不惧权威，敢于质疑 Young and the 1)Perceptive
文字难度：★★★
It has been more than three years since the beginning of the Wall Street financial crisis, yet we continue to hear about new evidence of 2)glaring errors and widespread 3)misdoings. Even the smartest minds in finance are left scratching their heads: how did we not catch any of this sooner?
华尔街金融危机爆发至今已有三年多了，然而现在还时有新证据浮现，印证当初那些昭然的错失和普遍的谬行。即便是金融界里最聪明的头脑也只能无奈地挠头：我们为什么没有早点发现错误呢？
When I hear this 4)refrain, I am reminded of 5)Boris Goldovsky. Goldovsky, who died in 2001, was a legend in opera circles, best remembered for his commentary during the Saturday 6)matinee radio broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera. But he was also a piano teacher. And it is as a teacher that he made a lasting—7)albeit unintentional—contribution to our understanding of why seemingly obvious errors go undetected for so long.
听到这一重复老调，我想起了鲍里斯·戈多夫斯基。2001年逝世的戈多夫斯基曾经是歌剧圈的传奇，因其为大都会剧院的周六音乐广播节目作评论而广为人知。但他同时也是一位钢琴老师。并且，也是作为一位老师，他——即使是不经意地——帮助我们理解了为什么显而易见的错误会长时间不被察觉，这一发现影响深远。
One day, a student of his was practicing a piece by 8)Brahms when Goldovsky heard something wrong. He stopped her and told her to fix her mistake. The student looked confused; she said she had played the notes as they were written. Goldovsky looked at the music and, to his surprise, the girl had indeed played the printed notes correctly—but there was an apparent 9)misprint in the music.
有一天，当他的一名学生在练习勃拉姆斯的作品时，戈多夫斯基听到曲子弹错了。他叫她停下来，并纠正错误。学生看起来很困惑，她说自己是按照书上所写的音符来弹的。戈多夫斯基看了看乐谱，让他吃惊的是，女孩的确是正确地按照乐谱上的音符来弹的——但是在曲子里有一个很明显的印刷错误。
At first, the student and the teacher thought this misprint was confined to their edition of the 10)sheet music alone. But further checking revealed that all other editions contained the same incorrect note. Why, wondered Goldovsky, had no one—the composer, the publisher, the 11)proofreader, scores of accomplished pianists—noticed the error? How could so many experts have missed something that was so obvious to a 12)novice?
一开始，学生和老师都认为仅仅是他们这一版的散页乐谱有印刷错误。但是经过进一步的检查后，他们发现其他所有版本都有相同的错误音符。为什么，戈多夫斯基想，没有人——作曲家、出版商、校对员以及大量的杰出钢琴家——发现这个错误？那么多的专家怎么能够漏掉一个对初学者来说这么明显的错误？
This 13)paradox intrigued Goldovsky. So over the years he gave the piece to a number of musicians who were skilled sight readers of music—which is to say they had the ability to play from a printed 14)score for the first time without practicing. He told them there was a misprint somewhere in the score, and asked them to find it. He allowed them to play the piece as many times as they liked and in any way that they liked. But not one musician ever found the error. Only when Goldovsky told his subjects which 15)bar, or 16)measure, the mistake was in did most of them spot it.
这个悖论引发了戈多夫斯基的兴趣。于是，在接下来的那些年里，他把这份乐谱拿给一些有熟练视奏技巧的音乐家过目——也就是说他们不经过练习就能把第一次看到的印刷乐谱弹奏出来。他告诉这些音乐家在乐谱的某个地方有一处印刷错误，请他们找出来。他允许他们不限次数、不限方式地弹奏这首曲子。但是，没有一个音乐家能找出这个错误。只有当戈多夫斯基告诉他们错误在哪一小节或哪一拍时，大部分音乐家才注意到。