White House visitor logs show up famous names白宮訪客紀錄簿出現名人大名

◎張沛元

White House visitor logs show up famous names

白宮訪客紀錄簿出現名人大名

Did Barack Obama’s controversial ex-pastor Jeremiah Wright visit the White House? Or did the great Michael Jordan shoot some hoops with the president on his basketball court?

頗具爭議性的巴拉克．歐巴馬的前本堂牧師耶利米．萊特曾造訪白宮？抑或是偉大的麥可．喬丹曾與總統在他的籃球場上灌籃？

The answer to both questions is no.

這兩個問題的答案都是否定的。

But those famous names, and others, were thrown up in an exercise in government transparency Friday, when the Obama administration released the first 500 names on a list of the 100,000 people cleared to visit the White House every year.

但這些眾所周知的姓名，以及其他人的姓名，都在週五的一場政府透明度活動上、歐巴馬政府公佈每年獲准參訪白宮的10萬人中的前500個姓名時曝光。

Though the administration touted the release as evidence of "transparency like you’ve never seen before," the list did spark confusion, as some people with famous names were listed on the visitor logs.

儘管行政部門宣稱此一公佈行為足以證明「（政府的）前所未見的透明度，」但該名單卻也引起困惑，因為訪客簿上也列出了一些與名人同名的人。

The White House said several "false positives" of people saddled with famous names were on the list of 500 guest entrances to the White House, including that of one Jeremiah Wright.

白宮表示，500名踏入白宮大門的訪客清單上，有不少普通老百姓因同名之累而「讓人誤會」，其中包括耶利米．萊特。

新聞辭典

show up：片語，出現，露面；暴露。例句：When will the train show up?（火車什麼時候會來？）

transparency：名詞，透明，透明度。transparent，形容詞，透明的；坦率的；一目了然的。

false positive：在醫學上指的是「偽陽性」，在阻擋垃圾郵件的程式中，指的是真正的訊息被誤判為垃圾郵件，因此遭到程式阻擋並退回給寄件者。

saddle someone with someone or something：讓某人肩負重擔。saddle，名詞，馬鞍；動詞，加馬鞍；使負擔。例句：I didn’t mean to saddle you with my problems.（我無意拿我的問題來增加你的負擔。）