双语｜刘慈欣《三体》

科幻作家刘慈欣所著系列小说《三体》（The Three-Body Problem）讲述了地球人类文明和三体文明的信息交流、生死搏杀及两个文明在宇宙中的兴衰历程。其第一部经过刘宇昆翻译后获得了第73届雨果奖最佳长篇小说奖。今天的推介就节选自这部小说，请大家赏读。

《三体》

文/刘慈欣

Tr. Ken Liu

647号宇宙中的一年过去了。

田里的小麦收获了两季，程心和关一帆两次看着翠绿的麦苗慢慢变成金黄的麦浪，旁边的菜地里也一直充盈着绿色。

A year passed in Universe 647.

The wheat had been harvested twice, and Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan had now watched twice as the green seedlings gradually turned into a sea of golden stalks. The vegetable fields next to the wheat had always remained green.

这个小小的庄园里有着完备的生活用品，所有的用品都没有商标，显然是在三体世界制造的，但在外形上与人类的产品完全一样，没有任何异域特征。

In this tiny world they were provided with all the other necessities of life. None of the objects had manufacturing marks or brand logos—Trisolarans made them—but they looked exactly like human products.

程心和关一帆有时到田里与机器人一起干农活，有时则在小宇宙中散步。散步时只需要一直走下去，只要不注意自己上次留下的脚印，就有穿过无穷无尽的小世界的感觉。

Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan sometimes went into the fields to work alongside the robots. Sometimes they strolled about the universe—as long as they were careful not to leave footprints, they could keep on walking indefinitely and experience the feeling of traversing countless worlds.

但他们更多的时间是花在电脑前。在小宇宙中的任何位置都能够激活一个终端窗口，但他们不知道这个世界的电脑主机在哪里。电脑中有大量地球人类的文字和图像资料，大部分是广播纪元之前的，显然是三体世界收集的人类世界的信息，遍及科学和人文的所有领域；但更多的信息是三体文字的，数量巨大，浩如烟海，这也是他们最感兴趣的部分。

They spent most of their time in front of the computer, however. It was possible to invoke a terminal from anywhere in the small universe, but they didn't know where the CPU for the computer was located. The computer had a massive databank of text, image, and video from the Earth, most of which dated from before the Broadcast Era. The Trisolarans had clearly gathered the info as they studied humanity, and the material covered every field in the sciences and the humanities.

在电脑中找不到把三体文字翻译成人类文字的软件，于是他们开始学习三体文字，智子成了他们的老师。但他们很快发现这极其困难，原因在于三体文字是一种表意文字，与人类的表音文字不同，与语言无关，直接表达含义。人类在远古时代也出现过表意文字，比如一部分象形文字就是表意的，但后来消失了，人类的阅读习惯完全变成了表音的习惯。不过，他们发现这种困难只是在开始时存在，越往后越容易。他们经过艰难的两个月后，进步逐渐快起来。与表音文字相比，表意文字最大的优势在于阅读速度，这种文字阅读起来比表音文字至少快十倍。

But even more information existed in the databank written in the Trisolaran language. This massive ocean of data was what interested them the most. Since they couldn't find any software on the computer for translating Trisolaran writing into human languages, they had to study the Trisolaran script itself. Sophon acted as their teacher, but they soon discovered that this was an extremely difficult endeavor because Trisolaran writing was purely ideographic; unlike human scripts, which were mostly phonetic, Trisolaran writing had no connection to their speech, but expressed ideas directly. In the distant past, humans had also used ideographic scripts—such as some hieroglyphs—but most of these later disappeared. Humans read by decoding speech made visible. However, the difficulty didn't last long. The more they persisted, the easier the learning process became. After struggling for two months, they found themselves making rapid progress. Compared to phonetic scripts, the biggest advantage of an ideographic script was how fast one could read—Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan read at least ten times as fast in Trisolaran as they did with human scripts.

程心和关一帆开始磕磕绊绊地阅读三体文的文献资料。他们最初的目的有两个，一是想了解三体世界是如何记载他们与地球文明的那段历史，二是想知道这个小宇宙是如何建造的——对于后者，他们知道真正从专业角度了解不太可能，但至少应该从科普角度知道是怎么回事。智子说，要达到这两个目标，他们还需要一年时间进一步掌握三体文字，再用一年去阅读。

They began to read the Trisolaran material in the databank—at first haltingly, and then faster. They had two initial goals in mind: First, they wanted to know how the Trisolarans had recorded the period of history between their civilization and Earth civilization. Second, they wanted to know how this mini-universe was constructed. For the latter, they understood that they would likely not achieve a specialist's level of understanding, but they wanted to at least understand it at the level of popular science. Sophon estimated that in order to achieve these two goals, they would need to spend one year to learn how to read Trisolaran better, then take another year to read in depth.

建造小宇宙的基本原理确实令他们难以想象，即使是其中一些层次较低的奥秘他们也很长时间弄不明白。比如在一立方千米的空间中，生态循环是如何建立的？太阳是什么？它的能源从哪里来？最令人费解的是：作为一个完全封闭的系统，小宇宙中的热量到哪里去了？

The fundamental principles underlying the small artificial universe seemed unimaginable to them; even the most basic mysteries puzzled them for the longest time. For instance, how could a complete ecological cycle function in a sealed space of only one cubit kilometer? What was the sun? What was its energy source? And most confounding: As a completely sealed system, where did the heat of the mini-universe go?

当然，他们最关心的是：小宇宙可以和大宇宙通信吗？智子告诉他们，小宇宙绝无可能向大宇宙传递信息，但接收到大宇宙的信息广播却是有可能的。她说，所有的宇宙都是一个超膜上的空泡（这涉及三体物理学和宇宙学中最基本的理论图景，对此她也无法进一步解释），大宇宙有足够的能量把信息在超膜上传播。但这很困难，需要难以想象的巨大能量，如果大宇宙这么做，可能需要把相当于一个银河系的质量化为纯能。其实，647号宇宙中的监测系统经常收到超膜上其他大宇宙的信息，有些是自然产生的，有些是无法解读的智慧信息，但从未收到他们所来的那个大宇宙的信息。

They also cared about the answer to one question in particular: Could the mini-universe communicate with the great universe? Sophon told them that there was no way for the mini-universe to transmit any information to the greater universe, but it was possible for the mini-universe to receive broadcasts from the great universe. She explained that all the universes were bubbles above a supermembrane—this was a fundamental conceptual image from Trisolaran physics and cosmology, and she could explain it no further. The great universe had enough energy to propagate information across the supermembrane. However, this was difficult and required a great expenditure of energy—the great universe would have to convert a Milky Way's worth of matter into pure energy. As a matter of fact, the monitoring systems in Universe 647 often received messages from other great universes on the supermembrane. Some were natural phenomena; some were messages from intelligent beings that could not be decoded—but they had never received any message from the particular great universe they had come from.

时间一天天过去，像那条小溪中的水，平静而流畅。

Time flowed by day after day like the smooth, placid water in that little brook.

程心开始写回忆录，记述她所知道的历史，她把它称为《时间之外的往事》。

Cheng Xin began to write her memoir so that she could record the history she knew. She named the book A Past Outside of Time.

有时候，他们也设想新宇宙中的生活。智子告诉他们，按照宇宙学理论，新宇宙在宏观上一定是高于四维的，甚至很可能高于十维。当新宇宙诞生后，647号宇宙能在其中自动建立出口并检测周围的环境。如果新宇宙高于四维，小宇宙出口可以跨越空间进行移动，直至寻找到合适的生存环境；同时，还可与三体世界其他小宇宙的移民进行联系，当然，也可能与银河系人类的移民联系上。在新宇宙中，旧宇宙的移民几乎属于同一个种族了，应该可以共建一个世界。智子特别强调，在高维宇宙中，有一个因素使生存的几率大大增加：在众多的维度中，可能有多于一个的维度是属于时间的。

Sometimes, they also tried to imagine life in the new universe. Sophon told them that according to cosmological theories, the new universe was certain to possess more than four macro dimensions, perhaps even more than ten macro dimensions. After the birth of the new universe, Universe 647 could automatically construct an entrance to it and examine the interior conditions. If the new universe possessed more than four dimensions, the mini-universe's exit could be moved around until a suitable habitable location was found in the great universe. Simultaneously, their mini-universe could establish communications with the refugees of other Trisolaran mini-universes, or even with Galactic human migrants. In the new universe, all the migrants coming from the old universe would practically be one race, and should be able to work together to construct a new world. Sophon emphasized that one characteristic greatly increased the probability of survival in a high-dimensional universe: Out of the many macro dimensions, it was likely that more than one dimension would belong to time.

来源：英语世界

编辑：鲁蒙海

审核：海 新

终审：张 扬