Japan is losing its final pager service decades after the technology was rendered obsolete by cell phones.

　　五十年科技巨变，寻呼机已被手机淘汰，如今，日本的寻呼机服务正在失去其最后的堡垒。

　　Tokyo Telemessage, the only telecommunications company still operating the service, said it would terminate its pager offerings in September 2019 due to lack of demand.

　　日本唯一仍在运营这项服务的电信公司—东京电讯公司表示，由于用户数量迅速下降，将于2019年9月终止寻呼机服务。

　　The company said the number of users has fallen to below 1,500, despite the fact that it stopped producing the actual devices 20 years ago.

　　该公司表示，用户数量已降至1500人以下，尽管该公司已在20年前停止生产寻呼机。

　　Pagers were popular in Japan and the rest of the world in the 1990s, before cell phones became widely available to the public. Tokyo Telemessage said its subscriber base peaked in 1996 at 1.2 million.

　　20世纪90年代，在手机普及之前，寻呼机在日本和世界其他地方非常流行。东京电讯称，其用户数量在1996年达到顶峰值，突破120万。

　　For those too young to have ever used one, pagers are a personal radio device that is used to receive messages sent via a switchboard. When the pager beeps or buzzes the owner usually needs to find a phone to return the message.

　　对于那些从未使用过寻呼机的年轻人来说，寻呼机是一种个人无线电设备，用来接收通过交换机发送的信息。当寻呼机发出嘟嘟声或蜂鸣声时，主人通常需要找一部电话来回复信息。

　　It’s not clear who still uses them but Japan Times says pagers are popular with people working in hospitals because they don’t emit electromagnetic waves.

　　目前还不清楚谁还在使用寻呼机，但《日本时报》表示，在医院工作的人当中，寻呼机很受欢迎，因为它们不发射电磁波。

　　A reluctance to part with the old technology may also be due to Japan’s aging population. The country is considered a "super-aged" nation, defined as one where more than 20% of the population is over 65.

　　东京电讯公司之前不愿放弃旧技术的另一个原因可能是日本的人口老龄化。日本被认为是一个“超高龄”国家，即65岁以上的人口超过20%。