As they report in Science Advances, Dr Ravreby, Dr Snitz and Dr Sobel started their research by testing the odours of 20 pairs of established, non-romantic, same-sex friends. To do this they employed an electronic nose (e-nose) and two groups of specially recruited human “smellers”.

因巴尔·拉夫雷比、科比·斯尼茨和诺姆·索贝尔在《科学进展》期刊上发表了他们的研究报告，他们首先测试了20对已确定的非情侣同性朋友的气味。为此，他们使用了电子鼻和两组专门招募的人类“嗅觉器”。

The e-nose used a set of metal-oxide gas sensors to assess t-shirts worn by participants. One group of human smellers were given pairs of these shirts and asked to rate how similar they smelt. Those in the other group were asked to rate the odours of individual t-shirts on five subjective dimensions: pleasantness, intensity, sexual attractiveness, competence and warmth.

电子鼻使用一套金属氧化物气体传感器来评估参与者所穿的 T 恤。一组人类“嗅觉器”拿到了这些T 恤，并被要求评价它们闻起来有多相似。另一组人类“嗅觉器”则被要求从五个主观维度来评价这些T 恤的气味：愉悦度、烈度、性吸引力、强度、温暖度。

The e-nose results and the opinions of the second group of smellers were then subjected to a bit of multidimensional mathematical jiggery-pokery(think plotting the results on a graph, except that the graph paper has five dimensions), and they, too, emerged as simple, comparable numbers.

通过对电子鼻的结果和第二组人类“嗅觉器”的评价进行多维分析处理（想象一下将结果绘制成图表，除此之外在坐标纸上有5个维度），结果便可以简单的、可比较的数字呈现。

All three approaches yielded the same result. The t-shirts of friends smelt more similar to each other than did the t-shirts of strangers. Friends, in other words, do indeed smell alike. But why?

这三种方法都得到了相同的结果。相比陌生人的T 恤，朋友的T 恤闻起来更相似。换句话说，朋友间的气味确实闻起来很相似。但这是为什么呢？

Why scent might play a role in forming friendships remains obscure. Other qualities correlated with being friends, including age, appearance, education, religion and race, are either immediately obvious or rapidly become so. But while some individuals have strong and noticeable body odour, many—at least since the use of soap has become widespread—do not. It is present. But it is subliminal.

为什么气味可能在建立友谊方面发挥作用仍然不清楚。与成为朋友相关的其他品质（包括年龄、外貌、教育、宗教和种族）要么是立即显现出来，要么是迅速显现出来的。虽然有些人有强烈而明显的体味，但很多人没有(至少自从肥皂被广泛使用以来)。它是存在的。但这是潜意识的。

Dr Ravreby speculates that there may be “an evolutionary advantage in having friends that are genetically similar to us”. Body odour is known to be linked with genetic make-up (particularly with the genes underlying part of the immune system called the major histocompatibility complex). Smelling others may thus allow subconscious inferences about genetic similarity to be drawn.

因巴尔·拉夫雷比推测，“拥有和我们基因相似的朋友可能是一种进化优势”。众所周知，体味与基因构成有关（尤其是与免疫系统中被称为主要组织相容性复合体的基因有关）。因此，闻到别人的气味可能会让人下意识地得出基因相似性推断。

(红色标注词为重难点词汇)

重难点词汇：

jiggery-pokery[ˌdʒɪɡəriˈpoʊkəri] n. 欺诈；欺骗

subliminal [ˌsəbˈlɪmənl] adj. 阈下的；限下的；意识下的

speculate [ˈspekjuleɪt] v. 推测；做投机买卖

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