譯/李京倫
With its winding dirt lanes framed by lilacs, quaint wooden houses and graceful onion-domed church, the tiny farming hamlet of Baruta was once a postcard of Russian bucolic bliss.
No longer. More people lie in the tightly packed church cemetery than inhabit the village. Agriculture is slowly withering, too.
俄國西北部普斯科夫區域的巴魯塔小農村曾是俄國田園的幸福象徵，蜿蜒的土路旁盡是丁香、古雅的木屋和優美的洋蔥圓頂教堂。
此景不再。在擁擠不堪的教堂墓地安息的人，比住在村裡的多。農業也逐步衰退。
With Russia's natural population growth entering an extended period of decline, villages like Baruta are disappearing from across the country's continental expanse.
"We have not had a wedding or a baptism for quite some time — we mostly have funerals," said a resident, Alexander Fyodorov, 59, one of just 17 men left in what was a thriving collective of some 500 farmers.
由於俄國人口的自然增長進入長期衰退期，像巴魯塔這樣的村落正從廣袤的俄國大陸各地消失。
59歲居民費奧多羅夫說：「我們好一段時間沒有婚禮或洗禮了——多半是喪禮。」他曾是一個約有500農民、蓬勃發展的集體農場的一分子，如今農場只剩下17個男人，他是其中之一。
President Vladimir Putin frequently cites hardy population growth as a pillar of restoring Russia's place atop the global order. There is a pronounced gap, however, between the positive terms in which Putin and his advisers habitually discuss demographic trends and the reality of the numbers.
Russians are dying faster than they are being born, demographers said. Given the general hostility toward immigration, the question is to what degree the population of 146 million, including annexed Crimea, might shrink.
俄國總統普亭常說，強勁的人口成長是讓俄國重居新全球之首的基礎。不過，普亭與顧問們討論人口趨勢時慣常使用的正面詞語，和真實人口數目差距甚大。
人口學者說，俄國人死亡的速度比出生快。在俄國人普遍對移民懷有敵意的情況下，俄國總數1億4600萬（包括兼併來的克里米亞）的人口勢將減少，問題只在減幅的大小。
The number of deaths exceeded the number of births in 2016 by a few thousand, and the prognosis for the years ahead is poor. From 2013-2015, extremely modest natural growth peaked in 2015 with just 32,038 more births than deaths.
"The statistics and the propaganda are very different things," said Natalya V. Zubarevich, an expert in social and political geography at Moscow State University.
去年俄國死亡人數超越出生人數幾千人，未來幾年前景也不樂觀。2013到2015年極微小的人口自然增長在2015年達到高峰，出生數只比死亡數多3萬2038人。
莫斯科國立大學社會與政治地理學專家祖巴列維奇說：「統計數字和宣傳大不相同。」
In terms of population loss, Pskov, which borders Latvia and parts of Estonia, is among the worst hit regions in Russia. The population peaked at around 1.8 million in the 1920s, said Andrei Manakov, a demographer at Pskov State University. It is down to 642,000, and projected to drop to about 513,000 by 2033.
Researchers estimate that out of 8,300 area villages in 1910, 2,000 no longer have permanent residents.
普斯科夫與拉脫維亞和愛沙尼亞部分地區接壤，是俄國人口減少最嚴重的區域之一。普斯科夫國立大學人口學者馬納科夫說，1920年代這裡的人口達到高峰，約180萬。現在降到64萬2千人，料將在2033年前降到大約51萬3千人。
研究人員估計，1910年這裡的8300個地區村落中，2000個不再有常住居民。
Under the most optimistic projections by demographers, Russia's population by 2050 will stay the same, about 146 million, if immigration from Central Asia — which has also been dropping — balances out low birthrates. Less optimistic figures put the population around 130 million by 2050, and the most pessimistic say fewer than 100 million.
人口學者最樂觀的預測是，如果來自中亞的移民（也正在逐漸減少）能彌補俄國的低出生率，2050年俄國人口會跟現在一樣，大約1億4600萬。較不樂觀的數據是2050年人口約為1億3000萬，最悲觀的是不到1億。
說文解字看新聞
文/李京倫
本文討論俄國的人口危機（demographic crisis）。俄國死亡率（death rate or mortality rate）高於出生率（birth rate），加上俄國人普遍對移民有敵意，所以人口勢必減少，問題只在減多少。
俄國出生率低，有人口學者認為主因是俄國對烏克蘭、敘利亞用兵，加上經濟不振，使人民覺得生活充滿不確定性，不願生兒育女；而俄國人大量飲用烈酒伏特加（high vodka consumption）和醫療資源分配不均（uneven health care），則使壽命變短（cut life short），平均壽命僅72歲。
標題中的melt away原指冰塊「融化」，引申為某物「消失」。postcard當名詞是明信片，但也可以當形容詞「如畫的」，等同於picturesque、picture-postcard（像風景明信片的）。本文中的postcard後接抽象名詞bliss，應解作「象徵」。
prognosis原本只是醫學用語，是指對病人病情的預斷，後來擴展到所有領域的專家預測都適用，動詞是prognosticate。
跟出生率相關的字是生育率（fertility rate），指平均每位婦女一生中生育的子女數。
