《中英對照讀新聞》Telecom New Zealand tells woman her name Gay is "inappropriate" 紐西蘭電信公司告訴女子，她的名字Gay「不妥當」
◎ 魏國金



A woman’s email to Telecom New Zealand’s help-desk was rejected because the company’s filter system found her name, Gay, "inappropriate for business-like communication," a newspaper reported.

一名女子發送給紐西蘭電信公司客服部的電子郵件遭退回，因為該公司的電郵過濾系統發現她的名字─蓋伊（Gay，同性戀者之義），「對實際的溝通不妥當」。


Gay Hamilton, of Nelson, admitted that she did happen to be gay but was concerned that the country’s biggest public company had spent time and resources deciding that the word was offensive, the Herald reported.

紐西蘭先鋒報報導，尼爾森市的蓋伊．漢彌爾頓承認，她剛巧是同性戀者，不過令她關切的是，這家紐國最大的上市公司，耗費時間、資源，判定gay是令人反感的字眼。


"If they do have to put content filters on, then maybe they should ensure that it only gets genuinely abusive words," she told the paper.

她告訴這家報紙說︰「如果他們一定要裝置內容過濾程式，那麼或許應該確定只用於真正侮辱性的字眼。」


Telecom’s automated reply to her email said the message "was identified by our content filtering processes as containing language that may be considered inappropriate for business-like communication." It confirmed that the offending word was "gay".

電信公司給予她的自動回函說，所接獲的訊息，「被我們的內容過濾處理程式判定為，恐含被視為對實際溝通不恰當的用語。」它確認這個冒犯性字眼就是「gay」。


Public relations spokesperson Lenska Papich said the response was triggered by Telecom’s internal email monitoring system. "Our systems detect a number of words, including both the words gay and heterosexual, that could be deemed as inappropriate for use at work," she said.

公關發言人蘭斯卡．帕皮奇指出，該回應是由電信公司內部的電郵監測系統所引發的。 「我們的系統會鑑查出包括同性戀與異性戀等一些用字，這些字眼恐被認為不適合用於工作境況中。」


新聞辭典

businesslike：實事求是的，等同於practical，以like為字尾的形容詞，含有宛如的意思，如childlike： 天真的、孩子般的。


happen：發生，在此則指碰巧。例句︰I happened to sit by her in the cinema. （在電影院看電影時，我碰巧坐在她旁邊。）


public company：可指公眾公司，即允許民眾透過證券買賣購買股權；亦可指國營公司，即為政府所擁有，然此義在美國較少使用。