The feel-good story of the summer comes from Russia, where, we are told by the state-funded broadcaster RT, an enterprising fellow has turned the tables on his credit card company.

今夏的欢乐故事来自俄罗斯。俄罗斯国有电视台今日俄罗斯(RT)报道，一个富有创意的小伙子面对信用卡公司打了个翻身仗。

Dmitry Agarkov reportedly received an unsolicited offer of a credit card. Dissatisfied with the terms of the deal, he wrote his own amendments, signed the contract and mailed it back to the bank, which countersigned it and sent him his credit card - apparently not noticing that Mr Agarkov had proposed an interest rate of zero, an unlimited credit balance and a cancellation fee of nearly $200,000. So far the courts have sided with Mr Agarkov.

报道称，一家信用卡公司主动向德米特里•阿加尔科夫(Dmitry Agarkov)发出了开办信用卡的要约。阿加尔科夫对合同的条款不满意，就自己写了修正条款，在合同上签了名，然后寄给了银行。银行会签了合同，给他发了信用卡。银行显然没有注意到，阿加尔科夫在修正条款中要求欠款零利率、无限信用额度、以及高达近20万美元的合同终止费。到目前为止，法院一直站在阿加尔科夫这一边。

Well, as Tom Waits once sang, the large print giveth and the small print taketh away. But needless to say, we consumers are usually the ones who fail to read the small print. That can hardly be a surprise: the small print is usually unintelligible.

反正，就像汤姆•韦茨(Tom Waits)有一首歌中唱的，合同正文施予的，在附属细则里又拿走。但不消说，我们消费者往往不阅读小字印刷的合同附属细则。很难算出人意料的是，附属细则往往令人费解。

Take the example of reading the privacy policies of websites. Aleecia McDonald and Lorrie Cranor, two academics specialising in computer privacy, published a research paper back in 2008 estimating how long it would take to read all this stuff. With the typical policy weighing in at 2,500 words (that is four times the length of this column, and possibly even more full of jargon), and four new privacy policies to read per day, McDonald and Cranor reckon that the time it would take to read all these policies would be 244 hours a year. Put another way, if your job were to read privacy policies, you'd spend six weeks on the task.

以阅读网站隐私政策为例。早在2008年，两位专门研究计算机隐私的学者艾丽西娅•麦克唐纳(Aleecia McDonald)和洛里•克拉诺(Lorrie Cranor)就发布了一份研究论文，对阅读这些隐私政策所需时间进行了估算。隐私政策通常的长度是2500个单词（也就是本文长度的4倍，里面出现的术语数量甚至可能比本文还要多），如果每天阅读4份新的隐私政策，麦克唐纳和克拉诺估计，人们每年就要花244个小时的时间来阅读所有这些政策条文。换句话说，如果你的工作就是阅读隐私政策，那么这项工作要花六周时间才能做完。

Does any of this matter, and if so, can we improve the situation?

阅读这些政策有用吗？如果有用的话，我们能否改善上述状况？

One famous economic idea throws a harsh light on the subject: George Akerlof's “lemons” model, for which he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. (The lemons model is about cars, not citrus fruit.) If sellers can evaluate the quality of a used car but buyers cannot, the likely outcome is that both buyers and sellers know that only the most awful cars will be traded in the market.

一个著名的经济学理论残酷地暴露了这个问题的真相，这个理论就是：乔治•阿克洛夫(George Akerlof)提出的柠檬市场模型(lemons model)。阿克洛夫当年凭借该模型荣膺诺贝尔经济学奖(Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics)。（柠檬模型讲的是车，而不是那种水果。）该模型的结论是：如果卖家能够评估旧车的质量，但买家不能，结果可能导致，买家和卖家都知道，只有最差的车才会进入市场交易。

The same could apply to small print: customers naturally assume that all contracts contain weaselly clauses, and companies who might prefer to deal honestly know that they'll never get credit for doing so.

同理，对合同附属细则而言，顾客自然会假定所有的合同都包含免责条款，可能有意愿诚实交易的企业也知道，这种做法会让他们永远无法建立信誉。

A more hopeful economic model suggests that a few diligent shoppers will keep the worst corporate excesses in check. Many of us don't check prices in supermarkets any more than we check the small print; we just assume that others are paying attention and so the prices will be fair. Maybe that is also true of contracts? Unlikely, alas.

一个更令人鼓舞的经济模型指出，少数勤劳顾客的存在会对企业恶劣行径的下限构成约束。我们很多人在超市不查看价格，就像我们不查看合同附属细则一样。我们简单地假定其他人会留意，因此价格应该是公道的。或许这也对合同成立？可惜的是，这可能性不大。

A study in 2009 by Yannis Bakos and others called “Does Anyone Read the Fine Print?” tracked people as they shopped for software online. Out of 125,000 browsing sessions, only 55 involved looking at the “end user licence agreement” (EULA) for more than a second; even then, the median time looking at it was 29 seconds. It is barely an exaggeration to say that nobody reads the EULA.

扬尼斯•巴克斯(Yannis Bakos)等人在2009年展开了一项研究，名为《有人阅读附属细则吗？》。这项研究对在网上购买软件者进行了追踪调查。在12.5万次浏览中，浏览者目光在“最终用户许可协议”(EULA)处停留超过一秒钟的只有55次。即便是在这55次浏览中，浏览者目光在EULA处停留时间的中值也仅为29秒。要说根本无人阅读EULA也不算夸张。

We have some defences: courts refuse to enforce abusive terms, and companies restrain themselves to keep their reputations intact. But that's a long way from a healthy market built on informed consumer choice.

我们有一些保障：法院拒绝执行不法条款，企业为了保护自己的声誉会自律。但这距离建立基于知情消费者选择的健康市场还有很长一段路。

One solution, which has been advanced both by computer scientists such as Lorrie Cranor, and by economists such as Richard Thaler, is to use our computers to help us. Contracts are confusing in part because they are not natural-language documents at all - they are a kind of algorithm designed to be interpreted by law courts instead of by computers. Why not, then, produce machine-readable privacy contracts, or pricing schemes? Our computers can advise us if we are about to make a bad choice, and suggest superior alternatives. The idea might seem like science fiction - but these days, what doesn't?

一个解决方案是，让计算机帮忙。这是洛里•克拉诺等计算机科学家以及理查德•塞勒(Richard Thaler)等经济学家提出的方法。合同之所以令人费解，部分原因在于合同语言根本不是自然语言。合同就像一种算法，只不过预设的解析者不是电脑，而是法院。那么为何不制作可机读的隐私合同或者定价方案？如果我们即将做出糟糕的选择，电脑就能提示我们，并告诉我们还有哪些更好的选择。这种想法看上去有点像科幻小说，但这年头，什么不像科幻小说呢？