Bundespraesidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung. It has a ring to it, doesn’t it? Try it out for yourself: Bundespraesidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung. To an English speaker, it may seem like a meaningless, even endless assortment of letters, but it turns out that it’s an award-winning German word. As the Associated Press reports, a survey of 10,000 Austrians has chosen the lengthy noun as its word of the year.
Bundespraesidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung，听上去像是什么有趣的东西，不是吗？你可以试着自己念一遍：Bundes／praesidenten／stichwahl／wiederholungs／verschiebung。对于说英语(或是其他语言)的人来说，它似乎是段毫无意义无穷无尽的字母组合，但事实证明它却是个获奖的重要德语词。美联社报道，一项有上万奥地利人参与的调查将这个超长的名词选作了年度热词。
Roughly translated, the word means “postponement of the repeat runoff of the presidential election.” The super-long word was coined this year in response to a similarly drawn-out presidential election in Austria.
大致翻译过来，这个词的意思是“联邦总统选举再选的推迟。”这个词在今年被生造出来以描述奥地利遭遇的与美国类似的胶着选举。
In May, Austrians elected Alexander Van der Bellen to the presidency in May. But Van der Bellen’s victory was a narrow one, and the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), the country’s far-right party, contested the results and claimed that voting irregularities warranted a new election. The repeat runoff was due to go ahead on October 2, but then something sticky happened. As The Guardian’s Kate Connolly reports, the government requested a postponement of the repeat runoff when issues with the glue used to seal mail-in ballots were discovered. The election was postponed and a new term was born.
在五月份，奥地利人将Alexander Van der Bellen选为下一届总统。但Van der Bellen仅是险胜，而奥地利自由党，奥地利的极右翼政党对这个结果提出抗议，并声称由于投票过程中的不规范行为，重新选举具有了正当理由。这次重选理应在十月二日进行，但又有些棘手的事情发生了。正如《卫报》的Kate Connolly报道中所说，政府又要求推迟这次重选，因为他们发现拿来密封邮寄选票的胶水出了问题。随着选举的推迟，又一个政治术语诞生了。
The election finally went forward with higher turnout. This time, the far-right party was rejected by Austrian voters by an even wider margin. The events were watched with amusement and exhaustion by Austrians. As the jury of experts who judged the contest told the Austrian paper Der Standard (in German), it is “both an expressive and ironic commentary [on] the political events of the year.”
这场选举最终获得了更高的投票率。这次，极右政党以更大的差距被奥地利选民拒之门外。奥地利人最终以娱乐却又疲惫的心情见证了这次事件。正如对这次抗议做出审判的专家陪审团告诉奥地利媒体《标准报》(Der Standard)，这个词是对这场年度政治事件不仅生动而且极具讽刺意味的评论。
If you wanted to save a letter, you could spell Bundespraesidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung with an umlaut instead, making Bundespräsidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung. Those little symbols, which add an e to a vowel, are another example of how the German language lets speakers combine more than one thing. Or you could just marvel at how much longer it is than the longest word in the English language—pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
如果你想少打一个字母，你也可以把它拼成Bundespr?sidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung，用加了变音符的?代替ae。这两个小点不仅可以给元音变音，也是德语可以由使用者自由组合的又一例证。或者你也可以试着弄清它比起最长的英语词汇——pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis，要长多少。