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Britain is no stranger to public inquiries.
公众调查在英国并不陌生。
From the phone hacking by British newspapers in 2011 to the ongoing inquiry into the death of 72 people in the fire at Grenfell Tower in London, successive British governments have regularly turned to such inquiries to examine particularly troubling injustices.
从2011年英国报纸的电话窃听，到目前进行中的伦敦格伦费尔大厦火灾中72人死亡的调查，历届英国政府都经常求助于此类调查，以审查特别令人不安的不公正现象。
Now, an inquiry is underway into the wrongful accusation of hundreds of British postal workers of theft, in what has been described in the media as Britain’s biggest miscarriage of justice in its history.
现在，针对数百名英国邮政工作人员涉嫌盗窃的不当指控正在进行调查，媒体将这一事件描述为英国历史上最大的司法不公。
In 1999, the British Post Office introduced a new accounting system, Horizon, to tally transactions.
1999年，英国邮政局引入了一个新的账单系统--Horizon，用这个系统对交易进行统计。
Staff running local branches, known as subpostmasters and mistresses, soon noticed that the computer software did not match the amount of money they had manually recorded at the end of a working day.
经营当地分支邮局的工作人员，也就是所谓的邮政署分局长和副局长，很快就注意到，电脑软件与他们在一天工作结束时手动记录的金额不匹配。
When the Post Office higher-ups became aware of the discrepancies, they began taking local staff straight to court, accusing them of theft, false accounting, and fraud.
当邮局上级意识到这些金额差异时，他们开始将当地工作人员直接告上法庭，指控他们盗窃、伪造账目和欺诈。
Many were sent to prison, with an average of 30 subpostmasters jailed every year between 2000 and 2014.
许多员工被送进监狱，2000年至2014年间，平均每年有30名邮政署分局长入狱。
A total of 736 subpostmasters were prosecuted.
共有七百三十六名邮政署分局长被检控。
However, years later it came to light that the problem was not wrongdoing, but Horizon.
然而，多年后人们发现，问题不在于员工的不当行为，而在于Horizon系统。
The software contained faults that made it appear money was missing from Post Office branches, when all was in fact accounted for.
该软件存在缺陷，使其看起来像是分邮局的钱不见了，而实际上所有的钱都被计算在内了。
A complex web of staff loyalty to the company, unreciprocated trust by subpostmasters toward management, and a culture of blame all fed the situation.
员工对公司的忠诚，邮政署分局长对管理层无条件的信任，以及相互指责的文化，组成了这个复杂的网络，都助长了这种情况。
Many subpostmasters had served as Post Office employees for much of their careers, or had opened up postal branches with family members, particularly among many migrants of Ugandan-Indian origin who had relocated to Britain in the 1970s.
许多邮政署分局长在职业生涯的大部分时间里都是邮局的员工，或是与家人一起开设了邮政署分局，特别是许多在20世纪70年代移居英国的乌干达裔印度移民中。
Postmasters say they felt a deep loyalty toward the community-centric role played by the Post Office – so much so, that some topped up company accounts with their own money to shore up discrepancies on the computer system.
邮局负责人表示，他们深深忠于邮局扮演的以社区为中心的角色--以至于一些人用自己的钱给公司的账户充值，以弥补计算机系统上的差额。
