兔子與籃球有什么共同點？“瘋狂三月”

Before March fades too far from our memories, we wanted to follow up on a back story that appeared recently in the versions of our Morning Briefing in Asia and Europe.

在三月從我們的記憶里淡去之前，我們想對近期出現(xiàn)在我們早報亞洲版和歐洲版中的一篇幕后故事進行后續(xù)報道。

In it, we explained to our international audience the history of the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament, which acquired the nickname “March Madness” in the 1980s.

在那篇幕后故事中，我們對國際讀者解釋了NCAA(國家大學體育協(xié)會)籃球聯(lián)賽的歷史，該聯(lián)賽在1980年代獲得了“瘋狂三月”的稱號。

As it relates to basketball, March Madness can be traced to 1939, when it was used by the Illinois High School Association to describe a statewide high-school basketball tournament: “A little March madness may complement and contribute to sanity and help keep society on an even keel.”

“瘋狂三月”與籃球的歷史可追溯至1939年，當時伊利諾伊州高中聯(lián)盟用它來描述一場全州范圍內的高中籃球聯(lián)賽：“一點點的三月瘋狂可能會補充、促進人們保持頭腦清醒，讓社會保持在一個平衡的水平上。”

One of our erudite readers, however, pointed out that the link between March and madness is much older: The old English phrase “mad as a March hare” stretches back to the 1500s.

然而，我們一位最為博學之一的讀者指出，三月與瘋狂之間的關系要回溯到更為久遠以前：古老的英語短語“mad as a March hare”(瘋得像只三月的野兔)可追溯至1500年代。

The idiom, used to describe someone who is crazy or irrational, derives its meaning from the behavior of hares at the beginning of breeding season.

這個諺語被用來描述瘋狂、不理性的人，意思源自于野兔在交配季節(jié)開始時的行為。

In Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” from 1865, the March Hare famously attends the Mad Hatter’s tea party, before which Alice thinks: “The March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May, it won’t be raving mad — at least not so mad as it was in March.”

在劉易斯·卡羅爾(Lewis Carroll)1865年的《愛麗絲漫游奇境記》(Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)中，三月野兔參加了瘋帽子的茶會，這一事件十分著名，在這之前，愛麗絲想道：“三月野兔會是最有趣的，可能因為現(xiàn)在是五月，它不會瘋狂到極點——至少不會像三月那么瘋狂。”