Neon Lights in Hong Kong

香港霓虹灯

——文章来源: 2018年6月CET4真题

Neon is to Hong Kong as red phone booths are to London and fog is to San Francisco.
霓虹灯之于香港就如红色电话亭之于伦敦，烟雾之于旧金山。

图片来源：https://www.jiemian.com

When night falls, red and blue and other colors cast a hazy glow over a city lit up by tens of thousands of neon signs.
当夜幕降临，成千上万店铺招牌散发出来的红蓝及其他各色的霓虹灯光在这座城市弥漫开来。
But many of them are going dark, replaced by more practical, but less romantic, LEDs.
但是大多数霓虹灯将被更实用却不浪漫的LED灯取代。
Changing building codes, evolving tastes, and the high cost of maintaining those wonderful old signs have businesses embracing LEDs, which are energy efficient , but still carry great cost.
不断变化的城市建筑规范，不断变化的品味和这些美好旧招牌高昂的维护成本，使得商家开始接受LED灯，这些LED虽然是节能的，但依然带来很大成本。

1960年的西九龙区旺角亚皆老街图片来源：http://renjian.163.com
"To me, neon represents memories of the past," says photographer Sharon Blance, whose series Hong Kong Neon celebrates the city's famous signs.
“对于我来说，霓虹灯代表过去的回忆”，摄影师莎伦·布兰斯说，她的《香港霓虹灯》系列节目庆祝了这座城市著名的招牌。
"Looking at the signs now I get a feeling of amazement, mixed with sadness."

“看着现在的这些招牌，我感到一种带着悲哀的惊愕。”
Building a neon sign is an art practiced by professionals trained on the job to mold glass tubes into decorative shapes and letters.
建造霓虹招牌是受过专业训练的人练就的一门艺术，他们把玻璃管塑造成装饰性的形状和字母。
They fill these tubes with gases that glow when electrified.
他们在这些管子里装满通电就会发光的气体。
Neon makes orange, while other gases make yellow or blue. It takes many hours to craft a single sign.
氖气发橘色光，其他的气体发黄光或者蓝光。手工制作一块霓虹招牌需要好几个小时。
Blance spent a week in Hong Kong and photographed more than 60 signs;
布兰斯在香港花了一个星期来为60块招牌拍照。
22 of them appear in the series that capture the signs lighting up lonely streets — an approach that makes it easy to admire their colors and craftsmanship.
其中22块出现在她的系列节目中，这些招牌照亮了孤独的街——这种方式使得欣赏它们的色彩和工艺变得很容易。
"I love the beautiful, handcrafted, old-fashioned quality of neon," says Blance.
“我喜欢霓虹灯，它美好，是手工艺的，带有老式的质感”，布兰斯说道。
The signs do nothing more than identify a restaurant, theater, or other business, but do so in the most striking way possible.
这些招牌的作用仅仅是标识一个餐馆，一家影院，或者其他店面。但是这可能是最吸引人的一种方式。

——2018-11-23 Edited by @Theo