AMATRICE, Italy — The rescuers worked tirelessly under a scorching sun.
意大利阿马特里切——救援人员在烈日下不知疲倦地工作。
Wearing white masks to fight off the dust, they formed a human chain, passing from hand to hand all they could salvage from the gravelly destruction of the earthquake that struck this region in August. They had to work quickly, fearing the precariousness of an adjacent building splintered by wide fissures.
为防止吸入尘土而戴着白色口罩的他们组成了一条人链，传递着能从8月那场地震留下的瓦砾中抢救出来的所有东西。由于担心旁边一栋楼不安全——楼体出现了多条很宽的裂缝——他们必须抓紧时间。
It was not lives they were saving on this recent day, nor corpses they were retrieving from the mounds of stone ruins, but the history of Amatrice itself.
在最近几天，他们不是在抢救生命，也不是从石头堆里挖掘遗体。他们是在抢救阿马特里切本身的历史。
Working alongside firefighters, the team included a specialized art squad of Italy’s carabinieri police that had been deployed specifically to vacate the city’s municipal archives — 300 years in the making.
和消防员并肩作战的这支队伍中，包括意大利宪兵警卫队派来的一个专业的艺术小组。他们是专门来搜救阿马特里切市的市政档案的。相关档案有300年的历史。
At least 296 people died in the violent shaking on Aug 24. Many more were left homeless and injured. But those few, fraught and devastating minutes also placed at risk thousands of books, dossiers and folders amassed since past earthquakes destroyed this town in 1639 and 1703.
在8月24日那场强地震中，至少296人死亡。无家可归者和受伤者更多。但那令人担忧并造成了毁灭性影响的几分钟也让大量书籍、档案、卷宗处境危险。它们是从1639年和1703年那两场地震之后积累起来的。
There were also countless pieces of art and artifacts in churches and museums across the earthquake zone, which touches towns in four Italian regions.
此外，分布在地震灾区的多家教堂和博物馆里还有不计其数的艺术品和手工艺品。此次地震的受灾区包括意大利四个地区的城镇。
“For now, we have secured a trace of Amatrice’s past — that’s the principal thing, that the community has preserved its history,” said Maria Letizia Sebastiani, the Culture Ministry official who oversaw that afternoon’s recovery.
“目前，我们找到了阿马特里切的过去的痕迹，这个地区保留了自己的历史，这是主要的，”负责那天下午的抢救工作的意大利文化部官员玛丽亚•莱蒂齐娅•塞巴斯蒂安(Maria Letizia Sebastiani)说。
The crisis unit of the Culture Ministry was created after an earthquake engulfed central Italy in 1997, severely damaging a number of monuments, including the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi. It has since been deployed in dozens of disasters, both natural and man-made, in Italy and abroad, and last year was formally instituted via a ministerial decree.
1997年，意大利中部发生地震，导致大量历史遗址，包括阿西西的圣方济各宗主教圣殿(Basilica of St. Francis)严重受损。之后，意大利文化部成立危机应对小组。自那时以来，该小组参与了意大利国内外数十场灾难的救灾行动，既有自然灾害，也有人为灾难。去年，文化部下令，该小组正式成为一个机构。
This year, the Culture Ministry even created a task force that works with UNESCO to carry Italy’s long-standing restoration expertise to war-torn corners of the world.
今年，意大利文化部甚至还成立了一个工作组，与联合国教科文组织(UNESCO)合作，将意大利历史悠久的修复技术带给全世界遭受战争破坏的角落。
United Nations officials had hoped to send it to Syria, where the monumental ruins in Palmyra were badly damaged after the Islamic State entered the ancient city in 2015. But the Syrian conflict has remained too intense for the team to enter.
联合国官员本希望将其派往叙利亚。伊斯兰国(Islamic State)在2015年进入叙利亚古城巴尔米拉后，那里的历史遗迹受到了严重的破坏。但叙利亚冲突的局势太紧张，不适合工作组前往。
“We’re operative, ready to go at a moment’s notice,” said Capt. Michelange Stefàno, an official with the carabinieri art squad and a member of the UNESCO-trained task force.
“我们一直在行动，做好了一得到通知就出发的准备，”宪兵队艺术小组的官员、接受联合国科教文组织培训的工作组成员米凯兰杰•斯特凡诺(Michelange Stefàno)说。
For now, in any case, there is work to be done in Italy.
至少目前在意大利国内有工作要做。
The crisis unit was dispatched in the first hours after the earthquake. As emergency operations were winding down, trained experts began inspecting buildings to assess the damage to the area’s cultural patrimony.
地震发生几小时后，上述危机应对小组便被派往灾区。随着急救行动逐渐减少，训练有素的专家开始检查各建筑，并初步评估该地区文化遗产遭受的损失。
Since then, squads of rescuers and Culture Ministry officials have entered churches, museums and town halls, all with an eye to saving the territory’s heritage, and its very memory of its past.
自那时以来，救援人员和文化部官员组成多个分队进入教堂、博物馆和市政厅，一心想抢救该地区的文化遗产及其对过往历史的记忆。
Paintings, statues and ecclesiastical objects, like crucifixes and processional crosses, have been bundled and sent to what amount to field hospitals for art and artifacts, for preservation and an early evaluation of the damage.
绘画、雕像以及耶稣十字架受难像和十字架等宗教物品被捆起来，送往特定的地方，接受保护和初步定损。那些地方相当于艺术品和手工艺品的战地医院。
The work has been risky and painstaking. Many buildings in Amatrice and elsewhere are still in danger of collapse, and weeks after the quake, aftershocks continued to strain already-weakened structures.
这项工作有风险，也很艰苦。阿马特里切和其他地方的不少建筑仍有倒塌的风险。尽管离地震发生已经过去了数周，但余震仍威胁着本就遭到削弱的建筑结构。
The teams photograph and document artifacts, and recover what can be easily removed from some sites — “those that we can enter; many are still in a bad state,” Stefàno said — with the assistance of firefighters and civil protection rescuers.
各支队伍会对手工艺品进行拍照和记录，并在消防员和民事保护救援人员的帮助下拿走容易取下的部分。“我们能进入的建筑，很多仍处在危险状态，”斯特凡诺说。
The crisis unit’s immediate task was to safeguard monuments as best as possible, “to halt any further deterioration,” said Prefect Fabio Carapezza Guttuso, the unit’s leader, who acts as a liaison between art experts and firefighters and civil protection officials.
上述危机应对小组的首要任务是尽可能让历史遗迹得到最好的保护，“防止受损情况进一步恶化，”该小组的组长法比奥•卡拉佩扎•古图索(Fabio Carapezza Guttuso)说。他也是艺术专家、消防员和民事保护官员之间的联络人。
He described it as a complex but harmonious synergy of individual expertise. Experience gained in every disaster that the unit has dealt with “has improved our capacity to intervene,” he said.
他称这项工作是各种专业技能复杂却又和谐的融合。该小组从之前参加的每一场灾难中获取的经验，“都提升了我们参与救援的能力，”他说。
In the weeks since the quake, the crisis unit has emptied Amatrice’s municipal museum, as well as some churches here and in towns including Accumoli and Arquata del Tronto, which were also badly hit.
地震发生后的这几周里，危机应对小组清空了阿马特里切市博物馆，还有这里以及同样受灾严重的阿库莫利(Accumoli)和阿尔夸塔德尔特龙托(Arquata del Tronto)等城镇的一些教堂。
But thousands of artifacts still need to be salvaged from unsteady churches and palazzos, many in remote areas. “One by one, we will get to them all,” the prefect said.
但仍有成千上万件手工艺品需要从不稳定的教堂和宫殿里转移出来。它们很多地处偏远地区。“我们会一件一件地把它们都转移出来，”古图索说。
Though each operation is being carried out with every possible precaution, an element of urgency prevails. “We’re at 1,000 meters altitude,” Carapezza Guttuso said. “There will be snow in a month.”
每次执行任务时都会尽可能地做足防范措施，但紧迫性依然存在。“我们处于海拔1000米的地方，”卡拉佩扎•古图索说，“再过一个月就要下雪了。”
Some priorities were identified, the prefect said, like an 18th-century replica of the Shroud of Turin, the linen that faithful believe wrapped the body of Jesus. It was removed from a church in Arquata del Tronto and placed in the Cathedral of Ascoli Piceno.
古图索说，他们确定了一些优先事项，譬如都灵裹尸布(Shroud of Turin)——据信曾包裹过耶稣尸身的亚麻布——的一件18世纪的复制品。他们把它从阿尔夸塔德尔特龙托村的一座教堂里转移出来，放进了阿斯科利皮切诺大教堂(Cathedral of Ascoli Piceno)。
“It was important for the population,” he said. “It had the value of a relic.”
“它对民众而言非常重要，”他说。“它具有文物价值。”
Restorers with the crisis unit have also begun to pick out ancient stones and bricks from the rubble, which will be reused when possible in a reconstruction.
此外，危机小组的修复人员已经开始从废墟中挑拣古代砖石，重建工作一启动就可以派上用场。
“As much as possible, the idea is to build as it was, where it was,” the prefect said. “We want to render the idea that we are salvaging artifacts and construction materials” so that the towns will be as authentic as possible, he added. “That is the profound sense of what we’re doing.”
“我们的理念是尽可能在原地按原貌重建，”古图索说。“我们想要表达这样的想法：我们正抢救文物和建筑材料”，好让这些城镇尽可能地恢复原来的样子，他补充道。“这正是我们所做之事的深刻意义所在。”