Calendars 日历

Are you looking forward to summer? In Saint Petersburg, where this article was written, a day can be less than less six hours long in the middle of winter and nearly 19 hours in summer.At this time of year, you can easily see in people’s faces that they are ready for brighter, sunnier days to come round again.
你正期盼着夏天的到来吗？这篇文章的撰写之地圣彼得堡，隆冬的一天比少于6个小时还少，夏天的一天却将近19个小时。一年中的这个时候，你能很容易地从人们的脸上看到他们已经准备好迎接更明媚，更阳光充足的日子了。

Months from the moon and years from the sun.To the first people it was obvious that time went in circles. The sun rises (comes up in the morning) and sets (goes down in the evening). The moon waxes (gets fatter or wider) and wanes (gets thinner or narrower). The seasons follow each other in order. These things happen because we are all going round in circles…the earth spins round in 24 hours, the moon goes around the Earth, and the Earth goes round the Sun in about 365 and a quarter days. The most natural kind of calendar comes from the sun and the moon.You can count the number of days and nights in the moon’s cycle from New Moon (when it is all dark) to Full Moon (a bright disk), and back again: 29 and a half.
月份源自月亮，年份源自太阳。对于最早的人来说，时间明显是循环的。旭日东升（在早晨上升），夕阳西下（在晚上落下）。月亮有圆满（变得更饱满或更宽）和亏缺（变得更瘦扁或更窄）。四季循环交替。这些事情发生的原因是我们都一直在原地打转。 地球自转24小时，月球绕着地球转，地球绕着太阳公转约365天6小时。最原始的日历源自太阳和月亮。你可以数一下月亮从新月（全黑时）到满月（一个明亮的光盘）的循环需要经过的白天和黑夜的天数。

The basic problem for calendar makers is how to get the months (which come from the moon) to stay in synch with the years. The years all have a bit more than 12 New Moons in them. Maybe you read about the Chinese New Year in Claire Powell’s article in January. If you did, you already know that some years, the Chinese calendar has an extra month, so they have exactly 235 months in every period of 19 years.This article is about how the western world solved the same problem by adding an extra day in leap years (and having longer months the rest of the time.)
日历制定者面临的基本问题是如何使得月份（源自月亮）和年份同步。年份的时间都是比12次新月发生的时间要多一点。也许，一月时您读过克莱尔•鲍威尔有关中国新年的文章。如果您已经读过，那您就知道中国日历在某些年份中有一个多出来的月份，所以准确来说他们每个19年就有235个月。这篇文章就是关于西方世界是如何通过在闰年增加额外的一天来解决同样的问题（在其它时间有更长的月份。）

Days and weeks from the planets 天和星期源自行星

You can’t find any cycles of seven days by looking at the sky. However, the ancient world knew five planets apart from the sun and moon: Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. They probably made the week seven days long to give one day for each. In English, the first days of the week clearly come from The Sun (Sunday) and The Moon (Monday). The last day comes from Saturn (Saturday). Just like the rest of our language, an English week is a mixture of Latin and words from other places … Germanic gods: Tiw (an Anglo-Saxon god of the sun and war) and Wodin (the head of Anglo-Saxon gods) for Tuesday and Wednesday and Scandinavian gods Thor (another god of war) and Frigg (goddess of love) for Thursday and Friday.
你无法通过看天空就发现七天循环的规律。但是，古代世界知道除了太阳和月亮以外的五大行星：水星，金星，火星，木星和土星。他们规定一个星期有七天那么长，可能是给每个行星分一天。英语中，一个星期的头几天显然是源自太阳（星期天Sunday源自月亮Sun）和月亮（星期一Monday源自月亮Moon)。最后一天源自土星（星期六Saturday源自土星Saturn)。就像我们其他的语言一样，英语中的星期混合了拉丁语和其他地方的词汇。日耳曼神：Tiw(盎格鲁-撒克逊的太阳之神和战神）代表星期二，沃登（诸神之父）代表星期三，斯堪的纳维亚之神托尔（另一战神），代表星期四，弗丽嘉（爱神）代表星期五。

Months of the Year 一年的月份

Our names of months all come from Latin. Janus a god with two faces, the god of doors and gates gives us January; and February comes from a Roman festival of spring cleaning.Mars, who didn’t get a day of the week in English, got the whole month of March. Jupiter , well his wife was Juno – which makes the month of June.Most of the later months just come from the Latin words for numbers 7, 8, 9 and 10 septem, octo, nove, decem. But why isn’t September month number seven? It was for the Romans, because they started the year with March.
所有月份的名字都来自拉丁语。贾纳斯，两面神和门神，给了我们星期一；星期二来自罗马春天清扫节。马尔斯没有获得英语中的一天，获得了整个三月。丘比特的妻子朱诺规定了六月。后来的大多数月份来自拉丁语中的数字7（septem）,8（octo）,9（nove）,10（decem）。为什么九月不是英文中的数字7(seven)。这是赠给罗马人的，因为他们开创了有三月的那一年。

The Emperors’ calendars 帝王的日历

July is occupied by Julius Caesar, who also occupied part of Britain.And August by Augustus Caesar who was the next Roman emperor. These two men both played an important role in creating the modern calendar. The Julian calendar (which Julius introduced in 46 BC) had a leap year every four years, when one day was added onto the end of the year (as it was then) on February 29th. Julius’ calendar was much simpler than the old one, and it was pretty accurate, although not as good as the Chinese one. It was only 11 minutes and 14 seconds a year too slow. Somehow, the people in charge of the calendars in Rome didn’t understand their instructions and added an extra day every three years.Augustus, the next emperor, corrected that mistake but left the leap years as they were, so the calendar went on being 11 minutes a year too slow for centuries. Russia only introduced the Julian calendar in 1700 and changed to the Gregorian one after the revolution.
占领了不列颠部分地区的尤里乌斯•凯撒占领了七月。下一位罗马大帝奥古斯都•凯撒占领了八月。这两个人在创造现代日历中都扮演着重要角色。朱利安日历（尤里乌斯在公元前46年引进。）每四年就有一个闰年，2月29日那天一年的末尾会增加一天。尤里乌斯日历比之前的要简单得多，也很准确，尽管没有中国日历那么好。 一年只慢了11分14秒。 要不知怎么的，掌管日历的罗马人不明白他们的用法，每三年增加了额外的一天。下一位帝王奥古斯丁更正了错误，但是保留了原来的闰年，所以几个世纪以来日历每年都慢了11分钟。 俄罗斯只在1700年引进尤里乌斯日历，革命之后就改成格雷戈里安日历。

Behind the times 落后于时间

Over the centuries those 11 extra minutes in the Julian calendar added up to quite a lot.Our modern "Gregorian" calendar goes more quickly because we don’t have leap years at the end of most centuries – only 1600 and 2000.When Pope Gregory brought it in in 1582, they had to take out 10 days to catch up. The year jumped directly from 4th to 15th October. In the same year, William Shakespeare got married in Stratford-upon-Avon, but Britain went on for another 180 years with the old calendar.By 1752, when Britain changed to the new Gregorian calendar, they needed to miss 11 days to catch up. This caused violent protests…people thought the government was making their lives 11 days shorter, or even worse, stealing their wages for the 11 missing days. Here in Russia, the years carried on being a bit too long right into the twentieth century.On the 25th October 1917, when the Bolsheviks pushed their way into the Winter Palace it was already 7th November across the rest of Europe…a difference of 13 days. As a result, in 1918 Russia missed the whole first half of February: going directly from 31st January to 14th February. Maybe they were pleased to get closer to the summer.
几世纪以来，尤里乌斯日历的额外11分钟累积了很多。我们现代的格雷戈里安日历过得更快，因为大多数世纪之末都没有闰年-除了17世纪和21世纪。 当格雷戈里安教皇在1582年引进该日历时，他们需要拿出十天来赶上。一下子直接从10月4日跳到10月15日。同一年，威廉•莎士比亚在埃文河畔的斯特拉特福结婚，但是大不列颠继续使用了180年的旧日历。1752年，大不列颠改用新的格雷戈里安日历，他们需要减掉11天来赶上。人们认为政府让他们活少了11天，或更糟糕的，偷走了他们在这减少了的11天的工资。在俄罗斯，年份继续保持较长的时间，一直到二十世纪。 1917年10月25日，布尔什维克主义者进入冬宫时，已经是欧洲其它地区的11月7日。 结果，1918年俄罗斯错过了整个二月的上半月：直接从1月31日进入到2月14日。也许，他们很高兴他们离夏天更近了。