I was talking to John when the line suddenly went dead.

我正和约翰谈话，突然电话断了。

《牛津词典》

One woman reported talking on the phone to her boyfriend when the line went dead.

一名女性说，她正和男朋友煲电话粥，线路突然断了。

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Building lively stories around dead characters is not impossible -witness the Sixth Sense or the dead-man-talking classic Sunset Boulevard.

只需看一看《第六感》或者经典的亡者对话影片《日落大道》，便知围绕已经死亡的角色塑造生动的故事并非不可能。

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"The difference is you're talking about somebody dead in the vehicle or dying very quickly, or somebody being able to get out of the vehicle themselves, " said David Ward, director general of the London-based FIA Foundation for auto safety, which supports the Euro and Latin NCAP programs.

NPR: AP IMPACT: Cars Made In Brazil Are Deadly

In others, they are installing playful prompts, like trivia games, to get workers talking in traditional conversational dead zones, such as elevators.

WSJ: The Science of Serendipity in the Workplace

By the time the two got talking, Chrysler was no longer the funky Detroit company that in the 1980s had come back from the dead through then chief executive Lee Iacocca's sheer flair.

ECONOMIST: The DaimlerChrysler emulsion