中英双语新闻 缅怀泰坦尼克号（在线收听）

Titanic remembered

The 100th anniversary of the ship they said would never sink has been remembered in a number of special events this week.

It was on the night of April 15th 1912 that the world's largest ship, Titanic, struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage.

The owners of the huge vessel, White Star Line, had said the ship was "designed to be unsinkable" but people interpreted this as proof that it was completely invincible.

But sadly this wasn't the case and more than 1,500 people perished in the icy cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean. It was a tragedy that is still remembered today and a story that has become part of the popular imagination. The Titanic is a symbol for the most epic and glamorous failure.

Myths and legends surround the story but the only real first-hand account of what happened can be discovered from the collection of wireless messages sent between the Titanic and the other ships which hurriedly tried to organise a rescue operation.

It is a telegraphic narrative showing how the Titanic had been given warnings of ice by other ships and which records the increasingly frantic calls for assistance after the collision with the huge iceberg.

"Come at once. We have struck a berg. It's a CQD, (an official distress signal) old man," the Titanic called to another ship, the Carpathia. It was like trying to organise a rescue by Twitter, with operators on other ships trying to make sense of the stream of sometimes contradictory information.

The Titanic, as the showcase of an ambitious, optimistic era, had the biggest and best wireless equipment in the world but investigations after the sinking would never satisfactorily establish why these warnings had been ignored.

Its sinking may have happened 100 years ago, but the ship's legacy still plays an important role in the way the maritime industry works today. International safety regulations became far stricter following the disaster and these rules are still governing the way ships are built.

缅怀泰坦尼克号

本周，泰坦尼克号100周年纪念日活动中的一些特殊事件让我们想起了曾被认为“永不沉没”的泰坦尼克号。

1912年4月15日晚上，世界上最大的船只——泰坦尼克号在首次远航中与冰山相撞。

这艘巨轮所属的白星航运公司表示泰坦尼克号被设计为“永不会沉没”，因此人们误以为泰坦尼克号是无敌的。

但事实并非如此，1500多人死在了大西洋冰冷的水中。这场悲剧被人们缅怀至今，这个故事也成了大众想象力的一部分。泰坦尼克号象征着史诗般迷人的失败。

泰坦尼克号沉船的故事被赋予了很多神话传说，但是当时的真实情况能从泰坦尼克号和组织救援的其他船只之间的无线信息中被获知。

电报内容显示了其他船只是如何警告泰坦尼克号前方有冰山的，电报还记录了泰坦尼克号与巨大的冰山相撞后，人们开始疯狂地呼救。

泰坦尼克号向卡帕西亚号求救：“快来营救，我们撞上冰山了。老兄，这求救信号（CQD是官方求救信号）。”这有点像通过推特来组织营救，其他船上的营救人员需要先弄清楚这段相互矛盾的信息流是什么意思。

作为壮志雄心的乐观主义时代的展示品，泰坦尼克号配备了世界上最强大、最好的无线设施，但沉船后的调查无法给出令人满意的解释：为什么那些有关冰山的警告被忽视了。

虽然泰坦尼克号沉船事件发生在100年以前，但泰坦尼克号的遗训对现在航海业的运营仍然起到了非常重要作用。这场灾难过后，国际安全管理条例变得更加严格了，条例还对船只的建造方式进行了监管。