《那些古怪又讓人憂心的問題》第123期:日不落帝國的日落(1)
SUNset ON THE BRITISH EMPIRE
Q. When (if ever) did the Sun finally set on the British Empire?
Q．什麼時候（如果有的話）在所有大英帝國的土地上都看不到太陽？——Kurt Amundson
——庫爾特•阿蒙森
A. IT HASN'T. YET. BUT only because of a few dozen people living in an area smaller than Disney World.
A．到目前爲止這種情況還沒發生過。不過這僅僅是因爲有這麼一小撮人住在某些比迪士尼公園還小的土地上。The world's largest empire
世界上最大的帝國The British Empire spanned the globe. This led to the saying that the Sun never set on it, since it was always daytime somewhere in the Empire.
大英帝國的領土遍佈全球各地，因而纔會有人說大英帝國是日不落帝國，因爲總有那麼一塊領土所處的正好是白天。It's hard to figure out exactly when this long daylight began. The whole process of claiming a colony (on land already occupied by other people) is awfully arbitrary in the first place. Essentially, the British built their empire by sailing around and sticking flags on random beaches. This makes it hard to decide when a particular spot in a country was “officially” added to the Empire.
要想知道這種情景是何時開始出現的十分困難，因爲宣稱某一塊（已經有別人居住）土地是殖民地的這一做法從一開始就很武斷。實際上英國人駕着船開到哪裏就在哪裏插上一面旗子，宣稱這是他們的殖民地，所以你很難確定一個國家的某一地區是何時被“正式”加入到大英帝國裏去的。“那些處在陰影裏的地方呢？”“那裏是法國，但我們終究會把它搶回來的。”“What about that shadowy place over there?” “That's France. We'll get it one of these days.”
“那些處在陰影裏的地方呢？”“那裏是法國，但我們終究會把它搶回來的。”The exact day when the Sun stopped setting on the Empire was probably sometime in the late 1700s or early 1800s, when the first Australian territories were added.
大英帝國不再經歷日落的準確日期大概是18世紀末、19世紀初的某一天，當第一塊澳洲領土正式加入的時候。The Empire largely disintegrated in the early 20th century, but-surprisingly-the Sun hasn't technically started setting on it again.
在20世紀初期，大英帝國基本已經解體了，但讓人驚訝的是，自那以後太陽依然沒有真正落下去過。
