如今，各個視頻網站在播放器菜單中都會顯示“彈幕”這個功能，身邊也有不少朋友專門喜歡開著“彈幕”看視頻，說那樣看著熱鬧，感覺不是自己一個人在看。去年，有部分電影院還試著推行了影片放映時觀眾可以發(fā)送“彈幕”。不知道試行效果如何呢？

“Bullet screen,” or danmu, a model of movie-watching that has been introduced in select theaters in China since 2014 has been widely used by video websites.
2014年開始在中國部分指定影院引入的“彈幕”其實早已被在線視頻網站廣泛應用了。

In this case, the bullets don’t refer to actual bullets, but to text messages that audience members send via their mobile phones while watching the film or video. The messages are then projected onto the screen, so that at any given time the scene may be overlaid with multiple “bullets,” or comments, scrolling across the screen.
這里的“彈”并不是真正的子彈，而是指觀眾在看電影或視頻時通過手機發(fā)送出去的信息。這些信息發(fā)送之后都被直接顯示在屏幕上，所以，觀看電影或視頻的時候，你隨時都可能看到整個屏幕上掛滿了滾動顯示的“子彈”，也就是評論。

The idea behind “bullet screens” originated in Japan, where they were first popularized by a Japanese ACG (animation, comics, games) video portal called Nicodou, which later became the inspiration for similar Chinese ACG video sites such as Bilibili.
“彈幕”這個概念來源于日本，由一個名叫Nicodou的動漫游戲視頻網站普及開來，后來也催生了中國類似Bilibili的網站。

While comments can be so numerous that they obscure the entire screen, many “bullet screen” proponents say the point is often not to watch the actual video in any case, but to get together and “tucao,” Chinese for “spit and joke around,” about the silliness of the video.
有時候，彈幕評論太多，會使得整個視頻屏幕難以看清，不過，很多“彈幕”擁躉都表示，他們真正的樂趣并不在于看視頻，而在于一起吐槽這個視頻有多二。

（中國日報網英語點津 Helen）