【精英翻譯】的部落格

The Skinny on Sausages

千變萬化的美味香腸

精英翻譯社轉自https://paper.udn.com/udnpaper/POH0058/354661/web/

If you stop and think about sausages for a second, they are pretty strange. A length of animal intestine, stuffed with spices and ground meat, cooked to brown perfection: How did anyone think to try that, and why? Most historians agree that sausages were invented by people from a region called Mesopotamia, in what is now the Middle East, around 4,000 years ago.

如果你停下來想想香腸這玩意，它們是還蠻奇怪的。一條動物的腸子、塞滿香料和絞肉、煮到完美的褐色：怎麼有人想到要嘗試那樣做，以及為什麼？

However, the modern sausage called “salami” first appeared in written history in the fifth century BC. The name is believed to come from the ancient Greek city of Salamis, near Cyprus. Then again, the word “sausage” itself is from the Latin word salsus, meaning “salted,” and was coined during the Roman Empire.

大多數歷史學家都同意香腸是大約四千年前由美索不達米亞地區（在今天中東地區）的人發明的。然而，叫作「薩拉米」（salami）的現代香腸最早是出現在西元前五世紀文字記載的歷史中。這個名字被認為是來自於賽普勒斯島附近的古希臘城市薩拉米斯。另一方面，「香腸」（sausage）這個字本身則源自拉丁文salsus（意思是「鹽醃的」），而且是在羅馬帝國時期創造的。

The humble sausage once fulfilled a vital role in peoples’ lives. Before the invention of refrigeration, a common way to stop food from spoiling in hot countries was to pack it in a casing with salt and hang it somewhere to dry. This meant that food could be preserved for a long time and eaten during times of food shortage. On top of that, sausages make use of every last bit of meat—a quality that would have been important at a time when food was not so easy to come by.

不起眼的香腸曾在人們的生活中起著至關重要的角色。冷藏技術發明之前，在炎熱國家要防止食物腐敗常見的方法就是把它和鹽一起塞進腸衣裡，然後懸掛在某處晾乾。這表示食物可以長時間保存並且能在食物短缺時食用。此外，香腸利用最後的每一塊肉——這在食物不是非常容易取得的時代是很重要的特性。