2017考研英語拓展閱讀：蘋果新聞應用撞臉Dota2

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It’s not unusual for Dota 2 fanatics like myself to perceive the game’s logo in innocuous everyday objects, but when it comes to the new Apple News logo, I think even laypeople will have to agree that it bears a striking resemblance. Both marks feature a square bisected by a diagonal line descending from left to right. Both have a pair of rough triangles filling the open corners. Both are red!

對于筆者這樣的Dota 2發燒友來說，在日常生活中看到這款游戲的標志可說非比尋常。不過看了蘋果新聞的新標志，一般人都會覺得二者確實“撞臉”了：兩個標志的外觀都為正方形，通體呈紅色，中間是一條由左至右的對角線，兩側空白部分各有個三角形圖案。

Now, I’m not about to suggest that Apple copied Valve’s global sensation of a video game. As I say, those of us who play Dota are stupidly passionate about it and we’d notice an infraction of this kind pretty much instantly. Much more likely is that Apple simply didn’t know. I guess 12 million active players each month, millions of Twitch viewers, and tournament prizes that overshadow pro sports aren’t quite enough for Dota to register on Apple’s radar. It’s mind-boggling to me, but seriously, Apple works on a scale of billions, not millions, and it’s not like the company has ever shown itself particularly interested in PC gaming. Which is a shame because my dream computer is basically a MacBook that can run all my Steam games as well as a Windows PC.

筆者的意思不是蘋果復制了Valve公司出品的游戲的標志。筆者說過，像我們這樣無法自拔的Dota玩家，對如此違和的圖案及其敏感。蘋果公司對此可能毫不知情。筆者想，即便Dota2每個月有1200萬活躍玩家，Twitch上的觀眾達到數百萬之多，比賽獎金令傳統體育相形見絀，恐怕也難入蘋果的法眼。對此筆者簡直無法想象，說真的，Dota的產業規模達到百萬美元級已經相當難得，可蘋果的生意動輒便是數十億美元，而蘋果從未對電腦游戲表現出特別的興趣。說到這里，筆者心頭一痛，擁有一臺能像個人電腦一樣流暢運行Steam上游戲的MacBook素來是筆者的夢想。

The inspiration for the two logos is rather divergent. Apple’s News app is going for a stylized "N" whereas the Dota 2 mark is a representation of the one and only map on which the game is played: the diagonal represents the river splitting the Dire and Radiant sections and the corner elements are the bases that each team has to defend (the "Ancients" in the original Defense of the Ancients game title).

兩個標志的設計靈感可謂截然不同。蘋果新聞的標志代表大寫字母“N”，而Dota2的標志代表游戲地圖：中間的對角線其實是天災軍團和近衛軍團的分界河，角落里的圖案則代表雙方各自的基地(Dota1中的字母A代表上古遺跡)。

Lest you think that Apple is uniquely ignorant of PC gaming, though, Google didn’t do much better with its Nexus 5X last year, whose packaging looked like this:

蘋果不怎么關注電腦游戲，谷歌也好不到哪里去，谷歌去年推出的Nexus 5X的包裝是這個樣子的：

Actually, that 5X box looks almost exactly identical to Apple’s new News. So maybe my Dota bias has swayed me to focus on the wrong similarity.

實際上，5X盒子的包裝看上去與蘋果新聞的新標志幾乎一模一樣。筆者可能對Dota過于偏愛，才會關注這樣幾個標志之間無甚關聯的相似性。