世界小史 第3章:档案馆

It's like a bottomless well. Does all this looking down make you dizzy?

它就像一个无底的深井。从上往下看，你会头晕目眩吗?

It does me. So let's light a scrap of paper, and drop it down into that well.

我会的。那么让我们点燃一张纸片扔下去吧。

It will fall slowly, deeper and deeper.

它会慢慢落下去，越落越深。

And as it burns it will light up the sides of the well.

燃烧的时候它会照亮井壁。

Can you see it? It's going down and down.

你能看到它吗?它将会继续往下落。

Now it's so far down, it's like a tiny star in the dark depths.

现在它已经落到很远的地方，就像黑暗深处的一颗小星星。

It's getting smaller and smaller ... and now it's gone.

它越来越小…… 现在它消失了。

Our memory is like that burning scrap of paper.

我们的记忆就像那燃烧的纸片。

We use it to light up the past.

我们用它来照亮过去。

First of all our own, then we ask old people to tell us what they remember.

首先是我们的过去，然后我们请老人们讲述他们记忆中的东西。

After that we look for letters written by people who are already dead.

此后我们寻找死去的人们写的文字。

And in this way we light our way back.

用这种办法我们照亮了回去的路途。

There are buildings that are just for storing old scraps of paper that people once wrote on–they are called archives.

有一些专门为收藏人们曾经在上面写字的纸片的房子——它们被称作档案馆。

In them you can find letters written hundreds of years ago.

你可以在里面找到几百年前写的文字。

In an archive, I once found a letter which just said:

在一个档案里馆里，我曾经找到一封信：

"Dear mommy, yesterday we ate some lovely truffles, love from William."

“亲爱的妈咪，我昨天吃了一些可爱的松露。爱你的威廉。”

William was a little Italian prince who lived 400 years ago.

威廉是一位生活在400年前的意大利小王子。

Truffles are a special sort of mushroom.

松露是一种特殊的蘑菇。