VENICE — “You guys, just say ‘skooozy’ and walk through,” a young U.S. woman commanded her friends, caught in one of the bottlenecks of tourist traffic that clog Venice’s narrow streets, choke its glorious squares and push the locals of this enchanting floating city out and onto drab, dry land. “We don’t have time!”
威尼斯——“伙计们，只需说‘借过’，然后穿过去，”一个年轻的美国女人向朋友发出指令。“我们没时间了！”他们被困在由观光客组成的拥挤人潮中。在威尼斯，这人潮堵塞了狭窄的街道，让美丽的广场水泄不通，还迫使这座极具魅力的水上城市的许多居民离开本岛，踏上单调、干燥的陆地。
Neither, the Italian government worries, does Venice.
意大利政府担心，威尼斯的时间也不多了。
Don’t look now, but Venice, once a great maritime and mercantile power, risks being conquered by day-trippers.
不应马上下结论，不过，曾是伟大的海上霸主和商业中心的威尼斯，的确面临着被一日游观光客征服的危险。
The soundtrack of the city is now the wheels of rolling luggage thumping up against the steps of footbridges as phalanxes of tourists march over the city’s canals. Snippets of Venetian dialect can still be heard between the gondoliers rowing selfie-snapping couples. But the lingua franca is a foreign mashup of English, Chinese and whatever other tongue the mega cruise ships and low-cost flights have delivered that morning. Hotels have replaced homes.
如今，当游客的方阵在运河上方的天桥上行进时，拉杆箱的轮子在台阶上滚动跳跃的声音便是这座城市的背景音乐。从那些划着船，运送着忙于自拍的情侣的船夫口中，你仍能听到零星的威尼斯方言。但通用语是一种外国语大杂烩，其中包括英语、中文，以及巨型游轮和廉价渡船那天早上运送的游客说的任何语言。居民的住宅已被酒店取而代之。

Italian government officials, lamenting what they call “low-quality tourism,” are considering limiting the numbers of tourists who can enter the city or its landmark piazzas.
意大利政府官员悲叹于他们口中的“低质量旅游”，正考虑限制可以进入这座城市或其地标式广场的游客人数。
“If you arrive on a big ship, get off, you have two or three hours, follow someone holding a flag to Piazzale Roma, Ponte di Rialto and San Marco and turn around,” said Dario Franceschini, Italy’s culture minister, who lamented what he called an “Eat and Flee” brand of tourism that had brought the sinking city so low.
“如果你是坐大船抵达的，下了船，你有两三个小时，跟随某个举着小旗子的人前往罗马广场(Piazzale Roma)、里阿尔托桥(Ponte di Rialto)、圣马可广场(San Marco)，然后就要往回走，”意大利文化部长达里奥·弗兰切斯基尼(Dario Franceschini)为他口中的快餐式旅游感到惋惜，这种业态已经让这个下沉的城市的情况变得愈发糟糕。
“The beauty of Italian towns is not only the architecture, it’s also the actual activity of the place, the stores, the workshops,” Franceschini added. “We need to save its identity.”
“意大利城镇不仅美在建筑物，还在于当地的实际活动、店铺、工坊，”弗兰切斯基尼继续说道。“我们需要保存它的特质。”
The city’s locals, whatever is left of them anyway, feel inundated by the 20 million or so tourists each year. Stores have taken to putting signs on the windows showing the direction to St. Mark’s Square or Ponte di Rialto, so people will stop coming in to ask them where to go.
每年约有2000万名游客涌入威尼斯，让这座城市的居民——不论还剩下多少——有被淹没其中之感。各店铺不得不往窗户上放标牌，指明圣马克广场(St Mark’s Square)或里亚尔托桥所在的方向，以免人们纷纷跑进来问路。
The majority of the anxiety has centered on the cruise ships that pass through the Grand Canal, blotting out the landmarks like an eclipse blocking out the sun.
担忧主要集中在穿行于大运河(Grand Canal)中的游轮身上，它们遮蔽着一处处地标，就如同月球的影子遮蔽着太阳。
Some of the roughly 50,000 Venetians who remain in the city, down from about 175,000 in 1951, have organized associations against the “Big Ships,” selling T-shirts that show cruise boats with shark teeth threatening fishermen. In June, almost all the 18,000 Venetians who voted in an unofficial referendum on the cruise ships said they wanted them out of the lagoon.
这座城市里还剩下大约5万名威尼斯人——1951年的数字是17.5万——他们组织起对抗“大船”的协会，还会售卖宣传T恤，上面的图案是带有锋利牙齿的游船向渔民发出威胁。今年6月有过一场关于游轮的非官方公投，参与投票的1.8万名威尼斯人几乎全都表示，他们想让游轮离开泄湖。
“One problem is the ships,” said Franceschini, who called their passage in front of St. Mark’s Square “an unacceptable spectacle.”
“这些船真成问题，”弗兰切斯基尼说。他把船只在圣马克广场前经过的情形称作“不可接受的景象”。
But the ships bring in money, and since Venice is not the trading power of yore, it needs all the euros it can get. The cruise ships don’t just bring fees into the city, they also create jobs down a whole supply chain, benefiting mechanics, waiters and water taxis. The gondoliers who change into their striped shirts early in the morning and put sunscreen on their bald heads have steady work.
但这些船会带来金钱，威尼斯已经不是昔日的贸易霸主，能挣到手的每一块欧元对它来说都很重要。游轮不只为这座城市带来收入，还顺着一整条供应链创造着就业机会，让机修师、服务生以及水上的士司机获益。那些一大清早就换好条纹衬衫、把防晒霜涂抹在光秃秃的脑袋上的船夫，拥有稳定的客源。
Many of Venice’s locals reside in the Castello section of the city, far enough from San Marco Square, the center of tourist gravity, to enjoy a semblance of normal life. But only a semblance.
威尼斯本地人很多都住在该市的城堡区(Castello)，一个离游客云集的圣马可广场足够远的地方，以便过表面上还算正常的生活。但也只是表面上。
“If you want to get some prosciutto, you can’t because the salumeria is gone,” said Tommaso Mingati, 41.
“如果你想要买点火腿，是买不到的，因为熟食店消失了，”现年41岁的托马索·明甘蒂(Tommaso Mingati)说。
His family kept a small apartment here but, like most former residents, had moved out to Mestre, the mainland section that no one has ever called Queen of the Adriatic. As his mother regretted the city’s becoming a “Disneyland on the Sea,” Mingati said that the expanding empire of bed-and-breakfasts was now forcing people out of Mestre.
他家在这里有一套小公寓，但像大多数前居民一样，已经搬去了梅斯特(Mestre)，没有谁会管那片内陆区叫“亚得里亚海的明珠”。在明甘蒂的母亲为这座城市变成“海上迪士尼乐园”感到遗憾之际，明甘蒂说，日益扩张的客栈现在正迫使人们离开梅斯特。
All of those bed-and-breakfasts, and the city’s roughly 2,500 hotels, produce a lot of towels and linens that need laundering. Venice no longer has the capacity for such an undertaking. So, at dawn, boats carry the dirty laundry and garbage out to Tronchetto, an artificial island and parking lot for trucks coming from the mainland.
所有这些提供床位与早餐的地方，以及该市的大约2500家酒店，出产了大量需要洗涤的毛巾和床单。威尼斯已经没有能力做这件事了。于是每到黎明时分，就会有船只将脏毛巾、脏床单和垃圾运往特龙凯托岛(Tronchetto)，那是一个人工岛，也是来自大陆的卡车停泊之处。
In turn, they deliver fresh towels but also untold gallons of drinking water, foodstuffs, bottles of orange Aperol to make the city’s ubiquitous Aperol Spritz and anything else consumed inside the lagoon.
回程时，它们会载满干净的毛巾，还有大量饮用水、食品、一瓶瓶橙色的柳橙苦酒——用以制作该市随处可见的鸡尾酒Aperol Spritz——以及在这里用得上的其他任何东西。
One weekend a year, during the Feast of the Redeemer in July, Venetians take back the city. They flow back in from Mestre to drink wine on the banks of the Grand Canal and wait for a fireworks show that puts New York’s Fireworks by Grucci to shame.
每年7月的一个周末过救赎节(Feast of the Redeemer)的时候，威尼斯人都会拿回对这座城市的主导权。他们纷纷从梅斯特赶回来，在大运河边喝葡萄酒，等待观看一场会让纽约的格鲁西烟花公司(Fireworks by Grucci)感到汗颜的烟花秀。
This year, the celebration coincided with the Venice Biennale, which draws thousands of sophisticated, globe-trotting visitors to Venice to check out the latest in art, dance and theater. The locals and the art enthusiasts have developed a sort of alliance against the crowds who march on St. Mark’s.
今年的救赎节撞上了威尼斯双年展(Venice Biennale)，后者把成千上万来自全球各地的高端游客吸引到威尼斯，欣赏最新的艺术、舞蹈和戏剧作品。当地人和这些艺术爱好者，已经结成了某种抗衡前进在圣马克广场上的人潮的联盟。
“We are a model of what could be,” said Paolo Baratta, the president of the Biennale, as he watched the fireworks from the terrace of the festival’s headquarters. The people emptying out of the cruise ships, he said, “aren’t concerned with what happens in Venice.”
“我们提供了一种关于这座城市的可能前景的范本，”威尼斯双年展主席保罗·巴拉塔(Paolo Baratta)一边在双年展总部的露台上看烟花，一边说道。他说，从游轮中倾巢而出的那些人“并不关心威尼斯发生了什么”。
At night, many of the tourists return to their cruise ships or tuck in after early dinners. The result is a momentary reprieve but also, like Venice in its slow winter months, a time warp to an earlier Venice.
晚上，很多游客会返回游轮，或者在黄昏晚餐结束后找地方休息。由此不仅暂时缓解了城市承受的压力，还制造出一个与威尼斯悠长的冬季类似的时间扭曲效果，让人得以重回早前的威尼斯。
For me it is the one I first encountered nearly 20 years ago, before Google Maps, when I could get lost and stumble onto seemingly deserted or forgotten campos. At night, away from the city center, a couple of tourists celebrating their wedding at a divey cafe was not cloying, but charming.
对我而言，这便是我在将近20年前的时候遇到的那个威尼斯，当时还没有谷歌地图，我会迷失方向，偶然走到看似荒凉或被遗忘的广场上。入夜，两名游客在远离市中心的一家寒酸的咖啡厅里庆祝自己的婚礼，那场景并不过于甜腻，而是令人愉悦。
Those enchanting hours stretched into the early morning, before the tourists stirred, when St. Mark’s Square itself was empty except for the pigeons and the early risers headed to work.
那些迷人的时光一直延续到凌晨，游客们起床之前，圣马克广场上空荡荡的，只有一些鸽子和赶着去上班的早起者。
Those hours, with the shadows still long and the light reflecting off the lagoon and the triforia windows, reminded me of what Raffaelle Nocera, who otherwise sounded depressed about the state of his city, told me as he navigated a water bus around the Grand Canal.
那些时光——其间，地上的影子依然很长，光亮反射在泄湖和拱形窗上——让我想起本来似乎对这座城市的状态颇感沮丧的威尼斯人拉法埃莱·诺切拉(Raffaelle Nocera)，一边在大运河上驾驶水上巴士一边对我说过的话。
“If you get up early enough,” Nocera said, “you get all of Venice to yourself.”
“如果你起得足够早，”诺切拉说，“整个威尼斯都是你的。”
It reminds you of why it is so worth protecting, and why Italians have been taking a stand.
它会提醒你为什么它值得被保护，为什么意大利人一直在公开表明立场。
“Today it’s Piazza San Marco or Ponte di Rialto,” Franceschini said. “In a few years it could be that the problem spreads.”
“今天是圣马可广场或里阿尔托桥，”弗兰切斯基尼说，“过不了几年，问题可能就会蔓延开去。”