黑匣子电将耗尽 搜索工作争分夺秒

The hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 continued at full speed Tuesday, with 10 planes and nine ships joining the multinational search as the time left to find the plane's 'black-box' flight recorder runs critically low.

寻找马航370航班的工作周二仍在全速推进，有10架飞机和9艘船只投入这场多国搜救。目前留给人们寻找黑匣子的时间已所剩不多。

Now in its fourth week, the search has yielded little except satellite images and aerial photographs of objects that haven't been linked to the missing plane. Numerous ships engaged in the hunt for the airliner-which vanished from civilian radar on March 8-have hauled in only unrelated scraps of junk.

搜寻工作已进入第四周，除了一些卫星影像和航拍图片显示的与飞机没有关联的物体外，搜寻并未取得实质性进展。参与寻找客机的多艘船只只找到与飞机无关的碎片。3月8日，从吉隆坡起飞的马航370航班在飞往北京的途中从民用雷达上消失。

A new search and coordination body, led by the former chief of Australia's defense force, said Tuesday that weather in the search area was expected to be poor, with areas of low visibility. Military aircraft from seven nations will scour a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean comprising about 46,000 square miles on Tuesday, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre said in a statement.

由澳大利亚前国防部长率领的新搜寻和协调机构周二说，搜寻区域的天气条件预计较差，能见度较低。联合机构协调中心(Joint Agency Coordination Centre, 简称JACC)在一份声明中称，周二将有来自七个国家的军用飞机在遥远的南印度洋约119,139平方公里(46,000平方英里)的海域进行搜索。

Australian maritime authorities leading the operation abruptly shifted the search zone some 700 miles (1,100 kilometers) to the northeast last week, to about 1,150 miles (1,850 kilometers) west of Perth. The zone was moved again fractionally to the west on Monday, based on a reassessment of ocean drift taking into account a more circular counterclockwise current and eddies than in the earlier search zone to the south.

牵头多国搜索工作的澳大利亚海事局上周突然将搜索区域向东北方向移动了1,100公里(700英里)，新搜索区域位于珀斯以西约1,850公里(1,150英里)。本周一，搜索区域再次小幅西移，这是考虑到修改后的搜索区域比原先偏南的搜索区域有更强的呈逆时针方向的洋流和涡流。

The new zone has more hospitable weather and ocean conditions than the one to the south, but also a lot more unrelated debris for searchers to investigate.

相比南边的搜索区域，新搜索区域的天气比较宜人，海洋状况更好，但同时也有更多不相关的碎片需要搜索人员进行调查。

'The intensity of our search and magnitude of our operations is increasing, not decreasing,' Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told reporters in Perth on Monday. The operation remains 'well short' of the point at which it could be called off.

澳大利亚总理阿博特(Tony Abbott)周一在珀斯对记者说，澳方的搜寻强度和规模都在加大，而不是在减小。他还说，搜索行动距离结束还相差很远。

'If this mystery is solvable, we'll solve it,' said Mr. Abbott, praising the search teams, which come from the U.S., China, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and New Zealand as well as Australia. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak plans to visit an air force base in Perth Wednesday in a show of support.

阿博特说，假如这个谜团是可以解开的，澳方就会努力解开它。他赞扬了搜索团队。搜索团队的成员来自美国、中国、日本、韩国、马来西亚、新西兰和澳大利亚。马来西亚总理纳吉布(Najib Razak)计划周三参观珀斯的一个空军基地以示支持。

Authorities calculate they may have as little as five days left before the plane's black-box flight recorders stop emitting signals that could help searchers locate them deep underwater. After that point, they say, finding the recorders will become much more difficult and could mark a turning point in the search effort. Investigators for the Air FranceAirbus A330 that plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 took almost two years to retrieve the plane's data recorder.

有关部门推测，还有五天失联客机的黑匣子飞行记录仪就会停止发出信号，而这些信号可以帮助搜索人员在深海中确定它们的位置。他们说，过了这个时间点，将更难以找到飞行记录仪，届时可能是搜索行动的一个转折点。2009年，法国航空公司(Air France)一架空中客车(Airbus) A330客机坠入大西洋，调查人员花了近两年时间才找到黑匣子。

An Australian vessel carrying a U.S. Navy black-box locator that can detect flight-recorder signals left for the search area on Monday night from Perth after completing trials. Ocean Shield, a vessel built to operate in Antarctic weather, is expected to arrive in the search area by April 5-leaving teams as little as two days to locate the recorders in depths of some 6,500 feet to 13,000 feet (2,000 meters to 4,000 meters).

在完成试航后，澳大利亚“海盾号”舰船(Ocean Shield)携带美国海军的黑匣子信号探测器周一晚间从珀斯起航，前往搜索区域。“海盾号”可在极地气候下工作，预计将在4月5日前到达搜索区域，这意味着搜救队只剩下两天时间在水深6,500英尺至13,000英尺（约合2,000米至4,000米）的海域定位黑匣子。

Experts say the pinger locator has to be towed at a speed of just three knots-three nautical miles an hour-to work effectively. That limits its search area to about 150 square miles (400 square kilometers) a day.

专家们表示，声波定位仪只有在每小时三海里（约每小时5.6公里）的速度被拖曳时才能有效工作，因此每天的搜索范围被限制在150平方英里（约合400平方公里）左右。

Malaysian Defense Minister Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Monday he would ask the U.S. and other nations about getting more equipment to search deep below the surface. He plans to put the request to Association of Southeast Asian Nations defense ministers, who are meeting in Hawaii starting Tuesday.

马来西亚国防部长希山慕丁(Hishammuddin Hussein)周一表示，他将请求美国和其他国家动用更多设备在海平面以下展开搜索。他计划向周二开始在夏威夷召开会议的东南亚国家联盟(Association of Southeast Asian Nations)的国防部长们提出这一请求。

Denise Hardesty, a research scientist at Australia's national science agency, which is advising the search teams, said it is likely the area being searched is one where currents frequently bring floating garbage together.

澳大利亚国家科学机构的研究科学家丹尼斯•哈德斯蒂(Denise Hardesty)说，洋流经常会使海面上漂浮的垃圾聚集在一起，目前的搜寻区域可能就属于这样一块区域。澳大利亚国家科学机构为搜救团队提供顾问服务。

'We estimate there are tens of thousands of objects in any given square kilometer of the ocean,' she said, adding that while most are quite small it isn't uncommon for containers and other large objects to fall into the water from commercial and fishing vessels. The large number of objects already spotted by search teams suggests this is an area of 'convergence,' Ms. Hardesty said.

她说，我们估计在任何给定的平方公里海域都会有成千上万个漂浮物；虽然漂浮物中大部分是很小的物体，但集装箱等大型物体从商用船只或渔船上掉入海里的情况也并不罕见。她说，搜救队已经发现大量漂浮物，说明这一地带是漂浮物的密集区。

Chinese, Australian and New Zealand aircraft have each spotted objects in recent days, raising hopes the authorities had made the right call in shifting the search area-a decision based on new calculations of radar data provided by Malaysians investigators. But items fished out of the water so far have turned out to be unrelated to the missing plane.

最近几天，来自中国、澳大利亚和新西兰的飞机都发现了漂浮物，这使人们觉得当局转变搜寻区域的决定是正确的。这一决定的依据是对马来西亚调查人员提供的雷达数据进行的新的推算。然而到目前为止，被打捞上来的漂浮物都被证明与失踪飞机无关。