Song of Albatross: All Your Base Are Belong To Us (I)

又做了一回火星人。昨天晚上碰到All Your Base Are Belong To Us这句话，百思不得其解。于是知之为知之，不知google之，结果，真是不搜不知道，一搜吓一跳。想不到这句四不像英语早在多年以前就已经“风靡全球”，甚至登上了时代周刊的封面。

All Your Base Are Belong To Us | TIME

你问我这句话到底是什么意思？那可实在是难为我了。话说在1986年日本某游戏公司开发的一款电子游戏中有这样一段翻译成英语的片头动画：

In A.D. 2101
War was beginning.
Captain: What happen?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's You !!
Cats: How are you gentlemen !!
Cats: All your base are belong to us.
Cats: You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say !!
Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Cats: HA HA HA HA ....
Captain: Take off every 'zig' !!
Captain: You know what you doing.
Captain: Move 'zig'.
Captain: For great justice.

现在明白他们在说什么了吗？反正我是对日本英语五体投地了，不知道后来美国电影Lost in Translation选择东京作为故事背景是不是受这个典故的启发。

就这？时代周刊未免也过于小题大做了吧？别急，其实这只是一段引子，角儿还没出场呢。

大概游戏的制作者做梦也想不到，在他们的公司随这款蹩脚之作一起归于尘土十多年之后，这只Zombie不知怎么又被考古爱好者从坟堆里挖了出来，而且这一回是一发而不可收。

官方网站（没错，确实是官方网站）上公布的完整大事年表如下：

History of 'All Your Base'

Toaplan creates the Zero Wing video game.
Toaplan releases a port for the Sega Genesis console with the addition of an intro scene, which is then translated into english (very poorly) and released in the United States.
Toaplan goes out of business.
Someone from a Zany Video Game Quotes website notices the poor translation, and highlights the game.
Overclocked.org does a humorous voiceover of the Zero Wing intro in a fake Wayne Newton voice.
Dozens of game-related messageboards begin to post quotes from the parody, and images altered to show the phrase.
Most of the threads lose interest and die off quickly as the trend is pronounced dead countless times.
The Flash movie/video is released with images from the threads and music taken from the origional game someone had added the phrase "all your base" to.
AYB explosively expands to the general (non game messageboard-reading) public.
The origional site for the video is shut down within hours due to excessive traffic, and moves to PlanetStarsiege.
Lycos ponders how "All your Base" was transformed from obscurity to a top 50 search practically overnight.
Mainstream media begin to notice the trend, and stories appear in Time Magazine, USA Today, Fox News, The Los Angeles Times, Tech TV, Wired, and many others.
As the 'remix' used in the video goes from 58 hits a day to several thousand per day, mp3.com notices the track has been ripped directly from the video game and pulls the music off their site due to copyright violations. It is later returned unchanged.
The trend continues to grow as it expands into nearly every corner of the web.
Large websites like Angelfire and Hewlett Packard sneak "all your base" references into their designs.
"All Your Base" is pronounced dead several times every day, yet it's 15 minutes of fame continue for some reason...