往下看，峭壁之下是巨石，是沙灘，還有大海，我站在下面，看着他沉浸在病態的喜悅之中。
What he can’t see from his perch is that he is resting on an overhang, a lump of chalk protruding over thin air and a very long drop. At any minute, the ground might simply give way, as this famous English beauty spot has had a habit of doing since time immemorial.
但他看不見自己正站於一大塊向外突出的白堊巖上，巍巍高聳的峭壁之上空氣稀薄，那塊岩石隨時都有可能垮塌，自古以來在這個著名的英國景點可沒少發生這種事。
What happens next, though, is a more recent phenomenon.
接下來這個男人要進行一項如今風靡全球的活動。
Slowly a hand comes in to view and it is holding — what else? — a selfie-stick. Click. Moments later, the man has retreated back from the brink and moved on.
他慢慢地伸出了一隻手，拿着一個什麼東西？哦，自拍杆，咔噠！過一會兒他從懸崖邊退了回去，繼續上路了。
How much longer can it be before a new category is added to the list of verdicts available to a coroner? In addition to ‘accident’, ‘misadventure’ and ‘open’, there will soon be a new pronouncement: ‘death by selfie’.
估計過不了多久，在驗屍官開具的死亡鑑定類型上除了“事故”、“意外”、“存疑”以外，又會多上一條新判決了，那就是“自拍死”。
Last year, it was reported that the number of people killed by sharks around the world had, for the first time, been overtaken by the number of those killed while snapping themselves on a phone (and in a record year for shark attacks, too).
去年，有報告稱全世界“自拍死”的人數有史以來第一次超過了被鯊魚襲擊而死的人數（並且這年的鯊魚襲擊事件也創了新高。）
Pretty soon, no doubt, someone will kill two birds — and themselves — by taking a selfie with a shark moments before they are chomped to death.
很快，我們就會看到這樣的新聞，有人爲了與鯊魚一同自拍而葬身鯊腹，這可就是兩種死因都佔全了。
But the number of narcissistic fatalities just keeps on rising. Last month alone, there were at least 15 selfie-related deaths.
這種自戀導致的死亡人數還在不斷攀升，僅上個月就有15起與自拍相關的死亡案例。
Leading the world in this idiocy is India, where selfie-cide is almost a daily occurrence.
而印度可以算是這種蠢事的多發之地，幾乎每天都有“自拍死”的事故。
In Britain, we have got off fairly lightly thus far. But if it is going to happen anywhere, it could easily be here, on the Sussex coast.
英國到目前爲止還未有太多自拍致死的案例，但現如今這類事件已遍佈世界各地，誰能說薩塞克斯海岸不會是下一個案發地呢？
For this six-mile cliff-top between Newhaven and Beachy Head — a stretch of corrugated peaks and troughs known as the Seven Sisters — has become so popular with selfie-seekers that the locals are about to take pre-emptive action.
在紐黑文和比奇角之間，有一片波瀾起伏的山脈，綿延長達六英里，這裏的七姐妹懸崖已經成爲自拍愛好者們十分青睞的景點，當地人聽聞也都紛紛搶先一步前去遊覽。
Lately, we have seen images of jaw-dropping stupidity as daredevil walkers — mainly young men, it seems — creep to the edge of these chalk faces in considerable numbers for that must-have selfie.
近來在新聞上我們常能看見一些讓人跌破眼鏡的圖片，這些冒失鬼——多是年輕人——成羣結隊來到懸崖的邊緣只爲了一張“這輩子一定要拍”的自拍照。
Last summer, a local photographer captured a row of irresponsible people sitting at the site, with their feet dangling over an edge which is not even there any more.
去年夏天，一個本地攝影師在該景點拍下了一張照片，一羣人坐在懸崖邊緣，他們的腿在空中晃來晃去，但那塊崖石現在已經不知所蹤了。
In another shot, a man is sitting on a chalk overhang which already has a very obvious fault line running down the side.
另一張照片中，一個男人坐在一塊突出的白堊巖上，但這塊岩石已經出現了明顯的裂紋，很有可能會滑落。
It is purely down to luck rather than judgment that no one has been sitting on these chunks of rock when the ground has given way. For erosion is a fact of life here.
目前還未有人坐在上面剛巧遇上岩石崩塌的情況，這不是因爲判斷力好，純粹是走運，因爲風化侵蝕是當地十分正常的自然現象。
‘Very often, you come here in the morning and see a great pile of chalk and rocks on the beach,’ says Molly, a volunteer in the National Trust visitor centre. ‘But with two tides a day, it gets washed away, so people don’t see it for long.’
“你早上來到這兒，很有可能會在沙灘上看見一些白堊巖粉末與石塊，”英國國民託管組織遊客中心的志願者莫莉說，“只不過因爲每天兩次漲潮，這些石塊都被海水帶走了，所以人們往往看不見這些痕跡。”
And in recent years, for reasons which are not entirely clear, there has been a run of particularly hefty falls. Indeed, as Molly points out: ‘The Seven Sisters have now become eight.’
近年來，已經有數起崖壁垮塌事件發生，原因尚不清楚。並且如莫莉所說：“七姐妹懸崖現在不只是七座而是有八座懸崖了。”
That’s because one stretch of cliff has had such severe falls either side of a grassy promontory that it has now created an extra peak.
那是因爲其中一處懸崖的石體數次墜塌落在長滿草的海角周圍，從而產生了一處新的陡崖。
The worst cliff-fall in living memory occurred during a storm in the winter of 2013-2014 when several yards fell into the sea at once. But these episodes are by no means restricted to extreme weather.
最嚴重的一次崖體墜落，發生在2013年到2014年那個暴雪肆虐的冬天，長達幾英里的山崖岩石全部發生滑落，但這種小插曲絕不僅僅是極端天氣導致的。
A German woman with two young children welcomes the idea of a fence but then wonders whether it would be wise to bash poles into ground that is already unstable.
一位育有兩個孩子的德國媽媽認爲這裏應該裝上護欄，但轉念一想，如果這塊岩石本來就不穩固，插上護欄杆又有什麼意義呢？
