If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a digitally altered picture of an absent British princess is apparently worth a million.
如果说一图胜千言，那么一位久未露面的英国王妃的一张经过数字修改的照片显然胜过百万言。

That seemed to be the lesson after another day of internet-breaking rumors and conspiracy theories swirling around Catherine, Princess of Wales, who apologized on Monday for having doctored a photograph of herself with her three children that circulated on news sites and social media on Sunday.
经过又一天的网络谣言和阴谋论肆虐后，这似乎是从中可以得到的教训，周一，凯瑟琳王妃为修改了一张她与三个孩子的合影照片而道歉，这张照片上周日在新闻网站和社交媒体上流传。

It was the first official photo of Catherine since before she underwent abdominal surgery two months ago — a cheerful Mother’s Day snapshot, taken by her husband, Prince William, at home. But if it was meant to douse weeks of speculation about Catherine’s well-being, it had precisely the opposite effect.
这是凯瑟琳自两个月前接受腹部手术以来公布的第一张官方照片，是一张欢快的母亲节抓拍，由她的丈夫威廉在家中拍摄。但如果这张照片是为了平息几周来人们对凯瑟琳健康状况的猜测，那么它的效果是适得其反的。

Now the British royal family faces a storm of questions about how it communicates with the press and public, whether Catherine manipulated other family photos she released in previous years, and whether she felt driven to retouch this photo to disguise the impact of her illness.
现在，英国王室面临着一场风暴，人们质疑王室与媒体和公众的沟通方式，质疑凯瑟琳是否修改过她前几年发布的其他家庭照片，质疑她是否感到不得不修图以掩盖疾病的影响。

It adds up to a fresh tempest for a royal family that has lurched from one self-created crisis to another. Unlike previous episodes, this involves one of the family’s most popular members, a commoner-turned-future queen. It also reflects a social media celebrity culture driven in part by the family itself, one that is worlds away from the intrusive paparazzi pictures that used to cause royals, including a younger Kate Middleton, chagrin.
对于在一场又一场自己制造的危机中跌跌撞撞的王室来说，此事已经演变为一场全新的风暴。与之前不同的是，这一次涉及的是王室中最受欢迎的成员之一，一位平民出身的未来王后。这也反映了部分由王室自身推动的社交媒体名人文化，这种文化，和让王室成员——包括早年的凯特·米德尔顿——懊恼不已的那些窥探隐私的狗仔队偷拍有着天壤之别。

“Like so many millennial celebrities, the Princess of Wales has built a successful public image by sharing with her audience a carefully curated version of her personal life,” said Ed Owens, a royal historian who has studied the relationship between the monarchy and the media. The manipulated photograph, he said, is damaging because, for the public, it “brings into question the authenticity” of Catherine’s home life.
研究君主制与媒体关系的王室历史学家埃德·欧文斯说：“和许多千禧一代的名人一样，威尔士王妃通过与观众分享她精心策划的个人生活版本，成功地塑造了自己的公众形象。”他说，这张经过修改的照片具有破坏性，因为对公众来说，它“让人怀疑”凯瑟琳家庭生活的“真实性”。

Authenticity is the least of it: the mystery surrounding Catherine’s illness and prolonged recovery, out of the public eye, has spawned wild rumors about her physical and mental health, her whereabouts, and her relationship with William.
然而真实性已经算是小事：凯瑟琳的疾病和持续已久的康复过程都在公众的视线之外，由此产生的神秘感已经催生了关于她的身心健康、行踪以及她与威廉的关系的疯狂谣言。

The discovery that the photo was altered prompted several international news agencies to issue advisories — including one from The Associated Press that was ominously called a “kill notification” — urging news organizations to remove the image from their websites and scrub it from any social media.
发现照片被修改后，几家国际新闻机构发出警告，其中美联社的警告使用了“封杀通知”这样不祥的字眼，敦促各新闻机构从其网站上删除该图片，并从任何社交媒体上将其删除。

Mr. Owens called the incident a “debacle.”
欧文斯称这起事件为“灾难”。

“At a time when there is much speculation about Catherine’s health, as well as rumors swelling online about her and Prince William’s private lives,” he said, “the events of the last two days have done nothing to dispel questions and concerns.”
“就在人们对凯瑟琳的健康状况纷纷猜测，网上关于她和威廉王子私生活的谣言甚嚣尘上的时候，”他说，“过去两天发生的事件丝毫没有消除人们的疑问和担忧。”

Kensington Palace, where Catherine and William have their offices, declined to release an unedited copy of the photograph on Monday, which left amateur visual detectives to continue scouring the image for signs of alteration in the poses of the princess and her three children, George, Charlotte, and Louis.
凯瑟琳和威廉的办公室所在的肯辛顿宫周一拒绝公布未经编辑的照片副本，业余的图片侦探们只能继续寻找照片中王妃和她的三个孩子乔治、夏洛特和路易斯的姿势是否有被修改过的痕迹。

The A.P. said its examination yielded evidence that there was “an inconsistency in the alignment of Princess Charlotte’s left hand.” The image has a range of clear visual inconsistencies that suggest it was doctored. A part of a sleeve on Charlotte’s cardigan is missing, a zipper on Catherine’s jacket and her hair is misaligned, and a pattern in her hair seems clearly artificial.
美联社称，检查结果显示“夏洛特公主左手的轮廓存在异常”。这张照片有一堆明显的异常，说明是被修改过的。夏洛特的开衫的部分袖子不见了，凯瑟琳外套上的拉链和她的头发对不上，她头发上的纹路明显有修改痕迹。

Samora Bennett-Gager, an expert in photo retouching, identified multiple signs of image manipulation. The edges of Charlotte’s legs, he said, were unnaturally soft, suggesting that the background around them had been shifted. Catherine’s hand on the waist of her youngest son, Louis, is blurry, which he said could indicate that the image was taken from a separate frame of the shoot.
图片后期专家萨莫拉·本尼特·加格发现了多处修改的痕迹。他说，夏洛特双腿的边缘柔和得不自然，这表明双腿周围的背景被换过。凯瑟琳放在小儿子路易斯腰上的手也很模糊，他说这可能表明这张照片是从当时拍摄的另一张图片中截取出来的。

Taken together, Mr. Bennett-Gager said, the changes suggested that the photo was a composite drawn from multiple images rather than a single image smoothed out with a Photoshop program. A spokesman for Catherine declined to comment on her proficiency in photo editing.
加格说，综合来看，这些改动表明照片是由多张图片合成的，而不是用Photoshop程序平滑处理过的单张图片。凯瑟琳的发言人拒绝就她对照片编辑的熟练程度发表评论。

Even before Catherine’s apology, the web exploded with memes of “undoctored” photos. One showed a bored-looking Catherine smoking with a group of children. Another, which the creator said was meant to “confirm she is absolutely fine and recovering well,” showed the princess splashing down a water slide.
甚至在凯瑟琳道歉之前，网上就出现了大量“未修”照片的米姆。在其中一个米姆里，闷闷不乐的凯瑟琳地和一群孩子在一起抽烟。另一个显示她正从水滑梯上滑下来，其创作者说这是为了“证实她绝对没事，恢复得很好”。

Beyond the mockery, the royal family faces a lingering credibility gap. Catherine has been an avid photographer for years, capturing members of the royal family in candid situations: Queen Camilla with a basket of flowers; Prince George with his great-grandfather, Prince Philip, on a horse-drawn buggy.
除了嘲笑之外，王室还面临着挥之不去的信誉损失问题。凯瑟琳多年来热衷拍照，捕捉王室成员的真实场景：卡米拉王后提着花篮；乔治王子与曾祖父菲利普亲王共乘一辆马车。

The palace has released many of these photos, and they are routinely published on the front pages of British papers (The Times of London splashed the Mother’s Day picture over three columns). A former palace official predicted that the news media would now examine the earlier photographs to see if they, too, had been altered.
白金汉宫发布了许多这样的照片，它们经常出现在英国报纸的头版上（《泰晤士报》用大幅版面刊登了那张母亲节照片）。一位前白金汉宫官员预测，新闻媒体现在将对过去的照片进行检查，看看它们是否也被修改过。

That would put Kensington Palace in the tricky position of having to defend one of its most effective communicators against a potentially wide-ranging problem, and one over which the communications staff has little control. After a deluge of inquires about the photograph, the palace left it to Catherine to explain what happened. She was contrite, but presented herself as just another frustrated shutterbug with access to Photoshop.
这将使肯辛顿宫陷入棘手境地，他们需要为王室最有成效的传播官辩护，以免受到一系列潜在问题的影响，而传播部门的工作人员基本无法左右这位传播官的意志。在照片引来大量质询后，白金汉宫让凯瑟琳对情况做出说明。她很懊悔，但按她的说法，她只是一个会用Photoshop、不满意图片效果的摄影爱好者。

“Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing,” she wrote on social media. “I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused.”
“像许多业余摄影师一样，我偶尔也会尝试修图，”她在社交媒体上写道。“对于我们昨天分享的家庭照片造成的任何困惑，我想表达歉意。”

Catherine’s use of social media sets her apart from older members of the royal family, who rely on the traditional news media to present themselves. When King Charles III taped a video message to mark Commonwealth Day, for example, Buckingham Palace hired a professional camera crew that was paid for by British broadcasters, a standard arrangement for royal addresses.
对社交媒体的使用是凯瑟琳与依赖传统媒体展示自己的王室年长成员的区别所在。例如，当查尔斯三世国王录制一段视频来纪念英联邦日时，白金汉宫聘请了一支由英国广播公司支付费用的专业摄制组，这是王室成员发表演讲的标准安排。

When Charles left the hospital after being treated for an enlarged prostate, he and Queen Camilla walked in front of a phalanx of cameras, smiling and waving as they made their way to their limousine.
当查尔斯因前列腺增生接受治疗后离开医院时，他和卡米拉王后在一排摄像机前一边走向他们的大轿车，一边微笑着挥手致意。

Catherine was not seen entering or leaving the hospital for her surgery, nor were her children photographed visiting her. That may reflect the gravity of her health problems, royal watchers said, but it also reflects the determination of William and Catherine to erect a zone of privacy around their personal lives.
没有人看到凯瑟琳进出医院接受手术，也没有拍到她的孩子探望她。王室观察人士表示，这可能反映了她健康问题的严重性，但这也反映了威廉和凯瑟琳在围绕着个人生活方面建立隐私区的决心。

William, royal experts said, is also driven by a desire not to repeat the experience of his mother, Diana, who was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 after a high-speed pursuit by photographers. Catherine, too, has been victimized by paparazzi, winning damages from a French court in 2017 after a celebrity magazine published revealing shots of her on vacation in France.
王室专家表示，威廉也决心不想重蹈他母亲戴安娜王妃的覆辙。1997年，戴安娜王妃在巴黎遭遇摄影师开车超速追击，在一场车祸中丧生。凯瑟琳也曾成为狗仔队的受害者，2017年，一家名人杂志刊登了她在法国度假时衣着暴露的照片后，她在法国法院获得了赔偿。

Last week, grainy photos of Catherine riding in a car with her mother surfaced on the American celebrity gossip site TMZ. British newspapers reported the existence of the photos but did not publish them out of deference to the palace’s appeal that she be allowed to recuperate in privacy.
上周，美国名人八卦网站TMZ上出现了凯瑟琳和母亲一起乘车的模糊照片。英国报纸报道了这些照片的存在，但由于王室呼吁让她在不受干扰的情况下康复，报刊没有刊登照片。

Catherine and William are not the only members of their royal generation who have sought to exercise control over their image. Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, posted photos of themselves on Instagram, even using their account to announce their withdrawal from royal duties in 2020.
凯瑟琳和威廉并不是他们这一代中唯一试图控制自身形象的王室成员。哈里王子和妻子梅根会在Instagram上发布自己的照片，甚至在2020年使用自己的帐户宣布不再承担王室职责。

Catherine’s embrace of social media to circulate her pictures is a way of reclaiming her life from the long lenses of the paparazzi. But the uproar over the Mother’s Day photo shows that this strategy comes with its own risks, not least that a family portrait has added to the very misinformation about her that it was calculated to counteract.
选择利用社交媒体传播自己的照片是凯瑟琳从狗仔队的长镜头中重新夺回自己生活的一种方式。但母亲节照片引起的轩然大波表明，这一策略也有其风险，尤其当一张本为了辟谣而发布的家庭照片反而增添了不实信息。

On Monday afternoon, Catherine found herself back in traditional royal mode. She was photographed, fleetingly, in the back of a car with William as he left Windsor Castle for a Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey. Kensington Palace said she was on her way to a private appointment.
周一下午，凯瑟琳发现自己又回到了传统的王室模式。当威廉离开温莎城堡前往威斯敏斯特教堂参加英联邦日仪式时，她一度被拍到与威廉一起坐在汽车后座上。肯辛顿宫表示，她当时正在前往私人约会的路上。

Gaia Tripoli和Lauren Leatherby对本文有报道贡献。

Mark Landler是时报伦敦分社社长，报道英国新闻以及美国在欧洲、亚洲和中东的外交政策。他从事新闻工作已超过30年。点击查看更多关于他的信息。

翻译：Ziyu Qing、安妮