Silicon¹ Valley, the heart of the American tech industry, has provided Hollywood with endless inspiration for movies and TV shows. Most of these offerings delve² into the pathos³ of its most famous entrepreneurs. In the past three years alone, Apple visionary Steve Jobs has been the subject of two movies and one feature-length documentary, and Facebook founder⁴ Mark Zuckerberg was likewise profiled in the 2010 biopic The Social Network.

美国科技产业的心脏——硅谷为好莱坞电影和电视剧提供了源源不绝的灵感。此类题材的作品大多描述的是著名企业家的艰辛的创业故事。仅在过去三年中，苹果公司的梦想家斯蒂夫•乔布斯就两次被搬上电影银幕，此外还有一部关于他的长篇纪录片问世，脸书创始人马克•扎克伯格的故事也被拍成传记电影《社交网络》。

Yet few shows have been willing to embrace the Valley’s quirky side. The HBO comedy series Silicon Valley happens to take this unusual approach. The show is about a geeky programmer named Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch), who rockets to superstardom after he creates a revolutionary data compression algorithm.

不过鲜少有剧愿意触碰硅谷奇葩的一面。美国有线电视网络公司HBO的喜剧剧集《硅谷》碰巧走上了这条不寻常的路。该剧讲述了极客程序员理查德•亨德里克斯 （托马斯•米德迪奇饰）在发明了一套革命性的文件压缩算法后名声大噪的故事。

Ever since the show debuted⁵ two years ago, Silicon Valley has been known for lampooning⁶ tech culture in US. However, its third season, which was kicked off on April 24, takes the series’ comic absurdity⁷ to a new level.

自两年前首播后，《硅谷》就因为讽刺了硅谷的科技文化而闻名。现在该剧的第三季已于4月24日开播，这一季荒谬爆笑的程度比之前更上一层楼。

The new season starts with a dramatic scene: Hendricks, founder of the startup Pied Piper, gets fired as a CEO. “You have created a company that is too valuable for you to run: You should feel good about that,” his investor⁸, Laurie Bream, tells him.

第三季开篇就是这样一个戏剧性的场面：亨德里克斯是初创公司Pied Piper的创始人，但作为首席执行官的他却被解雇了。投资人劳瑞•布里姆告诉他：“你创造了一个很有价值的公司，它珍贵到容不得被你糟蹋：你应该为此感到欣慰。”

Ludicrous as it seems, this scenario⁹ rings true in the tech industry. Celebrated¹⁰ tech entrepreneurs like Jobs, PayPal’s Elon Musk¹¹ and Twitter’s Jack¹² Dorsey have all experienced being pushed out of their own company.

这听起来很可笑，但在科技行业这种情节可是真实发生过的。著名的科技界企业家，比如乔布斯、贝宝公司的伊隆•马克斯和推特的杰克•多西都曾被自己的公司赶出去过。

The show’s creator, Mike Judge, was himself a former programmer in Silicon Valley. He revealed what inspires the whip-smart satire¹³ from the show in an interview with The Guardian¹⁴. “If you’re in Wall Street, you’re kind of unashamed about how much money you’re making,” Judge said. “But in the tech world, it’s not enough to be making money – you’ve also got to be saving the world.” That mentality¹⁵ inspires a running joke in season three. The series’ fictional¹⁶ entrepreneurs start using the catchphrase “Making the world a better place” to justify¹⁷ all their ideas, however bad.

该剧制片人迈克•詹郅之前也在硅谷当过码农。他在《卫报》的采访中透露了剧中机智吐槽的灵感来源。他说：“如果你在华尔街工作，你会觉得赚再多钱都问心无愧。但是在科技界，赚钱是远远不够的，你肩负着拯救世界的使命。”第三季中的一个段子就来源于此想法。剧中虚构的企业家开始使用“让世界变得更美好”的口号为自己所有的想法辩护，哪怕是坏的想法。

The stinging satire of Silicon Valley is the perfect medium to capture today’s tech culture. A rising number of college students are choosing to major in computer science. Around graduation season, many of them flock to California to launch their startups so that they won’t miss the new high-tech¹⁸ gold rush.

《硅谷》中的辛辣讽刺是了解当下科技文化的绝佳途径。越来越多的大学生选择主修计算机专业。毕业季时，很多计算机专业的学生涌入加州创业，似乎只有这样他们才不会错过新一波高科技淘金热。

“If you’re making a show about twenty-somethings, someone’s got to work at a startup because that’s what’s going on in the culture,” US writer and TV producer Evan Endicott told The Atlantic.

美国作家、电视制片人埃文•恩迪科特告诉《大西洋月刊》：“如果你拍一部讲诉20多岁年轻人的电视剧，那就必须加入创业元素，因为这才符合当下的最新潮流。”