今年奧斯卡大熱的影片《黑天鵝》不但讓女主角攬得小金人，也讓觀眾看到了藝術家創作角色過程的艱辛。不過，我們今天要說的這個“黑天鵝事件”跟這部電影可沒什么關系。

Black swan is the event that is a surprise (to the observer) and has a major impact.

“黑天鵝”事件指突然發生并且產生巨大影響的事件。

The term black swan was a Latin expression—its oldest known reference comes from the poet Juvenal's characterization of something being "a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan."

“黑天鵝”是一個拉丁短語，其最早的出處是詩人尤文納爾（譯者注：尤文納爾為羅馬諷刺派詩人）在詩中將某個事物描繪為“世間罕有之鳥，酷似黑天鵝”。

It was used to explain:

這個表達用于解釋此類事件的三種性質：

1. The disproportionate role of high-impact, hard to predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance and technology.

在歷史、科學、金融以及技術領域中，這種發生在正常預期之外、影響巨大、難以預知而且罕見的事件所扮演的重要角色。

2. The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities) .

（因其低概率的特點）很難用科學手段計算出這種罕見事件發生的可能性。

3. The psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs.

因心理偏見，使得人們忽視了歷史事件中罕見事件所產生巨大影響的不確定性和未知性。

The rise of the Internet, the personal computer, World War I, and the September 11 attacks are given as examples of Black Swan Events.

因特網的崛起、個人電腦出現、第一次世界大戰以及911恐怖襲擊均為“黑天鵝事件”的范例。

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（中國日報網英語點津 Helen）

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