英语视频畅谈欧美人文风情111：关于维京人等五大历史错误观念总览（中英+mp3）

What would a Viking be without his trusty battle helmet and its impressive horns? The answer is: a more historically accurate Viking.
维京人如果没有可靠的战斗头盔和那令人印象深刻的角会是什么呢? 答案是：一个在历史观点上更真实的维京人。
Think, for a moment about wearing headgear like that into battle would mean the horns are just easy targets for your opponent to hit and knock off your helmet.
想想看，戴着那样的头饰去打仗，角只是敌人容易打击的目标，很容易打掉你的头盔。
Or, if you strap on your helmet, now your opponent has a convenient lever with which to drag you to the ground and something to hold onto while slitting your throat.
或者，如果你把头盔绑紧，现在你的敌人就有个很方便的把手，用来把你拉倒在地，而且在割断你的喉咙时，有地方可以抓。
Horned helmets are a terrible idea, which is why archaeologists have never found them at Viking battle sites, and there's no evidence that they were ever used.
有角的头盔真是个很糟的点子，这就是为什么考古学家从没在维京人的战斗遗址找到它们，而且也没有证据显示他们有使用过。
It was poets and artists (people not known for caring about facts and reality) who gave the Vikings their silly hats during the late 1800s, long after the Vikings could "correct" their misconceptions.
这是诗人和艺术家(那些不是以关心事实真相闻名的人)他们在18世纪末给维京人戴上了这愚蠢的帽子，而那发生在维京人能够“纠正”他们错误观念的很久之后了。
Number four: Lady Godiva.
第四：Godiva夫人。
The story of this 11th century English noblewoman is that her mean husband, the Earl, raised taxes on the towns'people of Coventry which Lady Godiva, and not surprising the locals, thought were too high.
这个十一世纪英国贵族妇人的故事是关于她那不体恤人民的丈夫，这位伯爵对Coventry镇的居民提高税赋，Godiva夫人，以及不意外的当地居民，都认为税赋太高了。
She badgered her husband, and he conceded in exasperation to lower the taxes if she rode through town naked, assuming that she never would, but she did.
她不断纠缠她丈夫，伯爵不胜其扰而让步，答应如果她光着身子骑马穿过城镇，就降低税赋--以为她绝对不可能这么做--但她真的去做了。
Because people don't like taxes, even though they're how civilization is purchased, Lady Godiva's story lives on notably in the Godiva logo and in popular songs.
因为人民不喜欢税赋，即使那是文明的代价，Godiva夫人的故事特别是在Godiva巧克力的商标和流行歌曲中继续活跃着。
But while Lady Godiva was a real person and Coventry is a real town, there is no record of her nude ride from the time when it happened. So we can safely assume the story is false. Just as with the Vikings, again, poets and artists are to blame, who made up the tale long after Lady Godiva's death.
但虽然Godiva夫人是真实人物而且确实也有Coventry这个城镇，却并没有事发当时她裸体骑马的纪录。所以我们可以有把握的假设这故事是捏造的。就像维京人的故事，又一次的，要怪到诗人和艺术家头上，他们在Godiva夫人过世许久之后，编造了这传说。
Number three: Napoleon.
第三：拿破仑。
Famously, this tiny, tiny general, perhaps to compensate for his short stature, took control of France, greatly expanded its influence and dubbed himself emperor.
脍炙人口的，这小小将军，或许是为了弥补他矮小的身材，掌管法国，大大地扩展其影响力，并自封为皇帝。
Napoleon's official height was indeed five foot two inches, but at the time French inches were longer than English inches. So doing the unit conversion, Napoleon's height should've been reported as five-seven in England's Imperial Units, which is short by today's standards, but was average or slightly above average in the early 1800s.
拿破仑正式的身高的确是五尺二寸，但当时法国的“寸”是比“英寸”还长的。所以换算单位，拿破仑身的高应该是要被纪录为英制的五尺七寸(一百七十公分)，以现代的标准来看是矮的，但以18世纪早期来说算是平均身高，或是稍稍超过标准的身高了。
However, England, with its eternal love for all things French didn't care, (and) went with the Napoleon-is-so-short-LOL version of the story in newspapers and cartoons.
不过，英格兰对于法国人不在乎的事物有着永无止境的喜爱，在报纸和卡通上，演出“拿破仑超矮-哈哈哈(注一)”版本的故事。
Meanwhile, Napoleon was busy introducing the Metric System to France and the wider world to standardize measurements so this sort of confusion would never happen again. And thankfully, the whole world now uses metric. Mostly. Sort of.
同时，拿破仑正忙着将公制引进法国和世界上其他国家，以便将度量衡标准化，如此一来，这样的困扰就不会再发生了。而值得庆幸的是，现在全世界都在使用公制。某种程度上来说。
Number two: Roman Vomit.
第二：罗马人呕吐。
Ah, the Roman Empire, so great and powerful, but corrupted by decadence from within. And what could be a better symbol of that decadence than the Vomitorium, where Romans, after stuffing themselves with delicious foods, could vomit them all up again to make room to feast anew.
啊，罗马帝国，那么的伟大且强大，但却因内部的衰败而腐化。而还有什么可以比“Vomitorium”这个字更能代表罗马的衰败呢？罗马人，在用美味的食物填满肚子后，会再把所有东西吐出来，为再次享用大餐腾出空间。
Vomitoria are real, but this idea of them is not, though confusion is understandable, because their name of Vomit-Orium seems to make their purpose so clear.
确实有Vomitoria这个字，但并不是这样的意思，然而可以理解为什么会搞混，因为Vomit-Orium(注二)似乎很清晰地传达其意义。
Even if for some reason you know Latin, perhaps because you live in a country that insists you waste hundreds of hours of your life learning a dead, useless language, this knowledge still won't help you because the root word "vomitum" means "to spew forth."
既使你因为某些原因懂拉丁文，或许因为你住在一个坚持让你浪费几百个小时生命学习已经死去、完全没用的语言的国家，这知识仍然不能帮助你，因为“vomitum”这字根代表的意思是“往前喷出”。
So what is it really? If you've ever been to a big stadium, like say, the ones made by the Romans, you have already used a vomitorium. This is what the vomitoria are: The passageways that let lots of people enter or exit at once. The people are what spews forth in the vomitoria, not the contents of the people.
所以这个字真正的意思是什么呢？如果你去过大型的体育场，譬如说，由罗马人所建造的那些，你就己经使用过vomitorium了。这就是所谓的vomitoria：是让许多人立刻进出的通道。而人们就是在vomitoria中，往前喷出的东西，而不是指人们吃进体内的东西。
Number one: Columbus.
第一：哥伦布。
They're so very much wrong with the common retelling of the story of Christopher Columbus that it's hard to know where to begin. But the biggest misconception is that everyone else thought the world was flat, but Columbus was the only guy smart enough to know that it's round.
他们一般在重述哥伦布的故事时，实在错得离谱，以至于出处已不可考。但最大的误解是，其他每个人都认为地球是平的，而哥伦布是唯一够聪明的人，知道地球是圆的。
It makes a daring story, but knowledge of a spherical earth goes back to at least 5,000 BC. That's six and a half thousand years before Columbus set sail, and that knowledge was never lost to western civilization. In 200 BC, Eratosthenes calculated the Earth's circumference, and his estimate was still well-known and being used during Columbus's time.
因而造就了这个大胆的故事，但圆的地球这知识可追溯到至少西元前五千年。这比起哥伦布开始航海旅程还要早了六千五百年，而这知识从未在西方文明中消失。在西元前两百年
The argument Columbus had with Queen Isabella was not over the shape of the earth, but of its size. Columbus estimated the Earth was much smaller than Queen Isabella and her scientific advisers did, which was why he thought he could make it across the empty Atlantic to India.
Eratosthenes计算出地球的周长，而他的估算在那时相当知名，而且在哥伦布时代被使用。
But Columbus's size estimate was wrong, again, just like Napoleon's height, because of mixed up units.
哥伦布和Isabella皇后间的争执并不是关于地球的形状，而是它的尺寸。哥伦布估计的地球比Isabella皇后和她的科学家顾问们所估算的还小得多，这就是为什么他认为可以横渡一望无际的大西洋到印度。
However, this mistake did send him west to become the first European to discover America, as long as you ignore the hornless Vikings who beat him by five hundred years.
但哥伦布的大小估算错了，又一次的，就像是拿破仑的身高，因为混淆了的单位。

不管怎样，这个错误的确将他送往西方，成为第一位发现美洲的欧洲人，只要你忽略那些没有角的维京人，他们其实比哥伦布早了500年。