Before you read beyond this paragraph, grab a glass of water and 1,000mg of paracetamol(扑热息痛；对乙酰氨基酚). Walk over to your laptop—the supercomputer in your hand is not up to the task(不能胜任；不适合)—and make yourself comfortable. Now navigate(导航；浏览) to indianvisaonline.gov.in and see if you can figure out(弄明白；解决) how to apply for a visa.
在你读到此段之后，先拿一杯水和1000毫克扑热息痛。走到你的笔记本电脑前——你手中的超级计算机不适用于这项任务——然后让自己舒服点。现在导航到 indianvisaonline.gov.in，看看你是否能搞明白如何申请签证。
If you succeeded, welcome back, and apologies. Several questions are probably fighting for space in your addled(混乱的；糊涂的) brain. Let’s take them in turn(依次处理). The answer to the first is no, the government of India does not hate foreign visitors. Its online services for Indian citizens—railway ticketing, voter registration, income-tax filings(提交；申报)—are just as hostile(敌意的；不友好的). Those are among the better ones.
如果你成功了，欢迎回来，并请接受歉意。几个问题大概正在你混乱的脑海中争抢空间。我们逐一探讨。第一个问题的答案是否定的，印度政府并不憎恨外国游客。它为印度公民提供的在线服务——火车票购票、选民登记、所得税申报——同样令人不快。这些还算是比较好的。
Many are worse. They feature a sadistic(虐待狂的；残酷的) mix of pop-ups, moving text, flashing graphics, ministerial portraits and antique elements like text-based Captchas, a bot-prevention tool that these days only thwarts(阻碍；挫败) humans. If a citizen does find the useful section of a site, she encounters obstacles such as broken links or the railways’ infuriating(令人愤怒的) 16-character limit for names. Things are no better in the backend. In May a 19-year-old “ethical hacker(道德黑客；白帽黑客)” exposed critical flaws(关键缺陷，严重漏洞) in an important school-leavers’ exam system, causing a national uproar(全国哗然).
许多更糟糕。它们具备一种虐待狂式的混合体：弹窗、移动文字、闪烁的图形、部长肖像以及基于文本的验证码这类古董元素——这是一种防止机器人的工具，如今却只阻碍人类。如果公民确实找到了网站的有用部分，她还会遇到诸如链接失效或铁路部门令人恼火的16个字符姓名限制等障碍。后端也好不到哪里去。今年五月，一名19岁的“道德黑客”揭露了一个重要的离校考试系统的严重缺陷，引起了全国哗然。