巴西國家博物館慘遭大火浩劫 | 有聲雙語

當地時間9月2日晚，有著200年歷史的巴西國家博物館發生火災，眾多館藏葬身火海，不少珍寶或許將永別於人世……

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Time flies, but the tracks of time remain in books and museums. This is what made a recent tragedy in Brazil even more terrible.

時光總是匆匆而逝，但書籍和博物館卻保留了歲月的痕迹。這樣想來，巴西近來發生的一場悲劇就更加令人痛心了。

On Sept 2, a big fire ripped through the National Museum of Brazil, the oldest scientific institution in the country, in Rio de Janeiro. 「Two hundred years of work, research and knowledge were lost,」 Brazilian President Michel Temer wrote on social networking platform Twitter after the fire. 「It』s a sad day for all Brazilians.」

9月2日，一場大火吞噬了位於里約熱內盧的巴西國家博物館，這也是巴西最古老的科研機構。「兩百年來的努力、研究以及知識都毀於一旦，」大火之後，巴西總統米歇爾·特梅爾在社交媒體平台推特上寫道。「這是令所有巴西人悲傷的一天。」

Most of the 20 million pieces of history are believed to have been destroyed. Only as little as 10 percent of the collection may have survived, Time reported. Among all the items, there were Egyptian mummies, the bones of uniquely Brazilian creatures such as the long-necked dinosaur Maxakalisaurus, and a 11,500-year-old skull called Luzia, which was considered one of South America』s oldest human fossils.

據《時代周刊》報道，承載著2000萬年曆史的文物大部分都被燒毀，只剩下10%的藏品幸免於難。在燒毀的這些藏品中，有埃及木乃伊、巴西特有的長頸恐龍馬薩卡利神龍的骸骨以及被視作南美洲最古老的人骨化石——11.5萬年前的人類頭骨化石「露西亞」。

Besides these, Brazil』s indigenous knowledge also suffered. The museum housed world-renowned collections of indigenous objects, as well as many audio recordings of local languages from all over Brazil. Some of these recordings, now lost, were of languages that are no longer spoken.

除此之外，巴西本土的智慧成果也慘遭焚毀。博物館中藏有聞名全球的巴西當地文物以及巴西各地語言的大量音頻檔案。如今被燒毀的一些音頻中還錄有已經失傳的語言。

「The tragedy this Sunday is a sort of national suicide. A crime against our past and future generations,」 Bernard Mello Franco, one of Brazil』s best-known columnists, wrote on the O Globo newspaper site.

「本周日發生的這場悲劇可以說是場民族的自我毀滅，是對我們的祖先以及後人犯下的罪過，」巴西著名專欄作家伯納德·梅洛·弗蘭科在巴西《環球報》網站上寫道。

The cause of the fire is still unknown, as BBC News reported on Sept 3. After the fire burned out, crowds protested outside the museum to show their anger at the loss of the irreplaceable items of historical value.

據英國廣播公司新聞9月3日報道，火災原因尚未查明。火災過後，人群聚集在博物館外抗議，表達他們對於失去這些無可替代的珍貴歷史文物的憤怒。

According to Emilio Bruna, an ecologist at the University of Florida, 「museums are living, breathing repositories of who we are and where we』ve come from, and the world around us.

佛羅里達大學生態學家埃米利奧?布魯納認為：「博物館是現存於世的鮮活寶庫，它能告訴我們，我們是誰，從何而來以及我們周遭的世界。」

「Those insects pinned in a drawer, or those fish in a jar, or a feathered cape you might see in a display case – that represents a little piece of who we are as a people, as humans, as part of a greater world,」 he told National Geographic.

「這些被釘在抽屜中的昆蟲、放在玻璃罐中的魚或者是你在展櫃中看到的羽毛披風，都代表著我們作為個體、作為人類以及作為大千世界的一部分，」他在接受《國家地理》雜誌採訪時表示。

Just as underwater grass floats on the surface if it loses its roots, a nation is lost without its memories. The fire at the National Museum of Brazil teaches the world an important lesson: We should never neglect history.

失去了記憶的國家就如同隨波逐流的無根之草，巴西國家博物館大火給全世界帶了一個重要教訓：我們絕不應忽視歷史。

以上內容英文部分來自《21世紀學生英文報高中版》高三656期

本文英文音頻由我報外籍編輯Dale Fox朗讀

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