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When you think of Black Friday, you probably think of discounted prices, the long line-ups and the unofficial start of the Holiday Shopping Season.
当你想到“黑色星期五”，你可能会想到打折的价格、排长长的队以及假日购物旺季的非正式开始。
But the term "Black Friday", it wasn't always about shopping.
但是“黑色星期五”这个词并不总是指购物。
Black Friday is a term that's been in use for quite a long time to refer generally to negative events that happened to fall on a Friday.
“黑色星期五”是一个使用了相当长时间的术语，指的是发生在星期五的负面事件。
That's Ben Zimmer. He's a language columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
这位是本·齐默。他是《华尔街日报》的语言专栏作家。
He says, one of the big first usage of the term Black Friday was in 1869.
他说，“黑色星期五”这个词最早使用于1869年。
There were a couple of investors, Jay Gould and James Fisk who cornered the gold market and it led to a financial panic, and so that day in 1869 was called Black Friday.
杰伊·古尔德和詹姆斯·菲斯克是两位投资者，当年垄断了黄金市场，引发了金融恐慌，因此1869年的那一天被称为“黑色星期五”。
There's no concrete evidence on who coined the term "Black Friday" or when he even started being used to describe the day after US Thanksgiving, but a lot of evidence points to the 1950s.
关于“黑色星期五”这个词是谁创造的，或者他什么时候开始被用来形容美国感恩节后的一天，没有具体的证据，但很多证据都指向20世纪50年代。
The very earliest example that's been found so far by a researcher named Bonnie Taylor Blake comes from a journal,
一位名叫邦妮·泰勒·布莱克的研究人员，最早是从一本期刊上发现的相关记录，
sort of a trade journal called Factory Management and Maintenance, and that goes back all the way to 1951.
该行业杂志名为《工厂管理与维护》，时间要追溯到1951年。
At the time it refers to Black Friday as the day after Thanksgiving, but it has nothing to do with shopping at that point.
当时“黑色星期五”指的就是感恩节后的一天，但在那时与购物无关。
In fact back then it has to do with worker absenteeism,
事实上，这个词在当时与工人旷工有关，
basically factories had trouble getting their workers to show up on the day after Thanksgiving if they got... if they got the Thursday off
基本上，在周四因感恩节而放假的工人们，在第二天，也就是周五，很难回到工厂上班，
and they would just want to take off the Friday as well.
他们只想在星期五也休息。
This is Bonnie Taylor Blake, the researcher Ben was referring to.
这位是邦妮·泰勒·布莱克，本提到的研究员。
In her research, Bonnie writes that police in Philadelphia were referring to the days following Thanksgiving as Black Friday because they were considered the biggest shopping days.
邦妮在她的研究中写道，费城警方将感恩节后的几天统称为“黑色星期五”，因为这几天被认为是最重要的购物日。
Not only that been as people descended into the city for the Army-Navy football game that happened on the Saturday.
不仅如此，还因为人们在周六会纷纷来到费城参加陆军-海军橄榄球比赛。
Local police officers would refer to this day as Black Friday because it gave them so many headaches,
当地警察将这一天称为“黑色星期五”，因为这一天给他们带来了很多麻烦，
dealing with all of that traffic but sort of foot traffic and car traffic and police had to deal with all of that.
警察不得不应对各种交通状况，包括步行交通和汽车交通。
So when did Black Friday become the chaotic shopping scene we see today?
那么，“黑色星期五”是什么时候成为我们今天看到的疯狂购物的场景的呢？
Both Ben and Bonnie say that retailers and workers didn't like the negative connotation of the term "Black Friday"
本和邦尼都表示，零售商和工人不喜欢“黑色星期五”这个词的负面含义，
and even trying to rebrand it as "Big Friday", but that didn't catch on.
甚至试图将其重新命名为“盛大星期五”，但没有成功。
But amidst are circulating about the origin story of Black Friday, so retailers played into it.
但是关于“黑色星期五”起源的故事在当时广为流传，所以零售商很快将其与感恩节后的销售联系起来。
There's a very common myth that has been in circulation since the 1980s pretty much
自20世纪80年代以来，流传着一个非常普遍的说法，
that Black Friday actually refers to retail stores, retail companies become profitable, they go in the black, and that's why they're called Black Fridays.
那就是“黑色星期五”实际上指的是，零售商店和零售公司会在这些天盈利、有盈余，这就是为什么会被称为“黑色星期五”。
So thanks to that myth, retailers were able to put a positive spin on the term and reinvented the Black Friday we see today.
因此，多亏了这个说法，零售商们才得以对这个词进行积极的解读，并将其打造成我们今天看到的“黑色星期五”。
