《中英对照读新闻》 香港考虑使用“环保”棺材

【大纪元12月2日讯】自由时报 ◎ 俞智敏

They’re presentable, environmentally friendly and burn faster：cardboard “eco-coffins” may just be the solution to long queues at Hong Kong’s busy crematoriums, officials say.

它们外观漂亮、对环境友善、而且燃烧速度更快：纸板制成的“环保棺材”可能正是解决香港忙碌的火葬场大排长龙难题的方法，官员表示。

Health officials want to introduce the green coffins — made of corrugated cardboard and said to speed up the cremation process from two and a half hours to an hour — to alleviate traffic at crematoriums.

卫生官员希望引进环保棺材─这种棺材是由瓦楞纸板制成，据说可将火化程序由原本的2.5小时减为1小时─以纾解火葬场满档的状况。

“With less time required for each session, we can arrange more sessions per day to cut queuing time for cremation,” said permanent secretary for Health, Welfare and Food Carrie Yau in a statement. “That in turn will help ease the demand on our public mortuary.”

“每次火化所需时间减少，我们每天就可安排更多火化时段，缩短等候火化的时间，”卫生福利及食物局常任秘书长尤曾家丽在声明中指出。“如此一来，又可纾解民众对殓葬服务的需求。”

Cremating the dead is more common and affordable than burials in land-scarce Hong Kong.

在地少人多的香港，火葬远较土葬更常见，费用也较负担得起。

Although the cardboard coffins are more efficient and are said to produce less toxic gas during combustion, they aren’t likely to be popular in Hong Kong, where skimping on the traditional Chinese rituals of sending the dead away is seen as a sign of disrespect.

虽然纸板棺材效率较高，火化过程产生的有毒气体据说也较少，不过这种棺材在香港不太可能大受欢迎，因为省略中国传统丧葬仪式会被视为不尊重死者。

新闻辞典

queue：名词，指人或车的行列、长队，如︰The queue extended all the way to the street corner.（排队的人龙一直排到了街角。 )插队为jump the queue（主要为英式英语 )，如︰Don’t jumpt the queue！╱No queue-jumping！（不要插队！ )

alleviate：减轻、缓和，如︰Her sympathy alleviated his distress.（她的同情和缓了他的沮丧。 )

crematorium：火葬场、垃圾焚化场，复数可加s或用crematoria。火化遗体的动词为cremate，名词为cremation，如︰His father’s cremation was a sad affair.（他父亲的火化仪式令人感伤。 )

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