譯/王麗娟 How fitting that the man often credited with saying "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes" most likely did not invent the phrase.
Commonly attributed to Mark Twain, that quotation instead appears to be a descendant of a line published centuries ago by satirist Jonathan Swift. Variants emerged and mutated over time until a modern version of the saying was popularized by a Victorian-era preacher, according to Gregory F. Sullivan, a researcher who, like Twain, prefers a pseudonym.
說來真是貼切，被認為說了「當真相還在穿鞋時，謊言已走遍半個世界」這句話的人，大有可能並未發明這句話。
一般認為此語出自馬克吐溫，然而追溯這個引文的來由，卻似乎是諷刺作家強納森．史威夫特數百年前所出版作品中的一句話。葛雷戈利．Ｆ．蘇利文是位研究者，和馬克吐溫一樣喜歡使用化名，根據他的說法，隨著物換星移，不同版本相繼出現且一變再變，直到維多利亞時代，才由一名傳教士讓這句話的現代版成為廣為人知的格言。
Seven years ago, under the alias Garson O'Toole, Sullivan started Quote Investigator — a popular website where he traces the origins of well-known sayings. This month, also as O'Toole, he published "Hemingway Didn't Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations," a book in which he collected and updated many of the posts from his site and offers new theories on how misquotations form.
"When I started off, it was mysterious exactly where these misquotations were coming from, and it was interesting that sometimes you could find these clues that pointed to how they may have originated," said Sullivan, a former teacher and researcher in the Johns Hopkins computer science department who now spends his time writing.
In the book, Sullivan offers 10 common "mechanisms" that he says lead to misquotation and incorrect attribution.
七年前，蘇利文化名賈森．歐圖爾創立了「引文調查員」這個受歡迎的網站，專門對一些眾所周知的格言追本溯源。本月，他同樣以歐圖爾之名出版了《海明威沒這麼說：一些熟悉引文的背後真相》一書。他在書中收集與更新許多來自他網站的貼文，並為誤引形成的原因提出了新的理論。
蘇利文說：「當我開始時，這些誤引究竟從何而來完全是個謎，有趣的是，有時候你能找到這些線索，指引你它們的可能來源。」蘇利文曾任約翰霍普金斯大學電腦科學系的教師和研究員，目前專事寫作。
書中，蘇利文提出他認為導致誤引和不正確掛名的10個常見「機制」。
Through one such process, which he labels "textual proximity," a famous person mistakenly gets credit for a quotation merely by having their name or likeness published close to the words. In another, "ventriloquy," a statement about an individual's work is perceived to be so apt that it is eventually confused for their own words.
其中一個過程（機制）他名為「上下文鄰近」，一位知名人士誤被當作是一個引文的作者，其實只是因他們的名字或肖像在出版時位置靠近這些字詞而已。另個機制名為「腹語術」，則為與某人作品有關的陳述因被認為詮釋得淋漓盡致，以致最後與原作混為一談。
Both may explain how Anton Chekhov, the Russian writer, became associated with the saying: "Any idiot can face a crisis, it's the day-to-day living that wears you out," as outlined on Sullivan's website and, now, in his book. In May 2013, Sullivan heard from a reader who, after a fruitless attempt to prove Chekhov's authorship of those words, wanted help uncovering the true history of the quotation.
Sullivan accepted the challenge.
Google Books led him to "The Tradition of the Theatre," a textbook published in 1971 and edited by Peter Bauland and William Ingram. Only snippets were available online, so he visited a university library to review the book in full.
這兩者可解釋，為何俄國作家安東．契訶夫會與這句話扯上關係：「任何白癡都能面對危機，讓你筋疲力盡的是日常生活。」蘇利文在他的網站上做了概述，現在也見於他的書中。2013年5月，蘇利文的一位讀者告訴他，他試圖證明這句話出自契訶夫卻徒勞無功，希望蘇利文助他一臂之力，揭開這個引文的真實歷史。
蘇利文接受了這項挑戰。
谷歌圖書帶蘇利文找到「戲劇的傳統」這本書，它是1971年出版的教科書，由彼得．波蘭德與威廉．英格拉姆合編。由於網路只有此書片段，於是他前往一所大學圖書館，翻查了此書完整原文。
