2018年9月20日 星期四

‘Beach With No Water’ Draws Sneers in Rome 市長設「無水海灘」 羅馬人罵翻


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讀紐時學英文
2018/09/21 第233期 訂閱/退訂看歷史報份
 
 
紐時周報精選 Why Are Puffins Vanishing? 海鸚為何變少? 冰島生態警訊
'Beach With No Water' Draws Sneers in Rome 市長設「無水海灘」 羅馬人罵翻
紐時周報精選
 
Why Are Puffins Vanishing? 海鸚為何變少? 冰島生態警訊
作者/John Schwartz
翻譯/陳韋廷

Puffins are in trouble.

海鸚處境堪憂。

The birds have been in precipitous decline, especially since the 2000s, both in Iceland and across many of their Atlantic habitats. The potential culprits are many: fickle prey, overfishing, pollution. Scientists say that climate change is another underlying factor that is diminishing food supplies and is likely to become more important over time. And the fact that puffins are tasty, and thus hunted as game here, hardly helps.

這種鳥數量一直在急劇下降,尤其是自2000年代以來,無論是在冰島或是牠們大西洋上的許多棲息地。潛在的元凶有很多:獵物來源不穩定、過度捕撈、汙染。科學家們表示,氣候變遷是另一個導致糧食供應減少的潛在因素,隨著時間推移很可能變得更加重要,而海鸚由於味道鮮美,在當地被作為獵物獵殺的事實,也是個不利的因素。

Though some puffin colonies are prospering, in Iceland, where the largest population of Atlantic puffins is found, their numbers have dropped from roughly 7 million individuals to about 5.4 million. Since 2015, the birds have been listed as "vulnerable" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, meaning they face a high risk of extinction in the wild.

儘管部分海鸚聚居地正蓬勃發展,但在發現最多數量大西洋海鸚的冰島,牠們的數量已從大約700萬隻下降到540萬隻。自2015年以來,這種鳥類被世界自然保育聯盟列為「易受害」物種,這意味著牠們在野外面臨著滅絕的高風險。

Hunters with long nets can be seen tooling around Grimsey Island in the summer, leaving behind piles of bird carcasses, the breast meat stripped away. Iceland has restricted the annual harvest, but hunting "is accelerating the decline," said Erpur Snaer Hansen, acting director of the South Iceland Nature Research Center.

夏天可以看到帶著長網的獵人在格里姆賽島四處打獵,留下一堆鳥屍,剝去了胸肉。南冰島自然研究中心代理主任厄普.史內爾.漢森則表示,冰島已限制了年度獵捕量,但獵捕「正使鳥數加速下降」。

Around Iceland, the puffins have suffered because of the decline of their favorite food, silvery sand eels, which dangle from the parents' beaks as they bring them to their young. That collapse correlates to a rise in sea surface temperatures that Hansen has been monitoring for years.

在冰島周圍,海鸚因最愛食物銀沙鰻的減少而頗受影響,而銀沙鰻就是在海鸚親鳥啣去餵幼鳥時,在親鳥嘴裡晃來晃去的那種魚。銀沙鰻數量銳減與海水表面溫度上升的現象有關,漢森監測這個現象已有多年。

Without as many sand eels in the water, the birds have to fly farther to find food for themselves and their chicks. Hansen's twice-yearly census of 700 puffin burrows in 12 colonies around Iceland show that 40 percent of the population of Icelandic puffin chicks is losing body mass over time, another bad sign.

由於水中沒那麼多銀沙鰻,這些鳥必須飛得更遠來為自己和牠們的幼鳥尋找食物。漢森每年兩次對冰島一帶12個聚居地內700個洞穴進行的普查顯示,冰島海鸚的幼鳥有40%體重正隨著時間而減少,這又是個不祥之兆。

When the adults can't catch enough to feed themselves and the chicks, they make an instinctive Malthusian choice; the chicks starve. There are still millions of Atlantic puffins, but their plentiful colonies are deceiving, Hansen said.

當成鳥無法捕到足夠食物餵養自己及幼鳥時,牠們就會做出本能的馬爾薩斯式選擇,幼鳥只好挨餓。漢森表示,雖然大西洋海鸚數量還有數百萬,但牠們群體的繁多卻遮掩了真相。

"These birds are long lived, so you don't just see them plummeting down," he said. In the long run, he warned, "It's not sustainable."

他說:「這些鳥很長壽,所以你不會看到牠們數量在驟減。」他警告說,從長遠來看,「這難以持續」。

 
'Beach With No Water' Draws Sneers in Rome 市長設「無水海灘」 羅馬人罵翻
作者/Elisabetta Povoledo
譯/陳韋廷

The riverfront beach was supposed to be a summertime gift from the beleaguered mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, to her citizens. Called "Tiberis," an ancient name for Rome's main waterway, the municipal beach had been promoted as Rome's answer to Seine-side installations in Paris.

這個河濱海灘被認為是飽受抨擊的羅馬市長維吉尼亞.拉吉送給市民的一份夏季大禮,這座市立海灘以羅馬主要水道台伯河的拉丁古名「Tiberis」命名,而且宣傳期間一直被標榜為羅馬版的巴黎塞納河畔設施。

But when it finally opened this month, after doubts about whether it would open at all given that the season was nearly over, the area — a cluster of beach chairs and sun umbrellas, two beach volleyball courts and vending machines — was dismissed by some Romans (who perhaps hadn't even visited the beach) as too little, too late.

儘管人們曾因夏季已近尾聲而懷疑它到底會不會開放,它總算在八月開張了,然而部分羅馬居民(這些人可能還沒去過這海灘呢)卻認為,設有成排海灘椅和太陽傘,兩個海灘排球場及一些販賣機的這塊地方既不夠好,也來得太晚了。

Rather than a symbol of the progressive governance of Raggi's party, the Five Star Movement, Tiberis has become yet another lightning rod for Romans to vent their dissatisfaction with the mayor, who is entering the third tempestuous year of a five-year term.

台伯河海灘並未成為拉吉所屬政黨「五星運動黨」進步治理的象徵,反倒成了承受羅馬人對市長種種不滿的另一根避雷針。拉吉正進入五年任期中第三個風雨飄搖的年頭。

Taking to social media, some cracked jokes that the basic beach, in a populous Rome suburb, was best suited for the Tiber's most assiduous habitués: its rats. Others complained that unlike in other European capitals like Berlin and Copenhagen, whose urban lidos include pools or other areas suitable for swimming, sweaty sunbathers at Tiberis could opt only for showers in plastic cubicles.

在社群媒體上,有些人開玩笑說,位在人口稠密羅馬郊區的這座陽春海灘最適合台伯河中最刻苦耐勞的常客:老鼠。另有些人則抱怨說,不同於柏林與哥本哈根等其他歐洲都城有游泳池或其他適合游泳的地方,汗流浹背地做日光浴的人在台伯河海灘只能選擇在塑膠隔間內沖涼。

"A lot of untreated sewage is still dumped into the Tiber, so it is very polluted," said Giorgio Zampetti, the director general of the Italian environmental association Legambiente. "It's a shame, and an issue we've raised often." But cleaning up the river would be an immense and expensive undertaking for the city.

義大利環保協會「環保聯盟」的執行長喬吉歐.詹佩提說:「大量未經處理的汙水仍被排入台伯河,因此汙染嚴重。這是個恥辱,也是我們經常提出的一個問題。」然而對這座城市來說,清理這條河將是項巨大而昂貴的工作。

"A beach with no water is kind of ridiculous," said Tom Rankin, the former director of Tevereterno, a nonprofit that promotes artistic projects for the Tiber, including a 2016 mural along an embankment by South African artist William Kentridge. Although Rankin praised the effort of getting citizens to the Tiber's edge, he said City Hall could have given "more thought to the initiative to come up with something better."

非營利組織「永遠的台伯河」著力推動台伯河的各種藝術計畫,包含2016年南非藝術家肯特里奇的堤岸壁畫藝術,該組織前負責人湯姆.倫金說:「沒有水的海灘有點荒謬。」。雖然倫金對於把市民帶到台伯河邊的努力表示讚揚,但他同時表示市政府本可「對這個倡議考慮得更周詳,提出更好的做法。」

Other Romans said that the city had missed an important opportunity to re-establish a substantial connection to the Tiber, once central to the Italian capital's identity but today mostly neglected and overlooked.

另有些羅馬人表示,這個城市錯過了一個重新建立與台伯河實質聯繫的重要機會,這條河曾經是義大利首都羅馬身分認同的核心,今天卻大致已為人們所忽略與漠視。

"The operation was badly done," said Giuseppe Maria Amendola, the president of the Consorzio Tiberina, an association that aims to promote the Tiber. As designed, the spartan beach could have been plunked down anywhere, even in a parking lot, because "it gives nothing to the Tiber," he said.

旨在推廣台伯河的台伯河區協會理事長朱塞佩.瑪莉亞.阿門多拉說:「運作得很糟糕。」按設計,這座簡樸的海灘設在任何地方都沒差別,甚至可以設在停車場,因為「它沒給台伯河帶來任何東西」。

"This is not the way the city should be thinking about revamping the river," he added.

「這不是這個城市對於改造這條河流該有的思維方式。」他補充說道。

※說文解字看新聞

台伯河位於義大利中部是羅馬最主要的一條河流,是羅馬的母親河且跟羅馬帝國的興起息息相關,但這條河近年來卻是市民的「心頭之患」,屢遭民眾詬病骯髒不潔,甚至被視為恥辱,而這也讓市長拉吉的海灘計畫蒙上一層陰影,更凸顯市政治理混亂。

文中首段單字beleaguer指的是「圍攻、包圍」之意,同義詞有besiege、beset及bedevil等字,還有不斷遭到騷擾、困擾的意思,例如The president has been beleaguered by fake news.(總統一直受到假新聞困擾。),而首段另一單字municipal則代表「市的、市政的」意思,為英文新聞中常出現單字,跟 civic、city、urban等字同義。

至於habitué此字則源自法語,指的是常客,而有時我們也會使用此單字來形容吸毒成癮者(drug addict)。

 
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