林徽因&梁思成：夫妻携手，用一生探索中国建筑史

　　Since 1851, obituaries in The New York Times have been dominated by white men. We launched Overlooked to tell the stories of women who left indelible marks on society, but whose deaths went unremarked by our newspaper. Now we’re expanding our lens to include other notable people — many of them marginalized — who were omitted.

　　自1851年以来，《纽约时报》的讣告一直以白人男性为主。我们推出了“被遗漏的”(Overlooked)栏目，讲述一些给社会留下了难以磨灭的印记、但她们的死亡没有得到时报的关注的女性的故事。现在，我们将视线扩大，投向其他许多被边缘化、受到忽略的重要人物。

　　In the 1930s, Lin Huiyin and Liang Sicheng began surveying and recording the country’s overlooked ancient buildings, in an effort to begin preserving them.

　　20世纪30年代，林徽因与梁思成开始对被忽视的中国古建筑进行考察记录，力图展开对这些建筑的保护工作。

　　Many of China’s ancient architectural treasures crumbled to dust before the couple began documenting them in the 1930s.

　　令人遗憾的是，在这对伴侣开始考察记录之前，许多古代建筑瑰宝已逐渐坍塌。

　　Becoming China’s premier architectural historians was no easy feat. The buildings they wanted to save were centuries old, often in shambles and located in distant parts of the country.

　　成为中国最著名的建筑历史学家不是一件容易的事情。他们想挽救的建筑已有好几百年的历史，这些建筑通常年久失修，而且座落在中国许多偏远的地方。

　　In many cases, they had to journey through treacherous conditions in the Chinese countryside to reach them.

　　许多时候，他们必须途径环境恶劣的农村，才能到达这些建筑的所在地。

　　Exploring China’s outlying areas during the 1930s meant traveling muddy, poorly maintained roads by mule, rickshaw or on foot.

　　20世纪30年代，在中国远离市镇的地区考察意味着，要靠骡子、人力车或徒步在很糟糕的泥泞路上旅行。

　　This was a demanding undertaking both for Liang, who walked with a bad limp after a motorcycle accident as a young man, and Lin, who had tuberculosis for years.

　　对于梁思成和林徽因两人来说，这并非易事：梁思成年轻时的一场摩托车事故让他后来走路一瘸一拐，而林徽因长期患有肺结核。

　　Inns were often squalid and lice-infested.

　　他们住的客栈通常很脏，到处是虱子。

　　Their greatest discovery came on an expedition in 1937 when they dated and meticulously catalogued Foguang Si, or the Temple of Buddha’s Light, in Wutai County, Shanxi Province. The breathtaking wooden temple was built in 857 A.D., making it the oldest building known in China at the time. (It is now the fourth-oldest known).

　　他们最大的收获来自1937年的一次考察，他们在山西省五台县发现了佛光寺，考证了它的年代，对其进行了详细的测绘编录。这座令人惊叹的木制寺庙建于公元857年，是当时中国已知的最古老的建筑。(现在，佛光寺是已知第四古老的中国建筑。)

　　Liang and Lin crawled into the temple’s most forbidding, forgotten areas to determine its age, including one aerie inhabited by thousands of bats and millions of bedbugs, covered in dust and littered with dead bats.

　　为了确定佛光寺的年代，梁思成和林徽因爬进了寺里最令人生畏、被人遗忘的地方，包括钻到寺的屋檐底下，那里住着成千上万只蝙蝠和数百万只臭虫，到处都是尘土，充斥着死蝙蝠。

　　““When at last we came out from under the eaves to take a breath of fresh air, we found hundreds of bedbugs in our knapsack. We ourselves had been badly bitten. Yet the importance and unexpectedness of our find made those the happiest hours of my years hunting for ancient architecture.”

　　“当我们终于从屋檐下钻出来呼吸新鲜空气的时候，发现在背包里爬满了千百只臭虫。我们自己也被咬得很厉害，可是我们发现的重要性和意外收获，使得这些日子成为我多年来寻找古建筑中最快乐的时光。”

　　In complete darkness and amid the vile odor, hardly breathing, with thick masks covering our noses and mouths, we measured, drew, and photographed with flashlights for several hours,” Liang wrote.

　　“我们戴着厚厚的口罩掩盖口鼻，在完全的黑暗和难耐的秽气中好几个小时地测量、画图和用闪光灯照相，”梁思成写到。

　　Their families knew each other, and they journeyed to the United States together to attend the University of Pennsylvania in 1924.

　　他们两家是世交，两人于1924年一起前往美国，在宾夕法尼亚大学读书。

　　Lin was enthusiastic about studying architecture, but the university’s architecture school would not admit her because it was considered improper for young ladies to work late into the night, unsupervised, with young men.

　　林徽因对读建筑学很感兴趣，但大学的建筑学院没有接收她，因为当时人们认为，在无人监护的情况下，让年轻的女士与年轻的男子一起工作到深夜不合适。

　　So when they graduated in 1927 Lin earned a bachelor of fine arts degree, having taken classes in architecture, and Liang became the official architect, earning a bachelor’s and later a master’s degree in the field. But they always worked together.

　　所以，他们1927年毕业时，林徽因拿到的是美术学士学位，她也上过建筑学的课;梁思成则成为正式的建筑师，他先是获得了建筑学士学位，后来又获得了建筑硕士学位。但他们总是一起工作。

　　During the war they used their copious notes, photographs and drawings to continue writing about architecture.

　　战争期间，他们靠大量的笔记、照片和绘图，继续从事建筑方面的写作。

　　When the war ended Liang became a visiting professor at Yale.

　　战争结束后，梁思成前往耶鲁大学担任客座教授。

　　Liang became China’s representative to the committee that designed the United Nations building in Manhattan. Lin, burdened by caring for her family and by illness, remained in China.

　　梁思成成为设计曼哈顿的联合国大楼委员会中的中国代表。林徽因由于要照顾家人，又患病在身，留在了中国。

　　they were a team，they saw each other as partners, not as business but as life partners.

　　他们是一个团队，他们把彼此视为伙伴，不是商业伙伴，而是人生伴侣。