Sometimes it's hard to let go. For many British people, that can apply to institutions and objects that represent their country's past - age-old castles, splendid homes… and red phone boxes.
有时候很难放手。对许多英国人来说，这可以用来代表他们国家的历史——古老的城堡、华丽的住宅和红色的电话亭。
Beaten first by the march of technology and lately by the terrible weather in junkyards, the phone boxes representative of an age are now making something of a comeback. Adapted in imaginative ways, many have reappeared on city streets and village greens housing tiny cafes, cellphone repair shops or even defibrillator machines.
最先被技术的进步所击败，如今又被垃圾场的恶劣天气所击败，代表一个时代的电话亭现在正在卷土重来。经过富有想象力的改造，许多电话亭重新出现在城市街道和乡村绿地上，成了小咖啡馆、手机维修店，甚至除颤器。
The original iron boxes with the round roofs first appeared in 1926. They were designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect of the Battersea Power Station in London. After becoming an important part of many British streets, the phone boxes began disappearing in the 1980s, with the rise of the mobile phone sending most of them away to the junkyards.
最初的圆顶铁制电话亭最早出现在1926年，由伦敦巴特西发电站的建筑师吉尔斯·吉尔伯特·斯科特设计。在成为英国许多街道的重要组成部分后，电话亭在20世纪80年代开始逐渐消失，随着手机的兴起，大部分电话亭被送进了垃圾场。
About that time, Tony Inglis' engineering and transport company got the job to remove phone boxes from the streets and sell them out. But Inglis ended up buying hundreds of them himself, with the idea of repairing and selling them. He said that he had heard the calls to preserve the boxes and had seen how some of them were listed as historic buildings.
大约在那个时候，托尼·英格利斯的工程和运输公司得到了一份工作，将街上的电话亭拆除并卖掉。但英格利斯最终还是自己买了几百座，并打算修理后出售。他说，他听到了保护这些电话亭的呼声，也看见了其中一些电话亭被列为历史建筑。
As Inglis and, later other businessmen, got to work, repurposed phone boxes began reappearing in cities and villages as people found new uses for them. Today, they are once again a familiar sight, playing roles that are often just as important for the community as their original purpose.
当英格利斯和后来的其他商人开始工作时，人们发现了新的用途，被改造过的电话亭开始重新出现在城市和乡村。今天，它们再次成为人们熟悉的景象，扮演的角色对社区的重要性往往和它们最初的目的同样重要。
In rural areas, where ambulances can take a relatively long time to arrive, the phone boxes have taken on a lifesaving role. Local organizations can adopt them for l pound, and install defibrillators to help in emergencies.
在救护车需要较长时间才能到达的农村地区，电话亭起了拯救生命的作用。当地组织可以以1英镑的价格收购，并在紧急情况下安装除颤器来提供帮助。
Others also looked at the phone boxes and saw business opportunities. LoveFone, a company that advocates repairing cellphones rather than abandoning them, opened a mini workshop in a London phone box in 2016.
其他人也从电话亭里看到了商机。LoveFone是一家提倡修理手机而不是丢弃的公司，2016年，该公司在伦敦的一个电话亭里开设了一个迷你工作室。
The tiny shops made economic sense, according to Robert Kerr, a founder of LoveFone. He said that one of the boxes generated around 400 to rent.
LoveFone的创始人之一罗伯特·克尔认为，这些迷你工作室很有经济意义。他说，其中一个电话亭每月的收入约为1.35万美元，租金仅为400美元左右。
Inglis said phone boxes called to mind an age when things were built to last. "I like what they are to people, and I enjoy bringing things back," he said.
英格利斯说，电话亭让人想起了一个物品经久耐用的时代。他说：“我喜欢它们对人们的意义，也喜欢把它们带回来”。
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