SUNSET ON THE BRITISH EMPIRE
日不落帝国的日落
Q. When (if ever) did the Sun finally set on the British Empire?
Q．什么时候（如果有的话）在所有大英帝国的土地上都看不到太阳？
——Kurt Amundson
——库尔特•阿蒙森
A. IT HASN'T. YET. BUT only because of a few dozen people living in an area smaller than Disney World.
A．到目前为止这种情况还没发生过。不过这仅仅是因为有这么一小撮人住在某些比迪士尼公园还小的土地上。
The world's largest empire
世界上最大的帝国
The British Empire spanned the globe. This led to the saying that the Sun never set on it, since it was always daytime somewhere in the Empire.
大英帝国的领土遍布全球各地，因而才会有人说大英帝国是日不落帝国，因为总有那么一块领土所处的正好是白天。
It's hard to figure out exactly when this long daylight began. The whole process of claiming a colony (on land already occupied by other people) is awfully arbitrary in the first place. Essentially, the British built their empire by sailing around and sticking flags on random beaches. This makes it hard to decide when a particular spot in a country was “officially” added to the Empire.
要想知道这种情景是何时开始出现的十分困难，因为宣称某一块（已经有别人居住）土地是殖民地的这一做法从一开始就很武断。实际上英国人驾着船开到哪里就在哪里插上一面旗子，宣称这是他们的殖民地，所以你很难确定一个国家的某一地区是何时被“正式”加入到大英帝国里去的。“那些处在阴影里的地方呢？”“那里是法国，但我们终究会把它抢回来的。”
“What about that shadowy place over there?” “That's France. We'll get it one of these days.”
“那些处在阴影里的地方呢？”“那里是法国，但我们终究会把它抢回来的。”
The exact day when the Sun stopped setting on the Empire was probably sometime in the late 1700s or early 1800s, when the first Australian territories were added.
大英帝国不再经历日落的准确日期大概是18世纪末、19世纪初的某一天，当第一块澳洲领土正式加入的时候。
The Empire largely disintegrated in the early 20th century, but-surprisingly-the Sun hasn't technically started setting on it again.
在20世纪初期，大英帝国基本已经解体了，但让人惊讶的是，自那以后太阳依然没有真正落下去过。