英語視頻暢談歐美人文風(fēng)情107：2012和世界末日

　　History has a long and rich tradition of apocalyptic predictions—all of which were wrong—yet some people still think that this time around in 2012 is the real deal.

　　長久以來，歷史上流傳著各式各樣啟示錄預(yù)言的傳說--沒有一個(gè)成真--但還是有人相信，這次大概2012年就是世界末日。

　　Why 2012? Because of ancient Mayan calendars.

　　為什么是2012年呢?這就要追溯至古代的馬雅歷法。

　　Obviously, Mayan calendars not only recorded the days and years, but also longer cycles of about five Millennia, so they could easily make calendars that went thousands of years into the future. But, of course, thousands of years in the future from thousands of years ago brings us to the current times when the Mayan calendars stop in 2012.

　　很顯然的，馬雅歷法不只是記載了日日年年，同時(shí)也記錄了以約五千年為單位，較長的周期，所以他們可以很輕易的估算出未來幾千年的歷法。但是，想當(dāng)然爾，幾千年前的數(shù)千年以后，就把我們帶到了現(xiàn)代，而馬雅歷法的預(yù)測就停在2012年。

　　Modern new-agey people decided that the wise Mayans stopped making calendars because they knew when the world will end. And because the new-agers are happy (though scientifically illiterate people), their vision of 2012 was a great spiritual awakening or world reboot or other hippy-consciousness-expanding nonsense that the Mayans, who spend time pulling strings of thorns through people's tongues probably didn't have in mind.

　　現(xiàn)代推崇“新時(shí)代運(yùn)動(dòng)”的人們(注一)，是如此解讀的：睿智的馬雅人知道何時(shí)是世界末日，才停止估算歷法。而因?yàn)檫@些“新時(shí)代運(yùn)動(dòng)派”很高興(雖然他們沒什么科學(xué)概念)，他們的2012末日說，是一個(gè)偉大的精神覺醒、世界重生或是其他嬉皮式的“意識(shí)超脫”之類的廢話，而馬雅人忙著用荊棘穿過人們的舌頭，大概從沒想過以上解讀方式。

　　To a normal person, the thought that "Calendar finished, therefore End of the World" is an odd conclusion to draw.

　　對(duì)正常人來說，“歷法終止，因此世界末日來臨”這種邏輯是個(gè)奇怪的結(jié)論。

　　After all, the amount of time in the Universe is infinite, and the amount of stone is limited. So, at some point, the Mayans had to stop carving calendars.

　　畢竟，宇宙的時(shí)間是無限的，但石頭的數(shù)量有限。所以，有朝一日，馬雅人必須停止刻歷法。

　　But never mind.

　　但沒關(guān)系。

　　What should have stayed a fringe belief turned into mass hysteria with the 2012 disaster movie that swept the Academy Awards and the numerous Emmy-nominated apocalypse documentaries on The History Channel.

　　這原本應(yīng)該只是一個(gè)極端偏激的信念，隨著災(zāi)難電影《2012》橫掃奧斯卡，加上《歷史頻道》多部獲艾美獎(jiǎng)提名的天啟紀(jì)錄片渲染，轉(zhuǎn)變成為大眾恐慌。

　　What happened to you guys?

　　各位，你們到底在想什么啊?

　　Anyway, after this, NASA became so inundated with questions that they had to take time away from their busy robot building, frontier pushing, knowledge expanding, civilization inspiring schedule, to write a webpage explaining that "No, a human-sacrificing, stone-aged society, with neither wheels to pull carts nor glass to make telescopes, didn't know more about science at the dawn of history than real scientists do today."

　　不論如何，此后，NASA被大量涌入的問題淹沒，還得從他們忙碌的打造機(jī)器人、開疆?dāng)U土、擴(kuò)充新知及刺激文明發(fā)展的行程表中，抽空架網(wǎng)頁澄清：“不，一個(gè)以人為祭品的石器時(shí)代社會(huì)，既沒有發(fā)明輪子拉貨車，也沒有玻璃可以做望遠(yuǎn)鏡，在人類歷史起步之初，不可能比現(xiàn)代真正科學(xué)家更了解科學(xué)。”

　　But the parade of crazy marched on anyway making wilder and wilder predictions for Earth, including:

　　但不論如何，這狂熱的風(fēng)潮持續(xù)延燒，對(duì)地球的預(yù)測也越來越不著邊際，包括：

　　Geomagnetic Reversal (A process that unfolds on a geologic time scale, not a single day.)

　　地磁反轉(zhuǎn)(一個(gè)在地質(zhì)年表上才會(huì)呈現(xiàn)出的過程，不是一天就會(huì)發(fā)生的。)

　　A collision with mysterious Planet X (That no astronomers have found.)

　　和神秘的X星球相撞(根本沒有天文學(xué)家發(fā)現(xiàn)這個(gè)星球)

　　A local star going supernova (Despite there have been no such candidates.)

　　本星系群的一顆恒星變成超新星(只是沒有這樣的候選人)

　　An Alien Invasion (Which is ludicrous on the face of it...or is it?)

　　外星人入侵(從外表看起來是挺滑稽的...是嗎?)

　　And a galactic synchronization beam, whatever the hell that is.

　　還有銀河同步光束，管它是啥。

　　A sane person at this point would wonder how Mayans were able to predict astro-physical anomalies thousands of years in advance and millions of miles away yet didn't foresee the Spanish coming across the Atlantic.

　　現(xiàn)在，神智清楚的人可能會(huì)想，為什么馬雅人有辦法預(yù)測未來幾千年的天文物理異象，而且還是發(fā)生在離他們數(shù)百萬英里遠(yuǎn)的地方，卻沒辦法預(yù)見西班牙人會(huì)橫越大西洋(前來侵略)呢?

　　And that's because the Mayans never predicted apocalypse. The only people to claim that Mayans knew about the end of the world were distinctly not Mayans.

　　那是因?yàn)轳R雅人從沒預(yù)言過啟示錄。唯一那些聲稱馬雅人知道世界末日的人，很明顯的，都不是馬雅人。