All of those motives are attached to the passport in some way, because regardless of what your particular reason for going abroad is, that document is a constant.

所有這些動機都以某種方式與護照聯繫在一起，因為無論你出國的具體原因是什麼，護照都是不變的。

I am particularly interested in the passport as an object, as a kind of artifact, redolent, more full of stories and emotions and more of a spur to the imagination than almost any other document you'll find in the historical archive.

我對護照這種物品特別感興趣，它是一種文物，充滿了故事和情感，比歷史檔案中的任何其他文件都更能激發人們的想象力。

It's a legal document, it has this bureaucratic function that ties our personal desires for travel, connection, adventure, friendship, whatever they may be, to these larger bureaucratic structures, which are not just national but international in scope.

它是一份法律文件，具有官僚職能，將我們對旅行、聯繫、冒險、友誼的個人願望，不管是什麼願望，與這些更大的官僚結構聯繫在一起，這些結構不僅是國家的，而且是國際的。

The history of the passport actually goes all the way back to the 14th century BCE, so 3500 years ago in ancient Egypt, messengers were sent out by their sovereigns with terracotta or clay tablets that were inscribed with cuneiform characters, sometimes to arrange marriages, sometimes to deliver messages, but always to engage in an early form of international relations.

實際上，護照的歷史可以追溯到公元前 14 世紀，即 3500 年前的古埃及，當時的君主派遣信使攜帶刻有楔形文字的陶板或泥板，有時是為了安排婚姻，有時是為了傳遞信息，但總是為了進行早期形式的國際交往。

Something like the modern passport really arises in the 18th century with the emergence of the modern nation states.

類似現代護照的東西是在 18 世紀隨著現代民族國家的出現而出現的。

During the course of the 19th century, passports didn't include photos that described the individual, their nose, their chin, their complexion, and so forth, often in very subjective or vague language, so the nose is average or normal, which I don't know what that tells anybody.

在 19 世紀期間，護照上並沒有照片來描述個人、鼻子、下巴、膚色等，通常都是用非常主觀或模糊的語言來描述，所以鼻子是普通的或正常的，我不知道這能說明什麼。

The passport as we know it doesn't really emerge until the 20th century during the First World War, when concerns about sabotage and spying and so forth, concerns related to the war, led nation states to reimpose passport controls.

我們所熟知的護照直到 20 世紀第一次世界大戰期間才真正出現，當時人們對破壞活動和間諜活動等與戰爭有關的問題的擔憂，導致各民族國家重新實行護照管制。

One of their first actions was to hold a conference on passports and passport controls, and it was at that conference in 1920 that the first sort of universal standards for the document itself, the size, the shape, the contents, as the passport system has evolved increasingly rapidly over the last decade or so, there's more and more data gathering, not just about those personal details inscribed in the passport, but about the structure of our face or the veins in our eyeballs or what have you, so that the system itself is gathering an almost, one might say, dystopian amount of information about individuals so that we are completely within the purview or control of that system as we move around the world.

正是在 1920 年的那次會議上，對證件本身的大小、形狀、內容等制定了第一批通用標準，隨著護照系統在過去十多年裡發展得越來越快，收集的數據也越來越多、不僅是護照上的個人信息，還有我們的臉部結構、眼球血管等等，是以，這個系統本身正在收集大量的、幾乎可以說是歇斯底里的個人信息，這樣，當我們在世界各地移動時，我們就完全處於這個系統的權限或控制之下了。

And for someone like me, an English professor who loves books, who's kind of an analog creature, it's disappointing to see the passport evolving in those ways.

對於我這樣一個熱愛書籍、喜歡模擬的英語教授來說，看到護照以這種方式演變，實在令人失望。

But it remains a document that we can look back on in our own personal, you can see that picture of yourself much younger and remember, you know, sort of the experiences you had traveling and, you know, look at those stamps and kind of remember the course that you took through your travels.

你可以看到自己年輕時的照片，回憶起自己的旅行經歷，看著這些郵票，回憶起自己的旅行軌跡。

Thank you.

謝謝。